Joel Fuhrman - Eat To Live

Eat to Live 63

Weighing Food and Trying to Eat Smaller Portions Is Futile

Earlier 1 compared 100 calories of greens with 100 calories of meat. 1

did not contrast them by weight or by portion size, as is more cus-

tomary.

I compared equal caloric portions because it is meaningless to

compare foods by weight or portion size. Let me provide an example

to explain why this is the case. Take one teaspoon of melted butter,

which gets 100 percent of its calories from fat. If 1 take that teaspoon of

butter and mix it in a glass of hot water, I can now say that it is 98 per-

cent fat-free, by weight. One hundred percent of its calories are still

from fat. It didn't matter how much water or weight was added, did it?

In fact, if a food's weight were important, it would be easy to lose

weight, we would just have to drink more water. The water would

trigger the weight receptors in the digestive tract and our appetite

would diminish. Unfortunately, this is not the way our body's appc-

stat — the brain center in the hypothalamus that controls food in-

take — is controlled. As explained in chapter one, bulk, calories, and

nutrient fulfillment, not the weight of the food, turn off our appestat.

Since the foods Americans consume are so calorie-rich, we have all

been trying to diet by eating small portions of low-nutrient foods. We

not only have to suffer hunger but also wind up with perverted crav-

ings because we are nutrient-deficient to boot.

We must consume a certain level of calories daily to feel satisfied.

So now I ask you to completely rethink what you consider a typical

portion size. To achieve superior health and a permanently thin

physique, you should eat large portions of green foods. When con-

sidering any green plant food, remember to make the portion size

huge by conventional standards. Eating large portions of these super-

healthy foods is the key to your success.

The Nutrient-Weight Conflabulation

Nutrient-weight ratios hide how nutrient-deficient processed food

is and make animal-source food not look so fatty. Could this be why

the food industry and the USDA chose this method? Could it be a

conspiracy to have consumers not realize what they are really eating?

For example, a Burger King bacon double cheeseburger is clearly

not a low-fat food. If we calculate its percentage of fat by weight and