Your kidneys are remarkable little beans, filtering your entire blood supply about 12 times every hour, meticulously removing waste and toxins. Your liver is a powerhouse, filtering hundreds of gallons of blood and neutralizing every toxin that comes through your digestive system. But these vital organs are under siege. The culprit? A simple, four-letter acronym: CRAP. By understanding and eliminating this from your diet, you can take immense pressure off your liver and kidneys, allowing them to heal and rejuvenate at a staggering pace. (Based on the insights of Dr. Livinggood)
Key Takeaways
- Your Liver and Kidneys are Your Body’s Filters: These organs work tirelessly to remove toxins and waste. When they get clogged, your overall health plummets.
- The Modern Diet is the Main Culprit: Processed foods, loaded with harmful ingredients, are the primary cause of the skyrocketing rates of liver and kidney disease.
- Healing Can Happen Fast: By making targeted dietary changes, you can see significant improvements in liver function—up to a 43.8% reduction in liver fat—in just a couple of weeks.
- Cut the “CRAP”: The key to healing is a simple-to-remember acronym: Carbs (refined), Rancid oils, Artificial ingredients, and Processed proteins.
- Support Your Detox Pathways: As you clean up your diet and lose fat, your body releases stored toxins. It’s crucial to support your liver and kidneys with specific nutrients to handle this process effectively.
1. Cut Out Refined Carbs and Sugars
The first, and perhaps most significant, step is to eliminate refined carbohydrates and sugars. The average American consumes a staggering 164 pounds of refined carbs and 131 pounds of flour every single year. You might think, “That’s not me!” but these sugars are hidden everywhere. That morning bowl of Raisin Bran is nutritionally equivalent to eating a doughnut and a half. A can of Coca-Cola is like eating three and a half doughnuts. It’s a constant, compounding onslaught.
The key word here is “refined.” When a carbohydrate is refined, it’s stripped of its fiber. Think of your food groups not as fat, protein, and carbs, but as fat, protein, and fiber. Fiber is the crucial element that slows down sugar absorption, preventing the sharp insulin spikes that damage your body. Without fiber, simple carbs are absorbed almost instantly, sending a tidal wave of sugar into your bloodstream. Your kidneys have to take the brunt of this, and any fructose—found in table sugar (sucrose) and high-fructose corn syrup—goes straight to the liver, overwhelming it.
In fact, there are over 561 different names for sugar used in our food supply, making it nearly impossible to track. So, here’s a simple rule: for the next two to four weeks (90 days is even better), you need to go on a complete sugar fast. This means avoiding all simple sugars, processed foods, breads, grains, crackers, and even most fruits. Fruits like bananas, mangoes, apples, and melons are high in fructose and must be cut out temporarily to give your liver a break. If you must have fruit, stick to low-fructose options like lemons, limes, kiwis, grapefruit, and berries, which your liver and kidneys love.
- Avoid: All processed and simple carbohydrates (white bread, pasta, crackers, cookies, candy), high-fructose fruits (bananas, mangoes, grapes), and sweeteners like high-fructose corn syrup and agave nectar.
- Approved: For a short healing period, focus on fiber from vegetables alongside clean protein and healthy fats. If you need a touch of sweetness, use monk fruit or stevia.
- Better/Best: The best approach is to go as low-carb as possible, focusing on complex carbohydrates from whole, fiber-rich sources like sprouted grains (after the initial healing phase).
2. Remove Rancid Oils
This next category is arguably even more destructive than sugar. Every single cell in your body is made from fat. The membrane of each cell, which allows nutrients in and toxins out, needs to be built from clean, healthy fats. When you consume rancid, man-made oils, your body is forced to build faulty, congested cells that can’t function properly. This is how disease begins at a cellular level.
The main offenders are industrial seed oils high in linoleic acid: corn oil, soybean oil, vegetable oil, canola oil, grapeseed oil, and safflower oil. Our modern diet has created a massive onslaught of linoleic acid, which literally clogs your cells. The solution is incredibly simple: you only need four types of fats in your life. Cook with and consume olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, and natural animal fats like butter, ghee, and tallow. That’s it. These fats are stable, don’t break down easily under heat, and provide the building blocks for healthy cells.
The danger is amplified when these bad oils are heated repeatedly. Think about the deep fryers at fast-food restaurants or amusement parks, where the oil might be used for an entire day or even a whole season. Research on rats is terrifyingly clear: the more linoleic acid they consumed, the more weight they gained and the more damage occurred in their liver and kidney tissues. Just reheating the same oil three times dramatically increased weight gain and tissue damage in only four weeks. These repeatedly heated oils are in almost all fried and processed foods—chips, crackers, frozen meals, and restaurant food. It can take up to 600 days to clear these toxic fats from your cells, so the best time to stop eating them is right now.
- Avoid: All industrial seed oils (corn, soy, canola, vegetable, etc.) and anything fried in them.
- Approved: Coconut oil, olive oil, and avocado oil.
- Better/Best: Natural, stable animal fats like grass-fed butter, ghee, tallow, and lard are excellent choices.
3. Avoid Artificial Ingredients
Our food supply contains over 10,000 approved additives, and many of them are toxic to your system. To keep it simple, let’s focus on two of the most prevalent and damaging categories: artificial sweeteners and artificial dyes.
First, artificial sweeteners like sucralose (Splenda), aspartame, and acesulfame potassium must go. You might think you’re making a healthy choice by opting for a “sugar-free” drink or snack, but you’re often just trading one poison for another. Sucralose, for example, is a chemical compound that has been shown to increase appetite (making you eat more), damage the pancreas, promote insulin resistance, and destroy your healthy gut microbiome. Your liver and kidneys have to work overtime to process these foreign chemicals.
Second, artificial dyes are purely cosmetic chemicals used to make processed food look more appealing, and they are directly linked to serious health issues. For example, Red No. 3 was recently banned by the FDA for causing cancer, but the ban doesn’t take full effect until 2027, allowing companies to sell through their existing inventory. This known carcinogen is still found in countless products, from Pop-Tarts and jelly beans to cough syrups and even mashed potato mixes. If an ingredient causes cancer, it needs to be removed immediately. Always read the label and if you see names like “Red 40,” “Yellow 5,” or any other artificial color, put the product back on the shelf.
4. Purge Processed Proteins
Finally, let’s talk about protein. Your kidneys can handle protein, but the quality of that protein is paramount. Processed, commercially raised meat is a major source of inflammation and toxins that burden your liver and kidneys.
Conventionally raised cows are often kept in feedlots, fed an unnatural diet of grain (which is high in the inflammatory linoleic acid we just discussed), and pumped full of hormones and antibiotics. The resulting meat is fatty, less nutritious, and inflammatory. In contrast, grass-fed beef from cows that roam freely is lean, rich in nutrients, and healthy. The same principle applies to all animal products. Pasture-raised chickens produce eggs with deep orange yolks, rich in liver-supporting nutrients like choline, while conventional eggs are pale and nutritionally inferior. Farm-raised fish, fed pellets in crowded pens, are more toxic and have a discolored, fatty meat compared to lean, naturally pink wild-caught fish.
Perhaps one of the worst offenders is margarine, a synthetic product designed to imitate butter. It’s made through a disgusting process involving bleaching, high heat, and hydrogen gas, and then requires artificial colors and dyes to look palatable. It is an extremely toxic food-like product. Be equally wary of many plant-based meat alternatives, which are often ultra-processed and loaded with rancid oils and chemicals.
- Avoid: Commercial, grain-fed meat and dairy; farm-raised fish; margarine and highly processed meat alternatives.
- Approved: At a minimum, choose products with “no antibiotics” and “no hormones.”
- Better/Best: The best choices are always organic, grass-fed beef; pasture-raised chicken and eggs; and wild-caught fish.
Conclusion: You Can Heal Your Body
Reclaiming the health of your liver and kidneys is not only possible, but it can also happen remarkably fast. The key is to stop the assault by cutting the CRAP—refined Carbs, Rancid oils, Artificial ingredients, and Processed proteins. As you clean up your diet, your body will start to release stored toxins from your fat cells. This is a good thing, but it means your liver and kidneys need support. Ensure you’re getting nutrients that aid detoxification, such as milk thistle, B vitamins, and choline from sources like pasture-raised eggs.
This isn’t about a fad diet; it’s about removing the poisons and giving your body the clean building blocks it needs to heal itself. You don’t need to cut corners with risky drugs or injections. You just need to cut the crap. The power to rejuvenate your body’s most vital filters is in your hands, and it starts with your very next meal.
Source: Dr. Livinggood