The good
The two core ideas seem sound and backed by solid research:
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Eat less meat, eat less processed foods, and eat way more veggies (especially greens and onions), beans, mushrooms, berries, and seeds.
- The book introduces an alternative food pyramid based off these ideas.
- The scientific evidence is strong that such a diet is healthier than the Standard American Diet (SAD) and the awful USDA food pyramid from the 90s.
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The nutritarian diet: maximize nutrients per calorie consumed.
- The book introduces a diet where the goal is to maximize the ratio of nutrients (which includes macronutrients such as protein, carbs, fat and micronutrients such as vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals) to calories consumed (N / C).
- If you optimize for eating foods with the highest N / C ratio, you’ll naturally gravitate towards more natural, plant-based foods (again, veggies, beans, mushrooms, berries, and seeds), and naturally gravitate away from highly processed empty-calorie foods (sweets, sodas, alcohol, etc).
- Again, the scientific evidence here is strong that this will improve your health.
- They even worked out something called the Aggregate Nutrient Density Index (ANDI) so you can see how various foods stack up.
- It’s a useful chart, but I have some concerns with this, which I’ll mention below.
The not so good
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Crap writing. The intro and first few chapters are goddamn infomercial, and the remaining chapters repeat the same few marketing phrases (i.e., how only the nutritarian diet can help you, how all other diets don’t work, toxins toxins toxins, etc.) over and over again, dozens of times.
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Sloppy science.
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Nonsense claims. While many of the claims in this book are backed by solid evidence, many others are pure speculation, with no scientific backing whatsoever.
- Veggies are good for you? Yup, that’s backed by plenty of science.
- Eating more nutrients “melts fat away”? Fat build up is due to “toxins” in your diet? “Superfoods” help you “detox”? This is all just nonsense BS.
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Glaringly obvious factual errors. Here’s just one simple example:
- The very first chapter says calories only come from carbs, proteins, and fats.
- Apparently Dr. Fuhrman has never heard of alcohol, which contains 7 calories per gram?
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Gross overconfidence.
- Fuhrman is embarrassingly overconfident, literally using phrases like “unimpeachable science” multiple times.
- If you know anything about the history of nutrition science, the last phrase you should ever use is “unimpeachable science.”
- We have gotten it wrong so many times, and there is still so much confusion, that what we need is doctors and authors with an excess of hubris, rather than overconfidence.
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Fuhrman contradicts himself over and over again. It’s a remarkable feat of cognitive dissonance. Here are just a few examples:
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Diet’s don’t work! Except my diet. Repeats over and over again that diets don’t work… Then introduces his own, vastly more complicated diet that he explicitly names the “nutritarian diet”. The fact that he wants you to maintain his diet for the long term doesn’t mean it’s not a diet—after all, just about all diets argue for long-term lifestyle change. But as discussed in this very book, long-term adherence to diets is precisely the hard part of dieting! Anyone can do Atkins or Vegan or Paleo for a few weeks or months, but almost no one pulls it off for decades. This book presents no evidence that people would be any more successful maintaining the nutritarian diet for the long term, and given how restrictive and complicated it is (more on that below), I’m guessing that it will have a lower long-term adherence rate than simpler diets!
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Studies suck! Except these ones. Fuhrman says that studies that don’t take into account certain health factors, such as smoking habits, should be ignored completely…. Then uses many studies that ignore smoking habits to back up his own points.
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Eat as much as you want! But not really. Fuhrman says that on his diet, you can eat as much as you want—no measuring, no worrying about portions, no fasting, no restricting your caloric intake… Then, just a little while later, he warns you multiple times to never eat until you feel full. In fact, you apparently should never be aware of your stomach at all. Side note: he says that you should never be aware of your organs… I guess Dr Fuhrman has never exercised hard and felt his heart or lungs?. A little after that, he says you should eat as many nuts and seeds as you want… But never snack on them, or you’ll eat too much.
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Never feel hungry! Except when you do. Fuhrman says that on his diet, you’ll never feel hungry… Then, a few pages later, he laughs about how after a big dinner of veggies, he woke up the following morning feeling incredibly famished. How fun!
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Cook once per week! Somehow? Fuhrman claims that you can cook just once per week and maintain a nutritarian diet… Then lists all the fresh veggies and fruits you need to eat, the vast majority of which go bad in less than 1 week.
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No tracking macros! Except these ones. Fuhrman claims that on his diet you never need to track macronutrient intake… But then says eating too much protein is bad for you and you shouldn’t overdo it. Also, completely ignores the fact that when your body is losing weight, your protein needs are higher than normal.
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Conflict of interest. Dr Fuhrman makes his own food products, that he advertises in the book and on his website. The obvious conflict of interest here is awful. I assume he has good intentions at heart, but this just feels wrong in every way.
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The nutritarian diet is complicated. The diet Fuhrman presents in this book seems complicated and hard to follow. Fuhrman spends an entire chapter tearing apart (straw man versions) of other diets, such as Atkins, Paleo, Mediterranean, etc., in part because they are too complicated to stick with long-term, but in reality, most other diets are simpler. For example, the Atkins diet has basically one rule: keep carb intake to less than 50g per day. The Paleo diet has one rule: don’t eat foods that were not available in the paleolithic era. For comparison, I jotted down just some of the rules from the Nutritarian Diet Fuhrman introduces in this book:
- Food you must eat daily: a big salad, lots of beans, green veggies, a bunch of nuts and seeds, mushrooms, onions, and fresh fruit.
- Even more food you must eat daily: Also, you need to eat lots of tomatoes; mostly tomato paste, actually. And raw cruciferous veggies. And raw onions. Because everyone loves food that makes you cry.
- Food you must prepare in specific ways: Some of the veggies should be raw. Some steamed. Lightly steamed! Don’t overdo it, or you’ll ruin it.
- You can only use special dressings: Oh, but it’s OK, you can put dressing on it so it doesn’t taste like crap! No, not real dressing. A dressing made from nuts and seeds. That only I sell at my special online store.
- Foods you must avoid: Eat all the veggies you want! Except olive oil. In fact, just about any oil. Those are bad. Oh, and no potatoes! Or other starches. Those too are evil.
- Even more foods you must avoid: It’s not a vegan diet, but you should avoid all animal products, as just about any amount is really awful for you. So yea, definitely not vegan or anything, but don’t eat animal products, or you’ll die.
- Just kidding, you can eat those. Sort of. OK, OK, you can have some animal products after all. But no more than 1g per serving for females or 1.5g per serving for males (WTF is 1.5g of meat? Seriously?). Oh, and avoid farm-raised fish, especially salmon. And don’t eat cheese. Never cheese.
- Foods you can eat, but not snack on: Eat all the nuts and seeds you want! But never snack on them, or you’ll eat too much.
- Supplements you must take daily: Did I mention that anyone on a vegan diet MUST eat supplements, or they’ll die? At a bare minimum, you need a B12 supplement. You may also need zinc. Probably vitamin D. Oh, and omega 3s.
- Even more supplements: Take some fish oil to get Omega 3s. But don’t, because fish is bad!
- Specific times you must eat: Eat as much as you want! Except you should never feel full—stop eating as soon as you’re satiated! Oh, and you need to eat exactly 3 meals per day, and don’t snack in between. Allow for at least 12 hours between the last meal and breakfast.
- Special rules for fruit: Eat fruits! OK, just 3 pieces of fruit, no more. Unless you’re an athlete. Then you can have 4. Avoid fruit juice.
- Special rules for grains: Eat whole grains! Well, some of them. But not rice. And no bread. And definitely no white flour.
- Special rules for protein: Make sure to get plenty of protein. This is not easy when eating mostly vegan. So you’ll need beans. Like lots and lots and lots of beans. Hope you didn’t enjoy having friends!
- More stuff to avoid: Avoid salt. And sugar. And processed foods.
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Nutrient density is oversimplified.
- While nutrient density is important, and the ANDI score is a handy tool, it over simplifies things.
- For example, you know what’s the highest scoring food on that index? A multi-vitamin! Zero calories, shit tons of nutrients, ANDI score of infinity.
- So why don’t we just eat that and nothing else?
- Or why don’t we just blindly follow the ANDI score and eat solely the highest rated things?
- E.g., eat 5 pounds of kale, feel like shit, feel hungry 30 minutes later, and give up the diet immediately.
- The reason is simple: biology is more complicated than just nutrient density.
- And Dr. Fuhrman knows this—just look at the (incomplete) list of rules above from his own book! It’s crazy long and complicated.
- The fact that he doesn’t acknowledge it—the fact that he doesn’t admit just how hard it is to learn a diet like this, and maintain it, especially with a family, or with friends, or colleagues, or at restaurants—is dishonest, and makes it hard to see this as anything other than another fad diet author trying to make money.
Overall
What a frustrating book. On the one hand, I want to everyone to learn the core message of the book, which is backed by strong scientific evidence: eat less meat, eat less processed foods, and eat way more veggies (especially greens and onions), beans, mushrooms, berries, and seeds. But on the other hand, I don’t want to promote anything else about this book: the terrible writing, the sloppy science, concealing just how hard and complicated nutrition really is, and the massive conflict of interest.
To all authors of books on diet and nutrition: do better. This stuff matters. It’s literally a life and death topic in the modern world. Stop misleading readers, stop spouting shit science, and stop profiting off people’s diet struggles. Be humble, teach people, and do your damn part to fight the obesity epidemic.
