Book 53: Eat for Health

I finally read the last chapter of Joel Fuhrman's Eat for Health. It's a two-book set: The Mind Makeover and The Body Makeover. The second is mostly eating plans and recipes, so I won't count it as Book 54.




Eat for Health is much more lenient than Eat for Life, even allowing small amounts of meat! He gives advice for slowly adding in more and more healthful foods, rather than the drastic changes he insisted on in Eat for Life. Fuhrman recommends eating in a super-healthful style to extend life and prevent disease. He cites tons of research supporting a diet based mostly on fruits and vegetables. Isn't it weird that we need research to remind us that we should be eating produce???

But we are inundated with ads claiming that dairy is good for us, and that it's good for losing weight. We think that we need tons of protein (I read a lot about weight lifting and physical fitness, and almost every expert in that field pushes high amounts of protein). Somehow diet food has become low-fat, highly processed, frozen meals, or diet carbs with no nutritional value. Salads used to be diet food -- what happened?

Fuhrman reminds us that healthy food is fresh, unprocessed produce, beans, seeds, and nuts. Everything else can be added in small amounts as complements to a healthful diet.

Eating the Standard American Diet makes it more likely that we will develop heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, dementia, and cancer. Eating better foods most of the time can greatly reduce the risk of those diseases.

I like reading Fuhrman's books and refer back to them often, when I feel like I need to re-adjust my thinking on healthful eating. He has a professional, yet conversational writing style, and everything he recommends makes a lot of sense.