#2952: Steven Gundry

Steven Gundry is a pseudoscience-based wellness guru who has, apparently, managed to achieve something close to stardom in the wellness community. One thing that has presumably contributed to his success is the fact that Gundry is, indeed, a (former) cardiothoracic surgeon, something that presumably gives his nonsense a sheen of legitimacy to people with no background or knowledge in medicine and who don’t bother to look too closely. He does apparently have little or no scientific background in the fields to which he currently tries to contribute copious amounts of nonsense – Gundry is a nutritionist, not a dietician; his audience consists of people who don’t know the difference.

 

Gundry is probably most famous for promoting the pseudoscientific lectin-free diet, e.g. in his apparently quite popular book The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in “Healthy” Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain, which appropriately made this list. The supposed paradox of the title is the idea that consumption of grains, legumes and fruit (Gundry calls it “toxic candy”) leads to obesity and weight gain, a delusion that is not supported by any evidence but is contradicted by massive amounts of research demonstrating an inverse association (example, if needed; here’s another; meanwhile, Gundry’s own research to contradict consensus is … a poster at a conference). According to real scientists who care about integrity and nevertheless bothered to read the book, “even more egregious [than his well-worn quack gambit of referring to articles that don’t remotely say what he claims they say] are the wild claims he makes with no referencing at all, which is most of the text ... Sometimes it almost seems like this author is just making things up that sound good”. Examples include random assertions that “Up until 10,000 years ago, the average human stood about 6 feet tall” (patently false) and that most of his stage 3 and stage 4 cancer patients got better (no publication or study cited). The book does check every box on the standard pseudoscience gambit list, however. There is a decent review here.

 

Gundry’s guiding, erroneous idea is that lectins – which a lot of plants contain plenty of – cause inflammation (they’re “highly toxic”) and are really the cause of many modern diseases, including numerous autoimmune diseases, cancer, heart disease and some of its risk factors, weight problems, slow infant growth, diabetes, mental health problems, and neurological conditions like Parkinson’s, dementia, and “cramps, tingling, and numbness”. His Plant Paradox diet accordingly tells you to avoid all foods containing lectins altogether. Indeed, a main claim of Gundry’s is that “the continuous availability of fruit is one of the biggest contributors to the obesity crisis”; just think about that for a second (Gundry adds that fruits today are worse than before because they are GMOs, a claim that is false – the only GMO fruit available in the US is papayas – and would anyways have been bonkers crazy, but which probably works quite well with his intended audiences). In reality, by contrast, the evidence of the benefits of high-lectin-containing diets “is so overwhelming as to render Gundry’s arguments laughable”; Gundry, by contrast, has exactly no evidence and no remotely plausible mechanism for the purported effects of lectins on weight. According to endocrinologist and past president of the American Heart Association Robert Eckel, Gundry’s diet advice contradicts “every dietary recommendation represented by the American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, American Diabetes Association and so on”; moreover, it is not possible to draw any conclusions from Gundry’s own attempts as ‘research’ due to the absence of control patients in his studies.

 

Meanwhile, Gundry’s own line of supplements purportedly protects against or even reverse the supposedly damaging effects of lectins and include the Lectin Shield (“to assist the body in the fight against lectins”) and the Enhanced Circulation Formula (“designed to keep your blood flowing smoothly, carrying oxygen to all essential organs, tissues, and muscles”) – it’s notable that his list of ‘yes’ foods in his book consists of mostly expensive and hard-to-obtain products, making his own supplement series an attractive alternative for those who may have bought into his bullshit (he assures his audiences that this conflict of interest shouldn’t undermine his authority, though); and yes, his website does have a Quack Miranda Warning. Ostensibly, he even runs an experimental clinic investigating the impact of a lectin-free diet on health because it might be useful for marketing purposes to be able to refer to something like this. His lectin-free nonsense is apparently also popular with proponents of Dave Asprey’s mostly bullshit bulletproof diet and has moreover been promoted (of course) by pop stars and celebrities.

 

Currently, he is also the host of the Dr. Gundry Podcast on health and nutrition (not recommended) and writes articles for Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop website. That last fact alone should really be sufficient to fully capture the sort of character we’re dealing with here, but just to pile it on: Gundry has even expressed support for Joseph Mercola, claiming that Mercola provides “very useful health advice”. To top it all off, Gundry also pushed pseudoscientific anti-vaccine nonsense (anti-vaxxers called it a “study”) about mRNA vaccines during Covid, because of course he did; the misinformation was quickly debunked by real scientists, but Gundry’s audience isn’t very good at distinguishing good sources from clown train horn honks.

 

His latest book is apparently Unlocking the Keto Code (2022) – yup, Gundry knows to hitch the fad, which is crucial to maintain your success on the wellness pseudoscience idiot circuit. Before moving on to lectins, Gundry had published the book Dr. Gundry's Diet Evolution: Turn Off the Genes That Are Killing You and Your Waistline (2008), which we haven’t read and neither should you.

 

Diagnosis: Once Steven Gundry was a respectable medical practitioner; now he is full of shit. His nonsense reads as the worst kinds of spam and content-covering ads and is about as trustworthy. Whether he himself believes the confused rot that falls out of his mouth is not always clear to us (we wish to be charitable, but a principle of charity sort of pulls in two directions here), but people apparently listen. Good f**king grief.