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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
won’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. To
grasp why this works, let us look at how the brain controls our dietary drive.
A complicated system of chemoreceptors in the nerves lining the digestive tract
carefully monitor the calorie and nutrient density of every mouthful and send
such information to the hypothalamus in the brain, which controls dietary
drive. There are also stretch receptors in the stomach to signal satiety by
detecting the volume of food eaten, not the weight of the food. If you are not
filled up with nutrients and fiber, the brain will send out signals telling you
to eat more food, or overeat.
In fact, if you consume sufficient
nutrients and fiber, you will become biochemically filled (nutrients) and
mechanically filled (fiber), and your desire to consume calories will be
blunted or turned down. One key factor that determines whether you will be
overweight is your failure to consume sufficient fiber and nutrients. This has
been illustrated in scientific studies. How does this work in practice? Let’s
say we conduct a scientific experiment and observe a group of people by
measuring the average number of calories they
consumed at each dinner. Next, we give them a whole orange and a whole apple
prior to dinner. The result would be that the participants would reduce their
caloric intake, on the average, by the amount of calories in the fruit. Now,
instead of giving them two fruits, give them the same amount of calories from
fruit juice What will happen? They will eat the
same amount of food as they did when they had nothing at the beginning of their
meal. In other words, the juice did not reduce the calories consumed in the
meal—instead, the juice became additional calories. This has been shown to
occur with beer, soft drinks, and other sources of liquid calories. Liquid
calories, without the fiber present in the whole food, have little effect in
blunting our caloric drive. Studies show that fruit juice and other sweet beverages
lead to obesity in children as well. If you are serious about losing weight,
don’t drink your fruit—eat it. Too much fiber and too many nutrients are
removed during juicing, and many of the remaining nutrients are lost through
processing, heat, and storage time. If you are not overweight, drinking freshly
prepared juice is acceptable as long as it does not serve as a substitute for
eating those fresh fruits and vegetables. There is no substitute for natural whole foods!
There is a tendency for many of us to
want to believe in magic. People want to believe that in spite of our
indiscretions and excesses, we can still maintain optimal health by taking a
pill, powder, or other potion. However, this is a false hope, a hope that has
been silenced by too much scientific evidence. There is no magic. There is no
miracle weight-loss pill. There is only the natural world of law and order, of
cause and effect. If you want optimal health and longevity, you must engage the cause. And if you want to lose fat
weight safely, you must eat a diet of predominantly unrefined foods that are
nutrient-and fiber-rich.
Copyright ©Joel Fuhrman MD –Originally appeared in Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman MD
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