"But wait a bit," the Oysters cried,
"Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!"
— Lewis Carroll, The Walrus and the Carpenter
For years now, nutrition experts have been extolling the virtues of a low-fat diet. While some folks have heeded the message, many others persist in their high-fat ways. The average American consumes a whopping 40 to 50 percent of calories from fat, a blubbery burden that explains the current epidemic of heart disease and cancer in this country.
Lowering fat intake to 30 percent of calories, as some experts (and even the American Heart Association) recommend, can slow the epidemic. But it won't help to extend life span. Extensive research indicates that a much greater reduction--to 10 percent of calories--is necessary to prevent the so-called fatty degenerative diseases. You can easily achieve this low fat intake simply by following the Anti-Aging Diet.
Let's be cynical for a moment. Suppose you wanted to encourage heart disease, cancer, and the other degenerative diseases that thwart longevity and impede Renewal. What sorts of foods would you choose?
Well, you'd likely start your day with eggs, bacon, buttered toast, a croissant or a sweet roll, and a glass of whole milk or a cup of coffee with cream. For lunch, you might have a hamburger, french fries, and a chocolate milkshake, or a cheese sandwich, potato chips, and a cola. Around 3:00 in the afternoon, you'd grab a candy bar or a bag of corn chips to tide you over until dinner. Then a few hours later, you'd sit down to a meal of steak, chicken, or pork chops, a baked potato with sour cream, buttered vegetables, and salad with dressing. Round out your repast with ice cream, cake, or pie, and your fat intake for the day would hover at around 50 percent of calories.
Talk about a diet that's headed for disaster. Eating this way for 10 to 20 years would put you squarely in the group at highest risk not only for heart disease and cancer but also for stroke, diabetes, kidney disease, osteoporosis, arthritis, and high blood pressure. Even more disturbing, this malevolent menu closely parallels the standard American diet.
Now let's suppose you decide to go low-fat. Your breakfast might consist of granola, which often has added fat, and 2 percent milk. For lunch, you might have a turkey sandwich, a salad with vinaigrette dressing, and perhaps a low-fat yogurt. Dinner might feature fish or chicken (without the skin, of course), a plain potato or rice, and another low-fat yogurt for dessert.
On a meal plan like this, you're getting about 30 percent of calories from fat--certainly an improvement, but still too high for Renewal. Surprised? Consider that these "low-fat" foods supply, on average, 33 percent of their calories as fat.
If even low-fat foods don't go low enough, what's left for a diet that gets just 10 percent of its calories from fat? Plenty. But--and this is important--you do have to pay close attention to your food choices.
For breakfast, help yourself to hot or cold whole-grain cereal, topped with low-fat soy milk, rice milk, or juice; whole-grain bread or a bagel, very lightly toasted and topped with almond butter or fruit concentrate; and as much fresh fruit as you wish. For lunch, have a veggie burger, a bean and rice burrito, or a vegetable sub on a whole-wheat roll (hold the cheese and mayonnaise), with carrots and an apple as accompaniments. And for dinner, choose whole-grain pasta with spicy tomato sauce, steamed vegetables, and a salad, or a vegetable teriyaki stir-fry with brown rice (use nonstick cooking spray or just a touch of olive or soybean oil). Don't forget to save room for dessert: low-fat, fruit- or juice-sweetened cookies.
A meal plan like this pares your fat intake to just 10 percent of calories. It satisfies your appetite, too. Hmmm . . . that's not so bad after all.
A diet that gets just 10 percent of its calories from fat, such as the Anti-Aging Diet, has two very important features. First, it's vegan, meaning that it allows only foods of plant origin. Second, it eliminates all sources of fat, save for the smallest amounts of certain oils (more about them later).
Unfortunately, many people who decide to "go vegetarian" continue to cook with gobs of vegetable oil, slather high-fat dressings on salads, and nibble on high-fat snack foods. Any one of these factors can convert a naturally low-fat, life-extending vegetarian meal into a greasy, life-shortening meal that has more fat than a cheeseburger with mayonnaise.
I refer to this style of eating as greasy vegetarianism. Its adherents espouse this philosophy: "If I avoid all high-fat, high-cholesterol animal foods, then I'll be eating healthfully." These people avoid all animal-derived fats like the plague, as well they should. But they also buy into the idea that canola oil, olive oil, soy oil, and other plant-derived fats are okay, so they slather them on.
Certainly, the quality of a fat--whether it is saturated (as in meats) or unsaturated (as in vegetable oils)--is important. But it's only part of the issue. For people who want to achieve maximum life span, quantity of fat is actually far more important than quality of fat. If you replace an animal-derived fat with an equal amount of a plant-derived fat, the detrimental effects on health and the aging process are no different.
Here's an example of greasy vegetarianism at work. My friend Alice and I paid a visit to a local salad bar. Alice bypassed the meats and cheeses, opting instead for the grains, beans, fruits, and vegetables. She piled her plate high with a luscious assortment: lettuce, spinach, green peppers, broccoli, carrots, kidney beans, pasta, and a sprinkling of sunflower seeds. Just as I was thinking, "Wow, Alice really knows how to put together a healthy salad," we reached the fat-laden dressings. With three ladles of creamy blue cheese, Alice transformed what had been a 300-calorie, low-fat beauty into a 1,000-calorie, blubbery beast.
On another occasion, I met a friend for lunch at a nearby restaurant famous for its salads and fine vegetarian fare. As described on the menu, the spinach salad seemed innocuous enough--except for the bacon bits, which I asked to have left off. I was appalled at what I was served: a plateful of spinach leaves thickly coated with a creamy, high-fat dressing. I had estimated the calorie content of the salad at about 150 calories, but with the dressing, that figure shot up to around 750. Worse yet, the fat content was about 75 percent of calories, certainly not what you'd expect from a salad. The dressing had transformed my healthful lunch into an unhealthful fat trap.
Dairy products also contain high amounts of fat. Yet many people who switch to vegetarianism continue to eat these foods, thinking that they're somehow better than meats. They aren't. Like meats, dairy products come from animals. With the notable exception of nonfat items, most dairy products have much more fat than red meat, chicken, or fish.
If I had a nickel for every patient who described himself as a vegetarian but who ate lots of full-fat dairy products . . . well, perhaps I wouldn't be wealthy, but I would have plenty of parking meter money! If these folks replaced the milk, cheese, and yogurt in their diets with lean beef or chicken without skin, their fat intakes would plummet. (Not that I'm recommending this, mind you.)
The bottom line is this: If you want to prevent disease and slow the aging process, you must reduce all fats. This means not only eliminating animal-derived foods but also going easy on vegetable oils and other plant-derived foods. And certain high-fat habits must come to a screeching halt: no cooking with more than a smidgen of oil, no slathering butter or margarine on bread and toast, no drowning salads in high-fat dressing, no melting cheese in or over anything.
Occasionally consuming very small amounts of high-fat foods won't harm you. But if you want to stick with an overall fat intake of just 10 percent of calories, you need to be very selective about your foods, and you need to know exactly where the fat is coming from.
To make the task easier, here's a rundown of the fattiest offenders. Avoid them as much as you can. If you're not ready to give them up yet, just remember: The extent to which you follow the Renewal Anti-Aging Diet determines the extent to which you'll benefit from it.
Meats. These foods top the off-limits list because they are high in total fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol; they contain hormones, antibiotics, and pesticides; and they have no fiber or phytochemicals. I recommend eliminating all meats--including beef, veal, pork, lamb, chicken, turkey, duck, fish, shellfish, and processed meats and lunchmeats.
If you want to lower your fat intake, you need to lower your sugar intake, too. The reason: To your body, fat and sugar are interchangeable. It readily converts sugar--all kinds of sugar--into fat, which is then stored in your belly, hips, buttocks, or thighs for later use.
So if the label on a packaged food screams "No Fat! No Cholesterol!" be sure to check the nutrition information. Odds are, the food suffers from serious sugar overload. (We'll discuss sugar in more detail in chapter 17.)
Dairy products. Like other animal-derived foods, dairy products are high in total fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol. Whole milk, for instance, gets almost 50 percent of its calories from fat. Even 2 percent "low-fat" milk gets 37 percent of its calories from fat. (The 2 percent refers to proportion of fat by total weight, and most of milk's weight is water.)
My recommendation is to eliminate all dairy products: whole milk, 2 percent milk, 1 percent milk (which gets 23 percent of its calories from fat), cheese, butter, and yogurt. If you want to continue eating dairy products, then at least choose the nonfat varieties.
Eggs. One egg has about six grams of fat, which translates to about 65 percent of calories. It also has 250 to 300 milligrams of cholesterol, which is a lot. Make do without, if you can.
All fried foods. From chicken nuggets and french fries to Mexican chimichangas and Japanese tempura, fried foods have a bad reputation, and for good reason. They're laced with trans-fats and free radicals, which impair cellular function and discombobulate your immune system.
Steer clear of fried foods as much as possible. When you eat out, be sure to ask how menu items are prepared--many seemingly healthful choices may in fact be fried. When you eat at home, try microwaving thinly sliced potatoes for fat-free "home fries."
Hydrogenated fats. Food manufacturers have developed a bewildering array of margarines and spreads as "healthy" alternatives to butter. Unfortunately, these products are actually more unhealthy than the stuff that they're supposed to replace.
Thanks to hydrogenation, which transforms vegetable
oil from liquid to solid at room temperature, margarines and spreads
contain a caustic brew of trans-fats, free radicals, and other toxic by-products. What they don't
contain is
For these reasons, margarines, spreads, and other hydrogenated fats have no place in the Anti-Aging Diet. You're a bit better off with butter--and even better off with none of the above.
Salad dressings. We've already discussed what a nutritional land mine salad dressings
can be. The good news is that you can now choose from among dozens of
nonfat and low-fat varieties. Some do contain additives, so be sure to
read the ingredients lists on their labels. As an alternative, you can
easily make your own dressing by combining vinegar, olive or soy oil,
lemon juice, herbs, and spices. And add a little flaxseed oil, which
consists almost entirely of Renewal-supporting
Nuts, seeds, and nut butters. All of these foods are loaded with fat. Peanuts and peanut butter have particularly high levels of total fat and saturated fat--plus they contain aflatoxins, potent carcinogens produced by the aspergillus fungus, which grows on peanuts.
Among nuts and seeds, your best choices are walnuts,
almonds, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, flaxseed, and sunflower seeds. All
are rich in
Snack foods. Potato chips, corn chips, buttered popcorn, cheese-flavored popcorn, processed nuts, and the like are junk foods. I mention them only to condemn them. For starters, they get 50 to 80 percent of their calories from fat. On top of that, they're made with hydrogenated oils, which means that they're brimming with trans-fats and free radicals.
For those times when you have the munchies, many health food stores and grocery stores stock low-fat, baked potato chips and corn chips as well as rice cakes and fat-free wheat crackers. Even better, nibble on fresh fruits such as apples, bananas, grapes, oranges, and pears. My personal favorite snacks are fruit smoothies, which I make by blending together a banana, organic fruit (usually blueberries, mango, oranges, pineapple, raspberries, or strawberries), and rice milk, soy milk, and/or apple juice.
Cooking oils deserve special mention here. Unlike the foods
mentioned above, oils are a very gray area. Some you want to consume
because they supply healthy doses of
As a general rule, I strongly advise against buying
liquid oils in supermarkets. Because of the way in which they're
processed, these oils have been stripped of their
That said, here's a breakdown of which oils are which, to help you get a firmer grasp on this slippery subject.
The so-called tropical oils--coconut, palm, and cocoa butter (as in chocolate)--land
squarely in the bad category. They're very high in saturated fat, very low
in
The baddest of the bad is cottonseed oil, which is often
used in deep-fried snack foods. It supplies a beastly burden of free
radicals as well as an unhealthy dose of cyclopropene fatty acid. Not to
be confused with beneficial
My advice is to avoid all of these oils at all costs. They're often used in packaged foods, so be sure to read ingredients lists before buying.
For an oil to be considered good, it should meet all of the following criteria.
Of the oils on the market, only four meet all of these
criteria: organic flaxseed oil, organic pumpkin seed oil, organic soybean
oil, and organic walnut oil. While all four have superior nutritional
profiles, organic flaxseed oil is the healthiest hands-down. It delivers
more of the all-important
flaxseed oil does come with one caveat: It should not be
used in cooking. Its
Hemp oil also has very admirable levels of
What about olive oil? Well, it is rich in monounsaturated
fat. On the downside, it has very low levels of
One final note: All oils--especially flaxseed--gradually oxidize or turn rancid, the result of age as well as repeated exposure to light and air. Rancid oils contain free radicals galore. By the time an oil actually smells bad, the quantity of free radicals has become astronomical. So rather than using your nose to judge freshness, purchase oils in small quantities, keep them refrigerated, and toss out any unused portion after three months.
Many packaged foods contain way too much fat. You can identify the worst offenders by learning how to calculate a food's fat content. Take a look at the nutrition label on the package: You'll see figures for "calories from fat" and "total calories per serving." Simply divide fat calories by total calories, then multiply that number by 100. This gives you the percentage of calories from fat. If the food gets more than 20 percent of its calories from fat, put it back on the shelf. It has no place in a low-fat, Anti-Aging Diet.
Right now, this may seem like a lot of information to digest (no pun intended). But use it as the basis for your daily food choices and, over time, eating low-fat will become second nature to you.
To reduce your fat intake to 10 percent of calories and
maintain optimum levels of the
*
Now that you know how to de-fat your diet, let's turn our attention to protein. Like fat, protein is essential to the human body. But when consumed in excess, as it is in most Americans' diets, it causes problems all its own.