john: this is john kohler with okraw.com.today we have another exciting episode for you and this one's very exciting for me andshould be for you guys too since i have a special guest on my show today. i'm here withdr. joel fuhram. he's one of the guys i look up to and i follow his dietary advice andwould encourage you guys also to follow his dietary advice as well. he has books on howto reverse diabetes and heart disease and how to get kids to eat healthy.one of the main things he teaches besides just eating a plant based diet or a starchedbased diet, which are important, he takes it to the next level, right and i want youguys to take your diet to the next level as well by eating a nutrient dense or what dr.fuhrman calls nutritarian diet. so in this
episode we're going to ask dr. fuhrman whyit's important to not just eat a plant based diet, but to more importantly eat a nutrientdense diet or nutritarian diet. so dr. fuhrman, what would say?dr. fuhrman: thank you. in response to what you just said i say a couple things. numberone, i'm a little confused about this word plant based any way because scientists theworld over don't know what that means and the vegan community, they use that to meanvegan plant based but world-wide scientists don't use it to mean vegan, they don't knowwhat that means plant based. based means more than half. the american diet is only 32% ofcalories animal products. it's already plant based.so i'm concerned about using that word in
the scientific literature, because it's unclearand i want to use, so i was thinking nutrient dense, plant rich and i coined the term nutritarianto be clear that it means a diet to be nutrient rich, but nutrient comprehensive, completewith all the nutrients humans need and of course it's a diet that's designed to maximizehuman longevity. i know it's not for everybody, there are reason why people chose to eat certainthings for economic reason, the cheat that's available, maybe there are foods that aremore locally grown, but whatever the reason it is and some people eat foods that theyprefer to eat, they eat foods their nutritional guru tells them to eat.but see, a nutritarian diet is designed not based on what's best ethically for the environmentor best, but it's really what would be best
to extend human longevity and i want to keepmy issues focused on my specialty and my specialty is what would be the diet style that wouldbe most effective at extending human longevity the max with no other considerations, mostespecially protective against cancer because you can eat relatively healthy to protectagainst heart disease but most americans who haven't eaten healthy the first half of theirlife and already have dna damage, methylation defects and broken dna cross links and defectsin the mitochondria can't just eat moderately healthy, they have to eat a diet with nutritionalexcellence and that's my specialty. how can we design a diet with nutritionalexcellence, not just to be plant rich but also we know from hundreds, even thousandsof scientific studies that some plants are
particularly more effective at preventingcancer and extending human lifespan than other plants. the exposure to these rich plantsthat are so protective gives us the ability to extend human lifespan, whip out the potentialof getting cancer and maximize our chances of having a long life past the age of 95 withour mental faculties intact. now i realize the average american dies at 79 and the bellshaped curve is wide, which means a lot of people die between 60 and 79. we can narrowthat curve with any type of plant based diet, we can move the curve right, we can expandhuman lifespan with any kind of plant based diet. but that doesn't mean because it's betterthan the american diet, that doesn't mean it's designed to maximize human lifespan potential.that's my particular interest and not giving
people what's good, but what's best. you coulddo whatever you want out there but i also want to make sure i don't sell anybody outwith information that's not optimal and conservative in the sense that some people don't thriveon typical vegan diets and they don't thrive for various reasons.as a physician who's been in practice for 25 years having seen tens of thousands ofpatients, many thousands who haven't thrived on a vegan diet doing blood tests and ascertainingthough careful analysis why they're not thriving, instead of seeing these thousands of peopleswitching to a diet back to eat more animal products again, finding out why they're notthriving and making sure people don't develop problems and some people do require more b12than others, some people require more vitamin
d and some people get dha deficient and brainshrinkage is not something that can be reversed. we know that a small percentage of peopleon a vegan diet can develop dha levels because of genetic deficiency, the convergentic enzymesthat could make them at high risk of developing dementia in later life which we're seeingin a lot of vegans today and i see in my practice all the time.so i not only want to design a program to maximize human longevity but i want to makesure i don't sell any people out and that means young children eating a diet that'snot, that's a vegan diet not designed to be favorable, people with certain genetic weaknessesor tendencies as well as the elderly who require more protein diet and we design the nutritariandiet is designed specifically with nuts and
seeds that protein rich and beans that areprotein rich and green vegetables that are protein rich.it's a little higher protein from plant proteins than is a more typical vegan diet makes itmore not only lifespan promoting, but it's in those extremes of life and the early forthe people who are younger and childhood or as you get elder and your protein assimilationgoes down that you could get muscle atrophy, bone weaknesses and more disability and evenincreased risk of cancer do to f1 dropping too low that the nutritarian diet is predominatelyvegan and some people could do it on a flexitarian or near-vegan diet but either way.we want to design it so it doesn't leave some people out at the extremes of developed problems.so you can't, so i'm being more conservative,
more careful and i think that some of thevegan community are quite radical in prescribing one dietary approach for everybody assumingthat nobody can develop a problem in it and not paying attention to really making a dietideal for as many people and throwing out the widest net possible. you know what i meanby throwing out the widest net possible? john: yeah, absolutely. this is why i chooseto eat a fuhrman nutritarian dense diet myself because it's, from all the diets i've seenand i'm a pretty smart guy, it's the best that i've seen then i also try to do thingson my own to make fuhrman's diet better by growing my own food to have higher qualityfruits and vegetables because that's the basis of his diet. so fuhrman, for people that arenot familiar with your diet style you want
to recommend and share with them the foodsthat you eat, the g-bombs. dr. fuhrman: well, the g-bombs aren't thecenter piece of the diet, but they are an acronym to help people remember foods theywant to eat regularly, almost daily because those food have very powerful effects thatwork synergistically to fight off cancer and the g-bombs g-b-o-m-b-s: greens, beans, onions,mushrooms, berries and seed. i just want to say something you said i wantto object to. i don't really like to call what i do a fuhrman diet, and i'll tell youwhy i object to that because it's not a diet that it's like it's my diet, i'm taking, i'mjust like, i'm a student of nutritional literature worldwide and i read 20,000 and i really havedone this my whole life in evolving this as
my career. as the studies come out, as thestudies change if something becomes more powerfully protective, like i'm finding out more aboutraw onions in these last five years and i'm eating raw onions myself to see how protectivethey are, my father died of chronic lymphocytic leukemia and when i find that raw onions areprotective against chronic lymphocytic leukemia i'm using them more in my dishes.the point is there's no one fuhrman diet that i'm sticking too, that i've placed my haton. it's whatever the scientific literature shows is ideal to prevent cancer and acceleratepeople's longevity. so that's why, i didn't and eating healthy and eating high nutrientplant foods that are protective and extend longevity have been around for hundreds ofyears. there's a lot of people that came before
me, the natural hygiene movement, a lot ofpeople who were advocated raw food and healthy eating for years before.so i just don't think that i feel comfortable putting my name on the diet. you could callit, i sometimes call it a nutrient dense, plant rich diet to use the rich which meansmore plants than based because based means more than half and rich means more than themajority, i'm just trying to be more accurate in language. i think to be accurate in languagei don't prefer, i prefer not to call it a fuhrman diet either.john: alright. dr. fuhrman: just to call it a really healthy,super-healthy diet, sometimes i call it superior nutrition, nutritional excellence so i usethe word nutritarian to just sum up that word,
it means high in nutrients and rich in plantsand trying to design to maximize human longevity. john: awesome, yeah. i mean that's the otherthing, a nutritarian diet, i'll say that instead it's something that's flexible and is changingover time, not like a dogmatic because as research changes he changes his diet and maymake different recommendations on changing things and including things like powerfulnuts and seeds that i know a lot of you guys watching may be on a more lower fat diet.so doctor fuhrman why are nuts and seeds very important and essential to eating nutrientdense and to be disease protective and that's why i eat this diet style for not only diseaseprotection but also for longevity which are two of the most important things for me.dr. fuhrman: right. well there's just too
much overwhelming evidence that you can'tdeny. you have to bury your head in a garbage pail to think that cutting nuts and seedsout of a diet is going to make a person live longer. there's hundreds of studies that showsotherwise. i actually collected a hundred studies this last couple years and sent thewhole pile of a hundred to doctor dean orange to read because we're friends, we've beenfriends and talking that more. but in case, the point i'm making now is thatthe evidence is overwhelming that a vegan diet that's low fat, below 10% of caloriesand fat, omitting nuts and seeds like that shortens human lifespan you don't absorb phytochemicalsas much, you're not getting the anti-cancer effect from the vegetables from taking allthe fat out of your diet. you're not getting
those beneficial sterols, stanols, fibers,anticyodins [?], they're just factors, lignins, there's things in this, those things are cancerprotective and there's benefits to stabilize your blood vessels and there's just so manybenefits for brain function with walnuts. i mean you can't possibly, there's in otherwords, if you think that excluding nuts and seeds is a benefit then you haven't read theoverwhelming amount of evidence that says otherwise. if you have, you could not haveconclusion or if you're coming to that conclusion there must be some predetermined bias, orego going on that's making you not accept this, the reality of the accumulated evidencethat you can't deny at this point. so a diet, an extremely low-fat vegan diet is not favorableto maximize longevity.
when you eat nuts and seeds it lowers theoverall glycemic effect of your diet, exposing you better absorption of nutrients from otherfoods. it increases stool fat, it sucks out bad cholesterol and other toxins out of yourtissues, puts them onto the toilet bowl. there's so many benefits from using beans in yourdiet and from using nuts and seeds in your diet and from the consumption of especiallyraw green vegetables, cooked mushrooms, berries, these things where there's hundreds of studieson each particular food we're talking about here showing their benefits and either you'regoing to, either we're just going to come up with some crazy hypothesis and believepeople's viewpoints based on their personalities or we're going to be scientists without biasand look at the scientific literature and
see where the evidence points and when youdo that you can't, you have to face reality here.john: yeah, that's the other thing i want to encourage you, get some of doctor fuhrman'sbook, he has all the references in his books for the studies that share why he does whathe does. dr. fuhrman: i show the reference on bothsides by the way, like for example with regard to salt or dha deficiency i discuss, for examplewhat's the, where's the studies that hide this dha, it could be bad. let's look at thosestudies, it could be good let's look at those studies, why are there conflicts, why do peoplechoose one side or the other and why are the studies co-confusing, i try to look at allthe evidence and interpret the data in a way
that makes logical sense, that explains theconflicting evidence in a way that makes sense obviously and this making sense is that toomuch has bad effects and sometimes too little has bad effects too and we want to be in thatsweet spot when we don't know something we want to err on the side of caution and dothings, what's most sensible and conservative, not to screw any people up by our, lettingor predetermined bias effect messing anybody up based on your ego or something.john: right that's another thing i like about doctor fuhrman is that it's not like right/wrong,good/bad, even with animal consumption as long as you're eat less than 10% and for somepeople even less than 5% of your calories, that could be alright on a nutritarian stylediet and we need to get enough of these things
that are essential but not too much of thingsthat are non-essential like in my opinion the animal products, although certain otherthings like sodium, we need sodium is an essential nutrient but we don't want too much of itbecause that can cause real bad problems. any comments doctor fuhrman?dr. fuhrman: that's probably true what you said. my only comment to what you just saidis i don't know precisely whether a vegan diet is best for all people but it's bestfor a lot of people and it might be the best diet out there. but some people may do betterwith a small amount of animal products, some people, some elderly people may do betterwith a small amount. i'm designing a vegan diet with enough ofthe, with enough of the high protein plant
foods so less people have to go on animalproducts to get the protein they need as their protein assimilation goes down over the ageof 80 years old so people who are body builders or really serious athletes or as elderly peopleneed the extra calories and extra protein don't need to use much animal products intheir diet. but we don't want to come across dogmatic in the sense that we know everythingor that there may be some, what's the word, variants for individuals that are somewhatdifferent from others and some people may thrive on a diet with a little bit of animalproducts compared to none. but my point is just because a person doesn'tthrive on a vegan diet doesn't mean they should go back to eating a lot of animal products.they should design the vegan diet to be more
favorable for them without the animal productsthen if they do still need some animal products it should be the smallest amount possiblebecause there's too many detrimental possibilities when you're taking in too much animal proteinand also contaminants and other reasons why we want to get the animal products relativelylow if a person needs them. john: yeah, and the whole thing we want tofocus on is once again the nutrient dense foods, fruits and vegetables, beans, mushrooms,onions, berries like doctor fuhrman says. so doctor fuhrman any last comments for myviewers today to improve their life, to improve their health to improve their longevity.dr. fuhrman: yes, their, yes we're talking, yes this is the advice is about greens, onionsand mushrooms and that there's some enzymes
that are heat sensitive in greens and onionsthat should be consumed raw every day. so your green vegetables, kale, collards, lettucesand things like that, you want to eat some raw greens every day or raw shredded cabbageor watercress, arugula, beneficial myrosinase especially is heat sensitive and even if youtake some of that raw and you add some cooked vegetables with it you get more nutrientsfrom the cooked vegetables because you ate the raw vegetables the same meal because themyrosinase enzymes you consumed that was heat sensitive could be used for some of the cookedvegetables to benefit their digestion and their formation of the beneficial isothiocyanateswhich likewise the alliinase enzyme in onions is very beneficial to form those beneficialanti-cancer organosulfite compounds. so you
want to eat some raw scallion or raw onionon your salad. you don't just want to eat cooked onion because you're deactivate thealliinase enzyme. that's a-l-l-ii-n-a-s-e. two ls, two is, any interested word, no otherword's spelled that way alliinase. then as far as mushrooms, powerful anti-cancereffects. we want to use mushrooms and a variety of them if possible. but they're best offcooked because there's a mild carcinogen called agaritine that blows off with cooking. soi'm saying yes, eat a lot of raw food but add some cooked mushrooms to it because it'sjust a lot of benefits from cooked mushrooms that actually you're even making it healthierif you cook it lightly. john: yeah, i want to encourage you guys notto live by any dogma style but live with what's
important to you. like, i'm starting to includethings like cooked mushroom powders to get those mushrooms in me because i want to bedisease proof and that's what doctor fuhrman teaches you guys. another thing i like tosay is on the onions like onions are one of the easiest things you guys could grow andi like to prefer to eat the onion greens instead of the onion bulbs, they're a lot more nutrientdense. dr. fuhrman: that's a good point. then thepoint, you also was making it's fun to garden get to the earth and get your hands. i mean,i'm loving to do that as a hobby. i have my own greenhouse and a garden and i'm growingmy own fig trees, my own tomatoes, my own vegetables, and my own beans. i eat them,i grow broccoli but i eat a lot of the broccoli
leaf right off the plant. the broccoli leavesare fantastic. john: they're way better, yeah.dr. fuhrman: they're better than the broccoli. john: they're more nutrient dense too!dr. fuhrman: yeah, i'm just, i grow broccoli just to eat the leaves from the broccoli leaves.i eat part of my meals right outside in the garden. i don't even bring the food into thehouse. i'll grab a tomato, i'll grab some broccoli leaves, i'll pick some okra off theplant, i'll eat some, i'll eat figs from my fig tree, i'll start, and i'll eat it, i'lleat berries outside. so i usually will eat part of my meal just like right outside inthe garden which is a lot of fun i think. john: it is, no i have a blast, i have plentyof videos eating stuff out of the garden.
so doctor fuhrman, last question for you.juicing, do you think juicing can be a beneficial part of a nutritarian diet?dr. fuhrman: i think it can be especially with people with poor digestion or inability,bad chewing because their teeth are older, their teeth are bad. so it adds the nutrientsto the diet for people who don't have the time to chew a big salad or the ability tochew a big salad. juicing could be advantageous to people coming off a more conventional diet,maybe they have a serious diagnosis like cancer and have to get the nutrients in their bodymore quickly to increase their defenses. so juicing can be beneficial to people who aren'teating as well, don't have the ability to chew as well.so yeah, there's a lot of reasons why you
could use juicing. if you're eating a perfectdiet it's not essential you juice of course unless you have bad teeth and you can't chewvery well. there's also an advantage to chewing a salad over juicing of course because there'ssome advantage in mixing the bacteria in the mouth with actually the salad you chew andforming more nitrogen and other beneficial compounds. so it is, if you are going to juiceit's still good to eat a salad and chew one and eat a salad you actually eat and chewtoo. the other problem is that you want to useyour teeth and you're going to use your jaw because you don't have want have jaw atrophyand teeth atrophy because you're juicing, maybe it's smoothies and you don't use yourteeth anymore. we want to actually chew things.
you know what i mean?john: yeah, it's important in my opinion to chew properly. not just two chews on the lettuces,greens, the broccoli greens and swallow. dr. fuhrman: that's a good point.john: turn it into a mush. that's why we feed babies baby food. most people unfortunatelydon't chew things good enough and you can tell by looking in the toilet after you goto the bathroom and seeing chunks of food. if you're seeing chunks of food that's inthe toilet after you're done eating you're not getting the benefit, it's getting flusheddown the toilet. dr. fuhrman: i enjoyed talking to you, you'remaking a lot of great points. john: thank you doctor fuhrman.dr. fuhrman: it's such a pleasure talking
and i hope you're all inspired from this andi appreciate your work. john: thank you doctor fuhrman. so, last thingdoctor fuhrman, if somebody wants to learn more about you, your books, get on your specialmembership program so they can talk to you and you can answer their questions or oneof your other doctors on staff, how can they do that.dr. fuhrman: drfurhman.com, we have a member site and it's a lot of fun, we have peopleover the world communicating and a lot of people from other countries communicating.i'm really excited that my books have been translated to 17 different languages aroundthe world, they all, but so it's really exciting. hope i, so if you have an particular concernsit enables me to customize the advice for
people with various conditions and concernsor even answer people's questions that they're confused about.the other issue is, that i mention, is my newest book just came out the end of heartdisease. it's 440 pages, this is my biggest book ever. i think it's really, i feel it'smy best book because i really don't, i analysis a lot of different diets, they've been toreverse heart disease, but the really thing that i think that people need this type ofcomprehensive look at the futility of the medical profession, the futility of angioplasty,of bypass surgery, of cholesterol lowering drugs, the dangers of blood pressure medications.it goes through not just the right thing to do but why, but if i really feel if peoplesaw how poor a choice, using medications to
control symptoms were then many more millionsof people would choose to eat really healthfully. so i think it's very motivational to givepeople so much information. so even though there's a lot of pages to read i really thinka lot of people are enjoying all the information i put in there.john: yeah, i mean i for one appreciate doctor's furhman’s....dr. fuhrman: did you read it? john: well i haven't read that one yet.dr. fuhrman: yeah, okay. john: but i recommend you guys especiallyif you don't like reading, like i don't like reading, like what i love to do is go to audible.com,many of dr. fuhrman's books are on audible, i download them to my ipod thing or whateverand i listen to it while i'm gardening.
dr. fuhrman: oh really? i don't, that's agood idea though. sometimes i don't like, when i'm in the car i would like to do thatbut i can read faster than i can listen. john: i can listen faster. i can multitask.dr. fuhrman: so i can sort on page really fast and if i do it, i'm sitting there goingtoo slow, i can't sit through this, it's too slow.john: you could speed up the audio actually two times the speed.dr. fuhrman: oh you can speed it up? john: so you can listen to it really fast.dr. fuhrman: that's good. john: if you can comprehend it.dr. fuhrman: it's just a question of trying to get as much in as possible some of them,i lose patience.
john: anyways, if you want to read it or getthe audible version, the whole point is you guys need to get doctor fuhrman's informationbecause it will change your life, like it's made a difference in mine, to take my dietto the next level and i'm 100% confident it could take your diet to the next level too.so listen to this guy, he knows a lot, he shares a lot and thank you for being on theshow today doctor fuhrman. dr. fuhrman: my pleasure. my pleasure.john: alright, so if you guys enjoyed this episode wit doctor fuhrman, hey please giveme a thumbs up i'll be sure to get doctor fuhrman on in future episodes. also be sureto click that subscribe button right down below to be noted for my new and upcomingepisodes i've got coming out about every 5
to 7 days. also be sure to share this videowith somebody you love, you care about, a friend, a neighbor, a co-worker that thiswill help because getting on a nutritarian style diet is only going to help you becausei know most of the people i eat, especially in the raw foods circles that i hang out withare not unfortunately on a nutritarian diet, eating enough of these nutrient dense foods.dr. fuhrman: some people are eating too much fruit.john: absolutely. dr. fuhrman: they're not eating vegetables.john: fruit can be really detrimental. dr. fuhrman: like the all fruit diet, wasjust a little bit of vegetables, that's right. john: that's, lots of vegetables. yeah, eatsome fruit too, but lots of vegetables.
dr. fuhrman: lots of vegetables.john: especially the onions and garlic and all this very important. also be sure to checkmy past episodes, my past episodes are a wealth of knowledge. i have over 450 episodes atthis time sharing with you guys how to eat a nutrient dense, plant rich diet. i don'tknow if i got doctor fuhrman's approval on that one. so once again this is john kohlerwith okraw.com. we'll see you next time, and until then remember keep eating your freshfruits and vegetables they're always the best. is seaweed a healthy or harmful superfood??on a raw food diet alright! this is john kohler with okraw.com.today we have another exciting episode for you and what we're going to do today on thisepisode is have another one of my famous compilation
videos where i interview over a dozen of myfriends, long term raw foodists, people