The End of Dieting: How to Live for Life (8 page)

My broad experience as a physician has demonstrated that occasionally a vegan diet may need tweaking for people who have higher fat and protein needs. But these individuals are rare, and such additional requirements can most often be met while maintaining a vegan diet. In the rare instances that it can’t, however, a small amount of animal products should suffice.

The amino acid that repeatedly comes up borderline or low when I test levels on vegans who are not quite feeling up to snuff is taurine.
Additional taurine is often helpful for these individuals. The only other nutrients low or borderline low with a diet without animal products are B
₁₂
, zinc, iodine, and the marine fats eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), all of which are easily supplemented. Of course, vitamin D, the “sunshine vitamin,” also has to be considered because deficiencies are common and can lead to serious health problems.

I am lobbying for broad acceptance of basic nutritional principles by everyone, so people can all respect the healthiest dietary style. The only question is the level of compliance. There shouldn’t be a dramatic chasm between one dietary camp and another because nutritional science isn’t that controversial anymore. A nutritarian diet, as described in this book, is high in whole plant food. It pays close attention to broad nutritional diversity and allows for limited animal products, as desired by an individual. Competing dieting principles should come to an end, because there are no legitimate arguments against the preponderance of evidence that exists today.

The Mediterranean Mistake: Olive Oil and Pasta Are Not Health Foods

The Mediterranean diet describes a cuisine with certain characteristics common to countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. Traditionally, these cuisines are heavy in plants and include lots of fruits, vegetables, cereals, legumes, and nuts. Red meat is rarely consumed, and chicken and fish appear only in small amounts. Yogurt and cheese are used as condiments, and red wine is consumed regularly.

The climate and soil surrounding the Mediterranean Sea produce a wide spectrum of high-nutrient plants, including broccoli, tomatoes, grapes, figs, walnuts, and olives. The beneficial effects of the Mediterranean diet are due to antioxidant-rich foods, including vegetables, fruits, and
beans as well as lots of onions and garlic. The increased amount of broccoli, nuts, and beans, for instance, coupled with the heavy use of tomatoes in most meals, make most Mediterranean dishes rich in phytochemicals, which accounts for its protective effects. And the use of fish instead of meat helps decrease the consumption of saturated fat, while helping to increase the level of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids. Nuts, especially walnuts, are also commonly used in dishes. Beneficial health effects have been noted from the use of even small amounts of walnuts in the diet. Numerous studies have shown that people who eat walnuts regularly have half the heart disease rates of those who rarely eat them.
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For these reasons, as well as the powerful health benefits of tomato sauce and other tomato products, it is easy to understand why the Mediterranean diet is widely considered healthful compared to the SAD. Beneficial health outcomes are also evident in other areas of the world, such as Japan, rural China, Fiji, and Tibet. People in these regions have substantially lower rates of heart disease, cancer, and obesity, and their elderly people are healthier and live longer, compared to in the United States. We can learn about the positive aspects of all these culturally diverse diets and utilize their culinary principles to make a diet deliciously varied and even more disease-protective than the Mediterranean diet. However, we do not want to replicate the drawbacks and unhealthful aspects of these regional cuisines, such as white rice in the Chinese diet, white pasta in the Mediterranean diet, and high salt intake in the Japanese diet.

The reality is that modern fast-food outlets and processed food industries have permeated most of the modern world. Mediterranean people now follow a diet much like our own, and the rates of heart disease and obesity are skyrocketing in these countries. In Italy, the diet they follow today does not follow the guidelines of the old-time, healthful Mediterranean style. They eat much like we do, eating more cheese and fewer vegetables than before. They now have the same high prevalence of high cholesterol levels and heart attack risk as Americans.
¹⁷

Certainly the white flour pasta in the Mediterranean diet is not something we want to include in our own. It is just as bad for you as white bread. In fact, there is almost no chemical difference between the two. Both are made with white refined flour, which has been linked to diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and various cancers. White flour actually makes your blood sugar levels rise almost as much as plain sugar. Carbohydrates—literally chains of sugar molecules—are found in all plants and foods made from plants. They can be a single sugar or three of four bound together, but when thousands of sugars are bound together, they are called
starch
. When these simple carbon molecules are bound together so tightly that your body can’t break them down and digest them, they are called
fiber
.

When your digestive enzymes break down the carbohydrates into simple glucose molecules, they enter the body just as if you had sucked on a sugar cube. All the white starches—white bread, white rice, white pasta, and even white potatoes—are rapidly converted to glucose, or sugar, which is absorbed into the bloodstream almost instantaneously. When blood sugar levels go skyrocketing, it overworks the pancreas as it tries to match the load of sugar with a large amount of insulin. Not only is this stressful to the body and the pancreas, but metabolizing that large energy load without a concomitant intake of micronutrients creates metabolic havoc in the cells. Toxic metabolites build up in cells when we consume calories without antioxidant and phytochemical micronutrients needed to remove and control the toxic by-products of metabolism. So as we eat more low-nutrient and low-fiber carbohydrates, we build up more cell toxicity, leading to disease and food addiction.

Indeed, eating sugar and white flour not only leads to diabetes, but both of these foodstuffs are also linked to cancer. Quite a few studies have linked the consumption of high-glycemic, low-nutrient food to cancer. One such study showed more than a 200 percent increase in the risk of breast cancer in women whose diets are more than half refined carbohydrates.
¹⁸

Oil: From your lips to your hips.

Whereas most of the fat in the SAD comes from cheese, butter, and meat—all of which contain dangerous
trans
fats—the principal source of fat in the Mediterranean diet is olive oil, a monounsaturated fat. Foods rich in monounsaturated fats are less harmful than foods full of saturated fats and
trans
fats, but that doesn’t mean they’re “healthful.”

Like sugar, oil is a processed food, which means that its nutrients and fiber have been removed. Walnut oil, for instance, has a vastly different biological effect than raw walnuts, and sesame seed oil has a different biological effect than sesame seeds. Whole nuts and seeds release their calories over hours, not minutes, and have unique health benefits. All oil, including olive oil, contains 120 calories per tablespoon of rapidly absorbed fat. Those tablespoons of fat calories can add up fast. In fact, the average American consumes about 400 calories of oil a day—a large contributor to high body fat. Many people use the favorable reputation of the Mediterranean diet as an excuse to pour more olive oil on their food. Ounce for ounce, oil is one of the most fattening, calorically dense foods on the planet. It packs more calories per pound (4,020) than butter (3,200). Simply put, a lot of oil means a lot of empty calories. And an excess of empty calories means an excess of weight, which can lead to diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, and many forms of cancer.

Certainly, it’s better to use olive oil than butter or margarine, but this feature of the Mediterranean diet easily can sabotage your weight-loss results. Using oil in the preparation of meals will make losing weight more difficult, and many people won’t lose weight at all. A small amount of olive oil would be acceptable in an otherwise high-nutrient diet if a person were thin and physically active. For many overweight individuals, however, oil adds another 300 to 700 calories to their daily menu. Those low-nutrient calories impede the goal of superior health and weight loss, especially when seeds and nuts are the
preferable source of fat calories. To continue to eat foods prepared in oil and maintain a healthful, slender figure, dieters must carefully count calories and eat tiny portions—not something I recommend because it cycles dieters back to a cycle of failure, as they try to consume only thimble-size portions of food.

In addition to taking up most of a dieter’s caloric intake, oil significantly lowers his or her intake of nutrients and fiber. Compared with its high caloric content, olive oil contains very few nutrients, other than a small amount of vitamin E and a negligible amount of phytochemical compounds. It’s true that in the past, Mediterranean people regularly ate olive oil, but they also worked hard in the fields, walking about nine miles a day, often while guiding a heavy plow.

When reading about the Mediterranean diet, most Americans don’t take home the message to eat loads of tomato sauce, vegetables, beans, and fruits and to exercise. They blindly accept the myth that olive oil is a health food. Then they coat everything with cheese, one of the most fattening foods on the planet, and think they are eating healthfully.

The villain isn’t fat in general, but rather oils, saturated fats,
trans
fats, and the fats consumed in processed foods. A healthful alternative to olive oil are nuts and seeds, which contain fewer calories per tablespoon than oil. At the same time, the body doesn’t absorb all of the fat calories of nuts and seeds. Plus, the fats in nuts and seeds are slowly absorbed, satiating hunger. They stabilize blood glucose at a low level, reducing fat-storage hormones and encouraging your body to burn fat for its energy needs. Nuts and seeds are also rich in antioxidants and phytochemicals, and when eaten with other nutrient-rich foods, they increase the absorption of phytochemicals and antioxidants from those foods as well. They offer unique health benefits that effectively protect against heart disease and cancer.
¹⁹

Nuts and seeds are also a plant-food source of protein. Nuts and seeds (and avocados) are natural plant sources of the healthful fats we
need. Fats in nuts and seeds are rich in sterols, stanols, fibers, minerals, lignans, and other health-promoting nutrients that help lower cholesterol. They are linked in numerous scientific studies to a slimmer waistline and longer lifespan.

Researchers have found that including nuts and seeds in your diet can help you lose weight. Although they aren’t low in calories and are relatively high in fat, eating them may actually satisfy hunger and suppress appetite. I find that eating a small amount of nuts or seeds helps dieters feel satiated, stay with the program, and have more success at long-term weight loss. Seeds give you all the advantages of nuts, plus more. They are generally higher in protein than nuts and have many additional, important nutrients, such as omega-3 fatty acids and anticancer lignans (which will be discussed later).

A recent study compared a traditional Mediterranean diet with one that substituted nuts for oil. According to the study, the Mediterranean diet minus the nuts did not lessen atherosclerotic plaque. The version that substituted nuts for the oil, however, did.
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The Mediterranean diet was further evaluated in Spain, randomizing 7,216 men and women to include either nuts or olive oil. The group consuming more than three servings of nuts per week had a 39 percent reduced all-cause mortality over the average 4.8 years of follow-up, compared with the group not consuming nuts.
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Today, people who live along the Mediterranean are overweight, just like us. They still eat lots of olive oil, but their consumption of fruits, vegetables, and beans is down. Meat, cheese, and fish consumption has risen, while their level of physical activity has plummeted. They have become more like Americans. Utilize the healthful aspects of the Mediterranean diet, but leave behind its weaknesses so that you don’t merely reduce heart disease and obesity a little bit, but eliminate them altogether. Even people with a family history of heart disease can be free of heart disease forever with a nutritarian diet.

Wheat: How Worried Should We Really Be?

In his popular book
Wheat Belly
, William Davis, M.D., advises people to avoid wheat products entirely. He contends that modern “genetically altered” wheat is the main reason our society is sick and overweight. By genetically altered, he doesn’t mean genetically modified; instead, he merely refers to the cross-breeding of wheat cells over the years. This, according to Davis, is the chief cause of diabetes, heart disease, and the nation’s obesity epidemic. He lets off the hook sugar, white rice, soda, oil, fried potatoes, bacon, commercial meats, and cheeseburgers, placing the blame predominantly on wheat.