| Food and Degenerative Disease |
Many thousands of different diet recommendations have been made with respect to the problem of preventing or curing degenerative diseases such as cancer, heart disease, and the general loss of well-being with age. While we cannot review or evaluate even those with which we are closely familiar in this limited space, the impending holiday season may be an appropriate time to comment on one.
Most affluent middle-aged or older Americans are at least "healthily'' plump. As we age, our faces become more full and our waistlines more poorly defined. A sedentary lifestyle exacerbates this, but it seems to be characteristic of most people - even those who do significant amounts of physical work.
It has been shown in laboratory rats that lifespan can be increased by about 25% if the rats are fed very well during the first half of life -but underfed during the latter half of life.
The experiments on cancer and nutrition in mice that my coworkers and I carried out as described in
Access to Energy 25-9, May 1998 - in which the growth rate of cancer was reduced 20-fold by means of diet alone - were carried out at the suggestion of Arnold and Edie Mae Hunsberger. Mr. Hunsberger was the founder and President of U. S. Elevator Corporation. They suggested we try a diet of raw fruits and vegetables on which they had been living. This diet sharply reduced the growth rate of cancer - and it had another effect as well.Since it is virtually impossible to obtain a normal intake of calories from fruits and vegetables, which are mostly fiber and water, people who live on this diet have markedly restricted nutrient intakes. Their diet is roughly equivalent to filling your plate with about half the amount you would ordinarily eat - and eating that and no more.
In photos of the Hunsbergers taken before they adopted this diet, they are seen to be typical, slightly plump, affluent Americans. After they adopted this diet, however, they became wiry, energetic, sparkling, bouncy people of a sort rarely seen in the 50s age group. Although Mrs. Hunsberger is dead as the result of an accident, Arnold Hunsberger continues this diet today and - in his 70s - is still a bouncy, energetic, wiry, unusually intelligent and productive man.
This is merely an anecdote, but it illustrates a point that, on the basis of many bits of knowledge I have gathered, is useful. Each of us (at least those over 40 years of age) would be better off if our weight were at or (better) a little below our weight when we were 18 years old.
Most
Access to Energy readers will not try pure raw fruit and vegetable diets - at least not until cancer or some other problem scares them into self-experimentation. Most, however, can perform a simpler experiment. As a Christmas gift to those who are willing (and in hopes that this will not dampen your holiday), I suggest the following:For a period of one month, fill your plate with about half to two-thirds the amount that you usually eat. Eat that amount only and then leave the table. Do your best not to compensate with between meal snacks. (Two meals a day is best, but I know most of you are accustomed to three.) If you become too hungry with this, eat more, but you should at least try to leave each meal a little hungry.
You will likely experience an immediate and sharp improvement in your energy and sense of well-being - except that you may be hungry during part of each day. Eventually the hunger will lessen, but the improved health will probably continue.
Motivated by this sense of well-being - which we hope will outweigh the concomitant sense of hunger - it is to be hoped that you will continue in this way until your face and midline return to the approximate dimensions of youth.
The suggestion here is not that any of our readers are "overweight'' by the usual standards. Instead, we think that the usual standards are too high for optimum health. Like the rats, we should be underfed during the second half of life.
Mr. Hunsberger would confirm this, but he would also add that raw fruits and vegetables are an especially nutritious way to diet. In this, he is likely to be right - but, if one cannot give up normal food, it is at least best to eat less of it.