Dr Joel Fuhrman – Smart Nutrition, Superior Health

Content by: Dr Joel Fuhrman

Watch the full interview below or listen to the full episode on your iPhone HERE.

Stu: This week we welcome Dr Joel Fuhrman to the show. Dr Fuhrman is an American doctor who advocates what he calls a micronutrient-rich diet.

A former competitive figure skater, he suffered a serious injury which removed him from competition. He says an alternative medicine therapy helped speed his recovery and led him to become a physician. He has written several books promoting his dietary approaches and as of April 2013, his book Eat to Live was on the New York Times bestseller paperback Advice & Misc. list for 90 weeks.

In this episode we discuss the health issues linked to a modern day diet and how eating G-Bombs can help get us back on track. Enjoy…

Audio Version

downloaditunesListen to Stitcher Questions we ask in this episode:

  • What is the Nutritarian Diet?
  • Is gut health as important as we’re led to believe?
  • What are the top 3 foods to consume with longevity in mind?

Get More of Dr Joel Fuhrman

If you enjoyed this, then we think you’ll enjoy this interview:

Full Transcript

 Stu

00:03 Hey. This is Stu from 180 Nutrition and welcome to another episode of The Health Sessions. It’s here that we connect with the world’s best experts in health, wellness, and human performance in an attempt to cut through the confusion around what it actually takes to achieve a long lasting health. I’m sure that’s something that we all strive to have. I certainly do. Before we get into the show today, you might not know that we make products too. That’s right. We’re into whole food nutrition and have a range of super foods and natural supplements to help support your day. If you are curious, or to find out more, just jump over to our website. That is 180nutrition.com.au and take a look. Okay, back to the show.

00:44 This week, I’m excited to welcome Dr. Joel Fuhrman. Dr. Fuhrman is board certified family physician, a New York Times bestselling author and internationally recognized expert on nutrition and naturally healing. He advocates a micro-nutrient rich diet and explains how eating this way unleashes the body’s tremendous ability to heal, achieve optimal weight, and slow the aging process. In this episode, we discuss the health issues linked to a modern-day processed diet and how eating G-BOMBs, more on this later, can help get us back on track. Even if you think you’ve got your diet covered, I guarantee you’ll learn something from this conversation. So, enough from me. Over to Dr. Fuhrman.

01:29 Hey guys. This is Stu from 180 Nutrition and I am delighted to welcome Dr. Joel Fuhrman to the show. Dr. Fuhrman, how are you?

Joel

01:37 Great to be here.

Stu

01:39 Thank you.

Joel

01:40 Fantastic.

Stu

01:40 Thank you. First up, for all of those listeners out there that may not be familiar with you or your work, I’d love it if you could just spend a couple of minutes just telling us a little bit about what you do and perhaps why you do it as well.

Joel

01:54 Well, I’ve been a board certified [inaudible 00:01:56] family physician specializing in nutrition for about 30 years now. I specifically went to medical school with the intent to do what I do, which is to reverse disease to aggressive nutritional methods. So, people with chronic migraines, fibromyalgia, asthma, advanced heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, auto-immune conditions like scleroderma, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, ulcerative colitis, I’m making the radical claim that nutritional excellence is more powerful than medication. You could get people back to great health again without poisoning them with toxic drugs. I developed a career around that.

02:39 Aligned with that idea I’ve been treating sick people and getting them well again through nutrition, not through medications, is this concept of developing the ideal diet style to maximally extend the human lifespan. I’ve had thousands of people who have lost more than a hundred pounds, but the point I’m making right now is that it’s not just about losing weight, it’s about slowing the aging process, maintaining our youthful vigor, and our athletic abilities and our mental abilities into our later years and living to 100 years old in great health. I think that these modern advances in nutritional science are making this possible today for those of us that want that.

03:16 I’m president of the Nutritional Research Foundation. In other words, we raise money to do nutritional research studies and I’ve published numerous research projects and am involved with studies ongoing now, to show that we can protect … we can prevent cancer and if people have cancer they can live longer. We’re doing disease reversal and disease prevention studies as well, utilizing this nutritarian portfolio of these high-nutrient foods we have put together to design this ideal diet to maximize human longevity.

Stu

03:49 Wow. Fantastic. Fantastic. How common is that approach in medicine, at least, over in the states? Because it certainly isn’t common over here.

Joel

04:01 No, it’s not common at all. I’ve written about 12 books.

Stu

04:05 Yes.

Joel

04:06 I have six … six of them have become New York Times bestsellers.

Stu

04:09 Right.

Joel

04:10 So, it’s common in the sense that a lot of people have read my books.

Stu

04:13 Yeah.

Joel

04:14 A percentage of those people have adopted my methods to get well again and to have great health, but the vast majority of Americans are overweight and sickly and inevitably cancer-prone and heart attack-prone, develop dementia as they age, similar to what happens in Australia.

Stu

04:29 Yeah.

Joel

04:30 What’s funny is I have a retreat where I put people in and house them for four to twelve weeks to make sure they eat right to reverse advanced heart disease and diabetes. I have people that come from Australia and stay at my retreat. You know what I mean? So people fly in here from Australia for me to take care of them, which is really cool.

Stu

04:47 My word. Tell us about the nutritarian diet. Is that how I say it?

Joel

04:47 Yes. Nutritarian. That’s correct.

Stu

04:49 Nutritarian diet. Yeah. Tell us about that. What are the principles behind it?

Joel

05:02 The first principle has to do with nutrient density. That means that we want people to eat a diet style that’s high in micro nutrients. The micro nutrients are vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, antioxidants. We want their diet to be nutrient-rich. At the same time, we want them to be just moderately caloric restricted, in other words not overeat and have very little body fat.

Stu

05:27 All right.

Joel

05:27 So, we’re talking about, here, about nutritional excellence in the environment of moderate caloric restriction. To do that, you have to eat a lot of high-nutrient foods and remove from your diet these empty calories people keep shoving in their mouth, white flour, white rice, you know?

Stu

05:45 Yeah.

Joel

05:46 [inaudible 00:05:46] pour oil on your food to put more calories on it. We have to take away those non-functional calories that don’t contain nutrients and have our diet be comprised mostly of foods that are rich in these phytochemicals and antioxidants that we need for the immune system to fight off cancer. The first principle has to do with H=N/C.

Stu

06:06 Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Joel

06:07 That means your healthy life expectancy is proportional to the micro nutrient per calorie density of your diet. Whereas you eat things like bread and white rice and sugar and honey and maple syrup and all these low nutrient foods, french fries, you’re gonna shorten your lifespan to the extent that you eat those foods.

Stu

06:26 Yep.

Joel

06:26 The second principle of the nutritarian diet has to do with the diet being hormonally favorable. Hormones also have to be right. Meaning that, if we take in too much high-glycemic carbohydrate like sugar, honey, maple syrup, white rice, white potato, white flour products … if we take in too much high-glycemic carbohydrate, it raises blood sugars too high. The response promotes angiogenesis, the growth of fat and the growth of cancer.

Stu

06:57 Right.

Joel

07:50 A diet where people are drinking a lot of milk, that raises IGF1 too high and higher levels of IGF1 are associated with higher risks of breast cancer, high risk of prostate cancer, high risk of lung cancer and colon cancer and things like that, and accelerates the aging process. Promoting growth, for an adult, promotes cellular replication and things that are growing that shouldn’t be growing.

Stu

08:12 Right.

Joel

08:14 As we get older, IGF1 getting too low, severe deficiencies also could be a negative thing. A nutritarian diet is mostly vegan. A person can use a small amount of animal product in their diet, but it’s so rich in G-BOMBs. It’s so rich in G- B-O-M-B-S. G-BOMBs. That stands for greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, berries, and seeds, like flaxseeds, chia seeds, and sesame seeds.

Stu

08:45 Yep.

Joel

08:45 The G-BOMBs stands for those particular foods that have the most documented and scientifically studied anti-cancer and lifespan promoting benefits. We try to include the full portfolio of an anti-cancer foods in our diet. What I’m saying right now, I’m saying two things. I’m saying that our diet is largely plant material.

Stu

09:06 Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Joel

09:07 And largely colorful plant material, very high in G-BOMBs. It’s lower in animal products, which … or it could be free of animal products, which naturally keeps IGF1 relatively low compared to most Americans and most Australians. We’re looking for blood sugars to be low and IGF1 to be low, and of course, estrogen to be low as well. Now, what I didn’t say was that when your diet is so rich in these phyto-nutrients, it naturally suppresses the petite. You don’t feel like eating as much food. You get connected instinctually with the amount of calories you require. You no longer desire to overeat. It’s very hard to become overweight when you’re eating so much low-calorie, high-nutrient foods. What I’m saying that you want your diet to be high in nutrients and moderately caloric-restricted … what I’m saying right now is when your diet gets high in nutrients, it naturally calorically restricts you a little bit all by itself.

Stu

10:05 Yes.

Joel

10:06 You don’t have to do anything to calorically … you just don’t desire to eat as much food when you meet your nutrient requirements.

Stu

10:12 Got it. Got it. What-

Joel

10:14 The third-

Stu

10:15 Sorry. Carry on.

Joel

10:17 I was just gonna say, the third principle. We covered the first two principles.

Stu

10:22 Yes.

Joel

10:22 The first principle was nutrient density.

Stu

10:22 Yes.

Joel

10:22 The second principle was being hormonally favorable.

Stu

10:25 Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Joel

10:26 The third principle is the comprehensiveness. I call it my comprehensive micro-nutrient adequacy, which means that we wanna make sure no one particular nutrient that you or humans need is missing in your diet that could lead to your health demise or health problems. For example, a person on a vegan diet not getting enough B12 or not getting enough DHA for brain function in later life, we wanna make … or not getting enough zinc. A vegan could be a little low in zinc as they age and that could decrease their immunity. We wanna make sure everybody has the perfect level of these nutrients for optimal health as well as the perfect diet. We put … and the fourth principle, the last principle. There’s one more. That’s avoiding poisons, toxins, carcinogens, unfavorable bacteria or parasites. In other words, we’re avoiding things we know are dangerous like toxic materials and carcinogens added to food in the food … made in food processing or our environment. The last principle’s avoiding poisons, let’s say. Okay?

Stu

11:26 Right.

Joel

11:27 We put those four principles together into a diet style with a portfolio of all the foods that have been documented to prevent cancer. When we put … for example, mushrooms have been shown in one study to lower rates of breast cancer in women by 64% compared to women who don’t eat mushrooms. For example, using the little lignans that comes from flaxseeds have been shown to reduce recurrence of breast cancer by 71%, decreased mortality from breast cancer. What I’m saying is when we put the full portfolio of all these foods together in the same dietary portfolio, then the magic happens.

Stu

11:59 Right.

Joel

11:59 It will prevent disease, reverse disease and to really to live a long time free of cancer.

Stu

12:05 It’s … yeah. It’s very exciting. I have a few questions based around the principles of this. My first one is with the intake of fruits and vegetables and all the colors of all these wonderful foods, how do you sit in terms of organic versus non-organic because I know, at least in this country, organic foods are very expensive. They may not be available to larger families, to everybody. So, are we at risk by consuming much more non-organic vegetables that are then subject to pesticides, herbicides, and all of the above?

Joel

12:45 Well you’re at highest risk from eating the wrong type of diet.

Stu

12:48 Right.

Joel

12:49 Because there’s not only pesticide residue and chemical residue in processed foods and animal products, there’s more toxic residue in fast food and processed foods and bagged food and plastic bagged food. There’s more pesticide residue in the foods, and not just pesticides. We’re talking about toxic residue like dioxin and PCBs and heterocyclic amines and nitro amino compounds. We get toxic residue just from cooking the food under a high flame, just from frying things. When you cook an oil and you heat it up, you form rancid compounds that are toxic. People get more poisonous residues from the conventional way of eating. Once you’re eating a large amounts of fruits and vegetables with soups and salads with healthy dressings on them and [inaudible 00:13:35] vegetable dishes, the moisture in the cooking methods prevent the formation of toxic compounds. You automatically have less toxic residue. The little bit of pesticide residue that’s residual on the food is not one thousands the risk factor for all the other toxins people are eating in their food and the way they’re cooking it.

Stu

13:52 Right.

Joel

13:53 Yes. Yes, eating organic is an ideally … is ideal, but our population would essentially wipe out heart disease and strokes and reduce cancer rates by 80% just by cleaning up their diet and not even eating organic fruits and vegetables. There are … most of the problem with non-organic is problem for the farm workers, the people who work in the fields, the people who are working with the chemicals. They get the brain tumors, the soft tissue gliomas, the leukemias, the lymphomas, because they’re working a lot in these chemicals. A little bit of reside on the food isn’t as dangerous to us as it was to those people having to work in those … in that atmosphere with those chemicals all around a lot. You know what I mean?

Stu

14:32 Yeah. Absolutely.

Joel

14:33 It’s an issue, but it’s not as … it’s not the main issue.

Stu

14:36 Right. Okay. No, that’s good to hear because I always wondered, especially when things like broccoli and cauliflower, cruciferous stuff you think, “There’s no way I can wash chemicals off of this.” They’re so detailed, it’s not like a shiny apple that you can scrub under the tap.

Joel

14:50 Right.
Stu: 14:51 It sounds like that way of eating is going to be very … it’s gotta be very good and nourishing for the gut. My next question is based around gut health. Is it as important as we’re led to believe, because 10 years ago the importance of gut health was kind of a woo-woo topic. Nobody spoke about it. Microbiome and things like leaky gut were just scoffed at, but now it seems to be the epicenter of health. What are your thoughts on that?

15:21 Well, everything matters, but you see when you eat properly, the microbiome takes care of itself.

Stu

15:28 Yeah.

Joel

15:28 In other words, when you eat the wrong diet, you have an unhealthy microbiome. You eat onions and raw green vegetables and cooked mushrooms and cooked beans, those particular four foods … I said two raw foods, meaning green vegetables and raw onion or scallion, and two cooked foods meaning beans or legumes or [inaudible 00:15:47] and mushrooms cooked, those two cooked foods.

Stu

15:50 Yeah.

Joel

15:51 Give the most favor to microbiome. They don’t just give you the right balance of bacteria, but they also make the bacteria form a biofilm that adheres to the villi on the small intestines, preventing foods-

16:01 … to the villi on the small intestines, preventing foods from being absorbed too rapidly, and lowering the glycemic load from everything you eat. So that mango you ate, that moderate glycemic mango became low glycemic because you’re a regular consumer of beans and onions and mushrooms and scallion, let’s say.

Stu

16:19 Rice.

Joel

16:19 Onions, because it’s called … Scientists call that the second-meal effect. That means that when you’re eating beans and onions, and the microbiome is favorable, that when you eat oatmeal or an apple or mango, the glycemic effect of those foods will benefit from these foods you’re eating, because the microbiome … The favorable biofilm slows the passage of glucose through the villi, the wall of the villi. So yes, microbiome is important, but you don’t have to know about it to be important. You don’t have focus on it because you don’t have to take probiotics. You don’t have to take fermented foods. You don’t have to eat yogurt and sauerkraut.

16:55 You don’t have to do anything. When you eat the right diet and get rid of the junk out of your diet — the white flour and the sugar and too much animal products, the microbiome fixes itself. So even though it’s important, people don’t have to know anything about it for it to work.

Stu

17:09 Yeah, good. That’s good advice. It does seem to be that things are getting a little bit more complicated than they ever used to be, and I always look back at my grandparents. They seem to eat simple foods, and they had relatively simple lives in terms of … They weren’t subject to all this craziness of social media and internet and stuff like that. But nowadays, we seem to have to track our activity. We’re taking supplements and pills and potions for everything. We get super concerned about the gut health, and it just sounds like the fix is so simple.

Joel

17:46 Right. The fix is simple right, right. You get back to natural foods, mostly plants, not too much food, you live a long time. I want people to recognize that. You don’t have to get cancer. You don’t have to get heart attacks and strokes, and it’s ever more so tragic because people are eating themselves to death needlessly. That’s all over the world. We’re exporting fast food and junk food all over the world, and we’re seeing cancer rates skyrocket wherever people eat more like Americans do.

Stu

18:14 Yeah, got it. So fast food, and it would be a great segue into your book, Fast Food Genocide. So I just wondered, what can we expect from there? When you say “fast food,” are we talking about the big four fast food outlets? Or are we talking more about the broader term fast food as in conventional processed food that you can purchase from the supermarket?

Joel

18:39 That’s correct. That’s correct. Fast food is anything you could eat fast. You can access it fast. You can open a bag, and you can put it in your mouth. You don’t prepare it. It’s already prepared. That’s why it’s fast food. Certainly, fast-food restaurants are an example of dangerous eating. But there could be a fast-food restaurant … there probably are … that serves some healthy stuff. So of course, we’re talking about things bought in convenience stores and supermarkets that are in the inner aisles that are in bags and boxes. But in any case, the fast food is usually high glycemic.

19:05 It’s usually heavily salted. It’s usually calorically dense, usually has chemical additives and artificial colors. It usually has many chemicals in there. It usually as a long shelf-life, can last forever. It doesn’t have to be refrigerated. You know what I mean? It’s the opposite of fresh food. These foods, see, I think a lot of people out there listening understand that these foods increase risk of diabetes and obesity and heart attack and stroke. But what they don’t understand is the link between these foods and mental illness, and these foods and depression, and these foods and making you less creative and less happy.

19:41 What I’m seeing right now is two things. Number one, the amount of people who were mentally ill in America a hundred years ago was one out of a hundred. Now, it’s 20% of the population. You know what I mean?

Stu

19:53 Yeah.

Joel

19:53 Now, it’s like every five people have mental illness.

Stu

19:55 Looks like … yeah.

Joel

19:55 Number one. Number two, in the medical dysthymic studies, your risk of developing depression, major depression is all about how much fast food you’re eating and processed foods, commercial baked goods and fast food. We’re talking about bread and croissants and bagels and pasta and pizza and french fries and their burgers, and this is all linked to depression. Even two servings a week doubly risk developing depression. Now, those people who are not depressed from eating fast food, don’t get depressed, it still affects their mentality. It’s still affecting their intelligence. It’s still affecting their … lowering their enthusiasm for life.

20:32 Lowering their creativity, lowering their degree of happiness. Just because you don’t have major depression doesn’t mean your brain is working well. There’s something called dysthymic syndrome which means not quite depressed but a little bit of a flat mood. People don’t recognize how much eating these foods destroy them emotionally, and people don’t realize how much these foods are taking away children’s intelligence and their ability to succeed and realize the American dream. We call it the American dream to be able to be successful in your life by getting a good education.

21:05 But if you’re eating these fast foods, you can’t get a good education, you can’t be successful in your life because it dummies you down. The other thing is the link between candy and fast-food consumption and childhood and drug abuse and crime in later life is a solid link. I’m saying right now that the more candy a kid eats, the higher the risk of having some problems in later life and increased risk for other addictions, like drug addictions and more risk of criminal behavior. So we’re talking about how these foods are so negative to the human brain and how they’ve been used to incite bigotry and racism as well, because in the United States, with this history of slavery, and in this country today, it’s looked at people of color.

Joel

21:51 They’re looked as, well, they’re not doing as well economically. They don’t succeed in school as well. They have more sick … more breast cancer, more prostate cancer, more strokes, and I’m showing in the book Fast Food Genocide that it has nothing to do with skin color. But after the civil war, when the slaves were freed, when black Americans were freed, and they have access to vegetables. They were succeeding, getting educated. They were becoming more centenarians, having great health living a long time. And then of course through political … things have happened.

22:18 The advent of pellagra and [inaudible 00:22:21] in the South. The violence of lynchings and the Jim Crow laws. They were pushed into inner cities, and now after the World War II, we had the lack of produce getting to inner cities, and we had convenience stores and fast foods. Now, we have whole populations of people that are vulnerable, and we call these areas in the United States food deserts because not a lot of supermarkets and produce around. There’s mostly things you can buy, mostly fast food, and then people suffer because of that, and it’s blamed on their race.

22:49 I’m showing people that it doesn’t matter that it’s all about … But if we’re going to reach our potential physically, health-wise, intellectually, it’s all about getting the right food, especially through childhood and adolescence and our early life. It’s all about how you’re fed maximizes your human potential.

Stu

23:06 Got it. So, if somebody buys a copy of the book today and not wanting to be overwhelmed but wanting to start somewhere with to create new healthy habits, and to try and eradicate at least the start of the things that they’re going to have to put in place to be able to make this big change, where would they start? Where would be the easy places to start? Because I think a lot of people are very fearful of this radical change, especially where the word diet is concerned, because it can be … It can be a term that’s so emotionally connected with them as well.

Joel

23:44 Right. I always write my books, and I always say, “Don’t make a decision about what you’re going to do. Finish reading the book first.”

Stu

23:49 Right.

Joel

23:50 Get the knowledge first because the knowledge will set you free and make this enjoyable. And knowing how to cook and make it taste delicious and make ice cream, like take frozen banana with some macadamia nuts mixed with some real vanilla bean powder, and it makes the most delicious vanilla ice. We don’t need to put the sugar in at all. The banana is sweet enough when you put in the vanilla bean powder. What I’m saying right now is they learn all the tricks and tips. They don’t know how to make it taste great. So I’m saying start with one of my basic books, like Fast Food Genocide or Super Immunity … tell what we talked about in this show today, and they’ll know how to make it taste great.

24:22 I have cookbooks and stuff like that. But to really answer your question without saying, “Read my books,” is this. People have to change their lunch. That’s the most important thing. All they have to do to start is to have a big salad with a dressing that’s made from nuts and seeds. It might be tomato sauce with some almond butter, with some balsamic vinegar mixed in. A dressing made with nuts or seeds, not oil.

Stu

24:44 Right.

Joel

24:45 A big salad. Bowl of the vegetable bean soup. They can make that bowl of vegetable bean soup on the weekend, and they can put it in their refrigerator and take it the whole week, once they make it on the week, and a piece of fruit for dessert. So they can have a salad, soup, piece of fruit for dessert. If everybody just did that for their lunch, we’d see the healthcare crisis would start to ease up because that’s the meal we eat outside of the home most often. It’s the meal that we eat outside of the home that causes the most damage because that’s where people are choosing to eat the wrong foods. When they’re in their breakfast and dinner, they can control their environment.

25:17 They can keep the healthier foods in their house more readily, and you should be eating a lighter breakfast and dinner anyway. Your lunch is your bigger meal of the day, that mid-meal. So that’s the day where you have to really fill up on healthy food.

Stu

25:28 Right, okay.

Joel

25:29 [inaudible 00:25:29]. Just fix your lunch.

Stu

25:31 Okay, and just to get this right as well, and to dispel any myths. It wouldn’t be the best choice to go into one of the big fast-food outlets to purchase your salad, is that right?

Joel

25:44 Yeah, because I want a bigger salary. I want to make it green. I want onions in it or scallion. I want some beans in there. Of course, tomatoes and maybe some cooked mushroom in there. But you want to use some raw cruciferous on it. It’s a very important component. The salad, that’s the most powerful anti-cancer component. The raw cruciferous is something like arugula, watercress, shredded cabbage, red cabbage, green cabbage, kale, some kind of green on top of the salad that’s cruciferous too. Then the dressing has to be healthy, not a sugary-based dressing or an oil-based dressing, something where you blend nuts in with the vinegar to make the dressing, tomato.

26:20 It could be an orange that’s blended with blood orange vinegar or white wine vinegar and some raw cashews and stuff and sesame seeds and a little squeeze of lemon is a great dressing for your salad. So the dressing is healthy too. That’s the key. Make a healthy salad dressing. The dressing is good for you. You could eat that dressing right with a spoon. It’s a healthy dressing. You don’t pour an unhealthy dressing. What most people do, they put 250 calories of unhealthy dressing on like 30 calories of vegetables. Then just take out the vegetables. Drink the dressing straight from the bottle then.

Stu

26:49 No, I get it. I get it. So, out of all of the poor food choices that we can make, and boy, we can make a lot of poor food choices. They are everywhere. In your opinion, what single food or ingredient do you believe to be the worst? Something that we would adamantly try to avoid.

Joel

27:09 Anything fried in oil. Things that are fried really increase the risk of cancer and autoimmune disease like crazy. If you want to … You should avoid sugar too. So if you fry a doughnut, it’s fried and it’s full of sugar, right?

Stu

27:22 Yeah.

Joel

27:23 So a donut’s probably the worst thing you could eat. But french fries, they also put sugar in the french fry batter, and then they fry it in oil. It’s been cooked over and over again. How much risk do you think a person increases the risk of breast cancer if they have just a commercial fast-food french fry just once a week? Take a wild guess. Just one serving a week.

Stu

27:43 40%.

Joel

27:45 26%.

Stu

27:46 Okay.

Joel

27:47 Good guess. But see, that’s radical. Even moderate consumption is dangerous is the point, right?

Stu

27:53 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It’s ludicrous. In the press at the moment there is a lot of talk about healthy fried food in terms of, “I’m going to fry this now, not in vegetable oil. I’m going to use tallow, lard, so animal fats as well, because they’re much stable at high heat.” What are your thoughts on that?

Joel

28:17 I think it’s insanity that you have all these people trying to grasp that insane theories and hypotheses that now animal fat is okay, and you can cook it at high heat? It’s just insane. You know, all the long-lived societies, all the blue zones, all the areas that have the most centenarians draw people that are eating mostly plants, vegetables they grow themselves. They have [inaudible 00:28:39] and very little animal products in their diet and certainly not high amounts of animal fats.

Stu

28:44 Got it.

Joel

28:45 But the problem is, is that high amounts of low-fat animal product is also bad. But even the white chicken without the skin, if you cook it at high heat, it’s still forming a lot of dangerous carcinogens, and the animal protein, the concentrated proteins, like in egg whites and white meat chicken is still IGF-1-promoting and still cancer-promoting. So whether you take the fat out, whether you put the fat in, you just eat the protein without the fat, you just eat the fat without the protein, it’s all foods that contain no fiber, no phytochemicals, no antioxidants, none of those anti-cancer ingredients, and they’re hormonally unfavorable. A dry fat storage and cellular [inaudible 00:29:22]. They’re too growth-promoting.

Stu

29:27 And on that then, on the topic of protein, tell me about fish. What are your thoughts on fish in terms of … Obviously, mercury toxicity or heavy metals all the way through to the little fish. Do they play a part in your diet?

Joel

29:42 Well, the dioxin is very high in farm-raised fish and other chemicals. So the wild fish is a little better, but depending on where it’s caught, it’s still toxic. But don’t forget, if I’m allowing people or saying, “You can have some animal products.” If they’re sickly, I want them to keep it down to 5% of total calories. If they’re in great health, they can have up to 10%. But the American diet now is over 30% of calories from animal product. So even if wild fish was one of their more favorable animal product, I would still want them to curtail that consumption to very small amounts in the diet.

30:18 I don’t want them to think eating a lot of animal product is good for them, even if you’re eating wild salamanders and snakes and crocodiles. It’s still not good to eat a lot of animal products.

Stu

30:29 Got it, okay. So, just to go back to a point that you made earlier about the potential deficiencies that you could meet on a vegan and vegetarian diet, especially B12, omegas, zinc, things like that. Do you recommend supplementation? Or is it all from a food-based diet?

Joel

30:53 No, I recommend supplementation-

Stu

30:54 Okay.

Joel

30:55 Because a vegan has to be supplementing B12. That’s the most important thing. It can be very serious to be B12 deficiency, and vegans need more B12 than non-vegans do, than omnivores do. So they have to take a hefty dose of B12 to prevent the possibility of developing brain damage and nerve damage from B12 deficiency. So they have to use a supplement, or they could take an animal product that’s [inaudible 00:31:16] but there’s nothing that … What should I say? I can’t prove it. But the question is, which is more longevity-promoting, a properly supplemented vegan diet with a little extra DHA and B12 and maybe zinc or a diet that’s getting those foods from a little bit of fish?

31:33 You get the omega three and the B12 and the zinc from seafood, which if you don’t take the seafood out, you got to put the supplements in. Put the seafood back in, you can take the supplements out. So the question is, which is more lifespan-promoting? It seems like that from the studies we have, the Seventh-day Adventist studies from the United States that being on a vegan diet that’s properly supplemented, with the inclusion of the natural fats from nuts and seeds, seems to be more lifespan promoting than getting those nutrients from fish even more so. But a-

32:00 And promoting and getting those nutrients from fish, even more so. But a small amount, you could consider that a small amount of fish, but then if you do use a little bit of animal products, you still could be potentially B12 deficient. So those are the main three nutrients you would have gotten if your diet contained some wild animal products, the B12, the zinc, and the DHA. Right? The DHA and EPA are [inaudible 00:32:21] called fish oil.

32:23 And some vegans or some people can make enough DHA all by themselves, their body can make enough from the walnuts and the flaxseeds; but a lot of people can’t make it that well. It’s genetically determined, so we want to make sure people don’t get shrinkage of the brain with aging and dementia from being on a vegan diet. So we want to make sure they get some pure, [inaudible 00:32:44] DHA [crosstalk 00:32:46] as a supplement, not consumer fish, seafood.

Stu

32:49 Okay, alright. I would like then for you to walk us through your day in terms of what you eat, from the time you get up in the morning to the time you go to bed, including supplementation as well. So you can lend some perspective to this conversation because I am intrigued. Because you are clearly on top of this, in a way that nobody else is in this realm. I would love to know what you do. Run me through that day.

Joel

33:21 Well, don’t forget I don’t eat the same thing every day, you know. I eat what…such a wide variety of things I eat. Sometimes in the morning, I’ll just some fruit that I like, a mango and a glass of vegetable juice and go to the gym, something like that. Or sometimes I’ll have some steel cut oats just a little bit with some hemp seeds on top, flaxseeds on top, and a couple of wild blueberries on top and maybe some jackfruit mixed in there or some tart cherries or something. So it would be different from morning to morning, but I try to remember to get the flaxseeds or chia seeds or the hemp seeds in to me on a regular basis, if not every day, almost every day.

Stu

33:58 Right.

Joel

34:00 …for breakfast. Then for lunch, I try to eat a big salad. Get a lot of raw…I try to pick one meal to eat a lot of raw vegetables as I can. I slice up a head of lettuce. I’ll put some red cabbage or kale in there or I’ll make a smoothie with vegetables in it. So, I’ll use one meal, I eat a lot of raw vegetables. And usually in that meal, I’ll usually have my soup too, my vegetable bean soup.

Stu

34:22 Right.

Joel

34:23 If I don’t have the vegetable bean soup, I’ll have maybe a little chili on the salad or I’ll put some beans on the salad. So, I’ll usually have some beans with that raw vegetable meal even before the soup or the chili or the something or bean stew or something with that meal. And then I’ll have some dessert with that. I usually have some kind of fruit like a peach or a nectarine or something or an apricot, some kind of piece of fruit after that.

34:46 And then for dinner, I’ll usually have a mixed, a cooked vegetables in water like a wok.[inaudible 00:34:51] Chinese vegetables in wok like cabbage, mushrooms, onions tossed in maybe a Thai curry peanut sauce or I’ll put some almonds and hemp seeds with some tumeric and lemongrass paste and I’ll make a nice vegetable dish and maybe I’ll have a dip around some vegetables with like snow pea pods. Sometimes I’ll go out to my garden backyard, I’ll eat right out of the garden. Or I’ll make corn from my garden, or some okra from the garden, or snow pea pods from the garden. Or I’ll stay in the garden and I’ll eat. I’ll pick some figs off my fig tree and I’ll just eat them outside, you know what I mean.

Stu

35:22 Yeah.

Joel

35:23 So, I’m eating half of my dinner out in the garden, outside [inaudible 00:35:26]

Stu

35:28 Fantastic. And also…[crosstalk 00:35:30]

Joel

35:30 [inaudible 00:35:30] Or Mediterranean pine nuts, or some walnuts. I’ll have some nuts, you know, or make the dressing or the sauce with nuts and seeds. What makes my diet very different from people who are listening probably is that I’m not using any oil in the diet at all. I’m getting all the fat from instead of walnut oil, I’m using walnuts. Instead of olive oil, I’m using a few olives. Instead of avocado oil, I’m using avocado. I’m using macadamia nuts. On my diet is not low in fat.

Stu

35:55 Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Joel

35:57 But I’m not using any processed fat, all the fat comes from whole foods. It’s a biological horse of a different color when it doesn’t behave the same way in the body, when you eat your fats from whole foods.

Stu

36:07 Right. Okay. So, it’s not a red flag for olive oil, is it, cause many people would be very attached to olive oil, in terms of using it.

Joel

36:15 What do you mean it’s not a red flag? What do you mean?

Stu

36:17 I mean that olive oil isn’t unhealthy, in your mind’s eye, from a bottle.

Joel

36:27 Yes it is.

Stu

36:27 Oh, okay. Okay.

Joel

36:29 It is a red flag problem.

Stu

36:31 Okay.

Joel

36:32 I’m saying that when you got to a buffet…

Stu

36:36 Yeah.

Joel

36:36 If I gave you a table with olive oil, a 120 calories.

Stu

36:40 Yeah.

Joel

36:40 Before you went to the [inaudible 00:36:41]. It doesn’t have enough bulk or fiber and it’s absorbed so rapidly that it wouldn’t turn your appestat down to eat less food at a buffet, you still eat the same amount of calories.

Stu

36:48 Right.

Joel

36:49 If you put oil in the food, you need more calories than 120, you need 200 extra calories. Oil, even olive oil, leads to the over consumption of calories.

Stu

36:57 Right.

Joel

36:58 The more oil you put in your diet, the more fat’s on your waist.

Stu

37:01 Gotcha.

Joel

37:01 It’s very hard for people to lose weight if they keep putting oil on their food. What I’m saying to you right now and I said this at the very beginning of this conversation, I said moderate caloric restriction.

Stu

37:10 Yep.

Joel

37:10 Remember, I said environment and high micro nutrient exposure and oil is just pouring extra calories, diluting the nutrient density of your diet by pouring more calories on it. It makes your diet…and people aren’t walking behind a plow eight hours a day burning those calories, there’s no ground.

Stu

37:27 Yeah.

Joel

37:28 And if I’m off, let them stand up and pinch their waist. Are they ripped? Do they have a six pack? Or are the soft in the midsection and are they have a fat you can pinch. They’re pouring fat all over their food and pouring extra calories in their oil, saying oil’s a health food. You know, unless you’re a world class athlete, exercising or not, exercising a tremendous amount, you’re probably not burning those calories off. Take the oil out of your diet. You’re gonna be leaner and slimmer, morally favorable because fat on the body is machine, is a chemical risk factor. Fat on the body is a hormonal risk factor. It produces it’s storage toxins, produces inflammation. It produces hormones that are cancer promoting and promotes angiogenesis of the growth of cancer because fat cells secrete angiogenesis promoters to try and have blood vessels to grow into them so that the fat can grow more.

38:19 So you need to be lean, is the point, and oil takes away your capacity to be lean.

Stu

38:25 Got it. Got it. And interesting. Very Interesting and where does alcohol…

Joel

38:30 People don’t like the message, but the food taste just as great when the sauce are made with a whole nut or seed.

Stu

38:36 Yeah.

Joel

38:37 You have more flavor when you use the cashew, the sesame seed, the macadamia nut. Now you’re filling your body with nutrients and fiber and the beneficial chemicals, phyto chemicals in nuts and seeds. And you take the oil out, it’s like comparing white bread to the whole wheat vary.

Stu

38:53 Right.

Joel

38:53 Oil is the processed food form of that food.

Stu

38:55 Of course. Yeah. It does make sense. So, where does alcohol sit then on that spectrum because we’ve been told that a glass of red wine with dinner can be very helpful, but there are lots of hidden calories in alcohol too?

Joel

39:11 Helpful to the oncologist? To make more money?

Stu

39:17 Yeah. Yeah. Helpful for the owner’s of the vineyard, I think.

Joel

39:23 Yeah. We hear such nonsense and people believe what they want to believe because they want to keep imbibing, you know.

Stu

39:29 Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Joel

39:30 Unfortunately, alcohol is a carcinogen and the more you eat it increases, specially sensitive to breast. Women are sensitive to alcohol more than men are cause they have smaller livers. And the more you drink it, the more it becomes more of a carcinogen.

Stu

39:43 Right.

Joel

39:43 So even a small amount can increases for breast cancer, for a women. So you don’t get a free ride, you know. You look at any one factor, it’s not so bad you drink one glass of wine a day, it only increases risk for breast cancer by 12%, not so terrible. We can put that on top of all the other little things that people do wrong and then they get cancer. It adds up. They do this wrong. They do that wrong and the next thing wrong. You know, any one thing isn’t that treacherous. The apple is not so bad, a lot of worse things you can do, right?

Stu

40:12 Yes.

Joel

40:14 But it adds up with all the bad things they do, you know.

Stu

40:15 Yeah. No, I hear you. We call it the one percenters. It’s all these little things that you don’t think that actually matter, that when you add up all of the one percenters and you’re talking big figures and it a have a huge effect on you.

40:29 So, you mentioned exercise as well. You go to the gym as part of your day. How important is movement then into this? Because obviously nutrition, is a hugely important pillar in the holistic overview of health, but how important is it if you don’t lose…

Joel

40:51 You don’t eat right you can’t…right, you don’t feel like exercising or doing anything if you’re not eating right.

Stu

40:56 No.

Joel

40:56 You’re not fit, you can’t have no…so we’re saying that people have to start by eating right and then they’ll feel like doing more things and then they’ll be able to exercise more. You know, but exercise is not the primary way to control your weight. You can exercise like crazy. You can’t out exercise your mouth and your knife and fork. You put in one bagel at 300 calories. You’re gonna have to burn 300 calories at the gym.

Stu

41:15 Yeah.

Joel

41:15 You can’t exercise your mouth, you know. The point I’m making is exercise is favorable for longevity.

Stu

41:23 Yes.

Joel

41:23 But your diet is 90% of what contributes to your longevity and gives you the capacity to exercise comfortably and enjoy it.

Stu

41:30 Great. Great. No, that’s great advice. Crikey. That’s is a little snippet that I would like to share on it’s own across our social media audience, so no, that makes perfect sense. So, we’re coming up on time, and it’s just a question that I like to ask everybody as well that might be unique to you. Essentially, it’s the non-negotiables to ensure that crush every day. So, it might be the little habits that you gravitate to, the things you wanna do every single day to perform at your best. What would they be?

Joel

42:09 Nothing. You wake in the morning, you don’t need coffee to get yourself going. You’re already performing at your best because you slept soundly, you’re feeling good. You exercised because your diet is right. So that again, the most important thing is to make sure you eat green vegetables, a lot of green vegetables in your diet.

Stu

42:27 Great. Okay. Fantastic.

Joel

42:28 That’s the most important thing. Green vegetables. You could ask me a question, say Dr. Fuhrman, “what’s the food most [inaudible 00:42:34] to low rates of cancer?” And I’ll say green vegetables. And guess the next question – what’s the food most closely associated with low risk of heart attack? And I’ll say green vegetables. And here’s the next question – what’s the food most associated with low risk of stroke and dementia? And I’ll say green vegetables. And then you’ll ask another question, in other words I can say green vegetable the answer to every question because that’s the most important to eat a lot of green vegetables.

Stu

42:53 Okay. So with that thought in mind, tell me what your top three green vegetables are?

Joel

43:02 The cruciferous greens are at the top. So, I like to have arugula. I pick arugula because it’s soft like a lettuce. It’s easy to eat on your salad. So the top three would be something like kale, arugula, and broccoli. I’m saying broccoli because it has more substance.

Stu

43:15 Yeah.

Joel

43:15 And you can eat a lot of it as far as volume and feel filed up for it. It’s not gonna flatten out like a leaf, like the other ones. I love brussel sprouts, broccoli, and bok choy, I love all that stuff. And make it into nice dishes in woks, but I eat some of them raw too every day. Eat some raw, it some conservatively cooked of both the green stuff.

Stu

43:33 Alright and now people are often confused about green veggies, raw versus cooked. And often site the fact that well a cow has four stomachs and can digest all this wonderful veg but we can’t, we need to cook it. Do we need to boil the hell out of it?

Joel

43:53 Well the cruciferous vegetable has an enzyme called myrosinase.

Stu

43:57 Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Joel

43:59 In the cell wall and that enzyme’s heat sensitive, so we want to eat part of that green vegetable raw or cooked for under five minutes, if it’s steamed or woked. You wanna have it not cooked for more than five minutes. Because as you cook it too long, it deactivates the myrosinase enzyme. So particularly we’re trying to get the maximum anti-cancer benefit out of our green cruciferous vegetables. Wanna eat some raw and some moderately cooked, not boiled and not cooked a long time till they’re mush because you’re not going to get the full anti-cancer benefits out of it.

Stu

44:29 Great. Okay. Fantastic advice. Well, I am conscious of time now, so essentially what I would like to do is just, I would like to ask you where our readers can get more of Joel Fuhrman? So where can we send them?

Joel

44:47 Thank you.

44:48 DrFurman.com is obviously my website.

Stu

44:50 Yep.

Joel

44:52 Drfuhrman.com

Stu

44:55 Yep.

Joel

44:56 And of course, I have lot of information there, recipes, membership. I have people all over the world asking me questions and I have a forum in the member center. I answer people’s questions, health and nutrition questions.

Stu

45:06 Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Joel

45:06 And of course they can order books and they get eBooks from Amazon and they can get on my website and see what they have that will fit their condition. For example, if they have diabetes, I have a book written on that subject. If they have heart disease like blood pressure, I have a book written on that subject. They can get some more information from me there.

Stu

45:19 Fantastic. Okay and what’s next? Anything in the pipeline? Any exciting projects coming up?

Joel

45:27 Well, I always have a lot of exciting projects coming up, you know.

Stu

45:29 Yeah.

Joel

45:32 One thing I’m working on is a movie. We’re working on a documentary about fast food genocide. I’m working on my new retreat just opening up where people come to, whether they have food addiction, or they serious conditions like totally need bypass surgery, angioplasty. So, I have a place I can house people, to feed them so healthily, wanna watch them miraculously transform their life and so all the things are so exciting to watch people get healthy again.

Stu

46:00 Fantastic. Well, I really appreciate your time this morning. We’ll share all the links that we’ve spoken about today in the show notes and really look forward to showing this across our audience. So thank you again, really appreciate your time.

Joel

46:13 Best of health of course to you and all your listeners.

Stu

46:15 Thank you very much. Bye-bye.

 

Dr Joel Fuhrman

This podcast features Dr. Fuhrman who is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (Pearlman) School of Medicine (1988) and has received the St. Joseph’s Family Practice Resident’s Teaching Award for his contribution to the education of family practice residents; and a C3 Cardiology Global Health Award for teaching cardiologists... Read More
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