I recently read Eat to Live: The Amazing Nutrient-Rich Program for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss by Joel Fuhrman. I’m scheduled to run the Charleston Half Marathon next month and I haven’t been able to train for it the way I had planned. I read Fuhrman’s book to help prepare for the race. I found the book informative and have made a number of changes to my diet and I feel great. Here are some principles and statistics from the book that I found interesting,

In a recent survey of 9,500 Americans, 36 percent were overweight and 23 percent were obese, (Wow!)

In 1978, 18 percent of calories were eaten away from home; the figure is now 36 percent. In 1970, Americans ate 6 billion fast-food meals. By 2000, the figure was 110 billion.

Your key to permanent weight loss is to eat predominantly those foods that have a high proportion of nutrients (noncaloric food factors) to calories (carbohydrates, fats, and proteins). In physics a key formula is Einstein’s E = mc2. In nutrition the key formula is H = N/C.

Do not say you will give it a try. Do not try; instead, make a commitment to do it right. When you get married, does the religious figure or justice of the peace ask, “Do you swear to give this person a try?”

When people tell me they will give it a try, I say don’t bother, you have already decided to fail. It takes more than a try to quit addictions; it takes a commitment. A commitment is a promise that you stick with, no matter what.

You wouldn’t let your children sit around the table smoking cigars and drinking whiskey, because it is not socially acceptable, but it is fine to let them consume cola, fries cooked in trans fat, and a cheeseburger regularly. Many children eat doughnuts, cookies, cupcakes, and candy on a daily basis.

There is considerable data to suggest that childhood diet has a greater impact on the later incidence of certain cancers than does a poor diet later in life. (Parents – take heed)

Women: Approximately ninety-five pounds for the first five feet of height and then four pounds for every inch thereafter. 5’4″ 95 + 16 = 111 5’6″ 95 + 24 = 119 Men: Approximately 105 pounds for the first five feet of height and then five pounds for every inch thereafter. Therefore, a 5’10” male should weigh approximately 155 pounds.

The link between thinness and longevity, and obesity and a shorter life span, is concrete.

If you are serious about losing weight, don’t drink your fruit—eat it.

A slower metabolism is associated with a longer life span in all species of animals.

Contrary to what you may have heard and read in the past, our goal should be the opposite: to eat less, only as much as we need to maintain a slim and muscular weight, and no more, so as to keep our metabolic rate relatively slow.

Primates are the only animals on the face of the earth that can taste sweet and see color.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates that the typical American now consumes an unbelievable thirty teaspoons of added sugar a day.

Eating a diet that contains a significant quantity of sugar and refined flour does not just cause weight gain, it also leads to an earlier death.

If you want to lose weight, the most important foods to avoid are processed foods: condiments, candy, snacks, and baked goods; fat-free has nothing to do with it.

Americans are not nutrient-deficient because of our depleted soil, as some nutritional-supplement proponents claim. Americans are nutrient-deficient because they do not eat a sufficient quantity of fresh produce.

I recognize that raw, uncooked vegetables and fruits offer the most powerful protection against disease, and I encourage my patients to eat huge salads and at least four fresh fruits per day.

These researchers concluded that “most foods undergo a decrease in nutritive value in addition to the well-known loss of vitamins when cooked and/or processed.”

Consuming a significant quantity of raw foods is essential for superior health.

The bottom line about healthy fats is that raw nuts, seeds, and avocados contain healthy fats. However, you should consume a limited amount of these foods, especially if you wish to lose weight.

As in a trial, the evidence has become overwhelming and irrefutable—high-fiber foods offer significant protection against both cancer (including colon cancer) and heart disease. I didn’t say fiber; I said high-fiber foods.

Almost half of all vegetables consumed are potatoes, and half of the potatoes consumed are in the form of fries or chips. Furthermore, potatoes are one of the least nutritious vegetables.

Cheese consumption increased 180 percent between 1970 and 2003, and cheese is the primary source of saturated fat in our diet.4

Natural plant foods, though usually carbohydrate-rich, also contain protein and fats. On average, 25 percent of the calories in vegetables are from protein.

Cancer is a disease of maladaptation. It results primarily from a body’s lacking critical substances found in different types of vegetation, many of which are still undiscovered, that are metabolically necessary for normal protective function. Natural foods unadulterated by man are highly complex—so complex that the exact structure and the majority of compounds they contain are not precisely known.

A high intake of just one nutrient when nature has combined it with many others may make things worse, not better.

Men who ate three or more servings of cruciferous vegetables a week had a 41 percent reduced risk of prostate cancer compared with men who ate less than one serving a week.

There are simply too many protective factors that work synergistically to expect significant benefit from taking a few isolated substances. These beneficial compounds have overlapping and complementary mechanisms of action.

Cancer is much more preventable than treatable.

Steak has only 6.4 grams of protein per 100 calories and broccoli has 11.1 grams, almost twice as much. (Let’s hear it for broccoli!)

Keep in mind that most of the calories in meat come from fat; green vegetables are mostly protein. (All calories must come from fat, carbohydrate, or protein.)

The biggest animals—elephants, gorillas, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, and giraffes—all eat predominantly green vegetation. How did they get the protein to get so big? Obviously, greens pack a powerful protein punch.

Leafy greens such as romaine lettuce, kale, collards, Swiss chard, and spinach are the most nutrient-dense of all foods.

In a review of 206 human-population studies, raw vegetable consumption showed the strongest protective effect against cancer of any beneficial food. However, fewer than one in a hundred Americans consumes enough calories from vegetation to ensure this defense.

I tell my patients to put a big sign on their refrigerator that says THE SALAD IS THE MAIN DISH. The word salad here means any vegetable eaten raw or uncooked, e.g., a bowl of cold pasta in olive oil with a token vegetable is not a salad.

I encourage my patients to eat two huge salads a day, with the goal of consuming an entire head of romaine or other green lettuce daily.

Did you notice that 100 calories of broccoli is about twelve ounces of food, and 100 calories of ground sirloin is just one ounce of food?

With green vegetables you can get filled up, even stuffed, yet you will not be consuming excess calories. Animal products, on the other hand, are calorie-dense and relatively low in nutrients, especially the crucial anti-cancer nutrients.

To achieve superior health and a permanently thin physique, you should eat large portions of green foods. When considering any green plant food, remember to make the portion size huge by conventional standards. Eating large portions of these super-healthy foods is the key to your success.

Likewise, so-called low-fat 2 percent milk is not really 2 percent fat. Thirty-five percent of its calories come from fat. They can call it 98 percent fat-free (by weight) only because of its water content. Low-fat milk is not a low-fat product at all, and neither are low-fat cheeses and other low-fat animal foods when you recalculate their fat on a per calorie percentage basis. This is just a sad trick played on Americans. Incidentally, 49 percent of the calories in whole milk come from fat.

Americans began eating more and more animal foods. The campaign sparked the beginning of the fastest-growing cancer epidemic in history, and heart attack rates soared to previously unheard-of levels.

For years and years the USDA resisted lowering cholesterol and dietary fat recommendations in spite of the irrefutable evidence that Americans were committing suicide with food. Heavy political pressure, lobbyists, and money blocked the path to change.

Our government spends over $20 billion on price supports that benefit the dairy, beef, and veal industries. This money is given to farmers to artificially reduce the cost of crops used to feed cows, thereby helping to reduce the prices we pay for dairy foods, fowl, and meat. Fruits and vegetables grown primarily for human consumption are specifically excluded from USDA price supports.

The food pyramid endorses a level of animal-food consumption that causes the diseases that kill us: heart attacks and cancer.

This is an exercise in political correctness, not nutritional science. Could it be possible that the USDA continues to be unduly influenced by political pressure exerted by food industry groups? A pyramid based on science and science alone would have to place vegetables at the foundation!

In other words, as animal-food consumption approached zero, cancer rates fell.

The best bet for overall health is to significantly limit or eliminate all types of meat—red and white.

As long as Americans continue to practice nutritional indifference, they will suffer the consequences. Don’t expect any significant protection from marginal changes.

Fruits and vegetables are the two foods with the best correlation with longevity in humans.

Vegetables and fruits protect against all types of cancers if consumed in large enough quantities. Hundreds of scientific studies document this. The most prevalent cancers in our country are mostly plant-food-deficiency diseases. Raw vegetables have the most powerful anti-cancer properties of all foods. Studies on the cancer-reducing effects of vitamin pills containing various nutrients (such as folate, vitamin C, and vitamin E) give mixed reviews; sometimes they show a slight benefit, but most show no benefit. Occasionally studies show that taking isolated nutrients is harmful, as was discussed in chapter three regarding beta-carotene. Beans in general, not just soy, have additional anti-cancer benefits against reproductive cancers, such as breast and prostate cancer.

We are losing the war on cancer because we are on an incessant search for the impossible-to-find cure, when in fact removing the causes is the only way to win.

You can close this book and put it away right now as long as you can incorporate this crucial dietary change into your life: consume high levels of fruits, green vegetables, and beans. This is the key to both weight loss and better health.

Following a strict vegetarian diet is not as important as eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables.

A vegetarian whose diet is mainly refined grains, cold breakfast cereals, processed health-food-store products, vegetarian fast foods, white rice, and pasta will be worse off than a person who eats a little chicken or eggs, for example, but consumes a large amount of fruits, vegetables, and beans.

Remember, long-term vegans (strict vegetarians who consume no dairy or other foods of animal origin) almost never get heart attacks.

Whether you eat a vegetarian diet or include a small amount of animal foods, for optimal health you must receive the majority of your calories from unrefined plant foods. It is the large quantity of unrefined plant foods that grants the greatest protection against developing serious disease.

In this country, we consume an enormous amount of cheese. Our record-high increase in cheese consumption is alarming: a 182 percent increase in the past thirty years.43 Cheese has more saturated fat and more hormone-containing and promoting substances than any other food, and the incidence of our hormonally sensitive cancers has skyrocketed.

Exercise Powerfully Reduces Cancer Risk

Our most powerful artillery on the war against breast cancer, and cancer in general, is to follow the overall advice presented in this book and begin at as young an age as possible.

For example, subjects who ate meat, including poultry and fish, were found to be twice as likely to develop dementia (loss of intellectual function with aging) as their vegetarian counterparts in a carefully designed study.

Hip fractures and osteoporosis are more frequent in populations in which dairy products are commonly consumed and calcium intakes are commonly high.

However, it does suggest that dairy products are not protecting us from osteoporosis as we have been indoctrinated to believe since childhood. On the contrary, studies show fruits and vegetables are protective against osteoporosis.

Many green vegetables have calcium-absorption rates of over 50 percent, compared with about 32 percent for milk.

Numerous studies have shown that most Americans are severely vitamin D–deficient, a condition that causes osteoporosis as well as increased heart disease, cancer, and autoimmune disease.

Remember the 90 percent rule: eat 90 percent health-giving whole-plant foods.

You do not need dairy products to get sufficient calcium if you eat a healthy diet. All unprocessed natural foods are calcium-rich; even a whole orange (not orange juice) has about 60 mg of calcium.

Protein, fat, and carbohydrates are called macronutrients. Vitamins and minerals are referred to as micronutrients. All plant foods are a mixture of protein, fat, and carbohydrate (the macronutrients).

Green vegetables are about half protein, a quarter carbohydrate, and a quarter fat. Legumes and beans are about half carbohydrate, a quarter protein, and a quarter fat.

Appetite is not controlled by the weight of the food but by fiber, nutrient density, and caloric density.

Since the stomach can hold about one liter of food, let’s look at how many calories are in a whole stomachful of a particular food. It’s pretty clear which foods will let you feel full with the least amount of calories—fruits and vegetables.

Green vegetables are so incredibly low in calories and rich in nutrients and fiber that the more of them you eat, the more weight you will lose.

That is, try to eat at least one pound of raw vegetables a day and one pound of cooked/steamed or frozen green or nongreen nutrient-rich vegetables a day as well.

Cruciferous vegetables have the most powerful anti-cancer effects of all foods.

The phytonutrients in cruciferous vegetables also activate your body’s own antioxidant control system. These unique compounds cycle through the body for three to five days after consumption, offering protection and fueling numerous bodily systems, enabling them to function more effectively.

Some naturally occurring fats are called saturated because all of the bonds in their carbon chain are single bonds. These fats are solid at room temperature and are generally recognized as a significant cause of both heart disease and cancer. Saturated fats are found mainly in meat, fowl, eggs, and dairy. Coconut and palm oil are largely saturated and are not desirable. The foods with the most saturated fat are butter, cream, and cheese.

Remember, when you extract the oil from the whole food it was packaged in, you remove it from its antioxidant-and phytochemical-rich protective environment.

There are two main types of strokes: ischemic and hemorrhagic. Almost all heart attacks and the vast majority of strokes are associated with ischemia (lack of blood flow) from blood clots. The small percentage of strokes that are hemorrhagic (approximately 8 percent) result not from a cholesterol-laden vessel leading to a clot but from a rupture of a small artery in the brain as a result of years and years of high blood pressure.

Let me remind you that the best fats are the monounsaturated fats and essential fats (omega-3 and omega-6) present in whole, natural plant foods, including avocados, and raw nuts and seeds.

Studies continue to show that consumption of raw nuts protects against both heart attack and stroke, without the risks of increasing heart disease and cancer, as is the case with the high consumption of animal-origin fats.

When the fats you consume are from whole foods rather than oil, you gain nature’s protective package: a balance of vitamins, minerals, fibers, and phytonutrients.

Not only do nuts and seeds lower LDL cholesterol, but they also raise HDL (good) cholesterol.

Epidemiologic studies indicate an inverse association between frequency of nut and seed consumption and body mass index.

Several studies have also shown that eating a small amount of nuts or seeds actually helps dieters feel satiated, stay with the program, and have more success achieving long-term weight loss. By contrast, refined oil, which contains 120 calories per tablespoon, is fattening and can sabotage weight loss.

As trans fatty acids offer no benefits and only clear adverse metabolic consequences, when you see the words partially hydrogenated on the side of a box, consider what’s inside poisonous and throw it in the trash.

Trans fats are surely cancer-promoting and raise your cholesterol as much as saturated fat.

Beware that levels of less than 0.5 gram per serving can be listed as 0 grams trans fat, making it possible for a person eating multiple servings of a food labeled free of trans fat to still consume a significant amount.

The most dangerous fats for both heart disease and cancer are saturated fats and trans fatty acids, listed as “partially hydrogenated” on food labels. You would be foolish not to avoid these fats. Trans fats may raise breast cancer risk by more than 45 percent.

Remember, a low-fat diet can be worse than a higher-fat diet if it has more saturated fat or trans fat and if it contains an excessive amount of refined carbohydrates.

Note that lean meat or fowl, which contains 2 to 5 grams of fat per ounce, contains less fat, less saturated fat, and fewer calories per ounce than cheese, which has 8 to 9 grams of fat per ounce. Cheese has much more saturated fat (the most dangerous fat), about ten times as much saturated fat as chicken breast. Cheese is the food that contributes the most saturated fat to the American diet. Most cheeses are more than 50 percent of calories from fat, and even low-fat cheeses are very high-fat foods.

Avoid saturated fats and trans fats (hydrogenated fats) and try to include some foods that contain omega-3 fat in your diet.

Any combination of natural foods will supply you with adequate protein, including all eight essential amino acids as well as nonessential amino acids.

It is only when a vegetarian diet revolves around white bread and other processed foods that the protein content falls to low levels. However, the minute you include unprocessed foods such as vegetables, whole grains, beans, or nuts, the diet becomes protein-rich.

They are surprised to learn that broccoli has about twice as much protein as steak.

Only 10 percent of the total calories consumed by the average person needs to be in the form of protein. In fact, as little as 2.5 percent of calories from protein may be all that is necessary for the average person.

Almost any assortment of plant foods contained about 30 to 40 grams of protein per 1,000 calories. When your caloric needs are met, your protein needs are met automatically. Focus on eating healthy natural foods; forget about trying to get enough protein.

The RDAs are biased in favor of the conventional level of intake. They are not based on how people should eat to maintain optimal health; rather, they have been formulated to represent how we do eat.

The RDAs reflect a diet that caused all the problems in the first place.

You can take 1,000 mg of vitamin C in the form of a pill to make up for how deadly deficient your diet is, but then you would be missing all the other plant-derived antioxidants and phytochemicals that come in the same package as the vitamin C. The government must hold the RDA ridiculously low because it would be inconsistent with the other absurd dietary suggestions and make it impossible to achieve such levels without supplementation.

First, when food is refined and the macronutrients are removed from nature’s natural packaging, they assume disease-causing properties. Second, green vegetables ran away with the title and legumes and fresh fruits took home a distant silver and bronze in the nutrient-density Olympics.

Similarly, toxic hunger is heightened by the consumption of caffeinated beverages, soft drinks, and processed foods.

The confusion is compounded because when we eat the same heavy or unhealthful foods that are causing the problem to begin with, we feel better while the detoxification process is halted or delayed. This makes becoming overweight inevitable, because if we stop digesting food, even for a short time, our bodies will begin to experience symptoms of detoxification or withdrawal from our unhealthful diet.

To counter this, we eat heavy meals that require a long period of digestion, or we eat too often and keep our digestive tract busy and overfed almost all the time to lessen the discomfort from our stressful diet style.

During the catabolic phase, we “live off” the nutrients stored in the anabolic phase. The breakdown of stored glycogen is called glycolysis, and it is during this process that our body swings into heightened detoxification activity.

When we are breaking down our body fats and glycogen stores, the body is exposed to more released cellular toxins, and elimination and detoxification are increased accordingly. This elimination of toxins can cause discomfort, especially when our tissues have an excessive toxic burden. These uncomfortable symptoms are not caused by “lower blood sugar,” though the symptoms occur in parallel with low blood sugar.

When we consume excess animal proteins (which create excess nitrogenous wastes) and don’t eat sufficient phytochemical-rich vegetation, we exacerbate the buildup of metabolic waste products in our body.

You can’t crave some particular food and call it hunger; a craving by definition is an addictive drive, not something felt by a person who is not an addict.

Do not eat when not hungry. Do not snack, unless you are sure it is true hunger. Do not overeat. Don’t eat until you feel full or stuffed. Do not eat a big dinner. Don’t eat after dinner. Instead, clean the kitchen, brush and floss, and stay away from food. Look forward to how good food will taste the next morning when you are hungry again. Discontinue or wean off caffeine, salt, alcohol, sweets, butter, cheese, processed foods, soft drinks, smoking, and illegal and legal drugs (if safe to do so).

The body needs time between meals to finish digesting, because when digestion has ended, the body can more effectively detoxify and promote cellular repair. To maximize health, it is not favorable to be constantly eating and digesting food.

You will eventually develop the skill of knowing the right amount of food to eat at each meal, because it relieves your hunger, you feel satisfied (but not full), and you are hungry again in time for the next meal.

Try to stop a sugar addict from eating sweets or take the colas, pizza, and burgers away from a fast-food addict, and wow, do they feel ill. This is called withdrawal.

When we stop doing something harmful to ourselves, we feel sick as the body attempts to repair the damage caused by longtime exposure to noxious substances, reduces tolerance, mobilizes cellular wastes, and deals with empty receptor sites.

Inflammation serves a corrective function here as the body’s immune system reacts protectively to remove noxious substances and restore cellular function.

What you are learning here is different, as it is not some perfect ratio of fat, carbohydrate, or protein that will lead you to your ideal weight and superior health. Sure, we need to eat less fat, less protein, and fewer carbohydrates, the only three sources of calories in food.

Although diet books are everywhere, it is estimated that more than 75 percent of all Americans are overweight.

“Households should select predominantly plant-based diets rich in a variety of vegetables and fruits, pulses or legumes, and minimally processed starchy staple foods.”

In the classic portion-controlled (calorie-counting) diet, it is likely that the body will not get adequate fiber or nutrients. The body will have a compounded sensation of hunger, cravings, and addictive withdrawal, which for most is simply overwhelming.

Cravings are not the result of hunger; they are the result of toxic habits. Anyone seeking to adopt a healthy diet must accept that there will be a period (generally six weeks or less) during which the body will attempt to detoxify.

Studies have shown that portion-control diets result in significant weight loss that is maintained over five years for fewer than three people out of one hundred.

To become healthy, disease-resistant, and permanently thin, you can’t escape the necessity of eating large amounts of nutrient-rich, healthy food.

High-protein diets are not life span favorable, they do not offer the anti-cancer protection inherent in a diet much richer in plant-derived micronutrients, and they are not cardioprotective.

The popularity of these books is evidence that people are looking for a way to lose weight without having to curtail their dangerous love affair with rich, unhealthful foods. They preach what people want to hear: you can eat lots of fat, cholesterol, and saturated fat and still lose weight. This illicit romance can lead to tragic consequences.

Many of these diets have people afraid to eat healthful fresh fruits because they contain carbohydrates. Fruit consumption, however, shows a powerful dose-response association with a reduction in heart disease, cancer, and all-cause mortality.

Due to its emphasis on eating more animal products and fewer carbohydrates, the popular Atkins diet is a prototype of dietary misinformation.

I consider the South Beach diet one of the most dangerous diets because the three phases encourage people to go on and off a ketogenic diet, which can cause electrolyte shifts leading to life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias.

The medical literature has shown that ketogenic diets can cause a pathological enlargement of the heart called cardiomyopathy, which is reversible, but only if the diet is stopped in time.

In fact, reducing animal protein in the diet may be the most important dietary intervention one can take to reduce cancer risk. High-protein weight-loss diets promoting high-animal-product and low-plant-product (carbohydrate) consumption are not only unhealthy; they could be fatal.

Besides all the dangers reviewed here, it should be clear that eating meat actually correlates with weight gain, not weight loss, unless you radically cut carbs from your diet to maintain a chronic ketosis.

If increasing one’s risk of heart attack and cancer isn’t enough of an argument against high-protein diets, the science is conclusive that they also cause kidney damage, kidney stones, and gout.

However, we can eat a diet rich in phytochemicals from a variety of natural plant foods that will afford us the ability to live a long and healthy life.

Nutritional excellence, which involves eating plenty of vegetables, fruits, and beans, does not have to exclude all animal products, but it has to be very rich in high-nutrient plant foods (which should make up well over 80 percent of your caloric intake).

No more than 10 percent of your total calories should come from animal foods. There is insufficient data at this point to suggest that there is a clear longevity advantage to adhering to a vegan diet (one that is entirely free of animal foods). However, the scientific literature suggests that there is a longevity advantage to dropping your animal-food consumption to as little as one or two servings per week.

You can’t get to an ideal level of dietary protection, which includes enough of these fruit and vegetable super-foods, unless you significantly reduce your consumption of animal products, processed foods, oils, flours, and sweeteners.

When you eat sufficient volumes of beneficial foods in delicious and satisfying ways, you will not have room for the other foods that are not health-promoting, and you will eventually lose your desire for them.

The chicken, pasta, and olive oil diet is the perfect formula for mediocre health and a poor life expectancy. Chicken, oil, and pasta are all low-nutrient foods.

Instead of searching for weight-loss gimmicks and tricks, adopt a resolution to be healthy. Focusing on your health, not on your weight, will eventually result in long-term weight loss.

Stop measuring portions and trying to follow complicated formulas. Instead, eat as many vegetables, beans, and fresh fruits as possible, and less of everything else.

We all have genetic weaknesses, but those weaknesses never get a chance to express themselves until we abuse our body with many, many years of mistreatment. Never forget, 99 percent of your genes are programmed to keep you healthy. The problem is that we never let them do their job.

My clinical experience over the past twenty years has shown me that almost all the major illnesses that plague Americans are reversible with aggressive nutritional changes designed to undo the damage caused by years of eating a disease-causing diet.

Heart disease is the number one killer in the United States, accounting for more than 40 percent of all deaths. Each year approximately 1.25 million Americans suffer a heart attack or myocardial infarction (MI); more than 400,000 of them die as a result.

In contrast, numerous studies have documented that heart disease is reversible for the majority of patients following a vegetarian diet.

Multiple studies have shown the protective effects of consuming walnuts, which are rich in omega-3 fatty acids.

The ideal diet for heart disease reversal, then, is almost free of saturated fat, trans fat, and cholesterol; rich in nutrients and fiber; and low in calories, to achieve thinness. However, it should contain sufficient essential fatty acids, so it is important to add a small amount of nuts and seeds, such as walnuts and flaxseeds.

Two things are necessary to predictably reverse heart disease: one is to become thin and superbly nourished, and the other is to get your LDL below 100.

The patient’s diet must be nutrient-dense. Animal products and detrimental fats must be avoided to prevent the after-meal fat surge. Refined carbohydrates should also be avoided to prevent the after-meal glucose surge and to control triglycerides.

Fortunately, the same body that created the atheromas has the ability to disintegrate them.

More than twenty million Americans have diabetes. As our population grows fatter, this figure is climbing.

The combination of refined grains, processed foods, and animal products guarantees a steady stream of available customers for hospitals and emergency rooms.

Many people come into my office with a diagnosis of hypoglycemia, meaning they feel ill when they delay eating. They are often told to eat a diet with frequent feedings of high-protein food. I insist that this diet is the precise cause of the condition, not the remedy; it is no more a remedy than putting them on a cup of coffee every hour.

My experience in treating migraine and severe-headache patients with a more comprehensive nutritional approach has shown that 90 to 95 percent of patients are able to remain headache-free after the first three-month period.

Remember that eating one pound of green vegetables and one pound of raw vegetables a day is an average goal to shoot for, but you should eat only the amount of food that is comfortable for you. Some people may do better with more or less.

Beans or legumes are among the world’s most perfect foods. They stabilize blood sugar, blunt the desire for sweets, and prevent mid-afternoon cravings.

Consider beans your preferred high-carbohydrate food. They can be flavored and spiced in interesting ways, and you can eat an unlimited quantity of them.

Juicing fruits allows you to quickly consume three times the calories without the fiber to regulate absorption. The nutrient-per-calorie ratio is much higher for the whole food. Frozen fruit is permissible, but avoid canned fruit because it is not as nutritious. If you need to use canned fruit as a condiment (mandarin oranges, pineapple), make sure it is unsweetened.

Dried fruits should be used only in very small amounts for sweetening.

Use all spices and herbs, except for salt.

Therefore, if you want to follow a nutritarian diet style to achieve dramatic health and longevity benefits, you must not have significant amounts of animal foods, dairy, or processed foods in your diet.

Use animal products primarily as condiments—to add flavor to soups, vegetables, beans, or tofu—not as the main dish.

The accepted wisdom is that the “average” woman should consume fewer than 1,600 calories daily, and a man fewer than 2,300 calories.

Chinese consume more calories than do Americans, yet are about 25 percent thinner than Americans. This is because the modern American diet receives about 37 percent of its calories from fat, with lots of sugar and refined carbohydrates.

Superior health and optimal weight are no longer a matter of chance, but a matter of choice.

Most overweight individuals are addicted to food. This means almost all Americans are food addicts. Addicted means that you feel ill or uncomfortable should you not continue your usual habits.

Halting stimulating behavior such as overeating unmasks the fatigue that was always there. The power reserve in a battery is proportional to its use. The less we use it, the more life it has and the stronger it remains. Likewise, when there is continual stress on your body from stimulating foods and caffeine, it gives the false sensation that we have energy, when actually we are using up our nerve energy faster. This ages us.

It is almost impossible to eat too much food, only too much of the wrong food. Make your life simple. Enjoy food, but don’t have your life revolve around a menu plan.

Smoothies and Blended Salads Blended Mango Salad, here Chocolate Smoothie, here Creamy Fruit and Berry Smoothie, here Eat Your Greens Fruit Smoothie, here Breakfast Banana-Cashew Lettuce Wrap, here Blue Apple-Nut Oatmeal, here Quick Banana Breakfast to Go, here

Remember, dietary supplements are supplements, not substitutes for a healthy diet. Supplements alone cannot offer optimal protection against disease, and you cannot make an unhealthy diet into a healthy one by consuming supplements.

If you choose to follow a complete vegetarian (vegan) diet, it is imperative that you consume a multivitamin or other source of B12, such as fortified soy milk.

A vegetarian or vegan diet may be healthy or unhealthy, depending on food choices, but a diet similar to the one most Americans consume—i.e., one containing a significant quantity of animal products—cannot be made healthful.

In my community, parents and neighbors unknowingly attempt to poison their children at every opportunity. They don’t merely feed their own children a diet chock-full of sugar and fat, but at every birthday party, athletic event, and social occasion they bring sugar-coated doughnuts, cupcakes, and candy for the entire crowd.

If you are concerned about pesticides and chemicals, keep in mind that animal products, such as dairy and beef, contain the most toxic pesticide residues. Because cows and steers eat large amounts of tainted feed, certain pesticides and dangerous chemicals are found in higher concentrations in animal foods.

We can take advantage of this abundant variety of fresh vegetation to eat a diet with more phytochemical density and diversity than ever before.

Butter is loaded with a dangerous amount of saturated fat; stick margarines have hydrogenated oils that contain trans fats, which raise LDL, the bad cholesterol. The best answer is to use nothing, or buy whole grain bread that tastes good without adding a greasy topping.

In conclusion, the soybean is a superior food, containing the difficult-to-find omega-3 fats. Beans in general are superior foods that fight against cancer and heart disease, which is why you will benefit from including a variety of beans in your diet.

For optimal health, I recommend that no salt at all be added to any food.

Don’t buy the fallacy that you “need more protein.”

Sweetening agents such as NutraSweet (aspartame), Sweet’N Low (saccharin), and Splenda (sucralose) are added to thousands of foods and drugs. Many health gurus now recommend substituting stevia in place of artificial sweeteners. It has been suggested that consuming something with a sweet taste primes the body for a calorie delivery that doesn’t happen. As a result, users of no-calorie sweeteners just seek more sweets to satisfy the body’s cravings. Noncaloric sweeteners signal the body that sugar is on the way and stimulate the pancreas to secrete insulin, which is not favorable.

If you are a headache sufferer, beware of products made with aspartame. Studies have shown that migraine sufferers experience more frequent and more severe symptoms after ingesting aspartame.

Agave has become the sweetener of choice for many health enthusiasts, but I do not recommend it. It is just another concentrated, low-nutrient sweetener. In addition, it may pose some significant health problems.

Get in the habit of ordering a double-size green salad with the dressing on the side, and use only a tiny amount of dressing or a squeeze of lemon on the salad.

Since when is what the “masses” find socially acceptable the criterion for value? Value or correctness is independent of how many will choose to follow my recommendations; that is a separate issue.

We can’t buy good health; we must earn it. We are given only one body in this lifetime, so I encourage you to take proper care of it. Over time, your health and happiness are inescapably linked. You don’t get a new body when you destroy your health with disease-causing foods.

This diet actually has a biblical precedent as Daniel and his friends requested vegetables rather than the king’s rich food,

Please test your servants for ten days, and let us be given some vegetables to eat and water to drink. (Daniel 1:12)

The result was their appearance was better and they were allowed to continue on their healthy diet. What will you choose to eat? You may either live to eat or you may eat to live and experience health as the outcome.

Associate Pastor – Discipleship.  The Church at LifePark

Professor of Discipleship, Columbia International University

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