Joel Fuhrman - Eat To Live

Eat to Live 141

So we see a tendency to keep RDAs for plant-based nutrienis

low while keeping animal-based nutrients high. Take for example

the most ridiculous recommendation from the RDA — vitamin C.

Any diet utilizing an abundance of unrefined natural plant foods of-

fers a significant quantity of C. The diets I recommend, and consume

myself, contain between 500 and 1,500 mg of vitamin C each day,

just from food. If you consumed a diet only half as good as I recom-

mend, you would still consume between 250 and 750 mg of vitamin

C each day. The RDA of 60 is merely reflective of the inadequacy of

the American diet and how impossible it would be to get enough vi-

tamin C if you ate a diet so low in natural plant foods.

You can take 1,000 mg of vitamin C in the form of a pill to make

up for how deadly deficient your diet is, but then you would be miss-

ing all the other plant-derived antioxidants and phytochemicals that

come in the same package as the vitamin C. The government must

hold the RDA ridiculously low because it would be inconsistent with

the other absurd dietary suggestions and make it impossible to achieve

such levels without supplementation.

Most of the dietary recommendations from our government

have been discarded and updated over time. Such recommendations,

such as the Basic Four Food Group Guide, have always been at least

ten years behind current science and strongly influenced by the food

manufacturers. The current RDAs should meet the same fate; they

are based on outmoded nutritional opinions that do not stand up to

scientific scrutiny. Last, and most important, is that thousands of

phytonutrients lack RDAs. There are subtle nuances and nutritive in-

teractions that create disease resistance from the synergy of diverse

substances in natural food. Like a symphony orchestra whose mem-

bers play in perfect harmony, the performance of our body depends

on the harmonious interaction of nutrienis, both known and un-

known. By supplying a rich assortment of natural foods, we best

maximize the function of the human masterpiece.

Remember the two main messages of this chapter. First, when

food is refined and the macronutrients are removed from nature's

natural packaging, they assume disease-causing properties. And sec-

ond, green vegetables ran away with the title and legumes and fresh

fruit took home a distant silver and bronze in the nutrient-density

Olympics.