Dr. Fuhrman's response to the recent New York Times article we distributed to you yesterday is as follows:
The recent studies published this week in JAMA are nothing new.
Dr. Fuhrman recent book, Disease-Proof Your Child reviewed these studies that show that late life dietary changes to lower fat intake has literally no effect on cancer or heart disease.
Those that conducted those studies should already be aware of other hundreds of others studies that demonstrate “low fat” is not the key factor in disease causation. High phytochemical intake including critical antioxidants in (high-fat) nuts, seeds and avocados contain heart disease and cancer fighting compounds. Eating more low fat foods such as egg whites, chicken and pasta does not expose us to the disease-fighting compounds in berries, seeds, nuts, cruciferous vegetables, tomatoes and carrots. But to win the war on cancer; these positive diet change must occur when we are young.
When our cells are growing they expose their DNA to the damaging effects of low nutrient and low phytochemical intake. The low consumption of fruits, vegetables, beans, and nuts (only 5 percent of calories consumed by children) results in our unstoppable and growing cancer epidemic. Research scientists have been forced to accept the idea that the causes of cancer are usually set into motion more than 50 years before diagnosis. Our big artillery in the war on cancer is truly our in our kitchen; but we must start feeding our kids right to unleash the big guns.
Even though the factors initiating cancer causation cannot be eliminated with late-life dietary changes, nutritional excellence even later in life can have dramatic effects at lowering cholesterol and preventing heart disease. But a much more aggressive change in diet is required to achieve that degree of protection than what was looked at in these recent studies. It has already been established that a diet-style which contains a much larger percent of calories from unrefined plant foods (ninety percent) has dramatic effects on the occurrence of heart disease.
Dr. Fuhrman’s vegetable-based diet was studied in the medical journal Metabolism, 2001 and and was found to lower LDL cholesterol 33 percent and have dramatic effects on cardiac disease markers. Similar plant-based dietary approaches either vegetarian or near-vegetarian containing mostly vegetables, bean, fruits, and nuts have also been shown to offer dramatic protection against heart disease, even when adopted later in life. See references below.
Jenkins DJ, Kendall CW, Popovich DG, et al. Effect of a very-high-fiber vegetable, fruit, and nut diet on serum lipids and colonic function. Metabolism 2001 Apr;50(4):494-503.
Hu FB, Willett WC. Optimal diets for prevention of coronary heart disease. JAMA 2002 Nov 27;288(20):2569-2578.
Campbell TC, Parpia B, Chen J. Diet, lifestyle, and the etiology of coronary artery disease: the Cornell China study. Am J Cardiol 1998 Nov 26;82(10B):18T-21T
Esselstyn CB. Resolving the Coronary Artery Disease Epidemic Through Plant-Based Nutrition. 2001 Autumn;4(4):171-177