Eat To Live (Dr Joel Fuhrman)

August 30, 2009 at 7:39 am (Fuhrman, Joel, Non Fiction)
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This is excellent and I will purchase my own copy in due course.

When it comes to weight loss and maintenance of health, I have a saying (famous in my own mind): “Diets and dieting don’t work, diet does.”  What do I mean?  Well, if you are trying to lose weight and stay healthy and you are looking at the multitude of diets out there: (Atkins, Scarsdale, The Zone, Beverly Hills, Grapefruit, Eat to Your Blood Type, etc, etc, etc,) you need to ask yourself, “Could I make this my permanent, diet? Could I make this my nutritional lifestyle?  Could I eat like this for the rest of my days?”  If the answer is no, then that diet is most unlikely to work for you and is quite likely to be harmful.  Yes, many of these diets will help you lose weight, but stop them and the weight almost inevitably comes straight back.  And some diets are just plain unhealthy.

Joel F’s Eat To Live is the closest I have seen to a system that I could implement and live with as a permanent nutritional lifestyle.  Briefly, what he is saying is, The more nutrient-dense food you consume, the more you will be satisfied with fewer calories and the less you will crave fat and high-calorie foods.  So you can eat virtually as much as you can of the most nutrient dense foods such as fruits, vegetables, and beans, which tend to be very low in calories and high in physical bulk.  He advocates huge quantities of raw vegetable and fruit, whilst minimising or eliminating meat, dairy, and processed foods that contribute so markedly to obesity and poor health. 

The book is well organized and convincing, with sections on the likely causes of cancer, diabetes, heart disease and obesity.  He takes a swipe at dangerous weight loss schemes (Atkins et al) and also trashes the usual heart association type of dietary recommendation.  He has an excellent section on food as a cure for a range of disease conditions and a very thought provoking chapter on what he calls the dark side of animal protein.  (This is sobering for New Zealanders, who traditionally eat large quantities of beef and lamb and consume enormous quantities of dairy products, but have one of the highest rates of hip fracture in the world!) 

There is a section of recipes, which is not particularly large, but once you begin eating in this way, it is easy enough to improvise your own recipes.  Many people would die under torture before eating large quantities of raw vegetable, but again, once you begin to do so, it is surprising how satisfying it becomes and how much you miss it when you are unable to do so.  And there are many vegetables that are surprisingly palatable raw rather than cooked.  Sweet corn, for example, or beetroot, (which tastes better raw than cooked) kale, broccoli, garlic sprouts, mustard greens etc etc.

I certainly don’t need to lose weight and have always been pretty healthy, but I have been following Joel F’s principles for a while now and advocate this book for a number of people I see professionally, who have various health problems.

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The Thrive Diet

November 21, 2008 at 8:29 am (Brazier, Brendan, Non Fiction)
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Subtitle: The whole-foods way to losing weight, reducing stress and staying healthy for life.  Published 2007.

This is quite interesting and inspiring.  Brendan Brazier is a professional athlete (triathlete) who set out to see if he could maintain a competitive edge by eating a wholly vegetarian diet.  He succeeded, in spite of being told emphatically that it was not possible and this book is the outcome.  He did quite a bit of experimentation to find what foods worked for him and what did not.  He emphasises whole foods, raw foods and those that are alkaline forming rather than acid forming. 

As you would expect in a book of this nature, there are food lists, meal plans and recipes for those who may wish to follow his method. 

I am not an athlete – those days are long past for me, but I maintain an interest in health, healthy eating, staying slim, keeping mentally alert and reasonably fit.  Would I follow this diet as set out in the book?  Well… no.  I can’t see my wife co-operating for a start, nor could I make the effort to maintain the discipline that Brendan B obviously puts into the preparation of his daily fare.  And, of course there are foods/beverages that I would rather not give up, even if I do consume them in moderation. 

Even so, the book is inspiring.  I have resolved to eat a lot more raw foods and less of those on his acid forming list.  With a little adaptation (for local ingredients) I have made some very palatable energy bars as per his recipes and they make a great variation on my usual breakfast routine. 

I would like to have seen in the book, more information on the foods that he found unhelpful and avoided.  The reader largely has to glean this information from what is not there, rather than from what is, though he does touch on this a bit in chapter two.  Bread, for example, doesn’t really get a mention and certainly doesn’t feature in his diet plan. 

Following his diet in this part of the world (New Zealand) would present difficulties and would need quite some adaptation for local ingredients.  What on earth is dinosaur kale?  And as for hemp protein and hemp oil, goodness me – we would get arrested!!

I have a saying in relation to the maintenance of health, weight loss etc – dieting doesn’t work, diet does.  How many diets have we seen come and go – the Scarsdale, the grapefruit, Atkins, Beverly Hills etc etc.  All promising much and delivering disappointment.  The eating plans that have been successful are those that get closest to a natural whole-food diet (how much of the food on sale out there is complete crap and how often do we find that foods we are told are good for us – many cooking oils, margarines, high fructose corn syrup, etc – are in fact quite harmful. 

If we ate a diet closer to that advocated by Brendan B, there would I think be a whole lot less obesity, diabetes, heart disease, dietary stress, cancer etc.  I think it is possible, even desirable to use a book like this to enhance our diet rather than go the whole hog (oops) and follow the plan to the letter.

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Unclog Your Arteries

August 31, 2008 at 8:56 am (Hamilton-Craig, Prof. Ian, Non Fiction)
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Sub-title: Prevent heart attack and stroke and live a longer, healthier life.

This is straight down the line establishment medical advice on prevention and treatment of heart disease and strokes.  I am sure that no-one with a conventional view of medicine and coronary heart disease would have any objection to the messages of this book:  Be aware of your risk factors, have your cholesterol checked, eat a low fat diet, (recipes are included,) mind your blood pressure, don’t smoke, take your statins, they are good for you (even if you are a child) modern medicine is magical and modern treatment/prevention regimes for coronary heart disease and stroke saves countless thousands of lives.

Certainly I would have to say that a good bit of the advice that Prof H/C gives is sound and you would have to be more than a little daft to disagree with him.  Don’t smoke, don’t drink to excess, excercise, reduce sugar consumption, eat decent foods, maintain a healthy weight, take care of blood pressure, stress and the like. 

Beyond this, however, if you tend towards the skeptical end of the scale on matters relating to prevailing theories of coronary heart disease, much of what he has to say in the book will be about as popular as a concrete parachute.

Prof H-C is obviously completely sold on the cholesterol theory of heart disease.  High cholesterol causes atherosclerotic plaque, which clogs arteries and zap – coronary heart disease.  Others have questioned this theory.  The reader may wish to take a look at the site for The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics THINCS and follow some of the articles there, particularly in the “news” section.  Dr Malcolm Kendrick, author of The Great Cholesterol Con, (reviewed on this site) also wrote this article on cholesterol and heart disease, which is both controversial and thought provoking.

Throughout the book, I noted a number of statements or assertions which I thought were dubious, in the light of other information I have read, and were not supported by references.  For example, on page 99, he states:

“…. saturated fats in the diet have a powerful effect on increasing LDL levels.  On average, for every 1% increase of total energy as saturated fats, a 2% increase in LDL levels occurred.”

Thus, we are told to eschew saturated fats, but which research shows this?  I would like to know and check it out myself.  Malcolm Kendrick in The Great Cholesterol Con, spends quite some time on the saturated fats issue and pokes holes in the notion that saturated fat has a direct link to heart disease.  (The Seven Nations study by Ansel Keys was, according to Kendrick, badly flawed.)  Kendrick, also points out that some researchers state conclusions that are exactly the opposite of what their data indicate.

In the book we are also told to avoid foods high in cholesterol.  Again, from what I have read, the amount of cholesterol in our diet makes very little difference to serum cholesterol levels.  Our liver makes cholesterol and adjusts blood cholesterol levels depending on how much of the stuff we eat.  (Prof H-C does actually point this out, which seems a little contradictory.)

It is part V of the book, however, which I would imagine would provoke the most howls of dissent  from the skeptics.  Here prof H-C discusses the statins and other medications for cholesterol lowering, describing them as “magic bullets,” “oldies but goodies” (aspirin, fibrates, resins) and generally considering them to be “life saving drugs.”

Well… maybe, but take a look at this article by Sandy Szwarc on the THINCS site, which raises a few doubts about the efficacy and safety of statins.  See also this wonderful rant by Shane Ellison “The Peoples Chemist” on the Amazon site, about the wonders of modern medicines, including those for heart disease. 

I am not knowledgeable enough, (or arrogant enough) to say, as some do, that the whole cholesterol theory of heart disease, and its treatment, is a crock of schtook, nor would I say that the alternatives people have got it all right.  As always, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.  I do know, however how such matters can be hijacked by ideologies and obfuscated by big business (with eye watering profits as Malcolm Kendrick puts it.)

And I am putting my own mortality on the line.  From the age of 20, possibly earlier, my cholesterol levels have always hovered around the 8 mark and my doctor looks at me with burial casket eyes every time I have a blood test.  I am now nearly 60 and refuse to take statins – high cholesterol is my only “risk” factor and I am well aware of some of the nasty side effects of statins.  (And yes, I am careful to eat quite a sensible and healthy diet.)  I have looked at the mortality figures for a number of studies purporting to show the benefits of taking statins.  Long-term there is sod-all difference.  Get your cholesterol down and die of something else!

OK, this book contains some good sound advice and I do suspect there is some benefit to taking statins – if you already have heart disease.  They seem to be effective not because of their cholesterol lowering properties, but because of their anti-inflammatory effects and perhaps their plaque coating effects.  I am all for fully informed choices, however and unfortunately I think we are often not fully informed in this (and other) branches of medicine.

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