“What do you think of “undereating”?

“Dr. Gabriel Cousens writes, “The most important single rule in nutrition is undereat!" He continues “This rule takes precedence over all other dietary advice… In experiments with animals, the undereaters 'in general, were more youthful, vigorous, and energetic, when compared to normals, and showed minimal to no chronic degenerative diseases.'”

ANSWER: First of all, let's define OVER-eating. I think pretty much agrees that overeating is eating beyond one's needs. So using the same definition, UNDER-eating just means eating below one's needs.

Is that good? How could eating less food than what the body needs be healthy?

In fact, it is not.

What these authors mean when they talk about “undereating” as being a healthy practice, they simply refer to eating less concentrated and refined food. It doesn't mean eating less fruits and vegetables or restricting oneself on the quantity of fruits and vegetables eaten.

Most of the experiments that concluded that undereating increases lifespan were done on laboratory animals. The wrong conclusion of these studies is that eating less of EVERYTHING is somehow good for health.

If you're a lab mouse and you're being fed the kind of diet that lab mice get, then you're probably going to live longer on half of the stuff!

If you're a human on a standard American diet then you're also probably going to live a lot longer if you just cut the quantities of food in half.

However, if most of what you eat is fruits and vegetables, then you'll need to eat MORE. Why? Because fruits and vegetables are not very concentrated in calories, but they are concentrated in nutrients. So to get enough energy you eat more food, but at the same time get more nutrients.

This concept is called “nutrient density.” It just means that it's healthier to eat foods that give you more nutrients per calorie “dollar.” So 1000 calories of fruits and vegetables are going to give you a lot more nutrients than 1000 calories of bread and meat.

With whole fruits and vegetables, it would be very hard to overeat, since those foods are nutrient-dense. However, it's quite common to UNDEREAT and thus be hungry all the time, lose too much weight, and so on. This kind of under-eating is certainly not a good thing.

But a standard diet is so toxic and concentrated that just by reducing the amount of food you eat you are certain to improve your health.

ON FRUGAL EATING

“Your best-kept secret from last issue was very interesting. But I keep thinking that the greatest health secret is the one exposed by Cornaro: eat and drink as little as possible. Cornaro consumed one liter of liquid per day and one pound of food. He ate of everything (eggs, meat, etc.). But the principle of frugality seems to be very important to me, even of prime importance. What do you think?”

ANSWER: Regarding frugality, it helps those who have an unhealthy diet. The consequences of the traditional diet lessen when one practices frugal eating. They can then live longer and in good health. But someone eating mostly fruits and vegetables will need to eat much more. Those foods are not concentrated, so we need to eat more to fulfill our needs. If we try to restrict ourselves, we may well fall into worse mistakes. Not eating enough is a common mistake of people who attempt to follow a raw diet. It's important to eat enough for our energy needs. But with a regular diet, I agree that frugal eating helps.