#244: Secrets to Longevity: Exploring the Nutritarian Diet with Dr. Joel Fuhrman
Learn more about Dr. Joel Fuhrman
Dr. Joel Fuhrman, a pioneer in plant-based nutrition, discusses the power of nutrition in preventing diseases and promoting overall health.
Since his first book in 1996, Dr. Joel Fuhrman has been teaching people how to Eat to Live with his Nutritarian approach to eating.
Today, Rip and Dr. Fuhrman focus their conversation around his most recent book, 2020’s Eat for Life and the importance of micronutrients and phytochemicals like greens, beans, onions, berries and mushrooms to slow down aging, prevent and reverse diabetes and heart-disease, lower cholesterol and blood pressure, and reduce hunger and food cravings.
The interview stressed small health-promoting habits, G-BOMBS in meals, eliminating salt, and distinguishing true hunger from toxic hunger.
Dr. Fuhrman, like so many of the legendary plant-based physicians, has been unwavering in his beliefs and practice for decades and that’s why it’s an honor to welcome him to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast.
Episode Highlights
1:27 Dr. Fuhrman’s Journey to Nutritional Medicine
10:33 His Passion for Skating
22:19T he Power of Phytochemicals
30:02 Maximizing Lifespan and Healthspan
31:44 Slowing Aging: Metabolism Insights
38:22 Essential Factors for Slowing Aging
42:30 Comprehensive Nutrient Adequacy Concept
46:36 His Take on Hot Drinks in an Instagram Podcast
47:47 Dr. Fuhrman’s Supplementation Recommendations
54:49 Your Health is in Your Hands
55:18 Avoiding Disease-Causing Substances
59:49 Importance of Frozen Fruits and Vegetables
1:01:38 Cancer-Fighting Fatty Foods You Should Consume
1:23:57 True Hunger vs. Toxic Hunger
1:27:59 Dr. Fuhrman’s Exciting Projects for 2024 and Breakfast Preferences
About Joel Fuhrman, MD
Joel Fuhrman, M.D. is a board-certified family physician, seven-time New York Times best-selling author and internationally recognized expert on nutrition and natural healing. He specializes in preventing and reversing disease through nutritional methods. Dr. Fuhrman is the President of the Nutritional Research Foundation and on the faculty of Northern Arizona University, Health Sciences division. He coined the term “Nutritarian” to describe a nutrient-dense eating style, designed to prevent cancer, slow aging, and extend lifespan.
For over 30 years, Dr. Fuhrman has shown that it is possible to achieve sustainable weight loss and reverse heart disease, diabetes and many other illnesses using smart nutrition. In his medical practice, and through his books and television specials, he continues to bring this life-saving message to hundreds of thousands of people around the world.
Save the Date! LIVE Plant-Stock is BACK from August 16th-18th! Sign up for our newsletters at plantstrong.com to stay up to date on the official announcements.
Learn more about our 2024 PLANTSTRONG Retreats in Sedona, AZ
To stock up on the best-tasting, most convenient, 100% PLANTSTRONG foods, including our cornbread, teas, stews, pancakes cereals, granolas, pizza kits, broths and soups, check out all of our PLANTSTRONG products HERE. Use code: STRONG15 for 15% off your first order.
Give us a like on the PLANTSTRONG Facebook Page and check out what being PLANSTRONG is all about. We always keep it stocked full of new content and updates, tips for healthy living, delicious recipes, and you can even catch me LIVE on there!
We’ve also got an Instagram! Check us out and share your favorite PLANTSTRONG products and why you love it! Don’t forget to tag us using #goplantstrong 🌱💪
Full Episode Transcription via AI Transcription Service
[0:00] I'm Rip Esselstyn, and you're listening to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast.
Since his first book came out in 1996, Dr.
Joel Fuhrman has been changing the way people think about food and teaching people truly how to eat to live with his nutritarian approach to eating.
For the first time, I welcome Dr.
Joel Fuhrman to the PLANTSTRONG podcast right after this message.
[0:31] Have you ever considered the impact of whole grains on your daily energy levels?
Introducing PLANTSTRONG's whole grain, oil-free, no refined sugar granola, a clean label breakfast option that keeps you powered up all day long. long.
We have four incredible varieties, dark chocolate, all-American apple pie, crisp mixed berry crumble, and one of my favorites, classic oatmeal raisin cookie.
You can add any of these to oatmeal, eat with fruit and a splash of milk, or pack as a snack to enjoy right out of the bag.
They're loaded with sweetness but without the added sugars and they're baked to crunchy perfection without the oil.
I challenge you to find a cleaner label on your supermarket shelves.
[1:24] Give our PLANTSTRONGplant-strong granolas a try.
As you all are well aware, I have had dozens of plant-based physicians on this podcast who were inspired to become whole food plant-based typically after they started practicing medicine and started digging through the science and the the deep and very, very rich literature around whole food plant-based nutrition.
[1:53] Dr. Joel Fuhrman was ahead of his time. He went to medical school specifically because he was interested in nutrition and knew from the get-go that he wanted to work with patients using smart nutrition as his primary form of medicine.
He's written 12 books, including the seminal Eat to Live, which was published in 2004.
But today, we're going to focus much of our discussion around his most recent book, 2020's Eat for Life, and the importance of micronutrients and phytochemicals in our body.
Foods like greens beans onions berries and mushrooms are all packed with micronutrients that slow down our aging and prevent and reverse diabetes and heart disease lower blood cholesterol and blood pressure and reduce hunger and food cravings that's a pretty darn darn powerful, one, two, three, four, five, six, punch.
Dr. Fuhrman, like my father and so many others, has been unwavering in his beliefs and for decades has been keeping up with the science, which makes it even more of an honor to welcome him to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast.
[3:15] Good morning, Dr. Joel Fuhrman. Welcome to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast.
It is an absolute pleasure pleasure to have you in the house. Thank you.
Thank you. Looking forward to talking to you today. Yeah, yeah, me too.
You know, you and I, we've known each other, gosh, probably since 2010.
[3:35] And I am such a fan of your work.
I have so much respect for what you've done to help Really, millions of people kind of take their nutritional quotient to the next level.
And, you know, you've written, what, 10 plus books. You have all kinds of programs.
[4:02] You are truly an icon in this space.
And so I apologize that you haven't been on the podcast sooner.
Sooner so I can't wait to dive in and talk about all the great things that you're doing, oh thank you well looking forward to it it's always my pleasure yeah so tell me Joel where did you grow up I want to know a little bit about kind of what makes you tick and uh and and you know that kind of stuff so where'd you grow up I grew up in Yonkers New York, As you probably know, with your athletic background, I was very seriously involved with competitive figure skating, competing in singles and in pairs.
At some point in my skating training, I dropped the singles competition and focused only on pair skating as we approached the senior level.
I competed in junior men's singles, but then in the senior events, I only competed in pairs on a national and international level.
Yeah. So that was a huge part of my my occupied my time. I was going to school when I was young.
[5:08] What and so how did you get into skating? Was that something that your parents pushed you into or because that doesn't seem like it's on many people's radar?
Yeah, there was a rink like close to our house and we started taking lessons.
And then my father used to go up to the Catskill Mountains to deliver shoes.
He had about 11 or 12 shoe stores, and he delivered shoes to people up in, you know, driving.
And we went up there to skate and take skating lessons, and we wound up performing the ice shows.
And we just liked doing it, I guess, as kids, and we just got into it, you know?
Right, right, right. And so at what age did you start getting into it?
Are we talking like 6, 7, 8?
Yeah, like 9, 10. My sister, who was my skating partner, was 4 or 5 at the time because she's 5 years younger than me.
But I was probably 9 or 10, and she was 4 or 5.
[5:57] Wow. And so you grew up, did you have one sister? Any other siblings?
I have an older sister as well. So I had a younger sister and an older sister.
[6:07] Gotcha. And so your parents, so your father owned some shoe stores, is that right? Right. My father owned 12 shoe stores.
And when I actually when I first quit competitive skating, I started to teach skating and then and start to operate his shoe stores and start with the expectation of taking over the ownership and he would retire.
[6:29] And then as I did that for a few years, at that point, I decided I would go back to take the undergraduate pre-med courses.
I already had graduated from college years earlier, a few years earlier, and I decided to go back and take the postgraduate pre-med courses at Columbia so I could then apply to medical school with a specific intent to be a physician specializing in nutritional medicine.
So it was my interest in nutrition that drove me to go back to want to go to medical school.
So I didn't become a doctor first and then change the way I practiced to incorporate nutrition.
I went the other way. I had an excitement about natural foods and natural hygiene at that point and using like fruits and vegetables as the therapeutic modality to give people therapeutic diets.
This is from reading all of Dr. Shelton's works that he wrote in the 1950s and 1960s.
So I so I went to medical school with the intent to be a doctor, to doing what I'm what I did do when I right when I got out of medical school and residency, I went right into opening up my own practice, specializing in nutrition. That was 19.
[7:37] I graduated med school in 1988, but I didn't go to medical start medical school till I was almost 30 years old.
I was 29, just turning 30 when I began medical school.
And growing up, were you a good student?
[7:56] Yeah, I was always a pretty good student, but my schoolwork came second to my skating.
So I'd have like my teachers say to me, well, what's more important?
You're not you're not here half the time. You've gone half the time.
And I'd always do very well in the exams anyway.
So what do they care about? I'm doing OK on the exams. But they'd say to me, you know, what is more important, skating or school? you're missing half the classes.
And I'd say, well, to me, skating is more important. You know, that's my, at this point in my life, you know, and they, and it's funny how a lot of my classmates would come out of the class and say, what is she doing that to you? It's like, of course, this is a big part of your life.
They would, they would up, my other classmates would support me and say, the teachers are not, you know, or don't understand that balance has to be with what your life is about right now. And, you know, so they were like encouraging me to do what I did.
[8:45] And travel and to miss class and, you know, stuff like that.
And obviously it sounds like your parents were probably very supportive of that as well.
Yes. A lot of travel, driving to skating rinks at three in the morning and going, you know, training before school or through the night when, you know, so yes, there's a lot of, um, sacrifice time and travel and money, of course. Yeah.
And just so the listeners know, I mean, you and your sister were like incredible skaters.
I mean, I mean, give me a little example of like what were some of the accolades that you guys achieved as skaters?
[9:23] Well, we were second in the United States in 1973.
And in that event, there were 10 judges.
We had won by the team that beat us won by six out of the 10.
We won by four of the 10. It was a close competition.
And after that event, the number one team had retired. So we were ranked number one in the United States in 1975.
And then, obviously, I was injured and was unable to get back in sufficient condition in time for the 76 Olympics.
But I did compete in the World Professional Championships a few months later after the Olympics when I had gotten my better conditioning back.
And then we came in third in the world in 1976 after the Olympic Games. Right.
So and then after that, you know, in those days, many, many years ago, you couldn't compete in the Olympics or in major international events as a professional.
So the minute you started taking money or started taking professional events, you were disqualified from the major these major competitions like the Olympic Games.
So at that point, we kind of just performed professionally and we didn't have
[10:32] another Olympic opportunity.
Opportunity had it been like today where you can take money and be professional continue to competing we would have likely competed again into the 19 you know late into later years but then maybe i wouldn't have gone to medical school who knows you know yeah yeah when was the last time you were on a pair of skates.
[10:49] I think about a year ago, you know, a year, year and a half ago, I got, I got, I was locally skating and just skating around forwards and backwards and doing some things on the ice.
But mostly now I, I, you know, I ski, I play tennis, I hike, I run, I go to the gym, I do other things, but I've probably, if, you know, you know, there's so much time, you can only do so much things.
Oh yeah. Yeah. All right. I want to dial in.
So you had this fascination with nutrition, it sounds like, but when did that start?
Like, was that in as a teenager? Was that as in your early twenties?
Yes, it was a teenager because my father was overweight and sickly and we would drive him to doctor appointments all the time. And many times he couldn't even sit up straight in the car. He had to lie in the back on a mattress.
And, and he started changing his diet, losing weight and got a lot healthier.
So, so he brought these books and the literature into to the house, which I read and then experienced and traveled and, and utilized some of those nutritional principles to enhance our athletic performance and stamina.
And of course you do it because you don't want to get sick on the, on your travel and competitive, um, scheduling.
You don't want to be sick with it because if you're out of the, out with a week of a cold or something, you blew your whole year's work, you know?
So, so we started, my sister and I ate healthier in our late, later teenage years. We started eating pretty healthfully.
[12:12] And so before that, would you say that your family ate kind of the standard American diet?
Yes. I ate chicken, tuna fish casseroles, and macaroni and cheese, and lamb, all the stuff up until I was a teenager. Right.
Okay. So you went to medical school, and you knew going in there exactly what you wanted coming out.
[12:40] Was it frustrating for you going through medical school and what you were learning?
Because there's not much of an emphasis, I would assume, especially when you went to medical school, on any kind of nutrition.
You know, I really enjoyed medical school.
Number one, it was a lot easier than my skating career because trying to go to high school and college while you're still skating and training six hours a day and skating all night long, it's much harder to juggle everything.
When I went to medical school, I only had to worry about medical school.
Sure, I could go exercise for a half an hour a day or something, but you didn't have to have all that stress on you.
And I made friends there and And I and even friends with the professors and the teachers, they were quite nice people and they were all interested in what I had to say about nutrition.
And even though we were learning basic sciences and a lot of things, a lot of it supported what I wanted to do and gave the basic biochemical backgrounds and physiology and anatomy.
So I didn't find it contradictory and I didn't find it stressful.
[13:43] Except for when you then go to residency and start working in the hospital.
Because even in medical school, the first thing they tell you in pharmacology class is that all drugs are toxic and they don't work by supplying the body with a nutrient.
They work by blocking or interfering and poisoning some natural function or receptor site.
And it's better to live in a manner to avoid the need for these medicinal substances that cumulatively can cause disease and increase a person's risk of cancer.
So they told us that we learned about about the toxicity of medications and, and, and the fact, but then you go into practice and nobody remembers it does that.
And we learned about the, the benefit of inflammation even in the inflammatory response be intertwined with the process of repair and how inflammation serves to wall off an injurious agent and sets into motion a series of events that tries to clean out or repair damaged tissue and how the natural, we learned about biology in a way that supported this ability of the body to heal itself and the best way to heal itself is to restore this optimal environment for healing.
[14:47] So you learn that in the first like year or two of medical school.
And it's funny because at University of Pennsylvania, where I went to medical school, they made me chairperson of the Nutritional Education Committee at the medical school. They gave me a position there.
And I talked to students and we had meetings and discussions about it with even some faculty advisors.
So it was all good stuff. And it's funny because I would go to sit down in my chair in the auditorium where the classes were given.
And some of my fellow students would like hide their candy bars or junk food behind their back and I would walk by them and I'd look at them and I'd go, I'm not your mother.
I don't care what you do if you want, you know.
[15:30] But then they would say to me, you know, you've had a big effect on my life.
And so I enjoyed medical school. I made a lot of friends there. Right, right.
I want to continue with that. But first, so you said your dad was overweight and brought these books into the house.
Are your parents still alive today? My mother's going to be 96 this March.
So she's still alive. My father passed away.
[15:57] Got it. Okay.
All right. So in 2003, you decided to write, I would assume that that was your first book, Eat to Live.
Is that correct? No, that was my second book. I wrote Fasting and Eating for Health in 1996.
I was in practice now from after residency from 1991 on.
And then I realized that being this doctor, that's so unusual in my New Jersey community, I was sensing a lot of people where there'd be a lot of discussion.
I'd hear people speaking about what kind of doctor I was.
And I said, you know, I'm okay with being different and unique, but at least if they're trying to figure out what I stand for, at least it really should be what I do stand for and not some concocted made up story.
So I figured it's good if I wrote a book. And so I wanted to write a book about fasting, but the book publisher, oh, I was going to write a book about eating mostly.
But the book, I was going to call it Get Healthy Fast and have a little bit about fasting in there, too.
But the book publisher wanted me to put fasting first in the title because they felt there was no book in the medical catalog at the, you know, in the Congress, Library of Congress that has a book on fasting.
So I wrote the first book on fasting called Fasting and Eating for Health in 1996.
[17:21] But don't forget, at that point, I was just I was still relatively unknown.
Known. I hadn't had any media exposure, so it was very hard to promote a book and have people know who you are.
It wasn't until I wrote Eat to Live in 2004 that I started to get more penetration to the marketplace and sell more books.
But it really wasn't until about 2010 when I first got my opportunity to be on television and also not only had my own show on PBS, but I also was on on the Dr. Oz show that year.
And then I started to have a lot more people be aware of my work.
[17:58] Right, I mean, Eat to Live has probably sold over a million copies.
I mean, that thing, I think I read it's been on the New York Times, or it was on the New York Times bestseller list for over 90 weeks. That's phenomenal.
Yes, and it was on the number one spot in the self-help books for like over a year. I think it sold over 3 million books.
Oh, my God. Wait, that's incredible. That's incredible. That's huge.
Huge. Huge congrats on that. Thank you. And so you've written right around 10 different books, if I'm not mistaken. I think 12 books.
Okay, 12. There you go. There you go. And the latest one in your quiver is this one right here, Eat for Life, that came out in 2020.
Right. And you say that of all your books, this one kind of is, this is where you've kind of distilled everything down, right?
And all your, kind of your life's work in this book. book. Is that correct?
Something like that. I mean, it's obviously you would need to put together three or four of my books to be more comprehensive.
I mean, even my book, Fast for Genocide, the, you know, the end of, there's a lot of information.
There's some information in books that obviously can't be put into one book.
[19:11] However, I think the latest book I've recommend that one because it has the most updated references and the most comprehensive array of references.
So it has has more than 2,000 scientific references in there.
And I have reviewed more than probably 30,000 scientific studies.
I think that makes the book a great resource for people who want to get scientific references to various topics in plant-based nutrition too, you know? Yeah.
Well, it's a fantastic book.
I've read it over the last couple of days and thoroughly thoroughly thoroughly enjoyed it and you have such a um you have such a nice writing style and you don't you know you don't hold back on throwing any punches you just kind of say it how it is now let me ask you this um so for people that and i'm sure just about everybody is but for people that potentially are not familiar with you can you like let them know broad strokes what What exactly is a nutritarian diet, which is kind of what you propose in your philosophy?
[20:18] Right. You know, I really like that word nutritarian, and I'll tell you why.
Because it better defines a diet that means like a super healthy diet, a diet of nutritional excellence.
It's us health nuts that are nutritarians, where the other terminologies I don't think really defines a person who's interested in eating for health and not self-sabotaging themselves with self-destructive foods as much.
Even whole food plant-based doesn't give you a diet that has maybe enough vegetables in it or salad every day or includes sprouts and mushrooms and onions.
It doesn't really, because you can be on a macrobiotic diet or just leaving on nothing but rice and be a whole food plant-based.
You could be on a fruitarian diet.
[21:03] So in other words, it defines the inclusion of a wide variety of healthy foods that us nutritarians are trying to put in our diet.
And it gives an identity. And I think it's very important for people who have issues with their overweight, their unhealthy eaters.
They have a tendency to be to food addiction. They're trying to change their diet for healthy eating.
And we're trying to say to a person, unless you've changed your identity and you're proud of who you are in your new identity, you're not going to do well under the criticism of conventional society of not being going out drinking and smoking and eating unhealthily with your buddies.
You've got to be proud of who you are and build and have internal self-esteem based on you are living a healthy life.
And until you are, you're going to have constant troubles with living this way unless you're proud of your new identity as a healthy eater.
So that's where I think that word nutritarian can be particularly healthy and helpful because it defines a diet, not just being plant heavy or plant rich or plant based, whatever those words mean specifically.
But more specifically, we're interested in our own excellent health, and we're willing to adjust our food intake and our dietary intake to try to be as healthy as we can.
[22:20] Great. What do you say to people who argue that there are a variety of best diets that are out there, just depending upon your particular genetic makeup or unique individuality?
[22:37] Well, we may sometimes have data to suggest that may be true.
But at this point, we don't have such data right now.
Because right now we see we are primates, and as a primate, we have a high requirement for phytochemicals and antioxidants, and our immune system and our antioxidant response element in the cells that repair deep broken DNA or remove toxins from cells is dependent on a large intake of colorful and plant material.
[23:11] So they could want to think that our genetics or some other thing could make us more carnivore, you know, carnivore-like or something, or a person who maybe is able to eat more meat.
But we haven't identified such an individual yet who has, in any genetic way, that makes eating a high meat diet safe.
Now, that doesn't mean that some people don't have more risks from eating unhealthily or eating more animal products.
Some people have less risk. And that doesn't mean that some people can't develop digestive deficiencies or digestive idiosyncrasies that require some animal products in their diet, but it's still not a primary genetic inheritance.
And that a diet can't be excellent for a person's long-term health and prevention of heart disease.
[24:06] Stroke, dementia, and cancer without including a large quantity of these antioxidants and phytochemicals that are found in natural and whole plants.
So that there's no genetic type that doesn't need green vegetables.
There's no genetic type, even if you have an onion allergy or, you know, you still are going to, would have been benefit to your longevity if you were able, didn't have the allergy to onions and you could have ate some onions and scallions and mushrooms in your diet.
So it's better to have more nutritional variety and to be able to eat vegetables and plants as a means to extend human lifespan.
Even if there are some individuals that don't tolerate beans or don't tolerate nuts or don't tolerate certain plants, they still would have been better off for their health had they tolerated those things and were able to eat them.
And even if a person needs to eat some animal products because of some medical condition, they're still better off eating the least amount possible, not the most amount possible.
In your practice, have you come across people that, for whatever reason, can't tolerate beans?
[25:07] Yeah, you know, you occasionally, let's say, have a person who, you know, has some digestive problem where beans make them don't work well for them.
And very often we have to give them a tedious bit of beans, like a teaspoon with each meal.
And over a period of months, have them develop the ability to digest those with more time.
But there are some people with, you know, with certain conditions, maybe like colitis or Crohn's that with inflammatory bowel disease or other digestive that may never do well with a large amount of beans in their diet.
Their diet has to include a lot of cooked starchy vegetables because they just don't handle the higher protein or higher acid or higher digestive needs of beans.
But that's still, it's better, healthier to be able to tolerate and eat beans.
And they're linked to reduction of cancer and enhancement and longevity and more muscle and bone strength with aging.
So it's better to be able to tolerate beans and eat them when you can.
It's rare that a person can't. yeah but but most people who can't can still you know tolerate small amounts and be learned and over time even tolerate more yeah yeah um so in in this book you talk about kind of the four different principles of a nutritarian diet um i'd love to talk about those four and then uh also kind of dive in a little on each one but the first one you talk about is calorie restriction in a micronutrient-rich environment.
So what exactly do you mean by that?
[26:34] Yeah, I tell people to memorize those five words, moderate caloric restriction in the context of micronutrient excellence.
So it's moderate caloric restriction with micronutrient excellence.
Those are the five words.
And we're saying here that the opposite is true. In other words, it works the other way.
My point is, is when you don't achieve micronutrient adequacy and you're living on processed foods and animal products, and I'm saying a piece of chicken is like a bagel because the chicken and the bagel, though sources of macronutrients, the bagel has the carbohydrate, the chicken has the protein, but they are neither of one of them are a good source of micronutrients.
They're low in vitamins and minerals, and they contain no antioxidants and phytochemicals to speak of.
And so it leaves the body nutritionally deficient.
[27:28] And these nutritional deficiencies and lack of phytochemicals and antioxidants enable the body to build up more toxic waste and enhances food addiction and also makes the body eventually crave and desirous of more calories.
So I'm saying that the weakness in the micronutrient content and diversity enhances a person's addictions and desires to overeat food.
So as you achieve micronutrient excellence, you're more comfortable and less desirous of eating excessively.
And now you're going to see you're more likely comfortable with the right amount of calories.
It doesn't mean you can't emotionally overeat and and still make bad food choices.
But at least you're not so driven biochemically with these unrelenting cravings to have to overeat so much, you know.
[28:19] And then we're saying, yes, that that that body fat is a major driver of diseases and that there's no such thing as a healthy, overweight person.
And as much as many people want to believe that and accept, you know, bad science advocating that, but as we get our body fat goes up, so does insulin resistance and estrogen production and pro-inflammatory substances and angiogenesis promotion and all these factors we know that age us and drive chronic diseases are elevated by more body fat.
So all people who are overweight are pre-diabetic because they're all insulin-resistant.
You can't not be insulin-resistant when you have so much body fat.
So I'm saying here this degree of moderate caloric restriction.
[29:05] We don't want to excessive calorically restrict to drive mental obsession with eating or to make a person anorexic.
We want to keep the BMI favorable for a woman between like 18 and 21, for a male between 19 and 22. too. We want to be moderately caloric restricted.
So we maintain body fat in a favorable range below 15% for males and below 25% for females.
And that's plain permissive enough. You know, so I'm saying here, the word moderate says, well, you can't just say restrict any amount of calories because people go too far in that direction too.
But we get instinctually in touch with the right amount of calories, with the best amount for us to maintain our best and healthiest weight.
When we eat a diet that's very healthy and we don't eat a diet that's very healthy, it's very hard to get instinctually connected to the right amount of calories. Mm-hmm.
[30:03] And is your goal with this book and with the nutritarian.
[30:11] Lifestyle, is it to maximize lifespan, slow aging, and increase healthspan? Is that accurate?
Absolutely accurate. Okay. And increase healthspan and place span and lifespan.
Yes, we want to have our full mental faculties and be able to enjoy our life.
It's not so much that I care if I live to be 85, 90, or 95, or 100, but I don't want to be in a nursing home, certainly.
I want to be fully able to enjoy my life and be healthy and well and not be be medically crippled with all kinds of these diseases.
So I can't enjoy it. We can't enjoy our lives, you know? So yeah, I do.
That's definitely what you're saying is definitely my mission.
Yeah. What, if you don't mind me asking, how old are you? I'm 70.
70. You look great for 70. And you have a specific goal as far as like, I, that you want to live to, or are you just kind of taking it a year at a time?
[31:04] No, I really, I'm not focused on lifespan.
I'm focused on enjoying my life and seeing how I can appreciate the world around me, have connections with other people, still promote, have compassion and goodwill for others and trying to help people and just to enjoy doing all the things that we enjoy in life.
And that's being enjoying our connections, helping other people, enjoying the world around us, being physically active, enjoying play and just I'm enjoying living and want to continue doing so.
And when I can't do that anymore, I don't have to be alive just to be sick.
You know what I mean? Right. Right.
[31:45] So I want to still kind of hang on to the, you know, the the first principle of the Nutritarian diet. it.
And one of the things you also talk about is that it's important in order to kind of extend that, that runway, that longevity of, of people's lives to slow down the metabolism, as opposed to, as opposed to a faster metabolism and speeding it up. And it seems like, And I'll just speak for myself. I go pretty darn hard, you know, and I, I work out hard, I exercise hard.
And I think that I have a very, very elevated metabolism.
And I'm wondering if in your philosophy, if that's actually maybe something that's harming my longevity and my my lifespan by maybe going for a two-hour mountain bike ride where I'm redlining it for 85% of the time.
You know what I mean? That's really an excellent question that we could bat around.
[32:46] Okay, so let's talk about here because we're talking about a musculoskeletal metabolism based on how much exercise you do versus a basal metabolic rate that if you were, your metabolism would be if you were not considering the calories burned through exercise or the enhanced demands of muscles that were exercised.
So let's just talk about the basal metabolic first, and then we'll go into the exercise one, okay?
The basal one is that at rest you have a certain caloric need to maintain your body mass at rest.
[33:16] And now if your thyroid was running faster at a higher rate of function and your body temperature was higher and your respiratory quotient through breathing was burning more calories, you'd require more calories to burn your metabolic rate.
[33:30] And what I'm saying here is as you eat more calories than you need and put on more body fat, your body takes the extra calories you didn't need and it doesn't turn it all into fat.
It knows it's bad to turn it all into fat. So the body shunts those calories into raising your basal metabolic rate.
So it'll so the extra calories will increase your caloric burn by increasing your respiratory quotient increasing your basal metabolic your your thyroid function and increasing your body temperature and that is going to age you faster it's running your engine at a higher revolution or at a higher rate and your body is making a pact with the devil and saying you know what only turn half of those calories into body fat so when a person is overweight by 50 pounds they They didn't just eat 50 pounds of extra food.
They ate, you know, 150 pounds of extra food. They, you know, I'm talking about calories here.
We'll have to turn fat calories into, you know, into, it's not a one-to-one ratio, but of course, what I'm saying here is they ate a huge amount of extra calories they didn't need because most of those extra calories were turned into increasing their metabolic rate.
So as a person gains weight, their metabolic needs go up, their calorie needs go up to support the extra weight and they're burning their furnace at a higher rate and they're And they're aging themselves, burning out their stem cells and aging their telomeres rapidly to burn off those extra calories.
So we want the metabolism to slow down and come back to normal again where the caloric needs are lower. Okay.
[34:59] So I'm saying contrary to popular viewpoints, it's not beneficial to take medicinal substances to speed up a metabolic rate so we can eat more food and not get fat.
It's better to slow down our metabolic rate so we can eat less food and not get too thin.
We want to maintain our muscles and maintain our strength while eating as little as possible.
That type of metabolism is not the same thing as a person going out to the gym and running a couple of miles and then lifting weights for a couple of half hours ago and skiing all day because now you've revved up your musculoskeletal needs which is a form of metabolism you could argue it's a it's just semantics here one is musculoskeletal caloric needs which is which stays elevated after those exercise and can stay elevated chronically from the regular use of exercise but that's not raising your basal that's not raising your thyroid function that's not That's actually making you burn less calories in the resting mode and sleep.
And that's actually making you more having even a slower demand for calories when your heart is working better and your body is working more efficiently.
So it puts a stress on the system that the body then responds with compensatory benefits that make you use less energy when you're in the resting space.
[36:11] But it's still a stress on the body.
And by the way, I just want to go back one step back and say that in the normal range of thyroid function, we see more heart attacks, more irregular heartbeats in the higher range, in the higher half, the middle to higher half of thyroid function, whereas those in the lower half generally have longer life and less cardiac arrhythmias.
So and so we're saying it's better not to overly drive your thyroid and overly take thyroid medication to push your to overly suppress your tsh to lose weight it's not great to be taking medications and substances to make your metabolism speed up to lose weight because you're putting yourself at risk it's better to control your calories down to lose weight and not look for artificial things to stimulate yourself to lose weight i just want to stick that in there and then get back to this idea of exercise metabolism with you because you're doing a lot lot of exercise, it's not harming you.
The metatetabolism from the extra muscle burn is not harming you because your basal metabolic rate is not being changed by that.
[37:11] However, it could be harming you if you exercise too excessively because at some point in the amount of exercise you do, the capacity of human to exercise could exceed the compensatory benefits you get that your body builds back in response to the stress you go under.
And so that's why By being a triathlete, a competitive triathlete or a competitive marathon runner or a competitive, you know, long-term bike races and these 50-mile bike races and the training that necessitates that, it's not necessarily lifespan promoting.
Even myself and certain cross-country skiers and young athletes may have enlarged hearts, may have increased risk of atrial fibrillation later on in life from their heavy athletic devotions earlier in life. So, yes, the exercise is a great thing.
But at some point we have to say, well, that's might be too much exercise.
You know, if you're such an excessive part of your life where you're trying to compete on that kind of, you know.
[38:12] Yeah, it's an aggressive and world level of exercise performance. You know what I mean?
[38:17] Yeah, no, thank you. Thank you for going down that little rabbit hole with me there for a little bit.
So you mentioned that there's three factors that most powerfully slow kind of the aging process, phytochemicals, calorie restriction, and then exercise.
And obviously, we're talking about not excessive exercise, but the right amount of exercise, right?
You know, I feel like we've We've talked about calorie restriction.
[38:43] When you say phytochemicals, what exactly are you talking about?
Well, you know, plants contain hundreds or even thousands of different nutrients in them that largely haven't even been identified or named. But we have a whole bunch of protective chemicals.
If you take the inositol pentakys phosphates that are in beans or the bioflavonoids or the anthrocyanins and berries or the isothiocyanides.
[39:15] In green cruciferous vegetables, these aren't terms on people's lips.
And they're talking about taking vitamin C and vitamin D.
They're not talking about all these different names of all these different phytochemicals and even the names of the ones.
And we know how they work and we know what they do to the body and they know how they are, how important they are.
And we know that there's ergothionine in muscles, in mushrooms.
And we know we have an ergothionine receptor on the side of our cells to make stabilize the DNA from aging.
And so we have all these, we have all the science to back that the function of these phytochemicals have important benefits to human survival and lifespan, yet nobody talks about them.
And then just as many as they're identified, there's probably an equal or larger number that haven't even been identified yet.
And we get this wide array of phytochemicals from eating a wide array of different types of food.
And that's where I come to this statement where I say that we have this unprecedented unprecedented opportunity in human history to live longer and push the envelope of human longevity.
[40:14] Because our ancestors didn't have access to the science telling them what to eat, nor to the access to the type of foods we have access to today.
We can eat mushrooms and scallions and microgreens and sprouts and baby lettuces in the wintertime and wild blueberry, frozen wild blueberries.
And we can, you know, so instead of trying to narrow the diet and to say, just eat rice or just eat potato or just eat, we're trying to widen the variety of foods and say, well, try to incorporate mushrooms and onions and beans and berries and seeds and nuts and let's widen the variety of foods you can eat because we've seen from the science that we're collecting and investigating that the wider variety of these, wider exposure to these These various types of fibers, plant compounds, phytochemicals, sterols, and stanols gives us the ability to have excellent health if we do not exceed our caloric requirements in the process of widening our nutritional exposure.
[41:15] And do you think that the best…, The best indicator, if you are not exceeding your calorie consumption, is just your weight and your BMI.
Is that kind of a nice? Body fat percent, you mean? Yeah.
But you and I know that some people who are not overweight still overeat.
They still eat until they're full. I don't think it's good to eat until you're really stuffed. You don't have good digestion. They eat late at night.
They go to sleep late at night.
There are people who are lower body weights that are still not healthy.
But, yeah, I think it's a good indicator that your body fat is low.
And it's hard to have a favorable body fat if you don't exercise and not overeat and not eat right.
It's hard to get up to be 65, 70, 75 and have a favorable musculoskeletal strength and size and have a low body fat if you're not doing a lot of these right things.
Most people get, you know, get unhealthy and their blood pressure starts to rise, of course, too.
But um and their body fat rises and their numbers start to look worse but you're right that i i do think that the scale and the body fat percentages are major factors that determine your health yeah.
[42:31] So you uh you just talked about phyto phytochemicals and the importance of those, you um you have a term it's called the comprehensive nutrient adequacy the cna a um and i is that can you talk about that for a sec because i mean i you spend a whole chapter just on that whole principle yes and it includes so we're talking here that even though we're trying to have an excellent nutrient nutrient exposure if you're deficient in one or two substances you could still impair impair your health even if you're eating a lot of kale and strawberries and onions and mushrooms you're eating super healthy a lot of green vegetables principles, but what if you're deficient in one particular thing?
Then it still could like you're B12 deficient and you're still going to have problems with your brain or something, or your, your omega-3 index is exceptionally low or your, you know, so it still pays to pay attentiveness to all the nutrients humans need.
And I'm even have the awareness.
[43:35] That even on a plant-based diet, our exposure to certain nutrients may not be optimized, and that certain individuals, because of their genetics, may not absorb or convert those nutrients into the right amount for them, for their optimal health or brain size with aging.
So I'm just paying a little more attention because my experience has been, being a physician specializing in nutrition for almost 40 years, and caring for the vegan community and a a plant-based community that, such as the American Natural Hygiene Society, who I told you earlier, were some of my mentors, like Dr. Shelton, Dr. Vetrano, Dr.
Sidwar, Dr. Burton, all these doctors who I would go to these conferences when I was 18, 19, 22, and they were in their 40s or 50s or 60s, listening to them speak.
As I became a medical doctor and they became elderly, a lot of them developed neurologic problems like dementia or Parkinson's.
[44:32] And a lot of them came to me to do blood tests to evaluate them and to see what was the issues.
And so it made me very more attentive to the fact that, yes, if you're B12 deficient, if you're omega-3 deficient, if you're zinc deficient, what are these potential nuances on a plant-based diet that would not, what might need supplementation or might need augmentation to some people versus other people? And how do we measure those things?
So that's another thing that I've paid attention to because of my experience and also the combination of clinical experience with the science medical literature, of course, and documenting that there's a huge amount of evidence to suggest that it's important to pay attention to some of these things, to maximize human brain size and resistance against the, you know, because we know Parkinson's is caused primarily by chemical exposure.
[45:29] But the brain becomes more sensitive to these chemicals when your omega-3 index is excessively low.
So that's so we're talking here about making sure you're adequate in all the needed nutrients.
Like, for example, one of the major causes of Parkinson's disease that everybody should know about that.
So that's probably one of the major factors driving it is commercially dry cleaning your clothing.
That if you have your clothes, you know, I don't dress up anymore.
I'm not going to work, but I'm not never really dry clothing. your clothing.
But if you do dry clean your clothing or you work in a dry cleaner, that's very dangerous because those chemicals are now a known promoter of Parkinson's disease, for example.
[46:07] And people are also drinking, like going to Starbucks and drinking hot liquids, hot coffee into cups, cardboard cups that are lined with plastic.
And you have millions of particles of nanoparticles of plastic when you're drinking the coffee down from these commercial commercial establishments in plastic line cups.
You know, so there's a lot of things people, so part of this information is we want to do all these little things to improve our health as well,
[46:33] because these little things could pay, could be important.
Yeah. I want to ask you about supplementation here in a sec, but first you mentioned the, the, the hot drinks and I was looking, I was looking at your Instagram channel and I think you and your daughter have a, have a, have a nice, a nice podcast, a nice show.
And you started talking about hot drinks. And if I, If I heard correctly, you're not a huge fan of hot drinks. Is that correct?
[47:01] Yes, absolutely. Because if the drink is too hot, like steaming hot, a lot of people can have repetitive microburns to their oral mucosa and tongue, increasing risk of throat and tongue cancer from the actual heat.
And that could be hot soups and hot drinks as well. in hot teas, people burn them, their mouth and they get their mouth.
So they're not even sometimes the chronic use of such hot beverages.
They don't even know the burns are taking place because they've chronically burned themselves so much. They've indurated and damaged tissues in their oral mucosa and tongue.
So yeah, I think if you want to drink something warm, like a, like a green tea, it should be like warm, hot, not hot, hot, not steaming hot, you know? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I've, I've never liked beverages that are, that are very hot. Can't stand them.
[47:48] So as far as supplementation, Joel, I'm.
[47:53] What are the ones that you recommend or what are the different vitamins and minerals you recommend people get tested for?
Do you have a kind of a Joel Fuhrman like top eight or top 10 list?
I have a top six list, but let me give you the top three list right now because.
[48:11] It's the primary nutrients that are not as optimized on a plant-based diet that we get a better absorption from animal products or seafood are B12, zinc, and DHA, EPA.
Those are the three primary concern, right?
The K2, which we get, is still somewhat controversial. We don't know if we make enough K1 into K2 in our digestive tract. We might.
You know, there's not as much evidence, but we know that zinc supplementation in the elderly lowers risk of pneumonia and prostate and breast cancer, for example.
And we know that we get almost double the absorption of zinc from animal products compared to plant products because of the phytates that bind zinc, and we get less zinc absorption with aging.
So there's some concern about that, but it is hard to measure zinc because zinc in the bloodstream is not an accurate indicator of zinc needs.
So even though I'm suggesting a little more zinc might be indicated, we can't really test for that to see if it's indicated like we could with B12 or with DHA EPA.
With B12, you know, We all should be taking some, but some people, as we age, may need more than others.
Some people may need to take extra, and that can be ascertained by doing a blood test.
And the blood test to ascertain that is a homocysteine and a methylmalonic acid can ascertain with those elevate with B12 deficiency.
[49:35] Because you could have a B12 running 300, 350, and you don't even know if that's lower. It may not be low for you. It may be okay. That's where you run. You know?
Yeah. Yeah. I just had some blood work done not too long ago, and my B12 was 375, which is actually a lot lower than it has been in the last time I had it, which was five years ago, and it was 950.
So I was kind of surprised. So we don't know if 375 is low or not. It may be all you need.
And to do that, if an MMA, a methylmalonic acid, was elevated, that would tell us that you should probably take more to push it up past 375.
But if the MMA and the homocysteine are good, then 375 is enough for you, you know?
Okay. But if you had, the level was like seven or 800, you wouldn't need an MMA or a homocysteine because then the level of B12 being above 500 is not going to, you're not going to have a, you know, you're not going to have to recheck it with another blood test to see if it's accurate or not. Right. You follow me?
Yeah, yeah. What about, so you mentioned those were the three, the B12, the, I think you said the zinc and the DHA, EPA. What about iodine? What about DHA?
[50:43] Yes. Yeah, but iodine and D, you know, D is the sunshine vitamin.
And yeah, I do think people should supplement to avoid excessive burning of their skin, you know, in the sun.
But that, again, can be easily checked with a blood test. Those needs are more easily rechecked with a blood test.
So based on a person's skin color genetics and sun exposure, they can adjust their vitamin D level to make sure they're in that favorable range.
But you don't want to take excessive amounts that drive you into a because some people think because a little is good more is better and you know so in the more is better thing they say and then some people say look taking d vitamin d is bad well that's because of people taking too much but so we're taking saying here that um probably levels between 25 and 45 on the blood test are probably the most favorable range but some people get crazy and want to drive their blood level above 50 or they get panicky if their blood level is one point or two points below 30 you know they're like they're They're trying to get too aggressive with the supplements, you know what I mean?
And with most supplementation, too little could be bad, but too much could also be bad.
So it's a sweet spot for most of these things, and that's the way we can measure blood we do.
[51:57] I know in your book you mentioned that we must always err on the side of caution.
Right. And when you say that, are you referring to, like, maybe that's a good indicator to supplement? Is it to know what your numbers are?
What exactly does that mean? Error on the side of caution.
So it means we don't want to have deficiency or excess, right?
So we want to take a conservative amount.
Like you're saying iodine. Now, we're not eating seaweed, and we're getting some iodine in our diet, but we're not using salt on our food.
And unless you're a regular user of kelp or seaweed, you could require more iodine. So we're not going to give people, you know, 500 to 1,000.
Some people add eight grams of iodine.
The RDI is 150 micrograms. So if we're going to supplement with iodine, we don't want to excessively supplement with it, because just because having low levels might be putting you at risk doesn't mean that taking too much is going to be good for you.
If you need to supplement, supplement with, in most cases, a conservative amount, and that's how the RDIs can help us.
So the RDI for iodine is about 150 micrograms a day.
So if you had 300, it's not going to kill you, but don't take 500, 1,000, because too little iodine can cause hypothyroidism, but too much iodine can also suppress the thyroid and cause hypothyroidism as well, hypothyroidism.
[53:20] Right. You say that the lack of greens and beans in our diet has an impact on our DNA that is similar to that of smoking or radiation exposure.
Exposure, that's pretty powerful, pretty powerful statement.
And it's not surprising to me because when I look around me, unless you're like you or me or people, let's just say the thousands that are following a dietary pattern that's similar to ours, most people aren't eating beans and they're not doing greens.
So it sounds to me like they're in trouble and they probably have no idea that it's as serious on their DNA as smoking.
[54:08] Yes. And also that green vegetables are the largest, play the largest impact on our immune function and support the growth of the healthy bacteria that line the digestive tract and the intraepithelial lymphocytes, that are behind the villi of the small intestines.
These sphincter-like projections that line the intestines house all these lymphocytes right behind them to be the first defenders of the castle, you know, of infection or toxins.
And those, the ability of the health of the body to defend itself and to filter out toxins or microbes is dependent on green vegetable intake.
Wow. Yeah.
[54:49] So you say chapter four in your book is your health is in your hands.
And I love this. You say, you know, we know how to prevent the vast majority of cancers.
The only problem is, is that people don't like the answer, which is vegetables.
So, so what do you say to people that say they don't like vegetables?
Like you just say, hey, learn how.
Or just live close to a hospital.
[55:19] Yeah you know how these people like to live on the ski slope because they love to go skiing right well people just want to eat conventionally so just get these condos and they can take the their trams or the ski lifts right into the hospitals with their doctor's appointments and stuff oh my gosh that's right but in any case i mean obviously it's just a joke a silly joke but the point is is that you have you can't expect to have good health if you don't eat the foods required by the human body and obviously there are other things that cause ill health beside food food you know we get chemical exposure we could have genetic defects we could have other things that are that but but why not control what we can control why not put um you know put things in our body that's going to maximize our chance for the healthiest life and the happiest life possible because what we eat and affects our physical health also affects our mental and emotional health as well yeah well and your fourth yeah i'm sorry go ahead no that's it okay yeah and And your fourth principle is avoid disease-causing substances.
And there's a lot out there, isn't there?
Yeah. And so when you say disease-causing substances, can you give us a couple examples of.
[56:30] That you want people to like stay away from and be, be conscious of?
Well, the two things that come to my mind most powerfully are what Americans eat, which is, um, commercial baked goods that are made of white flour and sugar, which then has no, doesn't contribute any nutrients to the body.
So in order to convert it to energy, the body has to strip nutrients out of the body.
[56:55] In the stripping of nutrients to convert it into energy, you form more free radicals, reactive oxygen species, and you build up what I call toxicosis.
So as you eat foods like this, it not only more readily shunted to fat storage, but it also strips the body of nutrition and builds up more toxic waste product in the body, metabolic waste your own body produces when you're eating these foods.
And fried foods are particularly toxic in that when you heat oils at high temperature, it makes for carcinogenic and genotoxic changes that can affect your DNA and affect your cells to decay at a rapid rate.
So yeah, there are a lot of things people just take in. We're talking about barbecue, processed meats, fried foods, commercial baked goods, all these things that are exceedingly dangerous for a person's survival.
And so people just put things in their mouth that are so destructive, it's like shooting up with drugs just to get pleasure.
And without any awareness awareness or indication that there's that these foods are self-destructive well conversely you say that the anti-cancer solution and you mentioned greens but you have a great acronym it's g-bombs so what exactly are your g-bombs that you want people to get in into the their bodies every day.
[58:18] Yeah, G-BOMBS is a nice term, I think. It stands for G-B-O-M-B-S, greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, berries, and seeds, like flax seeds, chia seeds, hemp seeds, sesame seeds.
So, and the greens refer to a mixture of greens, both lettuce and both solid, you know, above ground substances that grow that are green, both cruciferous and non-cruciferous.
We want people to eat a salad every day and cook greens every day, both things in their diet for nutritional diversity.
Diversity um so and then we want them to eat some onion family raw as well as cooked too you know like scallion or onion in your salad if possible because you have enhanced absorption of the organ or increased formation and absorption of the anti-cancer organosulfate compounds when you're chewing and crushing these um allium family vegetables in your mouth and then most mushrooms was mostly cooked and then of course um fruit and which includes the the ones that are highest in.
[59:27] Flavonoids and anthracidines which are berries which are super and cherries and pomegranates and things that are you know these what fruits do we have available to us um and we get and we have we can eat frozen fruit i mean there's nothing wrong with frozen you could eat frozen pomegranate arrows and frozen blueberries and frozen raspberries make it less expensive and they and if you can't.
[59:50] The frozen is, you know, sometimes the organic, especially in the East Coast, when it's grown in the West, by the time it gets there, it's moldy, you know, because they spray the non-organic ones with the fungicides after they're picked.
So they don't, but if you can't afford organic or you can't get fresh organic, then buy frozen because it's much less expensive and you take out of the frozen pack just what you need and you put the rest back in the freezer again so it doesn't have to go bad.
So we have we can get exposed to have a wide variety of these foods even in the wintertime if we could include frozen vegetables and frozen fruits in our diet too yeah what about when was the last time you had a banana uh a few days ago um probably i mashed a banana into something i was making my wife some cereal and i mashed a banana into it uh into the prunes and banana and the the grain and the flax seed and the thing with the soy milk i was made a few days ago right yeah you're talking about the recent um studies that show that bananas decrease the absorption of the beneficial compounds from berries so we're trying to not to put bananas in the meal and usually the breakfast meals when we have our berries and so lately we haven't been using banana as much.
[1:00:59] With the breakfast so we get the maximum absorption of those nutrients and berries but not to be so fanatical that you can't ever eat a banana with berries you can't even you know everything everything we do doesn't have to be perfect as long as we're trying not to eat so these self-destructive foods we don't have to maximize every food we eat but we don't want to eat things that we know are so dangerous either you know i mean i would imagine that if you're eating a nutritarian the nutritarian way that um you're doing yeah you're hitting such a grand slam home run that if you have a banana instead of berries that you're probably going to be fine Right. Right.
[1:01:38] And you're also a fan of soybeans. And you mentioned how they're fantastic to basically fight off cancer.
[1:01:47] Yes, I do. And I also suggest that the most, these important scientific research articles of the last decades from 1918 to 2022 has shown that increasing amount of animal protein in a person's diet is linked to shorter lifespan.
That we know many studies corroborate that corroborate means we have other studies done by different researchers on different populations showing the same things over and over again, that more animal protein leads to shorter lifespans.
Those same studies show that increasing plant protein leads to longer lifespan.
[1:02:22] And especially as we age, not paying attention to protein, and I'm warning here people who are on plant-based like fruitarian diets, as they may be good for their middle ages when they're athletic and their protein bioavailability and absorption is high, but as they get to be 78 or 90, if they don't start to eat hemp seeds and soybeans and green vegetables and beans and things So what we're saying here that eating these plant foods that are higher in protein are linked to longer lifespan.
And that means that knowing which plant foods have high protein, of course, almost all of them do except for fruit.
We're talking about intact whole grains, beans, greens, vegetables, and nuts and seeds.
Those five categories of foods are all protein adequate.
And which means a diet, especially as we age, could be too high in fruit, which would lower the protein content of our diet or putting oil on our food, putting oil on our food.
If I take, like most Americans consume 500 calories a day, if my calories are 1500 a day and I take 500 into oil, I've just lowered my protein content, my diet by like 15 grams because I could have eaten those calories that had protein, like by eating soybeans or nuts or seeds or something that have protein mixed in those 500 calories.
So people don't realize how when they eat sugar and oil, not only do they get this caloric rush, which makes them addicted to eating those foods because it spikes the calories and the bloodstream so high.
[1:03:48] But they're also reducing the plant protein, reducing the protein in their diet, which is why people on like vegan diets in England might have more hip fractures and poor musculature because they're eating so much oil and sugar and white flour.
And they diluted the protein because they're not eating whole plant foods that contain the full protein matrix.
[1:04:09] You're the only fatty foods you say that fight cancer are nuts and seeds.
So, what are some of the nuts and seeds that you're most fond of?
Right. I'm saying that the American diet gets its fat from animal fats and oils.
And one of the hallmarks of a nutritarian diet is that our fat comes from nuts and seeds and avocados, not from oils and animal products.
Right. And then the ones I'm most fond of, I try to strive that people try it, whatever nuts and seeds they are eating, let's say they're eating two ounces a day, then I want at least one ounce to be from the nuts and seeds that are high in omega-3.
That to be like half their nut and seed intake, ideally, to be from walnuts, flax seeds, chia seeds, and hemp seeds.
So if the recipe calls for like a cashew sauce, which is really delicious and creamy, or a cashew icing on a, you know, then we take out like half the cashews and put put in half hemp seeds, so at least has some more favorable omega-3, omega-6 balance.
Because we know, like, for example, that with regard to stabilizing the heart arrhythmias, that ALA, which is the a-aphylactic acid from the short-chain omega-3 in flax seeds and walnuts, have beneficial stabilizing effects on the heart from arrhythmia like atrial fibrillation.
[1:05:31] Uh what what about alcohol are you uh do you imbibe an alcohol at all or you stay away completely, you know i i'm luckily i'm lucky that i've never liked it to you know i've never i never actually drank alcohol even before i knew it was harmful you know what i mean i never really um never, attracted me at all so no i never drank alcohol but i think that most of the population has been been misinformed to think that alcohol is okay in moderate amounts or could even be beneficial to their heart in moderate amounts.
And I think that any amount of alcohol is carcinogenic and lifespan unfavorable.
So I'd recommend, so I don't recommend people drink any alcohol.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm right with you there. A hundred percent.
[1:06:24] Can we talk for a second about salt? because you mentioned in this book that most people in their lifetime, I think you mentioned 90% of people in their lifetime will develop high blood pressure, hypertension, and that salt kills more Americans than tobacco.
That's pretty serious. Uh, and it just goes to show you, I think how ubiquitous sodium is in the American diet.
So what, how, what's the best way in your opinion for people to like reduce their salt intake by two thirds?
[1:07:08] Hmm. You know, I'm, you know, as the years have gone by, you'd think that I would become more permissive or liberal and allowing people to have more of this and more of that.
But I haven't. I've become even more advocating more strictness because I deal with so many people who have health issues.
And if you give them a little bit, they want more. And it keeps lights the desire under their fire of desire for those foods.
And also they don't, their blood pressure isn't normalized when they're having a little bit of salt and their, their arrhythmias don't go away and their psoriasis doesn't go away and their asthma doesn't return to normal.
So by trying to cut down their excessive consumption by two thirds, it's like you're going to get all this effort, but you're not going to see the miraculous benefits that you're going to see if you went all the way.
So when I'm dealing with people, which I am, most of the people I'm dealing with are quite ill people.
[1:08:08] I tell them, let's just get all the salt out of the diet and build back the taste muscle to enable you to feel what a vegetable tastes like, like what celery and lettuce and and what broccoli and artichokes and asparagus taste like without salt.
And you'll see that after you're off salt a few months, you'll start to enjoy the natural flavor of these foods more, and you'll see how much salt deadens your taste buds.
And so I am kind of seen as a radical advocate of, like, cutting out all oil and all salt, but I just see better results from that, and most people have less difficulty going.
And it doesn't mean I think that it's important to need to cut out all salt.
I mean, you could have 200 milligrams a day over and above what natural food gave you, and you're not going to impact a major disease risk.
But if I have the 200 or 300 in my diet, you know, I'm drinking more at night.
I'm up peeing and drinking more. I don't feel as well. I do better with less because I'm so used to it. And you know what happens?
[1:09:09] Your urine stops excreting salt, and your sweat doesn't have sodium in it, which means you don't develop electrolyte loss or need to, you know, when you're running or sweating or playing tennis in the heat or something, you're just sweating out water. You're not sweating out electrolytes anymore.
So what I'm saying is you have less chance of having cramping in your muscle tissue from exercising because your body has learned to hold onto sodium.
And when you're taking an excess sodium, you're not just excreting the excess.
You're also excreting other minerals that have to be lost when the extra sodium is pushed out.
And so you're increasing the mineral requirements and making for more mineral imbalances isn't that interesting wow you you.
[1:09:55] You are all about true hunger versus toxic hunger.
Can you explain what exactly that means? Because I think I've heard you talk about that probably a dozen times, and I think it's really, really impactful and important for people to hear that.
[1:10:12] Yeah, I'm one of the few people, you know, explaining this concept that what most people consider is hunger, I'm saying isn't hunger.
It's withdrawal and detoxification from their unhealthy eating habits so they start to feel shaky and weak and headachy and stomach cramping and stomach fluttering and those are not the simple real hunger hunger is felt right here in your upper chest and neck and it's a drawing sensation it's not uncomfortable it just makes you want to eat food makes food taste better but what I'm saying this because the head headache hunger or the stomach fluttering hunger or the weakness and fatigue hunger, they go away when people start eating healthfully. It disappears.
And I did publish a study on this where we diagnosed and investigated the hunger symptoms in more than 700 people and how their symptoms of hunger changed as they ate healthier and healthier and found in the title of that study was called The Changing Perceptions of Hunger on a High Nutrient Density Diet.
So I have documented that and published on it in in the scientific literature.
It was published in Nutritional Journal in, I think, 2011.
But in any case, yes, when we eat healthier, we get connected instinctually with real hunger.
[1:11:31] And then we eat when we're hungry. And if we don't, we're not hungry, we don't have to know how much calories to eat.
And food tastes better when we're hungry anyway. So we can let our body instinctually guide us better to the right amount of food.
[1:11:47] And I'm saying that it would be impossible to become overweight unless people are eating because of toxic hunger.
And the other issue here, or eating outside of the demands of true hunger, like when you're eating recreational eating, but what I'm saying here is that people can't keep their calories at the right amount.
And the reason they can't is because toxic hunger is too powerfully uncomfortable.
[1:12:09] When you're fatigued and and you feel like you ate and you've got your energy back. They think they needed more food.
They need the food so they can go to the gym. They need the food so they can go for a hike. They need the food to keep their energy up.
They don't realize that the desire for calories to deal with fatigue is not hunger.
You're using the calories to stop detoxifying and to stop healing because the fatigue is the detoxification, the withdrawal from your bad eating.
When you're no longer digesting food.
[1:12:37] And you go into this catabolic phase of the digestive cycle, when you're not digesting, that's when the body mostly is in a healing mode and more effectively can deconjugate toxins for the urine to excrete them and repair and remove free radicals.
The body's healing more when you're resting, when you're sleeping, and when you're not digesting.
And when you hit this resting and healing phase, if you were exposed to smoking, caffeine, unhealthy eating, you're going to feel more symptoms of withdrawal and detoxification in the healing phase.
And you could feel better with another cup of coffee or another smoke of nicotine or with eating some food, but feeling better isn't getting better.
Feeling better is getting worse because it's stopping the body's detox.
And I'm saying a headache is a detox. And if you're going to stop your headaches with caffeine or the eskit, Y-gain, vanquish, excedrin, furanol, furamidrin, these drugs whose active ingredients are barbiturates, narcotics, and caffeine to stop a headache, you're going to turn an occasional headache into a chronic headache.
And you're going to make yourself more toxic and more sick.
So the more you keep the toxins in, the more you're going to age you and increase the risk of chronic disease.
You also want food addicts to know that their addiction is not their fault.
[1:14:03] And I think that that's kind of a powerful statement, too. Yes.
And that our socialization process in the United States and Western Europe and our food and the socialization around food makes it really almost impossibly difficult for people to be a normal weight.
And so it's normal to be overweight and it's normal to develop food addiction.
And there's nothing wrong with these individuals. individuals they've just been misled misinformed and and having their bodies biologically desire, more food because they're eating the wrong they're eating the foods americans eat so they're not you know so i was raised in those foods and i luckily i found out and i changed the way i ate but most people don't have the opportunity to be exposed to this and and also because these foods are so addicting it's hard for people to be able to make judgments and to make the best decisions for their lives because their brain is taken over like an alien by the desire for these substances, these strong, addictive, and highly palatable and designer foods, you know?
So people are in denial that eating unhealthy foods are unhealthy even.
[1:15:15] You know, Joel, in the dedication that you have in this book, I just want to read it because to me, it dovetails really nicely what you just said there.
You say, this book is dedicated to all people suffering with serious medical issues who were never informed that they could recover their health with nutritional excellence.
The lack of information has denied them their inalienable rights.
[1:15:41] Yeah, you feel super strongly about that.
Yeah, I do. I think that we have a right to, and you know I'm advocating reading, writing, and arithmetic and nutritional science be taught in grade school even, that this is a primary right of people to know that they can make choices that protect their future, their precious mental and physical health.
And without that knowledge, people aren't given the chance to be the best version of themselves. ourselves. Yeah.
You know, I've, I've, I've always heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
A small dinner is the most important meal of the day you say.
And I, and it made me really like question it.
You said lunch is the most important meal and you have a list of reasons why.
And do you remember if you don't, I can kind of help you out here because I know you wrote this this a while ago.
[1:16:37] But the fact is that most people, they eat lunch and they're out of the house.
And so they're not even really in control of what's going in their mouth.
And that to me was a nice light bulb went on there.
It's just a reminder that you got to really work for your lunch.
[1:16:53] Yes. And that's really, and you said it right there. Why?
One of the main reasons why lunch is the most important meal of the day, because people are out working and they're surrounded by unhealthy food choices.
So if they're not going to, and that's their, you know, we don't, we want to eat a lighter and earlier dinner anyway, and we're not hungry in the morning, but the lunch is critically important.
If you get the lunch right, the rest of it's easy, you know?
So, and also I, when people come to my retreat here who have, you know, obesity or or a food addiction problem. They stay with me for months to get well.
[1:17:23] We make their lunch the same every single day.
It's always a salad, a big salad, a soup, and some fruit.
Salad, soup, and fruit. And the salad has a different salad dressing made of nuts and seeds.
We're changing the salad dressings or something, but it's still eating all the raw vegetables, which can have some like cooked vegetables on top of it if you want to cook mushrooms or onions on the salad.
But it's basically salad, soup, and fruit because I want people to get that big salad into them at at least once a day. And once they have the big salad, I'm trying to do with myself too.
I don't want to forget to have that salad. So I break it a habit to have a big salad for lunch every day and to have a little bit of mushroom bean soup with it and maybe some fruit for dessert.
And I know if my lunch is good, I don't have to be so for dinner.
I could choose to have, you know, whatever I want. And I don't have, I got my salad and I'm ready for lunch today. You know? Yeah.
Well, so you just, you just mentioned that you're, you know, people come come and they stay with you for a month or two or three.
Tell me a little bit about what you have going on there. And if I'm not mistaken, you're not in New Jersey anymore.
You're in what? San Diego. Is that right? Yeah. San Diego. Last five years.
Yeah. So tell me about what you have going on in San Diego.
You know, I felt with my career that I was a little bit, um.
[1:18:38] Like disappointed when somebody would learn how to eat healthfully, they know they should do it, they wanted to do it, and then they couldn't do it.
And then they just ate unhealthy and either gained the weight back or couldn't follow the program.
So I knew that for some people, and we know from some people, as you know too, Rip, that some people go on the way for a week, even getting all the right information.
They still aren't living with it long enough to be able to change their taste buds.
[1:19:04] Learn the wisdom and the social implications of emotional eating and how to deal with their own personalities to be able to be driven into food addiction or emotional overeating.
And there's so much more we could increase the probability of being able to help a person if they went to a real like drug rehab center, like a food rehab center and stayed a few months.
So I developed this place in San Diego as a result of my experience that I could impact the outcome better if people stayed longer.
Both have them get well with better outcomes and increase and reduce the chance of recidivism if they stayed longer. So my minimum stay is one month.
So I built this center. I was excited about having the opportunity to do this.
Because number one, and since I've done it, I appreciate it even more because both my wife and I get a lot of pleasure from getting to know people from all over the world that come here and to impact their way in a way that they can take home with them.
And now they have the tools and the knowledge to better their health for the rest of their lives.
So we feel we develop these relationships with people. So I have a retreat here in San Diego.
I moved out here. I bought this property, built this beautiful retreat where people can come and stay with us.
And it's like, Instead of going to a doctor for a half-hour visit, you come to see me for a month or two. You know what I mean?
That's amazing. How many people can be there at once? Do you have a maximum capacity?
[1:20:25] Yeah. Let's see. We'll have six, seven, 14. So, you know, under 20 people are here, you know, so like 15 to 20 people.
Wow. And so those 15 or 20 there, you're, if you're there for a month or two or three, um, do you have activities during the day or do they, I would imagine they get to know each other pretty darn well.
Yeah, exactly. That point you just made that when they, when we do meditation in the morning or wisdom teachings and things, when they leave here, they still, And of course, they're doing water aerobics and exercise classes and cooking classes and my lectures and emotional eating classes.
And they have a lot of things going on. Right.
Yeah. When they leave here, they still stay connected to each other and they can continue in the meditation on Zoom.
They were doing when they were here, for example, in the wisdom teachings.
So we still keep connected to them when they leave and they and they develop friendships and they sometimes come back, even that they even know that they've in good health and don't need to be. They just come back at times and meet other friends they met when they were here to spend some time here again.
So it's really interesting that the people build permanent friendships here as well, because the same group that's here the whole month and they come in on the first of each month and they leave on the last day of each month.
So like people are filtering through the same people are here the whole month, you know, which really makes it a unique experience.
[1:21:40] How long how long has this been up and going now?
About since 2018 since september 2018 so about five years you know how did you guys fare during covid you guys were you able to take people in yeah we we always stayed full because we only we have such a small place you know um and we had to make you know make it so people when they're coming in they'd be tested before they came in here they didn't leave the premises you know so So we did work, stay open during COVID.
[1:22:14] Got it. And, yeah, it was obviously a more stressful time for sure, you know.
So you've been doing this, like you said, 40 years.
Are you as excited now about kind of helping people and what you're seeing and the science as you were when you got into this 40 years ago?
[1:22:39] Well, that's a really good question. I'd have to say, yeah, I'm passionate about it.
And it really gives me pleasure to be working with people. And I became a doctor not to affect hundreds of thousands of people or be famous or anything or make a lot of money.
I became a doctor because I thought I'd enjoy working with people and helping them get better.
That's why people become doctors, right? But they wind up doing things that are not that effective and having nutritional tools to get people in good health and actually reverse heart disease.
You've got the blood pressure, reverse diabetes. diabetes, 75% of our people who come here who are diabetic become non-diabetic in the first month even.
Within the first three months, maybe 85%, 90%. But in the first month, 75% are off their diabetic medications with normal blood sugars.
So yeah, what I'm saying is that when your psoriasis goes away, when people are feeling better, it makes you feel good.
And it's always a high to have that reward in a good way.
You know what I mean? In other words, there's a good way to to build your self-esteem from being useful to other people.
And there's unhealthy ways to build self-esteem too. And this is a healthy way to feel good about yourself.
I've always enjoyed it. And I'm glad I made that decision to go back to medical school because whether you help five people or you help 500 people, it still just feels good to do that. You know? Yeah, absolutely. Joel.
[1:23:58] I'm wondering, is there anything that you've learned in the last, I'm just going to say five five years that you've started to incorporate into your own routine and your patient's routine that you didn't know about, you know, 10 years ago, 15, 20 years ago, just because of new science, new research, new information that's come to light. Yes, definitely.
What's that? Can you give me some examples? Yeah. It's more about dealing with people's psychology that lead, that if they don't change, they're going to have difficulty feeling, um.
[1:24:37] Unique or unusual or standing out or picked on if they don't have robust emotional health and if you don't have robust emotional health you're going to have trouble being a food being a health nut and being and sticking to your guns and sticking to your diet and this so i've gotten definitely more into these aspects of meditation and wisdom teaching and emotional health with with regard to building, you know, we're talking here now about having gratitude.
[1:25:10] Having respect and appreciation for the world around us, for being to giving up our own egos and reeling every individual is just as important as we are.
And that we're not looking to have people approve of us or like us or give us kudos that looking for brownie points or have likes on your Facebook page doesn't matter.
That it matters that we have creative goodwill for other people and we try to interact with them.
We're not looking for a comeback when they insult us or attack us and say, well, if I had to eat that way, I'd rather like die if I had to eat carrots, just shoot me right now.
We're not trying to have a comeback to feel superior to them.
We're trying to show them love, that we care about them and have the opportunity to maybe have a positive effect on them using our creative mind, creative goodwill.
And that's how we build internally generated self-esteem, which is a healthy thing to go after compared to the externally generated self-esteem of having other people try to think, be impressed with us in some way.
We look better or we're wealthier or we have a more powerful job or we have a position of power or we're always trying to impress somebody.
And these things that so many people go for in our population is putting people into conflict with each other and it's not good for their emotional health.
And the reason I'm bringing it up is because we noted that when you're more...
[1:26:39] When you don't have a higher degree of emotional health, it becomes more difficult to take care of your own health and be a role model as a nutritarian.
You can't eat healthfully and take the negative feedback and still get the support of your contemporaries and your colleagues.
And you probably know as well that many people who didn't adopt this nutritional training that you or I give people, Many of those people who didn't adopt it was because the social pressure they got from their co-workers, their friends and their family, which made them feel ostracized.
And so unless they feel really strong about themselves as a person and willing to be a role model and emanate goodwill for others, they're going to have a problem being different.
[1:27:23] Yeah i mean joel i can't even tell you how i mean i'm sure it's been the same thing for you but you know when i was a firefighter the amount of um belittling and uh teasing that i got was it was it was rough you know and um luckily i was older i was 33 when i got into the apartment so i I could, I could weather the storm, you know, um, but that's, that's a, that's a great observation.
I, I appreciate you, you, you sharing that very much.
[1:27:59] Yeah. So what, uh, anything that you're most excited about going into 2024?
[1:28:06] Well, I'm working on an exciting new project, um, kind of like an invention.
Um, but yeah, I'm always having some things that are, um, creative and excited, But I'm not writing another book or doing another television show.
I'm just working on a – I'm kind of working on an app, you know, an exciting new app.
Well, very good. Very good. Can't wait to see it.
When do you think you'll be launching that? About a year from now.
Yeah. Takes some time, I'm sure. Yeah.
Well, uh, Joel, I really appreciate you taking time out of your day to, uh, to talk to me about the nutritarian way of life.
Again, you have been such an inspiration and such an important part of so many people's journey, uh, health journey.
And it's a good thing that you, uh.
[1:29:01] That you went down the medical path and you are doing all the incredible stuff you are now.
And if people want to know more, I think we've put it up there.
But what do you recommend?
Do you have a website where people can go to to learn all?
There it is. Yeah, it's right up there, drferman.com. And information about the retreat is there and about my books and stuff is there.
So, yeah, it's all good. And if people want to know more, they can start there.
[1:29:27] Wonderful. Hey, Joel, what did you have for breakfast this morning?
I had flax seeds, chia seeds, and hemp seeds mixed in with soy milk and mango and black raspberries, something like that.
I had a little of that unsweetened familiar cereal mixed in too with the seeds, you know what I mean?
Yeah, that's a nice clean muesli. It was like soaked. It was for a while, you know. Yeah, it was delicious.
Yeah, fantastic. Fantastic. Well, will you give me a virtual PLANTSTRONG fist bump on the way out here?
All right. Boom. And hey, I hope to see you in April if you're coming to the sports weekend. Oh, sure.
[1:30:14] What an impressive human and also physician and with so much conviction.
No doubt with Joel's nutritarian approach to nutrition, he will live with health and vitality for decades to come.
To learn more, visit drfurman.com.
That's D-R-F-U-H-R-M-A-N.com. And I'll make sure to link that up in the show notes.
And of course, I highly recommend all of his books, including Eat for Life.
Thanks so much for listening and for sharing. And as always, always keep it PLANTSTRONG. Thanks.
The PLANTSTRONG Podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Laurie Kortowich, and Ami Mackey.
If you like what you hear, do us a favor and share the show with your friends and loved ones.
You can always leave a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
And while you're there, make sure to hit that follow button so that you never miss an episode.
As always, This and every episode is dedicated to my parents, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr.
And Anne Crile Esselstyn. Thanks so much for listening.
