Andrew Weil M.D. - Eating Well for Optimum Health: The Essential Guide to Food, Diet, and Nutrition

CONTENTS

To my colleagues in Integrative Medicine

I NTRODUCTION

IN THE COURSE of my work, questions always come up about food and nutrition, diet and health. It is not easy to find the answers to these questions, especially today when we are bombarded by so much confusing and contradictory nutritional information. My purpose in writing this book is to cut through the confusion.

I have always been interested in food, enjoy eating, and have studied the dietary habits of many different cultures around the world, especially to note correlations with patterns of health and illness. As a result of what I have learned, I use dietary change as a primary treatment in my medical practice, and I teach other physicians to do the same.

Throughout my lifetime I have read many words of medical thinking as to whats good for us and what isnt. Not long ago, I read that olive oil was bad for cardiovascular health. Now I see that it is good. I have seen fad diets come and go and then sometimes come again and go again. As I write, low-carbohydrate diets are enjoying a huge wave of popularity. I have serious reservations about them for long-term use... but I dont want to get ahead of myself. I will explain the dangers of those diets in due course.

I never want to promise anything I cant deliver, whether in my personal life, in my medical practice, or in my books. I will not make extravagant promises in this booknot of endless life, nor of miracle cures (though diet and nutrition can play a significant role in what I have referred to elsewhere as Spontaneous Healing).

Here is what I can promise you in this book:

• I will provide for you all the basic facts of human nutrition.
• I will equip you with the essential information that will allow you to make informed decisions about weight reduction and diet aids.
• I will help you to be able to read labels on all food products, which will allow you to be a far wiser consumer.
• I will discuss a number of popular diets, their pros and cons, and recommend my own diet for optimum health.
• I will provide you with menu plans, recipes, and guidance in eating at home and in restaurants.
• I will give customized dietary advice for a host of common ailments.

It is my sincere belief that if you adhere to the guidelines I have established here you will be the better for itas will your childrenboth in the near future and in the years ahead. And just as important as any fact I will demonstrate to you, I want you to emerge from this book clearly convinced that eating for health and eating for pleasure are not incompatible, that it is possible to eat in ways that best serve your body while also getting all the enjoyment you expect from food.

A healthy diet is the cornerstone of a healthy lifestyle. You will find in these pages all the information you need to put that cornerstone in place.

T HE P RINCIPLES OF E ATING W ELL

WHEN I USE the words eating well, I mean using food not only to influence health and well-being but to satisfy the senses, providing pleasure and comfort. In addition to supplying the basic needs of the body for calories and nutrients, an optimum diet should also reduce risks of disease and fortify the bodys defenses and intrinsic mechanisms of healing. I believe that how we eat is an important determinant of how we feel and how we age. I also believe that food can function as medicine to influence a variety of common ailments.

The American Council on Science and Health, a New Yorkbased nonprofit organization dedicated to helping distinguish between real and hypothetical health risks, recently suggested ten resolutions for a healthy new year. The council included obvious ones, such as dont smoke, wear seat belts, and install smoke detectors, but addressed diet in only one paragraph:

Eat a balanced and varied diet. Avoid obesity and fad diets. There are no magical guidelines for good nutrition. Patients should resolve to plan their diet around the watchwords variety, moderation, and balance. Remember: There are no good or bad foods. The primary danger from food is overindulgence.

I find this advice to be remarkably unhelpful. Eat a balanced diet? What is that? I meet people who think that adding a salad with creamy dressing to a cheeseburger and French fries balances the meal. Avoid obesity? Sure, that sounds like a good idea, but how do you do it? There are no good or bad foods? What about soybeans? They contain healthy fiber, a fat that may help lower cholesterol, and unusual compounds called isoflavones that may offer significant protection against common forms of cancer. Soybeans seem like a good food to me. What about margarine? For years Ive been telling my patients to avoid it because it contains trans-fatty acids (TFAs), unnatural fats that promote inflammation, heart disease, and cancer. Sounds like a bad food to meI wont eat it, even in moderation or in the pursuit of variety.

The primary danger from food is overindulgence? Im sure my distant ancestors had no problem in that area, but what am I supposed to do when everywhere I look I see tempting offerings of food in ever more novel preparations, when many restaurants score points for the size of portions they serve, when I get more for my money buying giant sizes of food and drink, and when people who love me or want my attention give me food and more food as expressions of their affection or interest?

The poor advice about diet and health that people get far too often when they ask physicians, nurses, registered dietitians, and other representatives of the health-care establishment for help reflects the dearth of good nutritional education in our professional schools. If you look to other sourcesalternative practitioners, bookstores, health food stores, the Internet, for examplethere is no shortage of information about nutritional influences on health. In fact, there is much too much of it out there, most of it contradictory, unscientific, and intended to promote particular foods, diets, or dietary supplements.

While scanning nutrition-related sites on the Internet, for example, I came across glowing recommendations for products made from super blue-green algae, microorganisms from a lake in Oregon. I was told that:

Super Blue Green Algae gives us nutrients and energy at almost no cost to the bodys reserves. This algae is 97% assimilable, and many of the nutrients are in forms that are directly usable. For example, the algaes 60% protein content is of a type called glycoproteins, as opposed to the lipoproteins found in vegetables and meat. As a result, the body doesnt have to spend its valuable resources converting lipoproteins into glycoproteins as it does with other foods. Super Blue Green Algae contains almost every vitamin and mineral needed by the body... [and] is one of the richest sources of chlorophylla cell regenerator and blood purifier.

Should I rush to order this costly superfood? Can it be that all my life my body has been wasting its valuable resources converting lipoproteins to glycoproteins when it could have been getting just what it wanted from pond scum? As for chlorophyll, while it performs a vital function in the life of green plants, it has no role that I know of in human nutrition.

At one extreme are authorities telling us that we are what we eat, that health, good and bad, is entirely or mostly a creation of what we put in our mouths. There is a kernel of attractive logic in that formulation that resonates with common sense. We have to eat to live, because food is fuel for the metabolic engine. The quality of fuel you burn must influence your body, just as the grade of fuel you put into an internal combustion engine influences its performance for better or worse, not only in the short runa smooth purr versus a ragged knock, for examplebut also in the long run, retarding or accelerating the accumulation of deposits that reduce the longevity of valves, rings, and ultimately the entire engine. But it is a long way from this simple observation to the conclusion that diet is everything.