Harley Pasternak M.Sc. - The 5-Factor World Diet

Also by Harley Pasternak

THE 5 - FACTOR DIET

5 - FACTOR FITNESS

THE 5-FACTOR WORLD DIET

VIKING CANADA

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Published in Canada by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2010 Simultaneously published in the United States by Ballantine Books,
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Copyright Harley Pasternak, 2009

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LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Pasternak, Harley

5-factor world diet / Harley Pasternak.

ISBN 978-0-670-06923-1

1. Reducing diets. 2. Reducing dietsRecipes. 3. Nutrition.

I. Title. II. Title: Five factor world diet.

RM222.2.P3776 2010 613.25 C2009-905644-5

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Contents

Introduction

In some ways, Ive been researching the 5-Factor World Diet for my entire lifeeven if I didnt always know it. I grew up in Toronto, Canada, which the United Nations recently crowned the most ethnically diverse city in the world. More than one hundred languages and dialects are spoken in Torontomore than in any other city in the worldand almost three-quarters of all Toronto residents are either immigrants or the children of immigrants. Like just about everyone else in my home-town, I have roots in foreign countries: my grandparents are originally from Hungary, Romania, Russia, and Poland.

Throughout my childhood, I was exposed to people from just about every culture, religion, and lifestyle you could name, and from the very beginning this diversity had a big impact on my way of looking at the world. Among other things, at a very young age I developed an insatiable appetite for a huge variety of foods, flavors, and ingredients from all over the globe. Like so many people in our international city, my family would regularly go out for Italian food, Thai food, Jamaican food, Indian food, Portuguese foodthe list goes on and on. And I was always impatient to try whatever latest exotic cuisine had come to the neighborhood.

I also spent a portion of my youth in the Caribbean, when my family lived in Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad, and in Miami, Florida. These early travels deepened my curiosity about different international cuisines. In Jamaica, I feasted on rice and peas and jerk chicken. In Trinidad, I enjoyed doubles and buss-up shot, while in Barbados, I gorged on flying fish. In Miami, I developed a passion for Cuban food, especially black beans, plantains, and ropa vieja, a dish of shredded flank steak in tomato sauce. And everywhere we went, Id taste these incredible tropical fruits that were completely unknown to most Canadians.

My familys eastern European background added yet another dimension to my perspective on international cuisine. At family meals, my grandmother served us stuffed peppers and fruit compote and uborka salata, a traditional Hungarian cucumber salad that was a staple in our household. The first time I went for Japanese food, my meal started with what I thought was uborka salata. Only afterward did I realize that it was actually sunomono, a traditional Japanese cucumber salad. The fact that different countries use the same or similar ingredients to produce sometimes very similar results intrigued me. I started to ask questions about the relationship between food and culture: how does what we eat reflect greater truths about how we live and what we value?

As I grew older, my zest for different flavors, smells, tastes, and ingredients grew even stronger. When I was a teenager, the Food Network was new, and it quickly became my favorite channel; Id watch it nonstop. I was equally taken with Ming Tsais Asian dishes, Emeril Lagasses Cajun cuisine, and Mario Batalis Italian food. I wanted to learn it all.

Around this time, I turned into a fitness fanatic as well. I had played hockey throughout my youth and in college, and in my desire to improve my performance on the rink, I became interested in an entirely new dimension of foodnot just how it tasted or how it looked and smelled, but how it could change the way I looked, felt, and performed.

Food wasnt just about the experience of eating, though that aspect remained incredibly important. Food was also about the results it could bring, the impact diet had on my body. The way I ate directly affected my performance as an athlete, and I saw that you could never separate diet from overall fitness.

In college, I pursued my interest in these subjects and studied kinesiology and nutrition. From early on, I really wanted to understand the scientific and technical aspects of food. In graduate school, I worked as a scientist for the Canadian Department of National Defense, conducting nutrition research. We studied the effects of different foods on soldiers performance and energy levels.

While I was studying all these interrelated subjects, I started my personal training business in Toronto. As my reputation grew, I got the opportunity to work with a lot of Hollywood actors who were in Toronto to shoot films. To train them, I drew on my degree in exercise physiology, but I also used my degree in nutrition to help design their diets. From this convergence of experiencesmy academic investigations into diet, nutrition, and physical fitness, along with my one-on-one interactions with clientsI developed what I came to call the 5-Factor Diet, a system of eating and exercising that I believe is the key to long-term health.