Dr. Joel Fuhrman speaks at new Whole Foods Market in Plymouth Meeting

  Dr. Joel Furhman in action at Whole Foods Market (Photo by mmking)

As part of the opening week events at the new Whole Foods Market located in the Plymouth Meeting Mall, Dr. Joel Fuhrman, a nutrition expert and author of Eat to Live, spoke to customers at the new store on Thursday, January 14, 2010. Dr. Fuhrman’s talk was titled “A Nutritarian Diet-Style for Toxic Hunger and Food Addiction.”

View slideshow of the new Whole Foods Market in Plymouth Meeting

Advocating a whole foods diet that is nutrient dense, Dr. Fuhrman maintains that heart attacks, strokes and dementia are not the natural effects of aging but are the consequences of “an insane toxic food supply.” The human body is designed to live 95 to 105 years and end with an uneventful death, he says, but in America, it is impossible to enjoy life after 65 for most people because they are being tortured with medical treatments and pharmaceuticals until they finally die. It doesn’t have to be that way.

According to Dr. Fuhrman we “earn our diseases” by eating an unhealthy diet with the result that 51% of Americans die of heart attack or stroke. We fail to protect ourselves against disease by making lifestyle changes, preferring to take a pill. Medications, he says, are “permission slips” to eat poorly and they lull us into thinking that we are protected from disease when in fact we are not protected. If there were no pills, he insists, doctors would be forced to encourage patients to change their lifestyles to prevent disease.

Dr. Fuhrman coined the term “nutritarian,” and defines it as a person whose food choices are influenced by nutritional quality, and who strives for more micronutrients per calorie and recognizes that food has powerful disease protecting and therapeutic effects.

The nutritarian diet-style encourages people to get the most micronutrients for their macronutrients. Macronutrients, are things that gives us calories, namely fats, carbohydrates and proteins. Micronutrients do not give us calories but consist of vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals.

Citing research over the past 50 years, Dr. Fuhrman asserts that a lower caloric intake is associated with a longer life and that Americans are eating on average 30% too many calories. He points the finger at the easy accessibility of processed food which makes us crave more and more, like a drug addict whose drug of choice is food.

As a result, he believes that 90% of Americans are either obese or overweight and that the remaining 10% are at a normal weight only because they are suffering from some debilitating disease causing them not to eat. In other words, he says, “you can’t be normal eating American food.”

Fortunately, now there is Whole Foods Market. 

This is the first in a series of articles about Dr. Fuhrman's remarks.  Read the second, third and fourth articles.