Eat to Live: The Amazing Nutrient-Rich Program for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss (6 page)

N
ow you know my formula for longevity (H = N/C) and that the key to this formula is the nutrient density of your diet. In other words, you must eat a diet rich in nutrients and fiber, with a very low percentage of foods that are not nutrient-and fiber-dense. It is the same formula that will enable your body to achieve slimness.

To help you learn how to apply this formula to your life, you first need to understand why you must follow it, exploring the relationships between diet, health, and disease. To do so, you need to take a look at the reality of how most people eat and what they gain or lose from such eating practices.

Even though we have many unique human traits, we are genetically closely related to the great apes and other primates. Primates are the only animals on the face of the earth that can taste sweet and see color. We were designed by nature to see, grasp, eat, and enjoy the flavor of colorful, sweet fruits.

Fruit is an essential part of our diets. It is an indispensable requirement for us to maintain a high level of health. Fruit consumption has been shown in numerous studies to offer our strongest protection against certain cancers, especially oral and esophageal, lung, prostate, pancreatic, and colorectal cancer.
¹
Thankfully, our natural sweet tooth directs us to those foods ideally “designed” for our primate heritage—fruit. Fresh fruit offers us powerful health-giving benefits.

Researchers have discovered substances in fruit that have unique effects on preventing aging and deterioration of the brain.
²
Some fruits, especially blueberries, are rich in anthocyanins and other compounds having anti-aging effects.
³
Studies continue to provide evidence that more than any other food, fruit is associated with lowered mortality from all cancers combined.
⁴
Eating fruit is vital to your health, well-being, and long life.

Regrettably, our human desire for sweets is typically satisfied by the consumption of products containing sugar, such as candy bars and ice cream—not fresh fruit. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates that the typical American now consumes an unbelievable thirty teaspoons of added sugar a day.
⁵
That’s right, in one day.

As we shall see, we need to satisfy our sweet tooth with fresh, natural fruits and other plant substances that supply us not just with carbohydrates for energy but also with the full complement of indispensable substances that prevent illness.

Unlike the fruits found in nature—which have a full ensemble of nutrients—processed carbohydrates (such as bread, pasta, and cake) are deficient in fiber, phytonutrients, vitamins, and minerals, all of which have been lost in processing.

In a six-year study of 65,000 women, those with diets high in refined carbohydrates from white bread, white rice, and pasta had two and a half times the incidence of Type II diabetes, compared with those who ate high-fiber foods such as whole wheat bread and brown rice.
⁶
These findings were replicated in a study of 43,000 men.
⁷
Diabetes is no trivial problem; it is the seventh leading cause of death by disease in America, and its incidence is growing.
⁸

Walter Willett, M.D., chairman of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health and co-author of those two studies, finds the results so convincing that he’d like our government to change the Food Guide Pyramid, which recommends six to eleven servings of any kind of carbohydrate. He says, “They should move refined grains, like white bread, up to the sweets category because metabolically they’re basically the same.”

These starchy (white-flour) foods, removed from nature’s packaging, are no longer real food. The fiber and the majority of minerals have been removed, so such foods are absorbed too rapidly, resulting in a sharp glucose surge into the bloodstream. The pancreas is then forced to pump out insulin faster to keep up. Excess body fat also causes us to require more insulin from the pancreas. Over time, it is the excessive demand for insulin placed on the pancreas from both refined foods and increased body fat that leads to diabetes. Refined carbohydrates, white flour, sweets, and even fruit juices, because they enter the bloodstream so quickly, can also raise triglycerides, increasing the risk of heart attack in susceptible individuals.

Every time you eat such processed foods, you exclude from your diet not only the essential nutrients that we are aware of but hundreds of other undiscovered phytonutrients that are crucial
for normal human function. When the nutrient-rich outer cover is removed from whole wheat to make it into white flour, the most nutritious part of the food is lost. The outer portion of the wheat kernel contains trace minerals, phytoestrogens, lignans, phytic acid, indoles, phenolic compounds, and other phytochemicals, as well as almost all the vitamin E in the food. True whole grain foods, which are associated with longer life, are vastly different from the processed foods that make up the bulk of calories in the modern American diet (MAD).
⁹

Medical investigations clearly show the dangers of consuming the quantity of processed foods that we do. And because these refined grains lack the fiber and nutrient density to satisfy our appetite, they also cause obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and significantly increased cancer risk.
¹⁰

One nine-year study involving 34,492 women between the ages of fifty-five and sixty-nine showed a two-thirds increase in the risk of death from heart disease in those eating refined grains.
¹¹
Summarizing fifteen epidemiological studies, researchers concluded that diets containing refined grains and refined sweets were consistently linked to stomach and colon cancer, and at least fifteen breast cancer studies connect low-fiber diets with increased risks.
¹²
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. Almost all weight-loss authorities agree on this—you must cut out the refined carbohydrates, including bagels, pasta, and bread. As far as the human body is concerned, low-fiber carbohydrates such as pasta are almost as damaging as white sugar. Pasta is not health food—it is hurt food.

Now I can imagine what many of you are thinking: “But, Dr. Fuhrman! I love pasta. Do I have to give it up?” I enjoy eating pasta, too. Pasta can sometimes be used in small quantities in a recipe that includes lots of green vegetables, onions, mushrooms, and tomatoes. Whole grain pastas and bean pastas, found in health-food stores, are better choices than those made from white flour. The point to remember is that all refined grains must be placed in that limited category—foods that should constitute only a small percentage of our total caloric intake.

What about bagels? Is the “whole wheat” bagel you just bought at the bagel store really made from whole grain? No; in most cases, it is primarily white flour. It is hard to tell sometimes. Ninety-nine percent of pastas, breads, cookies, pretzels, and other grain products are made from white flour. Sometimes a little whole wheat or caramel color is added and the product is called whole wheat to make you think it is the real thing. It isn’t. Most brown bread is merely white bread with a fake tan. Wheat grown on American soil is not a nutrient-dense food to begin with, but then the food manufacturers remove the most valuable part of the food and add bleach, preservatives, salt, sugar, and food coloring to make breads, breakfast cereals, and other convenience foods. Yet many Americans consider such food healthy merely because it is low in fat.

Contrary to many of the horror stories you hear, our soil is not depleted of nutrients. California, Washington, Oregon, Texas, Florida, and other states still have rich, fertile land that produces
most of our fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, and seeds. America provides some of the most nutrient-rich produce in the world.

Our government publishes nutritional analyses of foods. It takes food from a variety of supermarkets across the country, analyzes it, and publishes the results. Contrary to claims of many health-food and supplement enthusiasts, the produce grown in this country is nutrient-rich and high in trace minerals, especially beans, nuts, seeds, fruits, and vegetables.
¹⁴
American-produced grains, however, do not have the mineral density of vegetables. Grains and animal-feed crops grown in the southeastern states are the most deficient, but even in those states only a small percentage of crops are shown to be deficient in minerals.
¹⁵

Thankfully, by eating a diet with a wide variety of natural plant foods, from a variety of soils, the threat of nutritional deficiency merely as a result of soil inadequacy is eliminated. 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. Over 90 percent of the calories consumed by Americans come from refined foods or animal products. With such a small percentage of our diet consisting of unrefined plant foods, how could we not become nutrient-deficient?

Since more than 40 percent of the calories in the American diet are derived from sugar or refined grains, both of which are nutrient-depleted, Americans are severely malnourished. Refined sugars cause us to be malnourished in direct proportion to how much we consume them. They are partially to blame for the high cancer and heart attack rates we see in America.

It is not merely dental cavities that should concern us about sugar. If we allow ourselves and our children to utilize sugar, white flour products, and oil to supply the majority of calories, as most American families do, we shall be condemning ourselves to a lifetime of sickness, medical problems, and a premature death.

Refined sugars include table sugar (sucrose), milk sugar (lactose), honey, brown sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, molasses, corn sweeteners, and fruit juice concentrates. Even the bottled
and boxed fruit juices that many children drink are a poor food; with no significant nutrient density, they lead to obesity and disease.
¹⁶
Processed apple juice, which is not far from sugar water in its nutrient score, accounts for almost 50 percent of all fruit servings consumed by preschoolers.
¹⁷
For example, apple juice contains none of the vitamin C originally present in the whole apple. Oranges make the most nutritious juice, but even orange juice can’t compare with the original orange. In citrus fruits, most of the anti-cancer compounds are present in the membranes and pulp, which are removed in processing juice. Those cardboard containers of orange juice contain less than 10 percent of the vitamin C present in an orange and even less of the fiber and phytochemicals. Juice is not fruit, and prepackaged juices do not contain even one-tenth of the nutrients present in fresh fruit.

Empty calories are empty calories. Cookies, jams, and other processed foods (even those from the health-food store) sweetened with “fruit juice” sound healthier but are just as bad as white-sugar products. When fruit juice is concentrated and used as a sweetener, the healthy nutritional components are stripped away—what’s left is plain sugar. To your body, there is not much difference between refined sugar, fruit juice sweeteners, honey, fruit juice concentrate, and any other concentrated sweetener. Our sweet tooth has been put there by nature to have us enjoy and consume real fruit, not some imitation. Fresh-squeezed orange juice and other fresh fruit and vegetable juices are relatively healthy foods that contain the majority of the original vitamins and minerals. But sweet fruit juices and even carrot juice should still be used only moderately, as they still contain a high concentration of sugar calories and no fiber. They are not an ideal food for those desiring to lose weight. I often use these juices as
part of salad dressings and other dishes rather than alone as a drink. Fresh fruits and even dried fruits do contain an assortment of protective nutrients and phytochemicals, so stick with the real thing.