Food Over Medicine by Pamela A. Popper, Glen Merzer Page A

enormous amounts of plain junk foods.
    GM: What about sugar and sweets?
    PP: Well, I always tell people that we can’t vilify individual constituents because it’s the pattern that makes the difference, but sugar is just empty calories and is also addictive. I don’t know very many people—I can think of a handful—who can be around sweets without eating them. I personally don’t like those people. I’m very envious of them because if it’s in front of me, I want to eat it. Dr. Neal Barnard, in his book
Breaking the Food Seduction
, writes that there are studies that have shown that the effect of sugar on the dopamine receptors of the brain is very similar to the effect of drugs like heroin and cocaine on those dopamine receptors. Most people don’t understand when they buy this stuff at the store that it has a highly addictive quality and that they’re going to want more and more of it.
    Not only do sweets not provide any nutritive value, and one could argue that they’re destructive to health in terms of elevating blood sugar levels and suppressing immune function, but they displace healthy foods in the diet. If someone eats eight hundred calories’ worth of cookies and brownies in a day, that’s eight hundred calories that aren’t going into sweet potatoes and vegetables and rice and other foods that would actually have some protective value.
    The other thing to remember is that these refined sugary foods elevate triglycerides. And triglycerides are blood fats waiting to cause mischief. Triglycerides and cholesterol will go down when you get rid of all that refined and processed sugar-filled stuff.
    GM: Now, is there anything wrong with buying a box of crackers, whether it’s something like Ritz crackers, or even crackers you might see in a health food store made with whole wheat flour and organic sesame seeds and so forth?
    PP: There’s definitely something wrong with the Ritz crackers. The top ingredients for your regular, store-bought cracker brands, the ones that most people would know about, are sugar, white flour, and some type of fat. This is just absolutely junk food. There’s no nutritive value to it; you don’t want to buy it. When it comes to crackers in a health food store, you can find a few that don’t contain oil. However, any type of processed food like that is going to be calorie-dense. You really don’t want to be filling your diet with calorie-dense food.
    I don’t completely abstain from eating crackers, but they’re not a staple of my diet. I like fat-free hummus; I use it for vegetable wraps, but I also like to eat it as a dip. Now most people would dip crackers in it; I dip mushroom slices, sliced cucumbers, carrots, and things like that in the hummus. They’re much better for you than crackers. If I were having a party this weekend, I might have some crackers, but I’m working alone this weekend, so I’ll be dipping my mushroom slices in the hummus.
    GM: Okay, let’s talk about fatty plant foods. Let’s assume you’re eating these foods in their whole state. Avocado—anything wrong with that?
    PP: Well, there’s nothing wrong with any of these foods for a relatively healthy person. Avocados, nuts, seeds, olives—I love them. What I tell people is that they don’t want to be going out of their way to consume them, though, because they can end up eating a diet that’s quite high in fat with those foods. Our Chef Del is a good example. On a totally vegan diet, he ate himself to 475 pounds.
    GM: What the heck was he eating?
    PP: High-fat plant foods, fried food, baked goods … Del used to eat lots of avocados and almonds by the handful. Now he’s lost half of himself. I want to make that clear; he’s done a great job since he’s been here. So my rule is that I eat these fatty plant foods when they occur in a dish, but I don’t go out of my way to eat them. A restaurant near my house makes black bean wraps and the chef puts slices of avocado in them; I eat that. We