Where to start?,
I did wonder about the inconsistencies and contradictions for a while, but stopped once i worked out that it is a diet created by a doctor (Sidney Valentine Haas) back in the 1930's(?), based on his observations that carbohydrates caused digestive issues for many people (he worked alot with celiac disease and digestive issues).
He didn't get everything 100% percent but it worked for alot of people.
(For example, eliminating all carbs eliminates all gluten so it cured celiacs but was far more restrictive than they required)
Elaine Gottschall, whose daughter was helped by Dr Haas, popularised the diet with her book ( Breaking the Vicious Cycle: Intestinal Health Through Diet) in the 70's.
By all accounts she was a bit of a battleaxe (i mean that in a good way, strong and determined, not to be crossed) and laid down the law, not allowing any changes and making determinations on what else is legal and illegal.
She went back to school (at 47) and received a Masters degree in biochemistry and continued on with graduate studies in nutrition.
It is a trademarked system and it is not perfect,
It eliminates many things and there is no way to tell which eliminations were required for each individual and which ones were not necessary.
apparently "Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride has taken SCD and evolved it further to create a full protocol for healing digestive disorders and subsequent issues." and packaged it as the GAPS diet, which i think has some improvements.
I view it (SCD) as a good starting point since there is so much information available but would suggest that people move to a low to medium carb paleo diet ('Perfect Health Diet'-ish) if they can reintroduce safe paleo carbs (tubers and maybe white rice) without any issues.
I'm grateful to the SCD diet because it lead me to paleo and my belief is that that's why it works
We eat **** processed crap, too many carbs of poor quality, and inflammatory seed oils and it messes with out gut bacteria, our immune system and our health in general.
I don't even think that the nitty-gritty nit picking details matter, I've talked to people who are 100% SCD and eat shitloads of SCD muffins and just plain crap that happens to be SCD legal but isn't a balanced diet.
Put you effort into REAL FOOD (and in my world grains and seed oils ain't real food).
I thought this was a great post about diets and explains why i'm not as zealous as i used to be......
Raw Vegan, Blood Type O, Paleo, Low Carb High Fat Diets – what do they have in common?
http://paleozonenutrition.com/2012/11/11/raw-vegan-blood-type-o-and-the-paleo-diet-what-do-they-have-in-common/
