138 THE CHINA STUDYThis is an economic black hole that sucks our money away without
offering anything in return. Imagine paying $40 to a service man to
fix your leaky kitchen sink, and then two weeks later, the sink pipes
explode and flood the kitchen and it costs $500 to repair. I bet you
wouldn't ask that guy to fix your sink again! So then why do we end-
lessly try those weight-loss plans, books, drinks, energy bars and as-
sorted gimmicks when they don't deliver as promised?
I applaud people for trying to achieve a healthy weight. I don't ques-
tion the worthiness or dignity of overweight people any more than I
question cancer victims. My criticism is of a societal system that allows
and even encourages this problem. I believe, for example, that we are
drowning in an ocean of very bad information, too much of it intended
to put money into someone else's pockets. What we really need, then, is
a new solution comprised of good information for individual people to
use at a price that they can afford.THE SOLUTION
The solution to losing Weight is a whole foods, plant-based diet, cou-
pled with a reasonable amount of exercise. It is a long-term lifestyle
change, rather than a quick-fix fad, and it can provide sustained Weight
loss while minimizing risk of chronic disease.
Have you ever known anyone who regularly consumes fresh fruits,
vegetables and whole grain foods-and rarely, if ever, consumes meats
or junk foods like chips, French fries and candy bars? What is his or her
weight like? If you know many people like this, you have probably no-
ticed that they tend to have a healthy weight. Now think of traditional
cultures around the world. Think of traditional Asian cultures (Chinese,
Japanese, Indian), where a couple of billion people have been eating a
mostly plant-based diet for thousands of years. It's hard to imagine these
people-at least until recently-as anything other than slender.
N ow imagine a guy buying two hot dogs and ordering his second beer
at a baseball game, or a woman ordering a cheeseburger and fries at your
local fast food joint. The people in these images look different, don't they?
Unfortunately, the guy munching his hot dogs and sipping his beer is rap-
idly becoming the "all-American" image. I have had visitors from other
countries tell me that one of the first things they notice when they arrive
in our good land is the exceptional number of fat people.
Solving this problem does not require magic tricks or complex
equations involving blood types or carbohydrate counting or soul