Joel Fuhrman - Eat To Live

40 Joel Fuhrman, M.D.

ANALYSIS OF ONE TABLESPOON OF OLIVE OIL

Calories

Fiber none

120

Protein

Fat

none

13.5 gm

1.8 gm

none (trace, less than .01 mg of every mineral)

none (trace of vitamin E, less than 1 IU)

Saturated fat

Minerals

Vitamins

Fat, such as olive oil, can be stored on your body within minutes,

without costing the body any caloric price; it is just packed away (un-

changed) on your hips and waist. If we biopsied your waist fat and

looked at it under an electron microscope, we could actually see

where the fat came from. It is stored there as pig fat, dairy fat, and

olive oil fat —just as it was in the original food. It goes from your lips

right to your hips. Actually, more fat from your last meal is deposited

around your waist than on your hips, for both men and women.^20

Analyzing these body-fat deposits is an accurate way for research sci-

entists to discern food intake over time.^21 Having research subjects

remember what they ate (dietary recall analysis) is not as accurate as

a tissue biopsy, which reports exactly what was really eaten.

Foods cooked in oil or coated with oils soak up more oil than you

think. A low-calorie "healthy" food easily becomes fattening. Most

Americans eat negligible amounts of salad vegetables, but when they

do eat a small salad, they consume about three leaves of iceberg let-

tuce in a small bowl and then proceed to pour three or four table-

spoons of oily dressing on top. Since oil is about 120 calories per

tablespoon, they consume some 400 (empty) calories from dressing

and about 18 from lettuce. They might as well forget the lettuce and

just drink the dressing straight from the bottle.

One key to your success is to make healthful salad dressings that

are low in fat and calories. Some of my favorites are in chapter nine,

as well as some commercial dressings with less then twenty calories

per tablespoon.

The message Americans are hearing today from the media and

health professionals is that you don't need to go on a low-fat diet,

you merely need to replace the bad fats (saturated fats mostly from

animal products and trans fats in processed foods) with olive oil. Amer-

icans are still confused and receive conflicting and incorrect messages.