This blog is part of a series on the GAPS diet and No Plant GAPS. I had the pleasure of spending time with Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, learning directly from her expertise. The information shared in these blogs comes from our private conversations, public interviews, and exclusive content from a special interview included in the No Plant GAPS training session.

Monika Holland asked Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride “what is actually the role of vegetables and do we need them at all?

Flavors. They give colors. They give variety.

They give fun. They’ re tasty. It’ s nice to have them. So if your digestive system can handle them, why not? It’ s beautiful to introduce them. And that makes your social life more comfortable. Of course, you don’ t have to keep explaining to everyone, you know, why you’ re not eating this and why you’ re not eating that and why you’ re only eating this. You know, it makes your life for more normal. If you could have vegetables. Yeah, so it’ s it’ s nice to introduce them. And if a vegetable. You can even have fruit, then even in limited amounts, then your life is even fuller. There was there was also a context of vegetables having the cleansing properties that some some some some people claim that they help flush things out from the body.

So in that context, if somebody is following no plant gaps, are they actually missing out on that aspect and and will they detox less? Do they need to. Support their body? And should they do something extra to help the body detox more? They’ re not missing anything because animal foods are just as cleansing. Right. In order to cleanse and to keep your body clean, you need all the fat soluble vitamins in large amounts, vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin K2, vitamin E. They’ re very powerful. You need saturated fats. You need polyunsaturated fats. You need proteins. You need amino acids. You need enzymes. And the biggest and the most powerful cleanser in your body is your body. It has a so-called detoxification system in it, which is mighty powerful, and it has ways of removing toxins out, which our science hasn’ t even discovered yet.

So your own body will cleanse itself and the body, the physical structure of your body requires animal foods to thrive. So you don’ t need to eat plants in order to be clean on the inside. That’ s so powerful. Because again, there is a lot of propaganda about all this juicing, detox protocols and claiming to remove all the toxicity from the body just by drinking those juices. Of course, we know we’ re all different. No, no two human beings are the same. We are all different. We have different constitutions. And there are people in this world who can thrive on largely plant- based diets. You know, there are people like that. And they seem to be doing okay. And they seem to be doing well with people. We all have different constitutions.

So perhaps it is possible that people who don’ t need the no plant gaps diet have a particular Northern European constitution, where they thrive on animal foods. If your ancestry all comes from some tropical area of the world where there were lots of fruits and not many animal foods, perhaps you can manage to survive on fruit and veg. But no. Nobody can thrive on processed carbohydrates. Nobody thrives on wheat and sugar and soya and vegetable oils and all that. Nobody. And no matter what diet you choose for healing your body, for getting yourself healthier, the first thing every diet will make you do is to remove these processed things. And the first improvements that you get in the first two, three months will come simply from removing these poisons.

No matter what, you might be a vegan or you might be a complete carnivore. Improvements in both cases come from removing wheat, sugar, flour, breakfast cereals. You know, rice and and all these other vegetable oils and soy.

The protocol for the No Plant GAPS diet is outlined comprehensively in the book “Gut and Physiology Syndrome” by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, the creator of this approach. Further information on the protocol can also be found here.