Brian Johnson breaks down Joel Fuhrman's Eat to Live, arguing that health equals nutrients divided by calories. Fuhrman says feeding kids processed foods is like giving them whiskey and cigars. He recommends two large raw salads daily and warns against getting stuck debating diet philosophies when the basics are clear: whole foods, no refined stuff.
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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today, another great book, Eat to Live. Eat to live by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, who's one of the leading thinkers in nutritional science. He's on Whole Foods Advisory Board. John Mackey actually connected us. He taught a class with us at our old academy. I was vegan for the better part of 10 years. I read this book years ago when I was vegan. Deeply influenced my nutritional approach. It continues to do so, although I eat more animal protein these days than I did when I was vegan. That's a whole other conversation. We'll save that for another time. For now, philosopher's Note. Bunch of big ideas. Five of my favorite ones here. Let's jump in with number one. Furman's an intense guy. He's brilliant. He's awesome. And he says, look, if you want to improve your life and specifically your nutritional approach or your exercise or whatever it is you're committed to, he says, don't try. Don't say you're going to all try. Think that's. That's not going to work. That's just a promise that you're not going to get a whole lot done. He says, that's like when you're getting married, the officiant, whoever that is for you, saying, will you try to love your spouse through good times and bad? Do you commit to trying? It's insane. You commit to doing it, period. Do or do not. There is no try. Do it or don't do it. Don't say you're going to try. Now, unfortunately, most people, when they are doing those vows for their marriage, are actually pretty much saying, I'll try. Divorce rate indicates that. That's true. But we want to not try. We want to commit. Decide, make a commitment. What are you committed to? What do you want to do? Whether it's this approach or something else, decide, Commit, do it, don't try. That's the first big idea. Second big idea is an equation. H equals N over C, health equals nutrients over calories, which leads to something that Furman calls nutrient density. Nutrient density. If you're ever in a Whole Foods in the produce department, I haven't looked lately, but they used to have these Andy Scales, which is basically aggregate nutritional density index. Joel Fuhrman came up with that. The idea is your health is going to be determined by this ratio of nutrients to calories consumed. If you're eating food with no nutritional value and huge calories, your health is going to be very low. If you're eating Food that has a ton of nutrients per calorie, your health is going to be very high. Well, what has a high nutritional density index? At the top of the list are greens, things like collards and chards and romaine lettuces and stuff like that. That has the highest nutritional density index on Furman's scale. We want to consume a lot of that. That's a big part of our nutritional strategy here at the Johnson House. Nutrient density, it's a good idea and it's a big idea. Third big idea is whiskey and cigars. So As I mentioned, Dr. Fuhrman is intense. He says, look, let's imagine our kids now, we wouldn't at dinner crack open the whiskey and give our kids cigars. You got your little 2 year old there and your 4 year old and your 10 year old. You finish dinner and you say, hey, you know what, let's share some whiskey, let's light up a cigar. You'd never do that. That's insane. Yet Fuhrman says when you feed your kids candy every single day, you give them all these refined foods day in and day out, you might as well be giving them whiskey and cigars. Now it's socially acceptable to give your kids non food all the time. But the slow corrosive effect, those non foods going into our children's bodies is revealed through the obesity and diabetes epidemic that our country and our world faces. So think about that if you're a parent. Next time you give your kids candy, just imagine, why don't you follow it up with a little bit of whiskey and a little bit of smoking the cigar. Those are known to be detrimental to our health. We need to bring awareness to the corrosive impact over the long run of candies and other things. It's a huge idea, influences how we raise our little guy. Again, whole other conversation. Fourth big idea. Here is the secret. The secret to longevity is what Fuhrman tells us. In a word, it's salads, nutrient density. We got to go back up here, right, and look at our super nutrient dense foods, the cancer fighting foods. So many nutrients packed into greens. Raw leafy greens again, the romaine's, the chards, the collards, etc. Increase your intake of those. He says the salad should be your main dish. It shouldn't be a little thing on the side. It should be the main dish and you put other things around it. Two huge salads a day is what the good doctor recommends. That's his secret. One of them. But the primary one, two, longevity. It's A big idea. The fifth big idea here is let's not argue. So I've experimented a ton with my nutritional approach, and I love this idea. You can have an approach toward veganism or toward Paleo or toward this or toward that. He says, look, okay, there's. There's debate around the edges, but let's not argue about what everyone agrees about. Everyone's going to agree that we should eat, for example, more whole foods and less refined foods. You're not going to find one nutritionist that's going to advocate that you should eat more refined foods. You should give your kids as much refined foods as you possibly can. That's the ticket. No one's going to say that, period. So let's not argue about the edges. Let's find what everyone agrees on, which is what a big part of these videos is all about, is trying to find not the esoteric truths, but the truths that people come back to again and again and again. So you can be. And he's again advocating more of the vegan approach. He says, look, you can be a vegan that eats no animal products, but you eat junk food. You don't eat real food. You're going to be less healthy than someone who eats a moderate, a smaller, moderate amount of animal protein but eats whole foods. So pay attention to that. Just because you follow one approach, you want to make sure that you're doing the core fundamentals of whatever that approach is. Well, don't argue about the details. Find the things that everyone agrees on. Your secret. According to Furman, Two big salads, raw leafy greens, the highest nutritionally dense foods we can get. Let's quit giving our kids whiskey and cigars. It's a very potent image to imagine. Take care of yourself, take care of your kids by optimizing more whole foods. And then don't try commit. Decide what's important to you and go out and commit and do it. There you go. I'm going to be doing a ton more on nutrition going forward. This is one of my books I had read years ago. I'm doing some TV episodes on those books that I hadn't done before, but I've got a bunch of new ones coming I can't wait to share and I hope you enjoyed and I hope you have another awesome day. See you.
