Following the Calorie Density Approach

My eating has evolved over the past year and I think I’ve settled on something that is both easy and healthy.   I follow Jeff Novick’s principles of a healthy diet, which he briefly describes as “plant-centered, minimally processed, calorie dilute, low SOS (salt, oil, sugar)” in this interview.   The calorie density approach is summarized in this newsletter article.

Calorie density is the number of calories per weight of a given food.   For most people, if you keep your average calorie density below about 600 calories per pound, you can lose weight without going hungry.  It turns out that a lot of the most satiating foods have a calorie density around 300-600 calories/lb, and the most healthy foods have a calorie density below 800.   So that tells me all I need to know:   Eat mostly foods with calorie density below 700 calories/lb, and consider the higher calorie density foods as condiments.  Here is a table of calorie density of foods:

Foods                                                                           Calorie/lb

Vegetables                                                                     60 - 195

Fruit                                                                              140 - 420

Potatoes, Pasta, Rice, Barley, Yams, Corn, Hot Cereals   320 - 630

Beans, Peas, Lentils (cooked)                                        310 - 780

Breads, Bagels, Fat-free Muffins, Dried Fruit                   920 - 1360

Sugars (ie, sugar, honey, molasses, agave, corn syrup   1200 -1800

Dry Cereals, Baked Chips, Fat-free Crackers, Pretzels    1480 - 1760

Nuts/Seeds                                                                  2400 - 3200

Oils                                                                                 4000

 You don’t have to count calories or measure foods to use this chart.   My approach is to eat mostly from the top 4 lines (vegetables, fruit, starches & grains, beans), consider everything else condiments, and eat when I’m hungry and stop when I’m full.  I avoid salt, oil, sugar, caffeine, and alcohol altogether because of their disease-promoting and addictive qualities.  The rest I limit or avoid as well. 

If you don’t see a particular food on the above table, you can determine calorie density by finding out its nutritional information.   For example, take popcorn:  Type into google “nutritional info air popped popcorn” and you find that 24 grams has 93 calories.   Divide 93 by 24 to get calories per gram and then multiply by 454 to get calories per lb.  This gives you 1760 calories/lb for air-popped poprcorn!   It’s okay to eat it, but don’t use your stomach sensations as a guide for when to stop—that’s a key point of this is that your satiation mechanisms don’t work well with the high calorie-dense food.   If you use your stomach as a guide, you’ll eat a lot of more the calorie-dense foods before you decide you are full.   Another example is rice cakes, which are right up there with the popcorn.  Meat ranges from 600-1200, and ice cream from 1000-1500.   Isn't it interesting that even fat-free bread, crackers, rice cakes and dry cereals have more calorie density than meat?   This might explain why many diets promote meat and fish over breads and crackers.  However, I would bypass the meat altogether and go straight for the potatoes and vegetables and fruit.

An easy way to follow this plan is to fill “1/2 your plate (by visual volume) with intact whole grains, starchy vegetables and/or legumes and the other half with vegetables and/or fruit.”

Another important point JN makes in his article is to not drink your calories (even fruit juices and smoothies):  “Liquids have little if any satiety so they do not fill you up as much as solid foods of equal calories.”

You might be wondering:  Aren’t there certain foods we should eat every day because they are so important?   JN says there are no superfoods in this article.  If you don’t like a particular food, that’s okay.   However Dr. Esselstyn suggests we eat leafy green vegetables at every meal, or at least, regularly.  I eat a lot of the green and yellow veggies (e.g., kale, collards, spinach, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower) and salads and raw vegetables.   I also eat potatoes, sweet potatoes, intact whole grains (rice, oats, quinoa, buckwheat), and beans.  And I eat some fruit, and very occasional nuts, dried fruit, and avocado.  That’s all there is to it.  If you want added insurance that you are getting enough essential fats, add a tablespoon of some ground flaxseed or chia seeds.  But Drs. McDougall and Campbell say it’s not necessary if you eat leafy greens and don’t consume oil (I talked about it more in this post).

Since the low-calorie dense foods regulate appetite, and are also the healthiest,  it’s win-win to eat this way. 

I asked JN some followup questions about how this works, and you can see his replies here.  

If you follow this approach, it ends up being very similar to that outlined by Dr. McDougall for his Maximum Weight Loss plan (summarized here and here) and by Dr.Esselstyn for reversing heart disease.

The calorie density approach is explained more in this DVDand this newsletter article. 

A Common Sense Approach to Sound Nutrition

I thought this was a great post from Jeff Novick.  He posts a lot of good things on Facebook.  You can "like" him to see them as they are posted:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/jeff-novick-ms-rd/a-common-sense-approach-to-sound-nutrition/10150095257231819

Princeton Immersion, Thanksgiving, soup, and stuff

I went to Dr. Fuhrman's Princeton Immersion last weekend.  It was a wonderful trip for many reasons!  It was a great road trip with my friend Suz.  We stopped in Pittsburg to see my best pal Gail, sadly, only for a few hours.  I worked with a student for a day at Princeton which was very productive.  We visited with Suz's parents in Philidelphia.  And the immersion was fantastic.  It was jam-packed with lectures. Dr. Fuhrman is so energetic and interesting, you really can listen to him for hours.  Even better was the food.  This is the main reason I go, though I did learn a lot from the lectures.  I thought I knew it all by now, but one thing I get out of the in-person lectures is what Dr. Fuhrman is passionate about, and what is less certain scientifically.  It helps reinforce what the most important things are to keep in mind.  But the food!  It was the best I've ever had at one of these events.  I think that was in large part due to Chef Martin Oswald's contributions.  He owns a nutritarian restaurant in Aspen, Colorado!  (called the Pyramid Bistro).  He gave a talk on the last day and I have been having fun putting his tips into practice!  We got the recipes from the immersion and slides from his talk.  They are worth a lot!

So today I'm back from the holidays and putting some of my new knowledge into action.  My soup today has Indian spices and I cooked up the onion as Chef Martin described:  first you heat up a stainless steel pot until hot, then put the onions and garlic in.  They sizzle up, slightly brown, and then release their juices.  You don't need oil, and they still gain a nice flavor.  Fun, it worked!  I did that with the leeks, celery, collards and kale too.  Then the pot was looking pretty burned and I thought, this will take forever to clean up.  But then I did the mushrooms the same way.  Well, they release so much liquid that it just ended up cleaning up the pot.  When they were done, the pot was clean.  ha!   a nice accidental discovery.  My soup was just my usual pile of things that I found in the co-op or my freezer.  I soaked beans, red himalayan rice, lentils, and purple barley overnight, and started cooking them in the morning.  Then cooked up the onions, garlic, celery, leeks, mushrooms, even the collards and kale, like Chef Martin described.  Added them to the pot one by one.  Oh I cooked up a festival squash in the oven, then added it to the soup after it cooled.  Oh yeah, and while cooking up the onion and other veggies, I added some graram masala and curry powder as they cooked.  Add the end I added some currants and fresh ground ginger.  It made for a nice hearty soup.  I froze most of it in single-serving containers.  yum.  I think I'll have it for breakfast every day.   I'll be doing my food prep at night this week.

My food plans for the week are soup for breakfast, and salad and roasted veggies for lunch and dinner.  The salads will be micro-salads made from lettuce, cabbage, maybe some broccoli and cauliflower, all cut up finely in the food processor; and topped with pomegranate seeds, grapefruit or orange, seed mixture, and flavored vinegar.  I love these.  The name should be changed from micro-salad to high-powered salad because it is so nutrient rich.  Tonight I'll experiment with roasted veggies.  I hope I can get this right.  I'm going to follow Chef Martin's advice to cover with foil at first so they essentially steam cook (before burning on the outside), then take of the foil to roast at the end.  I'll top with fresh herbs.  The veggies available now (that I like) are broccoli, brussels sprouts, carrots, onions, leeks, and sweet potato.  I'll do a little of each.  I am just learning to do this.  It would be nice to do a big batch and eat them for several days but I'm not sure how well they will keep.  I think I'll start off by just trying to do one day at a time and hope it isn't too time consuming.  I will add some flavored vinegar and mustard as marinate.  I got some fresh sage and rosemary at the co-op and have some basil from the garden in my freezer.  I hope this works!

Well, this post is long enough so I won't go into Thanksgiving much except to say I made apple sauce for my "brother-in law."  He had two 18 lb bags of apples!  holy cow, we had all the burners going:

It was fun though.  I nibbled a lot on the apples.  In fact, it was so much fun, we decided to make some for ourselves when we got home.  My batch has no sugar in it.  I'm not sure what I will use it in as I am not a great dessert maker or baker, the usual use of apple sauce.  But, heck, it probably could go in soup.

Here's tonight's quick salad I threw together, which is yummy, as salads always are:

That's got lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, blueberries, banana, small orange, seed mixture, and d'angou pear vinegar.

whew.  time to go fold laundry, then start tomorrow's food prep.  whew!  

Guidelines for Healthy Nutrition and Weight Loss

Howard at Lifestyle Power developed this graphic that describes how to eat healthy.  It looks pretty good.  What do you think, is it useful for you?
http://lifestylepower.blogspot.com/2011/08/guidelines-for-healthy-nutrition-and.html
His blog has lots of good information and links to articles, including a recent show from CNN called The Last Heart Attack.

Another dietician's advice

I’ve recently been reading and watching material from Jeff Novick, a dietician who used to work with Dr. Fuhrman and now works with Dr. McDougall.  It’s been interesting to compare advice from all three of these guys.  I think they all offer very healthy eating plans.  The average advice is pretty similar but the ranges are different.   Here is a description of Dr. McDougall’s Maximum weight loss program.  Here is a description of Dr. Fuhrman’s 6 week plan.

From what I’ve read, I think all three would agree that 1-1.5 oz of nuts and seeds per day is an okay amount to eat.  All of their food plans include some nuts and seeds in some of their recipes, and none in others.  They differ in their minimum recommended amounts.  Mr. Novick says you shouldn’t go above 1-2 oz for normal activity, or 2-4 oz for very active folks per day.  Dr. Fuhrman says active people and athletes can go up to 4 oz or more.  Both Novick and McDougall say your minimum can be 0 and I think they recommend that when trying to lose weight.  In Novick’s video on fats, he says you can get all you need from vegetables:  “Where do you think corn oil comes from?”   I’ve asked Dr. Fuhrman explicitly even for small people or overweight people with low metabolism, and he says everyone should eat a minimum of 1 oz of nuts or seeds per day and more active people should consume more.  I find nuts hard to digest and feel better when I stick to under 2 oz per day.  Dr. Fuhrman says that some people need nuts to regulate their heartbeats and I have found that in the past too.  However, I don't need much, as little as 1 teaspoon of flaxseed will do it for me.   Dr. Fuhrman says you need to eat fat to burn fat.  Dr. Mullin, who is on Dr. Fuhrman's staff, explains why:

Healthy fats communicate with your genes in a different way compared to unhealthy fats. Healthy fats bind to receptors called PPAR receptors which improve insulin sensitivity and enhance fat burning. Trans fats do the opposite.

I'm not sure that fully answers it for me or demonstrates that it's a big effect.  I think women are fat producing machines and that combined with our lower metabolism when we hit our mid-fifties, makes me wonder if we all really need 1 oz a day.  Plus it squeezes out other calorie-rich foods that I might enjoy more.

Regarding sweets, I like the advice of Novick.  He says all sweeteners are the same as far as health goes.  Pick whichever one you want and keep it to less than 5% of your calories—and he includes that with all unhealthy calories including oils, etc.  So he’s saying your total unhealthy calories should comprise 5% of the total, not just your sweets.  This is consistent with Dr. Fuhrman’s “Life Plan”, where he says no more than 10% of your calories should come from less healthy sources.  Dr. Fuhrman distinguishes refined sweeteners (sugar, agave nectar, honey, maple syrup)from dried fruits such as dates and raisins, which are whole foods.  Almost all of his dessert recipes use dried fruits as sweeteners.   I think many Fuhrman followers go overboard with their use of dates and other dried fruits.  I know I did for a while.  I thought it was okay because it was a whole food.  But after a while I realized it’s having the same effect on my body, a sugar surge (probably an insulin surge too), and cravings for more.  Combine this with nuts and you have very high-calorie, hard to digest food.  I once got sick on “healthy” brownies made from dates and walnuts and cocoa powder.  I learned the hard way that I can eat too many dried fruits or nuts.  I tend to agree with Novick and prefer to think of all sweeteners, including dried fruit, as in the 5% category.

With salt, Fuhrman wants you to include no added salt in your diet.  McDougall is more relaxed about it.  He allows people to add salt at the table in small amounts and most of his recipes include some sodium in the form of salt or soy sauce, though it is much less than processed foods have.  McDougall’s advice might be easier to follow and it still cuts way back on salt.  I started out following McDougall’s advice and then eventually decided to go cold turkey, following Fuhrman’s advice.   There is an advantage to this, which is that you taste all the subtle flavors in produce.  I can taste the difference in sweetness from one carrot to the next, and one pea pod to the next.  Even kohlrabi and broccoli taste sweet when your taste buds are sensitized again.  My sweat still tastes salty, so clearly my body has learned to extract what it needs from whole foods. Dr. Fuhrman talks about the many harmful effects of salt in his teleconferences, mainly related to heart disease and stomach cancer and the increased risk of hemorrhagic stroke for people with lower cholesterol.  There are two disadvantages to going without salt completely:  1) Some recipes and especially grains can taste bland.  However, this can be solved with spices or a little sweetening (e.g., carrot juice, fruit, dried fruit).  2) It makes it harder to find acceptable food to eat in restaurants.  Soups are especially bad.  Your best best is salads without dressing or fruit plate.  Unfortunately, these can be pretty lame at a lot of restaurants.

Another way I agree with Novick is that he seems to like simple recipes, and he isn’t a big fan of smoothies and juices and other ways of processing your food.  I think of smoothies, “ice creams”, and sorbets as treats, a once a week type thing rather than daily.  Even carrot-juice sweetened beans and soups I save for special occasions, partly because it’s more work, ha. 

Regarding supplements, I think McDougall and Novick say that you only need to supplement B12.  On vitamin D, Novick says get your levels tested and if you are deficient, take a supplement.  McDougall is anti-Vitamin D and says you can get enough D from exposure to sunlight.  Dr. Fuhrman says that vitamin D is so important to your health (in fighting cancer for one thing) that if you don’t want to take the supplements, get your blood levels checked to verify that you are not deficient.  He says the same thing about DHA.  I'm following Fuhrman's advice on this currently but I kind of wonder if I really need the DHA. 

Regarding animal products, I think McDougall would recommend an all-vegan diet, Novick probably too, though I’m not sure, and Fuhrman says animal products could be included in your 10% of unhealthy calories, unless you have certain conditions such as heart disease and some autoimmune illnesses where an optimal diet is required to reverse your condition.

Then there is the grain/starchy vegetable debate.  Again I think all their recommendations intersect and you can design a diet that agrees with all of them.  Dr. Fuhrman emphasizes eating more leafy green vegetables.  He also emphasizes cruciferous vegetables, onions and mushrooms to fight cancer.   That sounds good to me.   Then how should you fill out the rest of your calories?  I think many Fuhrman followers eat too much fruit and nuts and therefore too many calories (I speak from experience)—and for me, that also leads to a stomach ache which I have no interest in getting.  Novick says it’s better to fill out your calories with starchy vegetables and grains.  Dr. Fuhrman would say the best starchy vegetable to eat is beans.   Novick and McDougall don’t put particular emphasis on beans and include it as one of many healthy options, including white potatoes.  Fuhrman thinks white potatoes are one of the least healthy vegetables and would recommend other vegetables above them.  Fuhrman recommends a minimum amount of beans per day (1 cup).  Novick and McDougall have no such minimum.  Once you get your GOMBS in, (Greens, Onions, Mushrooms, Beans/Berries, and Seeds/nuts), Dr. Fuhrman is fine with filling out your calories with starchy vegetables and grains, though he would prefer you eat sweet potatoes instead of white.

What do I do?   I really like Novick’s advice, which is practical and makes a lot of sense to me.  I think McDougall’s or the Engine 2 plans might be easier to adopt for a person starting out.  I eat a starch-based diet--that is, things like potatoes, squash, corn, beans, intact whole grains like brown rice, quinoa,  oats, and whole grain pastas.   I eat yellow and green veggies (e.g., leafy greens, bell peppers, broccoli, zuccini) but because they are of low calorie density, they don't comprise the majority of my calories.  I eat some fruit, about 2 1/2-cup servings a day.  I don’t like to eat many dried fruits or smoothies or juices, in agreement with Novick, though I put a small handful of raisins in my daily oatmeal.   I like the idea of 5% play calories, even though I usually eat much less.  But I like the idea that I can indulge occasionally if I want to.  That is of great psychological value to me, given the culture we live in. 

My 6-week plan

I just finished Dr. Fuhrman's 6 week plan on Sunday!   Okay, for those who know me, I'm a long-time nutritarian (at least 5 years) so why would I go on the 6-week plan?   Because I needed some motivation!  I was overeating the healthy foods and even craving the unhealthy foods!   I was in a dangerous position.  So I figured I needed a reset.  The 6-week plan did it.  I feel great, motivated, and not at all desirous of unhealthy foods.  Those Paul Newman peanut butter cups no longer call to me.  Though I might try one some day, I'm totally not in the mood for it right now.   

Here are some things I did that aren’t exactly what Dr. Fuhrman recommends:

1) I monitored my calories (using CRON-o-meter).  Not only does it help me to eat enough calories, it also shows me the foods to limit. It teaches me that nuts and seeds are a condiment, not to be eaten in large quantities. And it shows me that I can eat a lot more of some of my favorite foods like sugar snap peas, yum!    It also helped me proportion my food during the day so I wouldn't go too hungry before exercise.  As time went on, I saw my appetite correspond with my calorie intake, so I was getting in touch with my body's true hunger signals. Now i don't feel like I need to monitor my calories.
2) I ate rather enormous amounts of raw veggies during the week (Dr. Fuhrman recommends ~1 lb raw and ~1 lb cooked a day, and I eat at least 3 lbs of raw veggies per weekday). Every weeknight when I get home I prepare tomorrow’s meals, which consist of confetti salads, which I divide into 2 meals. The third meal might be manna bread or sweet corn, bean soup and raw carrots and sugar snap peas. I make big batches of bean soup on the weekend and freeze it in 1-cup servings for the week. The salads taste great, and take a long time to eat and I enjoy that.

Here is what motivated me:
A friend of mine likes to get streaks going to motivate her to exercise. For example, she has a daily walking streak going that started in February. I asked, how do you deal with breaking the streak? I mean, if you end the streak, do you lose your motivation? I’m worried if you applied that to dieting, you could set up that binge routine where if you go off plan, you say, okay I’ll start my diet tomorrow and go crazy today. She said she has a little flexibility: If she misses a day, she can make it up by walking twice in 1 day within 5 days, and she can bank days for later by walking twice in one day. That factors in real life. So I came up with these rules for myself to be in the healthy-eating streak:

1. Allowed: unlimited veggies, 1-2 lbs fruit, beans(1-2 cups/day), whole grains (1 serving/day), nuts & seeds (max 2 oz/day), very limited dried food on occasion (max 2 oz).
2. Not allowed, mostly (see item 9 below): Animal products, refined grains, processed sugars, oils, salt, caffeine, alcohol, chocolate (the caffeine bothers me, unfortunately!).
3. Eat lots of GOMBS: greens, onions, mushrooms, beans/berries, seeds.
4. No Overeating.
5. Limit snacking
6. Limit tea (herbal)
7. Max calories per day: 2000. That's way more than enough for me, but allows for an occasional splurge. Typical calories should be at or below 1500 for me to maintain.
8. Try to eat while sitting down most of the time. Try not to eat during food prep most of the time.
9. To stay on streak, no more than 500 calories of "unhealthy" food allowed in the last 7 days. This is not expected to be used every 7 days! Just on special occasions.

My streak is now 43 days and counting. The only unhealthy food I ate was a spoon of a nut-apple mixture that contained honey--I didn’t know it until later, or I wouldn’t have eaten it (it was supposed to be made with figs).  Overall I was more strict than my own guidelines because I was doing the 6-week plan, so limited to 1 oz seeds per day and 1 cup beans and no dried fruit until the last night (1 small fig).

Here are some of my observations:

1. I feel great. I’ve felt great for about 3 weeks now. I’ve been happier and more alert than I have been for months. I need less sleep.
2. Prior to this, when I overate on Fuhrman allowed foods, especially fruit and nuts, I felt crummy. And they led to food cravings, including SAD (Standard American Diet, i.e., junk food). Conclusion, overeating on even Fuhrman-allowed foods is not healthy, especially fruits, dates, and nuts. For me, Dr. Fuhrman desserts need to be carefully portioned. But I welcome them occasionally!
3. The 6-week plan does a great job resetting your taste preferences. Dr. Fuhrman and others are right: this is enough time to change your habits and preferences. It really does work to do this as close to 100% as you can for a period of time. I’d say it was at around the 30 day mark when the habits and preferences were established. I have no desire for SAD treats that I was craving a few months ago. Now I’m wondering why I was craving them, why would you want that? In other words, now it’s not hard to stay on plan, it’s a preference. I don’t want to spoil my taste buds with too intense sweet because I really enjoy the subtle flavors I taste in vegetables now.
4. My weekly treat was a portion of the smoothies I make for housemate.  Other than that, I don’t eat smoothies. They are a bit too sweet, go down too fast, and leave me wanting more. I prefer my more leisurely eaten chopped salads. They are finely enough chopped that I think I am absorbing plenty of nutrients from them.
5. My average calorie intake over the 6 week period was 1370. It increased a bit over the 6 week period as my activity levels increased. I suspect that 1400-1500 is a good maintenance value for me when exercising regularly. My calorie intake varied with activity levels. This shows I was in touch with true hunger. Also of interest to me was my average protein intake of 58 g per day. That’s about 1 g/kg of body weight for me, sufficient for an endurance athlete but not a strength athlete, according to Dr. Fuhrman’s newsletter #42 (Fueling the vegan athlete). That’s good enough for me because I’m not an athlete, just a person who likes to exercise.
6. My weight dropped a little. I am already thin, though I gained a few lbs after I broke my elbow in January, because my activity levels were low and I wasn’t paying attention to true hunger. I weigh a few lbs more than I did 6 months ago but I think I prefer this weight. It feels right. I am 5’9”, weigh 121.  Now I know what you are thinking--you are too thin!  No, I actually saw Dr. Fuhrman last summer and he said I was fine.  I just naturally do not make a lot of muscle mass which is why I'm not a great athlete, darn it.
7. I need goals and motivation. I posted recently about the excellent books I've been reading on positive psychology and meditation. Sarah Taylor said at last year’s Health Getaway: motivation is a daily practice. I lost my motivation for a while both as a nute and in my work. Fortunately I have both back now, and realize I need to actively work on my motivation. Right now, the streak is a fun game for me.
8. I listen to audiotapes while preparing food (lately on books mentioned above). This is very enjoyable and it also helps me not to eat during food prep because it’s harder to hear the audio when I’m crunching on a carrot.
9. I learned what exercise I really like to do. This was an accidental discovery during my arm rehab. My pre-broken elbow workouts were intense exercise classes that I think wore me out too much. Now I do a gentle and relaxing stretching and dumbbell weight routine in the morning (1 hour), ride my bike to work (1 hour), and do swimming or yoga in the evening (1 hour). I’ve realized that I love these forms of exercise and will give up other things to include this in my daily routine. I might try to add running into the mix. In the summer, weekends will be more biking and kayaking.

So yesterday started my new 6 weeks. What should my goal be this time? I think I will try to get in touch more with hunger and fullness. My secondary goals can be to try to eat mindfully, eat while sitting down and not eating while preparing food—most of the time, (let's go with 51%, heh).

Food = Health

This was a post from Darryl (aka "Nutritarian") from the Fuhrman forums about how changing your diet from the Standard American Diet to Dr. Fuhrman's plan will affect your health:

Here is what one might hope to achieve by really following Dr. Fuhrman's instructions:

First few weeks -- turning the ship around: Initial detoxification, improving cholesterol numbers, lowering of diabetic glucose levels, lowering of high blood pressure, etc. Some health conditions may resolve fairly quickly. Bowels start to work the way they are made to. Ability to taste and enjoy healthy food gradually develops.

Next few months - nutrient saturation: It takes quite a while for the body to readjust its complex physiology, so the entire system continues to work better and better as the months go by. The "healthy glow" develops, as phytochemicals diffuse through the body's nutrient-starved tissues. Detoxification is completed, excess inflammation resolves, immune system becomes stronger and more well-regulated. Weight moves toward ideal. Some kinds of health conditions may gradually resolve during this period.

Longer-term -- transformation: Ideal weight becomes just a normal part of life. As artery damage is gradually repaired, blood pressure works its way lower and lower until reaching extremely healthy levels. Nutritarian food just keeps tasting better and better. Skill for buying and preparing it develops to higher and higher levels. Tastes diversify, as one discovers more and more different wonderful-tasting vegetables, fruits, and legumes. Digestion and elimination become optimal, working exactly the way they are supposed to. Colds become mild and very infrequent. At the cellular level, the body's detoxification and anticancer mechanisms start functioning at maximal levels, gradually lowering (although unfortunately not eliminating) the probability of a cancer outbreak. Cellular damage that can lead to dementia and other premature degeneration later in life stops and perhaps is even reversed.