708: Dr. Joel Fuhrman on Eating for Life.
Using nutrition to prevent and reverse disease.
In This Podcast:
We have an amazing chat with Dr. Joel Fuhrman about how our food choices make such a huge difference in our health. This is a full-length interview with many of his tips and recommendations to achieve good health without relying on pills. He offers a natural eating plan that reduces disease and maximizes longevity. This is one interview you will want to listen to a few times just to get all the great details.
Joel Fuhrman, M.D. is a board-certified family physician, seven-time New York Times bestselling author and nutritional researcher who specializes in preventing and reversing disease through nutritional methods. At his Eat to Live Retreat in San Diego, CA, and through his books, television specials, and virtual speaking engagements, Dr. Fuhrman shares his life-saving nutritional protocols with hundreds of thousands of people around the world seeking to recover from obesity, food addictions, diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune disease, cancer, and other serious health concerns.
Listen in and learn about:
- How he was once on the world figure skating team in the 1970s and was third in the world in pair figure skating with his sister.
- How he stayed healthy when his father was not, and this kicked off his learning about nutrition as a young teenager
- Why this led to him becoming a doctor with a focus on nutrition
- Why he calls himself ‘anti-medicine and anti-medical care’ and says that diet and lifestyle is what makes a huge difference
“We are responsible for our own health, and you can’t achieve good health by going to physicians and taking pills.”
- He explains the Nutritarian Diet and how that can help you live longer and get healthy
- That disease is not the normal state of health for our bodies
- His acronym GBOMBS which stands for: Greens, Beans, Onions, Mushrooms, Berries, and Seeds
- Macro and micronutrients and how the American diet is lacking in the latter
- Why there are more doctors going into nutrition these days than his first years speaking at medical conferences
- The SAD – the Standard American Diet – or as he calls it the Deadly American Diet
- He says we can’t eat the SAD diet and not have health issues
- He assures us we can teach ourselves to like a natural diet
- He has written 12 books on the nutritarian diet
- How a nutritarian diet looks at all the various foods that maximize human longevity
- Key points include that fat intake should come from whole nuts and seeds and avocados
- He recommends sprouts, microgreens, cruciferous green vegetables, onions and scallions, different types of mushrooms.
- He says it’s about making food taste delicious while still retaining the nutrient quality of it.
- He explains a nutrient IQ score based on the typical serving size.
- How the US Food and Drug Administration tracks about 36 nutrients in ordinary supermarket food bought through regions throughout the United States.
- He explains that those numbers are not based on homegrown microgreens and lettuces.
- Growing in good organic soil can have 10 to 100 times the micronutrient content in conventional grown vegetables.
- How as humans we are vegetable dependent animals, and if you don’t eat vegetables, you cannot achieve excellent health – We can just about predict lifespan, by looking at the amount of green vegetables people consume.
- Natural, colorful plants have hundreds if not thousands of nutrients.
- He explains why diets that are high in animal products lead to both higher rates of cardiovascular death and higher rates of cancer deaths.
- He tells us longevity is linked to being insulin sensitive, not insulin resistant, and explains how fat cells work with insulin.
- He says you’re a nutritarian if you’re at your ideal weight or you’re overweight and moving in the direction towards your ideal weight, steadily.
- He further explains healthy or ideal weight and BMI, which he says should be under 23.
- He addressed the question of how quickly we can see results once a healthy diet is started – and says the risk of heart attack will go down within days.
- He talks abut how many Americans are food addicts with a need for instant gratification.
- He talks about some of his books “Fast Food, Genocide”, “The End of Heart Disease”, “The End of Diabetes”, and “Eat to Live, Eat for Life”
- He recommends whole grains and not grinding them for baking breads and pizzas.
- He addresses how white flour take nutrients out of the body instead of adding nutrients.
- He explains how seeing a doctor for headaches, cramps, or other signs of a poor health habit can result in a prescription for a drug that just pushes the toxins back inside instead of flushing them out. But the cycle is then repeated.
“You gotta start eating vegetables and cut out the salt and exercise everyday and lose some weight or you’ll never get your blood pressure down.”
Producer’s Note –
As well as:
His failure – How he thought he was going to the Olympics and then could not go because of an injury
His success – It is not being a number one Times Best Seller for more than a year. It is watching people transform their lives positively and developing relationships with them.
His drive – to stay in good health because you can continue to enjoy your life to the fullest when you take proper care of your health
His advice – Make lunch the most important meal of your day. Eat a giant big salad and chew it extremely well. Use a nut and seed based dressing, and add a bowl of vegetable bean soup and some fruit for dessert.
A few of the Books written by Joel:Eat for Life
Eat for Health
Super Immunity
Nutritarian Handbook & Food Scoring Guide
Desserts to Live For
Eat to Live Cookbook
The End of Diabetes
The End of Heart Disease
Fast Food Genocide
Joel’s Book recommendations:
Any of Wendy Walker’s books
and Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M Auel
How to reach Joel:
Website: drfuhrman.com
UrbanFarm.org/eatingforlife
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