Disease Proof

Overkill, too much, excess, a lot—all words and phrases that I’d use to describe most American’s dietary habits. But is it our fault? Well, one public interest group seems to believe restaurants are responsible for our extreme eating. Will Duhman of Reuters reports:

Michael Jacobson, the group's executive director, took aim at "table-service" chain restaurants like Ruby Tuesday's and Uno Chicago Grill. Such places increasingly stuff their dishes with extra unhealthy ingredients, he said.


"What we're finding is that table-service restaurants have launched into a whole new era of extreme eating," Jacobson said. "If we're going to deal with the epidemic of obesity and the tremendous prevalence of heart attacks and strokes, we're going to have to do something about restaurant foods."

If you follow Eating to Live on the Outside you can certainly see their point. Restaurants just pile on the junk. Take bacon for example, nowadays it’s on everything from salads to steak. It’s practically a condiment. So is it right to point the finger at restaurants or is it our responsibility to learn how to eat right and live well? I’ll let Dr. Fuhrman answer that:

My work over the last few years has demonstrated that I can affect dramatic change in even initially resistant people, not by merely appealing to their rational minds, but by giving them the confidence and tools to overcome their subconscious fears, addiction and cravings. Fear of a looming health crisis may be a motivator too, but even more important is the learnable body of knowledge that is critical to help addicts, especially food addicts get well.

In Eat to Live Dr. Fuhrman offers up some healthy alternatives that are basically the opposite of the nutrient-sparse calorie-dense restaurant junk food, and, they'll keep you from packing on the pounds:

An important corollary to the principle of limiting high-calorie food is that the only way for a human being to safely achieve the benefits of caloric restriction while ensuring that the diet is nutritionally adequate is to avoid as much as possible those foods that are nutrient poor.


Indeed, this is the crucial consideration in deciding what to eat. We need to eat foods with adequate nutrients so we don’t need to consume excess “empty” calories to reach our nutritional requirements. Eating foods that are rich in nutrients and fiber, and low in calories, “fills us up,” so to speak, thus preventing us from overeating.