Years ago, I started tracking the CDC's (Center for Disease Control) now popular obesity tracking system. It's pretty impressive, (not a in a good) way, to see what's actually happening with the weight of the nation in the US on a state by state basis, with respect to obesity, but even more specifically, fruit and vegetable consumption, which can predict obesity.

Here is an example of one of the graphics I'd been using up until 2010.

The Standard American Diet, is in a Sad State. As we are consuming less fruits and vegetables than we were a decade ago, and a decade ago we were not even close to consuming enough, hence the dramatic increase in obesity rates.

Here's the same chart in 2009.

First, let's establish one thing that is true. The primary reason this growth in obesity is happening, is because as a population we are eating nutrient poor diets, that are high in unhealthy protein, fat, cholesterol, hormones, refined and added salt, oil, sugar, chemicals etc. If you are a human being, let alone an animal (who have the same response); if you are going to eat a diet based on these foods, you are going to get fat and sick. Period. If you are genetic wonder, you may not get fat, but you will get sick and live a shorter life. Period.

What's happening is perfectly normal, given the circumstances. If the majority of your diet is not from leafy and green vegetables, fruits, legumes and beans, whole gains, starchy vegetables, nuts and seeds, and rather from nutrient poor foods, it's virtually predictable to figure out what will happen; just as predictable as what will happen if you consume up to 90% or more plant-based nutrient rich foods. Disease, or Health, what's it going to be?

Here's the deal, in my straight shootin' kind of way. I don't know any other way to be, when it comes to this since we're not playing around with your health. We like to have fun, but if we make too much light of this situation, you may just relegate dietary change to the sort of social dialogue "fat cats" have about their personal trainers. As if it was a comical, light matter... "oh, Johnny's got to lose a few pounds". It's not; eating a nutrient poor diet makes you fat, sick and kills you, leaves your wife or husband spousless, and your kids orphaned and costs the rest of a big-time dollars.

You may think it's a social status thing that you are eating steaks and all the junk food you can shovel in, but you are confusing this with the 1980's, before we all figured out that eating nutrient poor foods like this is crippling the nation and the environment for all of us, including you for that matter.

If you are overweight, you are not eating "rich", you are eating poor, you are eating a second class diet, maybe even a third class diet rich in calories, and low in nutrients. The kind of diet, mostly poor people eat, even though they don't have to either! The hundreds of fruits and vegetables (more foods than in any other category other than refined junk), are abundant almost everywhere.

So don't get too caught up in how rich a diet you are eating, or that you can afford such calorie-rich foods, because you are on the wrong side of rich, and it's likely you are on a downward spiral towards death, as shown in the graphic above. These graphics are not based on poor states versus rich states. This is all the states and wealthy people are leading the way.

Just watch Weight of the Nation, to see what happens when people of any economic profile eat calorie-rich food and not nutrient-rich food.

According to Michael Greger MD's video on the SAD States: Standard American Diet State by State Comparison, The Standard American Diet is worsening and falling far from the CDC goals for minimal fruit and vegetable intake, with some states doing worse than others.

What was the CDC's goal for vegetable and fruit consumption?

- Fruits > 2 each day
- Vegetables > 3 each day

Not one state even hit the CDC's goals of 2 fruits a day, by 50%!.
Folks, we're not talking about some special diet here; we are talking about your natural diet. The one you should have been born into. Not one state hit a third of the recommended 3 servings of vegetable either. This is crazy!

The CDC's original goal was to get each state (up to 75% of each states population), eating more than >2 fruits and >3vegetables, each day and we are not even close. Besides New Englander's consumption of fruit, neither goal was hit, by even 25%.

The only state that hit one of the goals, was Idaho. And that probably had something to do with Potato's.

What has to change is our whole view on this matter. It's not whether you are going to continue eating the Standard American Diet with 5 servings of fruits and vegetables. It's whether or not you are going to eat even 5 Standard American Diet foods at all!

Your diet should be upwards of 30-60% in total, coming from Fruits and vegetables, with the bulk of the rest, short of maybe 10% or less, all coming from plant foods, also including, beans and legumes, whole grains, nuts and seeds etc.

Up to 90% of the foods you eat, should be coming from natural plant foods, else you are assured a spot on the obesity tracker in your state and not fulfilling your longevity potential as a human being. And that's why nutrientrich.com is dedicated to helping people who are eating nutrient-poor diets make the Switch to a nutrient-rich healthy eating style they can call their own, guided by the More Plant-Based Nutrient-Rich® Approach.

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Instead of depriving yourself and only eating small portions of high-calorie foods that aren’t going to give you the nutrients that you need , and will leave you feeling hungry, eating nutrient-dense, appropriate-calorie foods will keep you satisfied at a much lower calorie count. Believe it or not, you’ll be able to feel satisfied on anywhere from 1000 to 2000 calories per day, as opposed to the usual 1600 to 3000.

What’s the trick?

Well, there’s no big mystery to the equation. You’ll be receiving many more nutrients for each calorie that you intake, so what you eat will actually count and fill you up. The Chinese population eats more calories than Americans do, but they’re actually 25% thinner. This is simply due to the fact that the average American diet is made up of at least 37% of calories that come from fat, as well as excess amounts of refined sugar and carbohydrates.

High fat and high sugar can totally destroy your metabolism, leading to long-term weight gain… no matter how many calories you’re eating. Yikes!

Or maybe you’re one of those people who has tried diet after diet, hoping to lose those last 20 pounds, without any visible results. All hope is not lost for you, my friend. You can tweak your taste buds with nutrient-rich healthy eating and learn how to be satisfied with fewer calories, on a permanent basis.

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health have set dietary guidelines for those hoping to reach their goal weight. These guidelines state that women should eat less than 1200 calories per day, and men should eat less than 1600.

After studying a number of top diets in-depth, it has been found that nutrient-rich healthy eating is the only way to meet these National Institutes of Health calorie requirements, while still getting the proper fiber and nutrients that you need each and every day. Even some of the sample menus published by the National Institutes of Health for 1200 and 1600 calorie plans don’t meet the recommended daily values set in place by the government.

Why is that? The sample diet plans simply aren’t nutrient-rich enough. Most of the food choices on the diet plans are surprisingly low in important nutrients, like vitamin K, chromium, folate, and magnesium, which can be found in a 90% plant-based diet.

But there’s no need to worry about your calorie count when you’re eating nutrient rich. Eating your way up to 90% or more plant-based nutrient-rich foods doesn’t mean that you’re on a diet. And, you don’t even have to become a vegan or vegetarian, since a vegetarian diet doesn’t necessarily guarantee good health.

People who don’t eat animal products, but continue to gorge on pasta, bread, bagels, and other refined carbohydrates may be eating low-fat, but they’re definitely not getting enough vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals to protect their health. Refined grains are dramatically low in fiber, so they also won’t help you to feel full after eating them. This again leads us back to the cycle of constant overeating due to a lack of nutrient-dense foods that are low in calories, causing your body to naturally feel full after a meal.

To spell it out for you, eating a strict vegan or vegetarian diet is not always the same as eating a 90% or more plant-based nutrient-rich diet. A vegetarian may eat a diet made up primarily of refined grains and processed health food products, yet they may still be missing out on valuable fruits, vegetables, and beans to balance their nutrition. But let’s not forget about the fact that vegetarians in the US have significantly lower cholesterol rates because they are not eating animal products. This reduces the risk of cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity, causing them to live longer. So, whether or not you are a vegetarian, you can receive many of the same benefits by eating 90% or more plant-based nutrient-rich and cutting back dramatically on the animal products that you eat.

By the way, with all the talk on global warming – imagine losing weight the nutrient-rich way, and reducing the environmental impact of the foods you eat. According to http://www.farmusa.org/,

a diet full of animal products is not only responsible for disease, but it requires 10 to 20 times as much land as a plant-based diet. More than half of the soybeans and grains in the world are fed to animals, resulting in a serious food waste. To give you a better idea, if meat consumption in the US dropped by even 10%, it would free up enough food sources to feed millions of starving populations in the world.

Animal agriculture has also caused mass devastation by cutting down forests for cattle pastures. Animal feed crops have a constant need for irrigation, using up 80% of all water available for human consumption and causing serious water shortages all over the world.

Eat the nutrient-rich way – it is good for you and for the planet!

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Whether or not to eat "organic" is a very popular question. Of course, all produce foods are organic, if they weren't they wouldn't grow. It's not like a potato is "man made". It's still organic and still healthy promoting and nutrient rich. But when a food is grown organically, meaning without pesticides and herbicides and according to natural soil cycling, you get a potato that is not only more nutrient-rich, but one that is has the ability to sprout and promote nutrient rich soil, and sustainability and turnover. Simply put, organic is significantly healthier.

The moral of the story is to eat organic foods as often as you can, and maybe this video will inspire that trend for you.

Enjoy it! 

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The 10 Healthiest Foods on the Planet.

What do you think?

1. Lemons,
2. Broccoli
3. Dark Chocolate
4. Potato
5. Salmon
6. Walnuts
7. Avacado
8. Garlic
9. Spinach
10. Beans

Well, to be sure, we'd have to look at the nutrient density of these foods to see of these are THE 10 healthiest foods on the planet, but I know from experience they are not.

Don't get me wrong, these are 10 very nutrient rich foods, but they are ALL not the healthiest foods on the planet. They are among them; and for the record, a nutrient rich food is never determined by whether or not a food is rich in one nutrient; it is determined by it's nutrient profile. Which, is as much about what it contains as it is about what it does not contain.

These are the top 10 and actually the top 30 super foods.

Keep in mind when you see charts like this, that you have to understand the data a claim like this is based on to know if they are really "the healthiest foods on the planet".
In this case, do notice that 80-90% of these foods are all plant based.

There is a reason why Yahoo has this article on the their homepage, people want to know not only the worlds healthiest foods, but the most successful way to eat!

Switch to Rich: The Nutrient Rich Way to Eat. 

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"Nutrient-Rich" Foods

I keep hearing about "nutrient-rich" foods. Do you have any ideas on how I could incorporate more into my diet?

Choosing more nutrient-rich (or "nutrient-dense") foods is how you can get more bang for the buck -- or really, more bounce for the ounce -- from the foods you eat from every good group.

Calorie for calorie, these foods provide a rich amount of nutrients (such as vitamins and minerals) and contain few, if any, saturated fats, trans fats and added sugars. For example, a cup of 1 percent milk contains 100 calories and offers a wide variety of nutrients: calcium, vitamin D, vitamin A, riboflavin and phosphorus, and also a good amount of protein, vitamin B12 and selenium. Compare that to a cup of non-diet soft drink, which has about the same number of calories but no nutrients to speak of.

Read more:

nutrientrich.com:

The problem with the referenced article is that it IS a "Trojan Horse". Do you have that picture in your mind? Enemy soldiers hid in a Trojan Horse that was given as a gift to the King of Troy. He accepted it and was then attacked from the inside when the enemy soldiers disembarked the horse.

Well, it's not different with the definition for nutrient rich foods that has been offered up by the Naturally Nutrient Rich Coalition and the new "MyPyramid", which promote steps to a healthier you.

Note: It's clear that you were to follow these steps as compared to the standard American diet (SAD and lifestyle, you will probably be a great deal healthier. That's not in dispute with this commentary. I applaud Government actions on this front. Just remember that the government is about maintaining a healthy economy and political interests as a priority over your health, which is why you need to beware of how you define nutrient rich or "nutrient dense" foods.

In the case of the new pyramid it's a Trojan Horse of nutrient poor foods, that are scientifically substantiated to clog your arteries, promote cancer, make it harder to stabilize your weight, speed up aging, and shorten longevity. The reference is to substantial intake of animal products and refined foods (grains in particular).

Originally there were the four food groups, which are now old. People got fat, eating foods high in animal products and refined grains at the base of the diet. Then came the new term "Nutrient Rich" or nutrient dense" which naturally gave rise to a plant-based pyramid because plant foods are the only foods that are actually nutrient rich and don't contain those food factors that you don't need from dietary sources.

Yet here's what happened. The same four food groups are now being marketed as "nutrient rich", because of useful but incomplete definition of nutrient rich foods. Animal products and refined foods are rich in some nutrients and marketed as such, but in fact they are nutrient poor being marketed in a nutrient rich wrapper.

See The Food Class System.

Just because a food is rich in some nutrients, 1 or more; does not make it a nutrient rich food. The definition of a Nutrient Rich Foods is far broader and way more powerful.

The effects of how you define nutrient rich foods are nothing short of crucial!

Here is a working definition for Nutrient Rich Foods.

How you incorporate nutrient rich foods into your diet and make the transition successfully, is what The Nutrient Rich Way is all about. The true way to eat to each nutrient rich foods is very different from what most people are learning.

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No one was disappointed!

FORKS OVER KNIVES examines the profound claim that most, if not all, of the so-called “diseases of affluence” that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting our present menu of animal-based and processed (refined) foods. The major storyline in the film traces the personal journeys of a pair of pioneering yet under-appreciated researchers, Dr. T. Colin Campbell and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn. Read More...

I should emphasize the under-appreciation for these two research and medical professionals and down right fine people. The reason is simple; what they are saying is true but just not good for the "HUGE inter-connected, money-driven “Med-Pharma-USDA-Academia-Food-Insurance-Media system” which my new friend and associate Jim Hicks, talks about in his new book Healthy Eating, Healthy World. His research indicates that 70 to 80% of our health care dollars ($2 trillion of them) are driven by what we eat — our toxic western diet. (You can read about all of the above in Chapter 8 of his book.)

Personally, I have a great deal of experience with both Dr's having assembled The Top 12 Findings of The China Study with the Campbells (Father and Son) who wrote this hugely successful book revealing the relationship between diet (lifestyle) weight loss and long term health, and having learned from and promoted Dr. Esselstyn's work for years. He is the author of Preventing and Reversing Heart Disease and a long time senior medical officer at The Cleveland Clinic.

These gentleman are major players in the plant based food movement now in the later half of their careers, both of which ironically began promoting or serving the effects of animal based diets. They were major players in their fields even before the switch to plant based nutrient rich foods began and made the switch themselves when they realized that animal based diets also rich in refined and process foods, causes disease.

These days, T Colin Campbell PhD and Caldwell Esselstyn MD have become "very" well known as President Clinton recently mentioned their names in a viral CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer, as he explained his own transition to a plant based diet to finally resolve his own heart disease.

The mass movement to whole foods, plant based, nutrient rich diets, is driven by one simple reality,'calorie rich / nutrient poor foods cause "lifestyle induced" diseases like heart disease and shorten your life plan. That is the main reason why the switch to a diet based predominantly on nutrient rich foods is on for so many people.

While at the event, I met up with Rip Esselstyn, son of Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, who is now becoming quite well known as the author of the Engine 2 Diet, a plant based, or should I say "plant strong" diet, that he put together while working in an Austin, TX fire department that helped his fellow firefighters lose weight, lower their cholesterol, and prevent disease. A former professional IronMan athlete, Rip has been eating a plant based diet for over 25 years now (even while training as an athlete) and had some amazing information to share.

He said "I switched to plant based diet so that I could get an performance edge".

Don't believe the hype when people tell you, you should be running your body on nutrient poor animal protein and saturated fat with a side dish of nutrient rich vegetables anymore, when a true nutrient rich diet is the way to go.

I also caught up with with Dr Pam Popper of The Wellness Forum, in Columbus Ohio; she and Rip Esselstyn were conducting a plant strong Education Immersion at Whole Foods. We talked about having never seen the switch to plant based nutrient rich foods be so strong, and how the movement is happening in an accelerated fashion now in part because of movies like Forks Over Knives. A movie like this is all the more powerful now having decades of amazing data and insights, like those from Dr's Esselstyn and Campbell's work, to convey in the cinema. Gone are the days of passion and principle alone; today, plant based diets are proven with sound science.

Look for a location near you and watch this movie!

Forks Over Knives is rich in incredible insights about healthy eating and it will inspire you when you see how everyday people right off the street are making incredible transformations in their health, weight and outlook because they are no longer eating foods that cause disease and are learning how to make the switch to eating nutrient rich healthy foods.

You too will be shocked and awed by how incredibly tasty nutrient rich foods really are, and wonder why you haven't been eating plant based nutrient Rich, your entire life!

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