Dr. Joel Fuhrman

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. is a board-certified family physician, New York Times best-selling author and nutritional researcher who specializes in preventing and reversing disease through nutritional and natural methods. Dr. Fuhrman is an internationally recognized expert on nutrition and natural healing, and has appeared on hundreds of radio and television shows including The Dr. Oz Show, The Today Show, Good Morning America, and Live with Kelly and Michael. Dr. Fuhrman’s own hugely successful PBS television shows, 3 Steps to Incredible Health and Dr. Fuhrman’s Immunity Solution, and his latest show, End Dieting Forever, bring nutritional science to homes all across America.

Dr. Fuhrman’s #1 New York Times best-selling book, Eat to Live, originally published in 2003 (Little Brown) has sold over 1,000,000 copies and has been published in multiple foreign language editions. In October 2012, Super Immunity (HarperOne) reached the New York Times best seller’s list and in January 2013, The End of Diabetes (HarperOne) became his third New York Times best seller. Dr. Fuhrman’s most recent books, The Eat to Live Cookbook (Harper One) reached #1 on the New York Times best sellers list during its debut week in October 2013 and The End of Dieting (HarperOne), released in March 2014, was #2 on the list for its debut. In addition, Dr. Fuhrman has written several other popular books on nutritional science which include: Eat for Health (Gift of Health Press), Disease Proof Your Child (St. Martin’s Griffin), Fasting and Eating for Health (St. Martin’s Griffin) and the Dr. Fuhrman’s Nutritarian Handbook and ANDI Food Scoring Guide (Gift of Health Press).

But that isn’t the whole story…

As with so many of us in this industry the key scene in a health-and-fitness guru’s biography is almost always the “Eureka!” moment that launches him from obscurity to self-help superstardom and this is Joel’s story.

Published on Men’s Journal…. Dr. Joel Fuhrman, whose radical ideas on nutrition have made him one of the most influential diet doctors in America today, followed, as he usually does, a different path. Fuhrman was already famous as a world-class pairs figure skater, competing on the same amateur circuit as Dorothy Hamill and other future Olympic medalists, when, in 1973, at age 20, he suffered a life-changing heel injury.

“I couldn’t take any impact on it, couldn’t jump and land on it,” Fuhrman says. “I couldn’t walk for almost a year.” We’re seated in his offices in a bland corporate park in exurban New Jersey, a suite that looks more like someplace to sign papers for a mortgage refinancing than the global headquarters of a health revolution. At 58, Fuhrman is still in excellent shape, a point that he illustrates by pausing midsentence to lift his shirt, flash his well-defined abs, and frog-jump up and down off his desk, an apple in each hand. His default facial expression is a smirk that implies he possesses an important secret, which he may. With a little more hair, he could pass for 15 years younger.

When the U.S. Olympic Committee’s orthopedist urged Fuhrman to undergo an experimental surgical procedure for his heel, Fuhrman refused. He sought treatment instead from Herbert Shelton, a San Antonio naturopath who specialized in irregular cures. Fuhrman, a fit 150 pounds, was put on a regimen of only water for 46 days. “They nearly killed me,” he says. “I fasted down to 88 pounds.” His heel trouble vanished, but so did most of his muscle, and he was unable to regain top form in time for the 1976 Olympics.

A less-farsighted man might have sued Shelton for malpractice. Fuhrman – who’d watched his father use natural methods to rid himself of obesity, osteoarthritis, and back pain – saw an opportunity for a second act away from the ice rink. He earned a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in nutritional medicine, and, in 1995, published the alt-medicine manifesto ‘Fasting and Eating for Health.’ The book laid out the unorthodox, roughage-heavy rules for maximizing wellness that Fuhrman has since refined and expanded upon for an ever-widening audience. In June, the revised edition of his best-known work, ‘Eat to Live,’ hit number one on the ‘New York Times’ bestseller list.

Judging by its cheery, colorful cover, which promises “Lose 20 Lbs. or More in 6 Weeks” and bears a ringing endorsement from celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz (“A medical breakthrough….There is no question in my mind that it will work for you”), ‘Eat to Live’ ought to be a typical diet book. A reader who cracks it open expecting WebMD-style advice about counting calories and taking the stairs more often might be surprised to learn that the author preaches something closer to fruitarianism or Christian Science than to conventional medical wisdom. In Fuhrman’s world, the number of calories one consumes is far less important than the types of food he or she ingests. Low-carb, high-protein diets are not only unhealthy, but they will also almost certainly hasten one’s death from an unpleasant disease. Olive oil should be avoided, and the Mediterranean diet is practically a sham. A slow metabolism is preferable to a fast one. “Why would you want to speed up your metabolic rate?” he asked me, throwing his hands up in disbelief. “You’re aging yourself!”

Fuhrman’s number-one predictor of whether someone will get cancer isn’t family history; it’s what that person puts in his mouth. “Your genes play a very small role,” he says. “And nutrition has the power to overwhelm genetics. The medical profession and the masses have absolved themselves of all responsibility. They think drugs are the answer to everything.”

Fuhrman isn’t a crunchy holistic thinker. He’s a data-analysis guy. He speaks in a combative tone underscored by a medium-thick New York accent and sketches little charts and diagrams to
illustrate important points. Fuhrman says he has reviewed 20,000 journal articles on nutrition, culling the most important information from each. Out of this collected wisdom, tested on thousands of patients over the years, he has devised a simple formula: H=N/C, or health equals nutrition divided by calories. It is the foundation of Fuhrman’s proprietary eating system, which he calls nutritarianism. One of the core tenets of nutritarianism is that everyone should eat at least one pound of raw vegetables and another pound of cooked ones each day, the equivalent of a throw-pillow-size bag of spinach and a very large bowl of steamed broccoli. Follow his advice, Fuhrman promises, and you should stay healthy until at least the age of 95.

Nutritarianism is part of a growing school of research-based dietary thinking that insists that, in terms of wellness, you really are what you eat. Call it plant-based libertarianism. The U.S. has the world’s highest healthcare costs – $2.7 trillion in 2011 – while consistently scoring lowest among developed nations for quality of care. Practitioners of plant-based libertarianism believe that every person needs to take full responsibility for his or her own health. This means adopting a wellness-focused diet, mostly vegan.

Comprehensive improvements in diet have long been shown to reverse, slow, or prevent what are called “diseases of affluence,” largely self-inflicted maladies like obesity, coronary heart disease, stroke, and type-2 diabetes. More recent research suggests that such dietary improvements also combat Alzheimer’s and cancer. This movement shares some of the life-extension dogma of the calorie-restriction crowd and a little of the anti-agribusiness, eat-local moralism of writers like Michael Pollan (‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma‘) and films like ‘Food, Inc.‘ Its primary concern, however, is wresting control of America’s health back from the insurance and drug companies and returning it to the hands of citizens. As Fuhrman puts it in ‘Eat to Live,’ “only you, not your physician, must take responsibility.”

“In the future, it’s going to become more and more impossible for the economy to support how expensive medical care is and the number of sick people we have,” Fuhrman says. “Why don’t we just get our population healthier so we don’t need medical care?”

“If you want ideal health, you need to overcompensate and eat an excellent diet,” Fuhrman says. He estimates that if all Americans were to adopt a nutritarian diet, “the immediate impact is that cancer rates might decrease by half. But the long-term impact, over generations….” He picks up a pencil and draws a downward-sloping line. “If we get kids eating right, we could decrease cancer rates by 90 percent.”

If you’ve set foot in a Whole Foods, you may have noticed that the fruits, vegetables, and dairy products are labeled with an ANDI (Aggregate Nutrient Density Index) score, a number calculated with Fuhrman’s H=N/C formula. (Leafy greens, like kale, low in calories and packed with phytochemicals, score a perfect 1,000.) “In my 31 years at Whole Foods, these scores are one of the biggest successes we’ve had,” says Margaret Wittenberg, the company’s global VP of quality standards and public affairs. “There’s times we’ve had stores run out of kale.” Fuhrman also recommends large quantities of onions, garlic, berries, and mushrooms, all of which he credits with anticancer properties. “Women who ate mushrooms in China had a 64 percent lower incidence of breast cancer,” he says, citing a recent study. “That should’ve been on the front page of the New York Times.”

Micronutrients, Fuhrman contends, are also one of the unacknowledged keys to understanding the American obesity epidemic. Americans get less than five percent of their calories from unprocessed fruits and vegetables that aren’t white potatoes; 62 percent of our calories comes from nutrient-poor processed foods that are usually loaded with carbohydrates. Fuhrman believes that we overeat these foods not only for the dopamine rush they supply but also in a futile attempt to make up for a micronutrient deficit. The more junk we consume, the more toxins, like free radicals, amass in our tissues. “We become addicted to this toxicity buildup like it was cocaine or nicotine,” Fuhrman says. “When we try to stop eating, we get withdrawal symptoms.” These include the gnawing sensation in the stomach, irritability, and light-headedness that 99.9 percent of us would identify as hunger.

“We know that cancer is a preventable disease that requires changing lifestyle,” says Bharat Aggarwal, a professor of experimental therapeutics at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. “No matter which cancer you pick, they’ve found out at least 200 to 500 genes have gone wrong. That means 200 to 500 pathways. The drug industry knows how to target only one pathway at a time. Natural products hit multiple pathways, so they slow down the progression of the disease.”

Fuhrman is flabbergasted at the amount of money going into cancer-cure research. “We’re not going to find a magic cure for cancer,” he says. “We’ve got to prevent it.”

Micronutrients, in his opinion, are “the fuel that turns on our body’s anticancer defenses.” Animal protein, on the other hand, raises levels of IGF-1, a hormone that stimulates growth in children but promotes tumor development in adults. Dr. Luigi Fontana, who conducted a multiyear study on long-term calorie restriction, observed a correlation between protein consumption and IGF-1 levels. “There’s a perception that you can eat as much protein as you want,” Fontana says, “and it’s safe and healthy. Our data suggests that probably this is not correct.”

The Fuhrman Plan: How to Eat to Live

The regimen: The cornerstone of Fuhrman’s Eat to Live plan is a six-week starter phase during which a person adopts his nutritarian diet. The first month, Fuhrman promises, the average person will lose 15 pounds by expunging his diet of animal products (including dairy), oils, added salt, caffeine, fruit juices, alcohol, potatoes, and all refined carbohydrates. One to two servings of egg or fish per week are allowed, provided no more than 10 percent of calories come from protein. (On a per-calorie basis, Fuhrman says, broccoli has double the protein of steak.) You are permitted to eat as many vegetables, fresh fruits, and beans as desired. Overeating, Fuhrman says, results from poor eating habits, which leave the body starved for nutrients. “Completely rethink your idea of what a portion is: Make it huge,” he writes. That means at least one pound of raw vegetables a day, plus a pound of cooked; four fresh fruits; and a cup of beans. Limited amounts of raw nuts, seeds, whole grains, and avocado are allowed. No calorie counting is required. No snacks are permitted.

The benefits: What can a budding nutritarian expect in return for these lifestyle changes? Fuhrman promises improved sleep, increased immunity, and more energy. Ninety percent of type 2 diabetes patients can leave insulin within a month, he says; 80 percent of headache sufferers – including those with migraines – recover without medication. The price of admission to this natural-health nirvana is several days of mild discomfort (headaches, light-headedness, hunger) as the body detoxifies from its habit of indulging every craving with food.