From Andrew Weil, Spontaneous Healing. A HEALING DIET At a recent workshop I taught on natural health a man was wearing a T-shirt that said, "Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway." There is truth in that motto. We will all die, and our life span may be genetically programmed. Nevertheless, our choices about how we live may interact with genetics to determine the quality of life we experience as we age. I believe that lifestyle significantly influences our risks of contracting common diseases and certainly affects our ability to heal. Of all the choices we make, those concerning food are particularly important, because we have great potential control over them. But, as you probably already know, there is great disagreement as to what constitutes a healthy diet. I have seen too many people who have lived to ripe, old ages on "bad" diets to believe that food is the sole or even chief determinant of good health. It is simply one influence, one that we can do something about. Books about diet and health appear with great frequency, many of them contradicting each other. Even on the Big Questions, such, as the health hazards of dietary fat, major disagreements exist among experts. Some doctors extol a low-fat diet as the key to health and longevity, while others say that cutting fat in the diet may.add at best a few weeks to one's life span. There is similar disagreement about the benefits of vegetarianism. Many surveys find that vegetarians have lower rates of heart disease and cancer, but doctors argue about the reasons for that, with some maintaining that vegetarians tend to be more health conscious and take better care of themselves in general, while others say animal foods are hazardous, and still others say that if nonvegetarians ate the same amount of fat (less) and fiber (more) as vegetarians, there would be no differences. I do not have time or space to enter into these kinds of arguments and I do not wish to add to your confusion. Instead I want to outline simple, practical suggestions for modifying diet in ways that I believe favor healing responses. You will have heard some of this before, but essential truths cannot be repeated often enough. I am not interested in nutritional fads and will concentrate only on what I see as key areas of consensus emerging from studies of diet and health. These findings concern (1) total calories, (2) fat, (3) protein sources, (4) fruits and vegetables and (5) fiber. TOTAL CALORIES An unexpected research finding that may have great practical significance is that experimental animals live longer with much lower rates of disease when they consume less than the recommended daily allowance of calories. The health and longevity benefits of "undernutrition" are clearly established for laboratory rats and mice, but remain unproved for humans, although there is every reason to believe they apply. The finding is unex ected because we associate less-than-optimal nutrition with poor growth and health, and common sense tells us that we do better if we are well nourished. In fact, most of us may be overnourished, and too much of a good thing may be doing us harm. If we all lived in controlled environments and had measured portions of monotonous food dispensed to us at regular intervals, none of us would be overweight, I am sure, and I suspect many of us would I ive longer and experience spontaneous healing more frequently than we do now. Fortunately or unfortunately, we live in a world that tempts us with a great variety and abundance of food, and many of us eat not to satisfy physical hunger but to allay anxiety, depression, and boredom, to provide a substitute for emotional nourishment, or to try to fill an inner void. Most of us are not voluntarily going to embark on programs of undernutrition; I wonder if there might be other ways to take advantage of the research findings. Two possibilities occur to me. The first is, to modify diet to lower caloric content without greatly reducing the amount or appeal of food we consume. The second to is restrict caloric intake, either by fasting or by eating a limited diet at regular intervals-say, one day a week. I have experimented with both of these techniques, and think both are useful. The easiest way to reduce calories in dishes you like is to cut the fat content. Fat has almost twice as many calories per gram as protein and carbohydrate, so it is the major contributor of calories to our diets. It is remarkably easy to cut fat by one-half, three-quarters, or more in dishes you prepare at home, and it is getting easier all the time with the appearance of low-fat cookbooks and low-fat or fat-free versions of popular foods, like chips, mayonnaise, and sour cream. Of course, fat also contributes taste and pleasure to food, and you do not want to sacrifice those qualities totally. Nor do you want to eat such great quantities of lighter foods that you wind up taking in more calories than before. (I know people who formerly ate ice cream only occasionally but now eat large helpings of nonfat frozen yogurt every day. I think their caloric intake has increased rather than decreased as a result of the change; this and similar adjustments may explain why obesity in America continues to increase, even as total fat in the American diet declines.) In short, it is possible to reduce caloric intake and still eat plenty of satisfying foods by using less fat, which is one way to reap some of the health benefits of undernutrition. At different times in my life I have experimented with fasting one day a week, usually on Mondays. When I fast, I consume nothing but water or herb tea, sometimes with lemon in it, and I find this to be a useful physical and psychological discipline. It feels healthy. If you are very skinny and sensitive to cold, I do not recommend fasting in, this way. Instead you might want to try drinking fruit juice or clear liquids one day a week. Not only do these practices give your digestive system a rest, they decrease total caloric intake and, again, may provide benefits of undernutrition without forcing you to give up the pleasures of eating. There are many secondary benefits as well, such as greatly increased appreciation of food following a fast and greater ability to eat consciously rather than unconsciously. In any case, watch for further research reports on the health benefits of undernutrition. If the findings hold up and continue to look applicable to humans, it will be worth trying to cut your intake of calories in order to realize more of your body's healing potential. FAT I will devote more time to a discussion of fat than to any other aspect of diet, because I believe the implications of research on how fat affects the body are vitally important. Eating too much of the wrong kinds of fat can seriously impair your healing abilities and may be the biggest dietary mistake you can make. Fats are mixtures of fatty acids, which are chains of carbon atoms with hydrogen atoms attached and a distinctive acidic chemical group at one end. Fatty acids can be classified by the lengths of the chains and by whether all of the available chemical bonds of the carbon atoms are occupied or saturated with hydrogen atoms. Unsaturated fatty acids have one (mono-) or more (poly-) links in the chain consisting of double or triple bonds between adjacent carbons. Points of unsaturation alter the configuratio n of the molecule, and its physical and chemical characteristics. Fats composed mainly of saturated fatty acids are solid at room temperature, and the greater the saturated fat content, the higher will be the temperature of melting. Animal fats are highly saturated, as are two vegetable fats: the oils of coconuts and palm kernels. At the opposite end of this chemical spectrum are the polyunsaturated vegetable oils, all of which stay liquid in colder temperatures. The lower temperature at which solidification occurs, the greater the degree of unsaturation. Corn, soy , sesame, sunflower, and safflower oils are examples of polyunsaturated fa'ts..In the middle of the spectrum are vegetable oils composed primarily of monounsaturated fatty acids, those with just one double or triple bond in the chain of carbon atoms; examples are olive, canola, peanut, and avocado oils. At the moment, conventional medical doctors who are concerned about nutrition are giving us two general kinds of advice about dietary fat. They are telling us to cut way down on the total amount of fat we eat and also way down on the amount of saturated fat we eat. In my view, this is only part of the story. Evidence for the health risks of saturated fat is overwhelming. In most people, a high percentage-of saturated fat in the diet stimulates the liver to make LDL (bad) cholesterol in quantities greater than the body can remove from the circulation. The result is damage to arterial walls (atherosclerosis), impairment of the cardiovascular system, increased risk of premature death and disability from coronary heart disease, and reduction of healing capacity through restriction of blood flow. Evidence for the health risks of total fat is much less convincing. Given the popular prejudice against fat in our society, many people would like to believe that very low-fat diets will make us live longer, prevent cancer, and boost our immunity, but we do not have hard data to support these ideas. Very low-fat diets-around ten percent of total calories from fat, as compared with forty in the average American diet-are of great therapeutic benefit to persons with established cardiovascular disease, but they are hard to adhere to and may not do much for the rest of us. I believe it is worth cutting fat to moderate levels-say, twenty to thirty percent of total calories-but that it is much more important to concentrate on reducing saturated fat and the other unhealthy fats that I will write about in a moment. The main natural sources of saturated fat are beef, pork, lamb, unskinned chicken, duck, whole milk and products made from whole milk (especially cheese butter, and cream), and processed foods made with tropical oils (palm and coconut). Of all of these, beef fat may be the greatest threat to health. In addition there are unnatural sources of saturated fat: margarine, solid vegetable shortening, and all processed foods made' with partially hydrogenated oils. In these products, liquid vegetable oils have been artificially saturated with hydrogen to make them solid or semisolid at room temperature and increase their resistance to spoilage. No matter how good the oils are that go into this process, what comes out is saturated and hazardous to cardiovascular health. Obviously, the easiest way to remove saturated fat from the diet is to cut way down on animal foods, especially meat and whole milk products-a strategy I recommend, In addition, you should eliminate sources of tropical oils and artificially solidified oils, which are dangerous for another reason, which I will explain below. Not long ago, doctors recommended replacement of saturated fats like butter with polyunsaturated vegetable oils, like corn and safflower, in the belief that these oils would lower cholesterol and benefit the heart and arteries. During this period, margarine, whose only virtue in the early part of this century was its low cost, changed in the public mind from a cheap substitute for butter to a healthy alternative to it. Sales of safflower oil, the most unsaturated of all the vegetable oils, boomed. I hope this era has now come to an end. Polyunsaturated oils are bad for us in,other ways. They are chemically unstable, owing to their content of fatty acids with energetic double and triple bonds that tend to react with oxygen, resulting in toxic compounds that can damage DNA and cell membranes, promoting cancer, inflammation, and degenerative changes in tissue. I strongly recommend eliminating them from the diet. Moreover, when unsaturated fatty acids are heated or treated with chemical solvents and bleaches, they tend to deform from a natural, curved shape (called the cis-configuration)'to an unnatural, jointed shape (called the trans-configuratio,n). Trans-fatty acids, or TFAS, may be extremely toxic, even though medical scientists have been very slow to recognize the danger. Even now, as they are finally beginning to admit that margarine may be worse for the heart than butter, they are still focusing solely on margarine's content of saturated fat rather than on its abundance of TFAS. The body builds cell membranes out of cis-fatty acids and also uses them in synthetic pathways for hormones. We do not know what it does with TFAS; if it tries to use them in the same ways, the result might be defective membranes and hormones. I believe that TFAs in the diet damage the regulatory machinery of the body, significantly compromising the healing system. Remember that TFAs are rarely found in nature, only in fats that have been subjected to unusual chemical and physical treatment. Some researchers refer to them as "funny fats," but there is nothing funny about what they may do to us. You can avoid any danger by eliminating from the diet all margarine and solid vegetable shortening and products made with them, all products listing "partially hydrogenated" oil of any kind on the label, and all commercial brands of polyunsaturated vegetable oils (corn, soy, sesame, sunflower, safflower), since these have been extracted with heat and sol- vents that promote formation of TFAS. (I refuse even to consider cottonseed oil as a food. It has a high percentage of saturated fat, may contain naturally occurring toxins, and is likely to be contaminated with pesticide residues.) What then can we eat? Vegetable oils that are predominantly monounsaturated-olive, canola, peanut, avocado-- do not pose thecardiovascular risk of saturated fats or the cancer risks of polyunsaturates. The individual oils within this. category differ significantly from one another, and it is important to know the advantages and disadvantages of each. Olive oil appears to be the best and safest of all edible fats. The body seems'to have an easier time handling its predominant fatty acid, oleic acid, than any other fatty acid. Replacing saturated fat in the diet with olive oil leads to a reduction of bad cholesterol (whereas replacement with polyunsaturated vegetable oils lowers good cholesterol as well). Olive oil is delicious and has been used as an edible oil for thousands of years. The best-quality, called extra-virgin, is extracted with gentle pressure rather than with heat or solvents; you can buy it in almost. any supermarket for a reasonable price. Olive trees are extraordinarily long-lived and beautiful, inspiring reverence in cultures that cultivate them; they produce well without heavy applications of pesticides and agricultural chemicals. Moreover, in populations that use olive oil as their main cooking fat, rates of cardiovascular disease are lower than expected for the amount of total fat consumed, and rates of degenerative diseases and cancer are also lower than in many other populations. Olive oil is the outstanding element of the Mediterranean diet that has attracted so much research attention in the past few years. Mediterranean peoples eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, whole grain breads, substantial quantities of fish, and moderate amounts of animal foods, but when all of these factors are analyzed, olive oil has the highest correlation with better health. As a result of my own research, I have come to rely on olive oil as the principal fat in my diet, using it for almost all cooking in which I use fat, for all salad dressing, and occasionally as a dip for bread (though I usually eat bread without anything on it). If you do not like the taste of olive oil, you can buy "light" varieties that lack the distinctive odor and flavor; although these might be useful in some dishes, like Oriental stir-fries and baked goods, they are probably less healthful because they have been processed. If the only change 'you make in your diet is to replace butter and margarine with olive oil, you will have made a tremendous step toward better health and healing. Canola oil (the name is a contraction of "Canadian oil," because the product was developed in Canada) is a modern version of a traditional cooking oil of India and southern China extracted from rapeseed. Rape is a mustard relative, whose seed contains an oil with very little saturated fat and a high percentage of monounsaturated fatty acids. It also contains a toxic fatty acid, erucic acid. Modern growers have reduced the erucic acid content of rapeseed oil and improved it in other ways; but despite its current popularity-Canola oil has eclipsed safflower oil as the darling of the health food industry-I am much less enthusiastic about it than I am about olive oil. We have no comparable epidemiological data for canola oil of the sort we have for olive oil to suggest that health is better in populations that use it. The canola oil you find in supermarkets has all been extracted in ways that deform fatty acids, and rape is heavily treated with pesticides that probably find their way into the oil. You can buy organic, expeller-pressed canola oil in health food stores at considerably higher cost, and this is the only kind I would use. I keep a bottle of it in my refrigerator for occasional recipes where I want a perfectly neutral-flavored oil, but I find that I use it up very slowly. In my opinion it is a distant runner-up to olive oil. Peanut,oil, once the preferred choice of Chinese cooks, has a much greater percentage of polyunsaturated fatty acids than olive oil and may also contain toxins, both natural and unnatural. I see no reason to use it. Avocado oil, available only in health food stores, is too expensive and has nothing to recommend it for use in the kitchen. Avocados are interesting additions to the diet but, given their fat content, should be used with great moderation. If you cannot give up the idea of spreading fat on your bread, try a little mashed, seasoned avocado instead; it is a way of replacing a highly saturated fat with a monounsaturated one. There are three other oils in my refrigerator that I use in small quantities as flavorings: roasted (dark) sesame oil, walnut oil, and hazelnut oil. These are polyunsaturates that must be kept cold and not, used in foods heated to high temperatures. They have strong odors and tastes that I like in soups, salad dressings, and marinades; in small amounts they are delicious and not unhealthy. Before I leave the subject of fats, I want to mention one other category that seems to promote health and healing. These are the omega-3 fatty acids found in some fish and a few plants. Omega-3s are highly unsaturated fatty acids with special properties. They appear to reduce inflammatory changes in the body, protect against abnormal blood clotting, and, possibly, protect against cancer and degenerative changes in cells and tissues. A great deal of research suggests that optimal diets should include sources of these hard-to-find compounds. Here are your choices: You can eat the fish that contain omega-3s in their fat, mostly oily fish from cold northern waters: sardines, herring, mackerel, bluefish, salmon, and,, to a lesser extent, albacore tuna. (I will have more to say about fish in the next section of this chapter.) Or you can take omega-3 supplements as capsules of fish oils. Canola and soy oil provide tiny amounts, but two less common vegetable oils from flax and hemp are rich sources: the seeds of these plants have high concentrations of omega-3s. You can buy flax seeds, flax meal, and flax oil in health food stores. Hemp oil is becoming available in some health food stores. Finally, one wild green-purslane-is an omega- 3 source. Mediterranean peoples use it in soups, and it is easily grown in the garden; in fact, it tends to be a persistent weed. I do not recommend taking fish oil capsules. They may be contaminated with toxins and may not provide the same benefits as eating the right fish. My personal preference is to eat salmon, sardines, or herring two or three times a week. (Mackerel is harder to get, bluefish is often contaminated with mercury, and albacore tuna is not a rich enough source.) If you choose not to eat fish, your best bet is hemp oil or flax, since purslane is not easy to come by. Hemp oil is greenish and nutty, quite good mixed with olive oil in salad dressing. Flax oil is sweet and nutty when fresh, but it deteriorates quickly and often tastes unpleasantly like oil paint (for which it is used as a base) by the time it gets to the table. If you can find good-tasting flax oil and like it, by all means use it. Otherwise, I would recommend adding flax meal to the diet. My suggestion is to buy whole flax seeds, . which are quite cheap, keep them in the refrigerator, and grind enough for a few days or a week at a time, using a coffee grinder or blender. You can sprinkle flax meal over cereal or salad or add it to, breads and cookies. It tastes good. A tablespoon of hemp or flax oil a day or two tablespoons of flax meal will give you a good helping of precious omega-3 fatty acids. Here, then, are my recommendations about dietary fats: Cut total fat by eliminating deep-fried foods, moderating con- sumption of chips, nuts, avocados,,, butter. cheese, and other high-fat foods, and learning to modify recipes to reduce fat con- tent of favorite dishes. Read labels of products you buy to deter. mine fat content, and try to keep your fat intake in the range of twenty to thirty percent of total calories. Make a special effort to cut saturated fat in your diet by cut- ting down substantially on meat, unskinned poultry, whole milk and whole milk products, butter, margarine, vegetable shortening, and all products made with tropical oils and partially hydrogenated oils. Eliminate polyunsaturated vegetable oils from your diet by avoiding safflower, sunflower, corn, soy, peanut, and cottonseed oils and products made from them. * Learn to rely on olive oil as your principal fat, preferably a.flavorful brand of extra-virgin olive oil. * Learn to identify and avoid all sources of hazardous transfatty acids: margarine, solid vegetable shortening, and all products made with partially hydrogenated oils of any kind. * Increase consumption of omega-3 fatty acids by eating the appropriate fish, hemp or flax oil, or flax meal regularly. PROTEIN SOURCES We need protein to make new tissue, to grow, and to maintain and repair our tissues. Proteins are complicated molecules, made up of a variety of amino acids, some of which are essential nutrients that the body is unable to manufacture and must receive in the diet. Protein .deficiency results in stunted growth and dramatic impairment' of healing ability; but in our society, protein deficiency is practically nonexistent. Instead, most people consume too much protein, which can also affect health adversely, and many of us get our protein from questionable sources. Most people rely on animal foods for protein: meat, poultry, fish, milk, and milk products. Vegetable sources are beans, grains, and some nuts. An important difference between animal and vegetable sources is that the latter are less concentrated. For example, the protein in beans is diluted by edible starch and indigestible fiber, so that you have to eat a greater volume of a vegetable protein source to get the equivalent,of a portion of an animal food. When you eat more protein than your body needs to make and repair tissue, it will be used instead as an energy source, as fuel. But protein is not an ideal fuel for the body. Because protein molecules are big and complicated, their digestion and metabolism require more work than the digestion and metabolism of carbohydrates and fats. So proteins are less efficient fuels: the ratio of work in to energy out is not as favorable as for other nutrients. A practical consequence is that if you are eating a high-protein-diet, your digestive system is doing a lot of work, and less energy may be available to you for healing, There is another problem with protein as fuel: it does not burn clean. Carbohydrate and fat, being composed solely of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, burn to carbon dioxide and water. Protein contains nitrogen, and in the process of metabolism degrades to highly toxic nitrogenous residues. The burden of dealing with these falls on the liver, which processes them to urea, a simple compound that is also highly toxic. The kidneys must then take up the task of eliminating urea. Tying up liver and kidney function in this way reduces the contribution of those organs to the body's healing system. Furthermore, the nitrogenous-breakdown products of protein metabolism can also irritate the immune system, increasing the risk of allergy and autoimmunity, which represent derangement of body defenses. For all of these reasons, it is better not to consume too much protein. You want to give the body enough for growth, maintenance, and repair, but not so much that it becomes a significant source of metabolic energy. How much protein is too much? Remarkably small amounts are enough to satisfy the minimal requirements of the average adult, perhaps two ounces, or sixty grams, of a protein food a day. Many people in our society eat much more than that at every meal, Certainly four ounces (less than I20 grams) is plenty. In general: it you have a protein meal once a day-that is, a meal organized around a main course of meat, chicken, fish, eggs, or tofu-that is probably enough. Try to design other meals around carbohydrates and vegetables: stir-fried vegetables with rice, say, or pasta and vegetables, or salads and bread. Cutting down on protein will free up energy, spare your digestive system and especially your liver and kidneys from extra work, and protect your immune system from irritation. In addition to thinking about protein in general and how to cut down on it, you should consider the advantages and disadvantages of the common sources of dietary protein, another subject that I consider important. Your choices about what kind of protein you ingest may have great influence on your long-term health and capacity for healing. One problem is that diets rich in animal protein put you high on the food chain, not a good place to be. The food chain is the pattern of dependence of higher organisms on lower organisms for energy. Plants make energy from the sun. Herbivorous animals get that same energy by eating the plants. Carnivorous animals get it further removed from the source by eating the flesh of herbivores. The bigger the organism and the more carnivorous it is, the higher it is said to be on the food chain. One consequence of eating high on the food chain is that you take in much larger doses of toxins, because environmental toxins concentrate as you move up from level to level. The fat of domestic animals often contains high concentrations of toxins that exist in much lower concentrations in grains, for example. An independent problem is that the methods we use for raising animal sources of protein further load them up with unhealthy substances. Here is a quick review of sources of dietary protein: Meat has several strikes against it. It is a major source of saturated fat in the diet, as well as a highly concentrated form of protein. Being high on the food chain, it accumulates environmental toxins. Unless it is raised organically, it is also full of added toxins: residues of growth-promoting hormones, antibiotics, and other chemicals used by all commercial ranchers and farmers. "White meat" is no better than red meat, except that veal has less fat than beef, and pork fat (lard) seems less hazardous for the human cardiovascular system than beef fat. Unless meat is cooked very well, it may transmit athogenic viruses and bacteria to humans who eat it. Chicken has, one main advantage over meat: its fat is external to muscle tissue and can be removed with the skin. Otherwise, chicken presents the same toxic hazards as the flesh of cows, sheep, and pigs and may contain even more added hormones. Dangerous bacteria, particularly salmonella, often contaminate chicken and can sicken humans who eat it unless the chicken is well cooked. Fisb increasingly appears to be a very healthy source of protein. I am referring here to scale fish, not to shellfish. Populations that eat the most fish have the highest longevity and lowest disease rates, and within those populations, the healthiest individuals are those who eat the most fish. Why fish is good for us is not clear. Omega-3 fatty acids may be a part of the explanation, but they are in some fish only, and the answer may not have to do with any one component. Are fish eaters healthier because of the fish they eat or because of what they don't eat? Most of them eat much less animal flesh, for example. There are important cautions about fish today. Much of it is contaminated by toxins that have been. dumped into rivers and oceans. Larger, more carnivorous fish and fish that live in coastal waters are most dangerous in this regard. I recommend against eating swordfish, marlin, and shark because their flesh is likely to contain toxins. Increasingly, fish are being farmed throughout the world, especially salmon,, trout, and catfish. Farmed. fish may not be as beneficial to health as their wild counterparts (farmed salmon have lower amounts of omega-3s) and may have residues of drugs used to control diseases in crowded conditions. But even with these drawbacks, fish are a good protein source. Shellfish are much less attractive, because they are more likely to contain toxins. They live in coastal effluents and feed in ways that expose them to high concentrations of wastes. Raw shellfish can easily transmit diseases to humans. Milk products tend to be very high in saturated fat, unless they are made from skim milk or low-fat milk. Many people cannot digest the sugar (lactose) in milk, and many more probably experience irritation of the immune system from the protein in milk. (This is a particular problem with cow"s milk; goat"s milk does not seem to bother the immune system nearly as much.) If you have allergies, autoimmune disease, sinus trouble, bronchitis, asthma, eczema, or gastrointestinal problems, it is worth eliminating all milk from the diet for at least two months to see what happens to the conditions. In very many cases, they will improve dramatically. Commercial dairy products are another source of environmental toxins, drugs, and hormones. Eggs, at least the whites of eggs, are good sources. of high-quality protein,. but egg yolks contain fat and cholesterol that most of us should limit. Commercially raised eggs are produced under awful conditions, may contain toxic residues of drugs and hormones, and may be contaminated with salmonella. Avoid raw and undercooked eggs, and try to find eggs from free-ranging chickens raised without drugs and hormones. Grains and beans contain carbohydrate and fiber along with pro- tein, so you can eat more of them without suffering a protein overload. Since they are often treated with a 'variety of agricultural chemicals, I recommend looking for organically produced varieties. Nuts and seeds, like almonds and sunflower seeds, are sources of vegetable protein, but their high content of fat (mostly polyunsaturated) argues for moderation in their consumption. Soybeans have much more protein than other beans, along with significant amounts of polyunsaturated fat. Soy protein can be isolated and transformed into an astonishing variety of forms, including facsimiles of animal foods. You will.find most of these in the refrigerator cases of health food stores, but also look in Oriental grocery stores. Many forms of tofu and tempeh are now available, along with better and better burgers, wieners, and lunch meats, including some excellent low- and nonfat versions. There may be great health benefits to soy foods that are just coming to light. They contain a group of chemicals called phytoestrogens that may offer significant protection against prostate cancer in men and estrogenically driven diseases in women, including breast cancer, endometriosis, fibrocystic breast disease, and uterine fibroids, as well as the discomforts of menopause. Low incidence of these conditions among Japanese women may be due to their high consumption of soy foods, especially tofu. Two of the best-known soy phytoestrogens-genistein and daidzein-are now being explored for their ability to moderate human hormonal imbalances. Having reviewed the major sources of dietary protein, I will now give you my simplest recommendations for taking advantage of this information to change your diet in a direction that favors spontaneous healing: Eat less protein. Learn to recognize sources of protein in your diet and to cut down on. them. Practice making meals that do not revolve around large servings of dense protein foods. Begin to replace animal protein in the diet with fish and soy protein. By doing so you will both reduce your exposure to toxins and other harmful elements in meats, poultry, and milk and gain the benefits of health-promoting components of fish and soybeans. FRUITS AND VEGETABLES Our mothers were right to tell us to eat our vegetables. Vegetables and fruits appear to offer significant protection against cancer, heart disease, and other common ailments as well as to help immunity and healing. Besides, perfectly ripe fruits and good-quality vegetables are some of the greatest delights of the table. What is better than slicing into an aromatic melon or a peach running with juice and flavor, or a creamy-ripe mango? How about a colorful bowl of mixed salad greens dressed with olive oil- and- balsamic vinegar; barely cooked, crisp sugar snap peas; or perfect ears of sweet corn? Many people miss out on these pleasures because commercial growers plant varieties chosen for resistance to shipping rather than for flavor, or because the crops are harvested before they are ready to eat, or because they have suffered in transit to stores. Other people think they do not like vegetables because they do not know how to cook them and have never tasted them properly prepared. Fresh fruits and vegetables probably deliver more health benefits than canned, frozen, or dried versions. As researchers identify more and more protective compounds in fruits and vegetables, there is a tendency in our society to isolate the compounds and use them in the form of supplements. I am not sure this is a good idea. Beta-carotene-, for example, the water-soluble precursor of vitamin A (that is, the body makes vitamin A from it), is now used in capsule form by millions of people, who have heard that it is an antioxidant and may prevent cancer. There is strong evidence that beta carotene helps prevent cancer when we eat it in our food; evidence for its effectiveness as an isolated supplement is much less -solid. Beta carotene is one member of a large family of carotenes, yellow and. orange pigments found in many fruits (peaches, melons, mangoes) and vegetables (sweet potatoes squash pumpkin, tomatoes, and dark, leafy greens). Other carotenes, like alpha carotene and lycopene (in tomatoes), may be even more important contributors to the cancer'protective effect of these foods, or they may act synergistically with beta carotene. Until a mixed-carotene supplement appears on the market, people whose diets are low in fruits and vegetables may be wise to take supplemental beta carotene, but they would be wiser still to increase their consumption of carotene-rich foods. Reductionism-the belief that properties of wholes can be reduced to effects of single components-is a common proclivity of Western science and medicine. When we find a plant in nature that has interesting biological effects, we want to identify and isolate the "active principle" of the plant and give it to patients in pure form. Traditional Chinese doctors think very differently. They do not object to scientific analysis of healing plants, but they do not believe in using isolated components. In their view the desirable effects of herbal medicine result from synergistic interactions of all components of each plant and of all the plants (often a dozen or more) used in a typical prescription. Recently, scientists identified a compound in broccoli, sulphoraphane, that may be partly responsible for that, vegetable's powerful cancer-protective effect. Should you eat broccoli or wait for capsules of sulphoraphane to appear in health food stores? I say broccoli, because parts are not equal to wholes. If you think you do not like it,, try it cooked in new ways. Here is a simple way of preparing broccoli that is so delicious I cannot get enough of it: Trim the end off a large bunch of broccoli, cut off the main stem, peel it beneath the fibrous layer, and cut into edible chunks. Separate the head of broccoli into bite-size pieces and peel a bit of the skin from the stems to make them more tender. Wash the broccoli and place it in a pot with 1/4 cup cold water, 1 tablespoon of extravirgin olive oil, salt to taste, and several cloves of chopped or mashed garlic. Bring to a boil, cover tightly, and let steam until the broccoli is bright green and very cr.unchy-tender, no more than five minutes. Remove the lid and boil off most of the remaining liquid. Serve at once. You can mix this with cooked pasta (penne or rigatoni),'season it with red pepper flakes and parmesan cheese, or eat it as is. It is beautiful to look at, utterly delicious, low in fat, rich in vitamins and minerals, and filled with sulphoraphane too! If you would like to try a more exotic preparation of broccoli, here is a modified version of a Chinese dish with black bean sauce, without all the fat (often cottonseed oil) used in many Chinese restaurants: Prepare the vegetable as in the previous recipe. Put it in a pot with the following ingredients: 2 tablespoons of salted black beans (available in Chinese grocery stores) that have been washed in cold water and drained; 2 large cloves of garlic, mashed; 2 teaspoons of finely chopped fresh ginger root; 1 tablespoon of dark sesame oil; 2 tablespoons of soy sauce; 2 teaspoons of sugar; 1 teaspoon of red pepper flakes, 2 tablespoons of chopped scallions; and 1/4 cup dry sherry. Bringto a boil, cover, and steam, as in the previous recipe, until the broccoli is just crunchy-tender. Uncover to evaporate most of the liquid and toss broccoli well in the black bean sauce before serving (over rice, if you wish). Of course, there is a caution about supermarket produce: it may be contaminated with toxins, put there not by nature but by agribusiness. I discuss this subject in detail in the next chapter . and will tell you how to protect yourself.. It is important to try to find chemical-free produce and to know which crops are the most likely to be contaminated. FIBER Fiber is the indigestible residue in plants that we eat, made up of carbohydrates too complex chemically for our digestive systems. Adequate fiber in the diet promotes, digestive health, allowing us to have regular bowel movements and improving the biochemical environment of the large bowel. Some forms of fiber also benefit the cardiovascular system by helping the body eliminate cholesterol. Populations that have very low intakes of fiber have high rates of colon'cancer and vice-versa. If you do not eat enough fiber, your digestive system will not function at peak efficiency, which can corn-. promise healing ability in several ways, The main sources of dietary fiber are fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Insoluble fiber, such as in wheat bran, is an important bowel' regulator. Soluble fiber,'such as in oat bran, helps eliminate cholesterol. Some people who require fiber to regulate the bowels take it in a supplementary form as bran-or psyllium (a seed with a fibrous husk)I think it is easier to eat more fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and cereals and breads made from whole grains, which may have other benefits as well. HERE IS A BRIEF,Summary of my recommendations for a healing diet: * Try to eat fewer calories by eliminating high-fat foods and modifying recipes for favorite dishes by cutting fat content. Also experiment with periodic fasting or restricted dieting. * Cut down appreciably on saturated fat by eating fewer foods of animal origin and none containing palm or coconut oils, mar- garine, vegetable shortening, or partially hydrogenated oils. * Do not use polyunsaturated vegetable oils for cooking. Use only good-quality olive oil. * Learn to recognize and avoid sources of trans-fatty acids (margarine, vegetable shortening, partially hydrogenated oils, and common brands of liquid vegetable oils). * Increase consumption of omega-3 fatty acids by eating more of the right kinds of fish or adding hemp-oil or flax products to the diet. . * Eat less protein of all kinds. * Try to replace animal protein foods with fish and soyfoods. * Eat more fruits and vegetables of all kinds. * Eat more whole grains and products made from whole grains. These recommendations are practical, sensible, and probably familiar to you. They are also important enough to repeat because they are the bare essentials of a healthy diet. They do not require you to become a food faddist or to give up everything you like. And, based on my knowledge and experience, I can assure you that they will help your healing system work more efficiently.