Free Fasting and Eating for Health by Joel Fuhrman; Neal D. Barnard

the incidence of most chronic diseases. Millions of lives would be saved from cancer.
    If we look at heart disease alone, more than $150 billion a year is spent on expensive medical procedures that attempt to remedy the effects of our rich diets. Yet we ignore the reality that heart disease can be totally prevented by a low-fat (less than 15 percent of total calories), plant-based diet. The American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society still recommend a diet with 30 percent of calories from fat.
    People are unaware that even 30 percent of calories from fat is an extremely high level when we look at diets consumed throughout human history. Scientific studies show that when this level of fat intake is consumed, there is no improvement in heart disease. On the other hand, it has been shown that at much lower levels of fat intake arterial blockages are easily reversible. When patients who have coronary artery disease are placed on diets containing less than 10 percent of calories from fat, improvement in their condition occurs in a predictable fashion.54
    The ineffective dietary recommendations from most authorities are comparable to telling a smoker with lung disease that he will be taking care of his disease if he cuts back from three packs a day to merely two.
    (Unfortunately, these American institutions are misleading the public by recommending diets with a level of fat that has been documented in the scientific literature to actually promote heart disease and cause cancer.) Instead, our government spends over $20 billion on price supports that benefit the dairy, beef, and veal industry.55 These dollars are given to farmers to artificially reduce the cost of crops used to feed cows and are also used to advertise and keep the prices down on dairy foods, fowl, and meat. Fruits and vegetables grown primarily for human consumption are specifically excluded from USDA price supports. Out of one pocket we pay billions of our tax dollars to support the production of expensive disease-causing foods. Out of the other pocket we pay medical bills that are too high because our population consumes too much of these rich, disease-causing foods.
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    Because of animal agriculture's powerful lobbyists, these price supports are not even considered wasteful by our present and past administrations. Worse than wasteful, by keeping fatty foods artificially cheaper, we actually are paying to make our society sicker and keep our health insurance costs high.
    Most Americans, though aware of the change in nutritional thinking, have not made substantial changes in their food choices or lifestyles. Why? Because most of us are physiologically addicted to food and assume it is difficult to change our diet. We are also confused, uncertain, and have an incomplete picture of how to maintain our health, so we resign ourselves to the way things are. We are unaware of what standards of health are possible for us.
    If you have a chronic illness or medical problem, most likely you have been told there are no special diets that will help. This book will put an end to that outmoded, incorrect, and dangerous position, which denies you the chance to regain your health and regain control of your life. Unfortunately, if you try to improve your diet and make changes following the guidelines you have been given from the typical dietician or physician, you will not get better. These recommendations are almost always too liberal to achieve substantial risk reduction or disease reversal. As you will see as we discuss most of the major health problems in detail in later chapters, aggressive nutritional management of specific medical conditions can mean the difference between wellness and a life of chronic illness, multiple medications, and premature aging and death.
    Vitamin Pills Will Not Give Us a Healthy Population It is true that the American public is deficient in certain essential vitamins and minerals, as well as trace elements. Many people are concerned