Heart Health Fuhrman Ornish

Jeff Novick on the McDougall website says something similar. You can use the search on this website to find Jeff's comments I believe. Fuhrman also recommends the vita mix which is powerful enough to toss tree limbs into and end up with a smoothie.

I saw some recipes for some smoothies in Fuhrman's book and wondered why you just can't eat the ingredients instead of tossing them into the vita mix. Unlike juicing which requires a ton of fruits and vegetables just to get one glass of juice, the smoothie retains all of the ingredients, albeit, a lot smoother.

Dolores

Awww, I don't know if Essy is right on this one or not. Seems to me he may be underestimating the capacity of our bodies to extract nutrients from food, in whatever form.

Hi Hanawaiman6358,

Good question about smoothies. Most of the general public makes smoothies out of yogurt and fruit. This would not be a smoothie that we would advocate at all.

Smoothies that Fuhrman advocates are also called blended salads. The purpose is to provide a delicious way to consume more veggies. Enough fruit is included to make it palatable. Some nuts or seeds are included to increase absorption, and for the health benefits of nuts and seeds. But the main purpose is to eat more veggies.

So, sure, if the smoothie is mostly or all fruit, and tastes like a milk shake, I agree with the objections you copied.

Best regards, EngineerGuy

Smoothies are how I went from carnivore to almost vegan. I had a heart attack a couple years ago because of bad lifestyle choices. My diet was meat, dairy, sugar"026..and very little vegetables and fruits. The only vegetables I ate were french fries and corn also the little bits if spinage that would float in wedding soup, that was it nothing else as far as vegetables are concerned.

A year after the heart attack I entered the Dr Dean Ornish program and it has since radically changed my life and my family's life. My high blood pressure is gone the diabetes is gone and have lost 85lbs so far.

I had to figure a way to get veggies in me since plant based eating is ¼ the program. In come smoothies at first they had a high fruit content to cover up the vegetable taste but slowly my pallet changed and I was able to change the ratio, more veg less fruit. Now I make what I call a "chunky" the fruit is blended smooth but the veggies are left chunky. The reason for this was in a movie I saw Processed People The Documentary. We are meant to eat our food not drink it, salvia the first step in digestion then the molars and our really long intestines to extract every bit of nutrition out of our food. So with my morning chunky I get too eat my spinage kale and carrots along with the ¼ cup of rolled oats and was it down with banana, strawberry and almond milk.

Because of Christ

Gregg

Hi Greg,

Thanks for the great post. And, congratulations on your great successes !! You are a champ !

Best regards, EngineerGuy