Rice and potatoes are very high in nutrients and they are the staple foods in the majority of the countries around the world. The Mayans and Incans have shown us that we can primarily live off these foods. The Okinawans and Chinese centenarians lived mostly off sweet potatoes and the Irish on potatoes. People in Thailand, India, Japan, etc, primarily live off rice, and can do so because of high number of nutients. Beans should be added to the main course meal list.

NUTRITIONAL CONTENT OF POTATOES
http://lifestyle.iloveindia.com/lounge/nutritional-value-of-potatoes-5739.html

NUTRITIONAL CONTENT OF RICE
http://lifestyle.iloveindia.com/lounge/nutritional-value-of-brown-rice-6210.html

These foods are very high in carbohydrates, which is fuel for your body and mind. I do not see problems by eating just vegetables and fruits, but it is very hard to get enough calories and it makes the diet that much harder to do(for most people). I don’t think advocating a diet of just fruits and vegetables is the way to go. If you are eating a whole food-plant based diet, you are on the right path. I think nuts are a good source of extra calories if you need them(they should be at a minimum for everyone else, very high fat content) and I do not regard oils as a health food at all. It is highly-processed fat (yes I know it comes from vegetables), and you should be getting your food in its natural form. There are many studies showing implications from eating oils. It should also be noted that they are the highest calorie dense food out there, along with butter, and many oils contain high amounts of saturated fat (olive oil at 14 percent, many even higher). Oil doesn’t have much nutritional value either.

USEFUL INFORMATION ON OILS
http://www.drmcdougall.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5868

There are also some very interesting topics on this page (scroll down a bit):
http://drmcdougall.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7828

I do think you have it down Nat, but I am just saying for most others, this is a much easier and more sustainable diet.

I think its best if people do the diet all at once. Then they can feel the great affects right away, gain back their taste buds, and also lose their addiction to the SAD(standard american diet). People also take moderation to the extremes too. And its not a vegetable and fruit diet, I think thats scary to people. It consist of all whole foods, based mainly of of starches- rice, potatoes, whole grain noodles, etc. The stomach problems you talk about happens to only some people and its for the first week or two on the diet, because your body is making some serious changes. You might at first feel some mild headaches as well, but its not because your not eating the right foods. I have been ont his diet (or lifestyle now for me) for about 6 months and I have lost about 35-40 pounds. Its very easy for me, because I can eat all the food I would like and never starve. Anyone can accomplish this if they only eat the whole-food plant based diet. The reason you can lose so much weight with eating as much as you want is because of the low-calorie dense foods. You are taking in a lot of substance without a lot of calories, also with a lot of fiber, so you get full a lot quicker, without taking in as many calories. On this diet I also have got rid of all of my daily ups and downs and I am now more on a level ground. I also don’t experience the tiredness after eating, but rather I am re-energized. I could never go off this diet either, because I am convinced 100 percent of its great affects. I have read many books and watched many DVD’s and there is tons of great evidence backing this diet. The only conflicting parties that try refuting this kind of diet is people that have lots of money, such as the dairy and meat industries, who obviously care more about making money over the health of the people. They will say or do anything if it will help their sales.

I want to say a little about the protein and calcium that everyone is always so worried about. For one, has anyone heard of a calcium or protein deficiency in someone that eats enough calories to support them daily? No, because there are none. These deficiencies are only found in people that are starving to death, like the people in Africa. Any combination of food you eat, with the right amount of calories, will give you enough protein and calcium to support you. Now people might say, what about osteroperosis. If you do some research you will find that osteroperosis is not a calcium defiency, but rather it comes from a diet rich in acids. The foods that contain the most acid are those that are rich in animal protein. Your body is naturally alkaline, and when you take in large amounts of acid in your body, you have to neutralize that acid somehow. The calcium in your bones acts as a buffering system and reduces the acid load. If you look at graphs with dairy consumption on a world-wide basis, you will see taht the countries that have the most osteoperosis are the countries that take in the most amount of dairy. You might also be surprised that the World Health Organization recommends that we get 500mg of calcium and the United States recommends 1500mg of calcium daily. How are the numbers so much different? No way it could be lobbying from the dairy industry. Or the reason we have cheese on the food pyramid, which has 70 percent fat and 50 percent saturated fat. How can that be good for someone?

Now to protein. At a time when you are growing the most, when you are a baby, you require breast milk. In breast milk there is 5 percent of the calories that come from protein. The World Health Organization(WHO) has done studies to find out how much protein you actually need when you are an adult and no longer growing. They found that people require different amounts, and the people that require the most, need 2.5 percent calories of their calories to come from protein. Now they wanted to be safe, so they doubled that and came up with 5 percent. If you are pregnant, they upped that to a wopping 6 percent. Now you might also be surprised to find that there actually is protein in vegetables, at levels much higher than 5 percent(google them if you’d like). What do people thing happens with the protein they take in protein shakes and bars? I can tell you it doesn’t go straight to their muscles. Your body has to overwork and process this protein and then you piss it out. If you think you need more protein when you work out, well you are right. When you work out you will also be eating more food (because you burned more calories), therefore consuming more protein.

There is a ton of evidence supporting this whole food plant based diet. There are many educational DVDs out there and many great books. Some of the leaders in this right now that you will want to look up are Dr. McDougall – drmcdougall.com, Dr. T. Colin Campbell (China Study-awesome book!), Dr. Dean Ornish, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn (heart disease), Dr. Neal Barnard – pcrm.com (diabetes), Howard Lyman – madcowboy.com, Robert Cohen, notmilk.com, and many others.

This diet could save your life and peoples lives in your family. These doctors don’t know of anyone they have treated that had a cholesterol of under 150 and had a heart attack. If you know someone that is high risk for this, or is getting a bypass or stint, please have them read Preventing and Reversing Heart Disease by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn. This is a great book and it shows us that heart disease is a disease we made, and a disease of affluence. It is the leading killer of people in the United States, and it can be completely reversed or prevented by diet! Over 30,000 people a year just die during the operations that they don’t have to receive.

Please anyone that reads this, just try out the diet for a couple weeks and you will find that this diet has a wide variety of a benefits. Also get yourself educated this. What Nat said is a 100 percent right and our diet is killing us. We need to stop relying on drugs and operations to save us, because even after using the drugs and having the operations, we are still indeed sick! Diet is a powerful medicine when used in the right way….

Tiredness was never a huge problem for me but I did have a lot of energy swings when I was eating poorly. I would have a lot of energy one minute and then crash hard.

I would also recommend reading “The China Study”, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “In Defense of Food”.

If you’re going to change your diet, I recommend two things:

1) Don’t do it all at once. Lay out like a three week plan where you go from meat 5x/week to 3x, 2x, 1x, then none. If you try to do it all at once it can make it hard to stick with it. Just lay out the plan to reach a better diet in a few weeks and stick to the plan.

2) Stick with the vegetable and fruit diet for at least six weeks (after you do the three week thing, so nine weeks total) to give it a fair shot. It took my body some time to adjust. I actually felt worse (stomach problems) for a bit. But in the long-run I have felt much better.