LITMIR.BIZ

       Foreword

      Now is the time to change your health destiny and finally get well. Remaining overweight and diabetic not only can kill you — it will also make you suffer needlessly for years. Modern nutritional science has shown that we can wipe out what I call these diseases of nutritional ignorance. Nutritional excellence can not only prevent cardiovascular illness but also reverse it, even in advanced cases. It can also reverse type 2 diabetes.

      The finest doctors are master coaches who motivate their patients to adopt healthful practices that can enable self-healing. This describes Dr. Vij, an elite physician who stays up to date on the recent advances in science and is committed to your health and recovery. He is an example of a new breed of physician who addresses causation and avoids the needless and excessive use of medications and surgical procedures to treat chronic disease.

      The underlying theme of this small but powerful book is that you can finally achieve a normal weight and keep the excess pounds off forever, no matter how many times you have failed in the past. If you follow Dr. Vij’s guidance, you can achieve an astonishing health transformation.

      We are fighting a war against obesity, diabetes, and chronic overeating. But the reality is that we have been losing that war to the food industry, which has hooked the masses on dangerous and addicting processed foods. The food industry promotes unhealthy foods and food-related behaviors to consumers, and it has billions of dollars to spend on supporting their aims. Sadly, they have been successful, to a large degree, in publicizing confusing, industry-promoted “science.” This confusion leads to the failure of our population to adhere to a new paradigm of healthy eating. An overweight and sickly population serves the economic interests of the food and drug industry. However, in recent years, it has become more difficult to deny the overwhelming preponderance of evidence emanating from medical journals — evidence that is slowly enlisting a consensus among nutritional scientists.

      People across America are misinformed and confused about health and nutrition. Until very recently, there has been mass confusion about what constitutes an ideal diet to prevent disease, normalize body weight, and maximally extend human life. Though there are outliers and deniers, who promote diets rich in oil or meat, most nutritional scientists are now in agreement that, for a diet to be considered health-promoting and physicianrecommended, it must adhere to four basic tenets.

      1. The diet must be rich in natural plant foods, particularly vegetables.

      2. Carbohydrates should be naturally fiber-rich and low-glycemic, such as beans, squash, and steel-cut oats.

      3. Salt, white flour, and sweeteners should be avoided.

      4. Animal products should be significantly reduced.

      Scientists throughout the world recognize today that low-nutrient calories, and excess calories, are toxic. When we overconsume calories, we shorten our lives and promote the development of chronic disease. In today’s world, we have more people overconsuming calories to their detriment than we have people unable to find sufficient calories. It is clear that the shorter the waistline, the longer the lifelißne — and the secret to a slim waist is more veggies and beans, not more meat and cheese.

      One mass nutritional folly in the modern world is the idea of “healthy oils.” Though there are healthy high-fat foods, such as sesame seeds and walnuts, there is no such thing as a healthy oil. For example, sesame oil and walnut oil do not have the cholesterol-lowering, heart-saving, and brain-saving effects that are associated with the whole nuts and seeds. Remember, oils do not grow on trees. They have never existed as a food for any animal on the face of the planet or for our prehistoric human ancestors, nor did they exist throughout most of human history. All oils are basically the same: They are heavily concentrated calories, with the natural fibers and most micronutrients removed. Oil consumption averages over four hundred calories a day for Americans and is a major contributor to our obesity epidemic. We need to eat less nutrient-poor calories and choose our calories and fats wisely.

      Adding to this universal confusion is the idea that drugs are our answer to high blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholesterol, and that these medications will be needed for the rest of one’s life. I feel strongly that if people knew the true risks of the medications they have been prescribed — and how little protection they offer — then millions more people would be embracing the nutrient-dense, plant-rich Nutritarian diet for the reversal of their health issues.

      We have fantastic freedom in America, but that includes freedom to commit slow suicide with (fake) food. I think almost all nutritional scientists and nutritionally aware physicians agree that the American diet is a health disaster — one that has led to health-care costs that are completely out of control and unsustainable.

      Our nation is suffering under the weight of a medical crisis that is difficult for most people to understand. While our government struggles to regulate health-care costs for a growing percentage of overweight, sickly, and medication-dependent people — and tries to find the most equitable way to do so — there is little conversation about the futility, the waste, and to put it simply, the damage caused by our nation’s addictive dependency on drugs and medical care.

      As a nation, we need less medical care, not more. We need to educate people about how to protect themselves from developing high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease. People need to understand that commercial baked goods, snack foods, and liquid soft drinks are as addictive and disease-causing as cocaine and cigarettes. Supervised abstinence is the key to freedom from dangerous addictions. It is important to recognize that cutting out sections of a person’s stomach does not cure them if they are a sugar addict.

      We have to come together and stop the insanity. We must say no to junk food. We must say no to processed foods and get back to gardening and eating closer to the Earth. We must fight for the survival and health of our fellow humans and make these changes together.

      I hope you embrace this message and become an example for others to follow. Your health transformation will be a victory for all of us.

      — Joel Fuhrman, MD, president of the Nutritional Research Foundation and New York Times–bestselling author of six books, including The End of Heart Disease, Eat to Live Cookbook, and Super Immunity