Diet guru wants more fibre, less fat

Press, 12 July 1980, Page 17

Diet guru wants more fibre, less fat

The Pritikin Program for Diet and Exercise. By Nathan Pritikin. Schwartz, Melbourne, 1980. 401 pp. Indexes. $12.95. (Reviewed by Frank Jepson) This book has been on the best-seller lists in the United States for more than a year. Following publication in Australia in March, it is now a bestseller there. The writer is a nutritional scientists who founded the Longevity Research Institute in Santa Barbara, California, in 1976. There, people pay $4300 to become residential patients. The foreword is written by Denis Burkett, a medical doctor who has carried out extensive nutritional research in East Africa, and has brought attention to the importance of fibre in people’s daily food. He has studied the part attributed to lack of fibre in such cqmmon diseases as large bowel cancer, gallstones, and varicose veins. Add to this the list of Pritikin’s admirers — Peter Sellers, Yehudi Menuhin, Marty Feldman — and we have a diet guru. It is generally considered that 40 per cent of New Zealanders are overweight, and our dietary pattern contains too much animal fat. This makes Pritikin’s proposals particularly important. The programme is set Out

under the following headings: dieting, walking, weight loss, the kitchen, and case histories. Half of the book gives recipes devised by June Roth, an award-winning author of cook books. Coffee, tea, alcohol and tobacco are not permitted. Salt is restricted, but the emphasis throughout is on fat restriction; no icecream, no take-away hamburgers, no steak, sweets, pizza, breakfast cereal, or even apple pie. It is ah unfortunate fact that balanced views on nutrition, such as the contributions from Professor Don Beaven in “The Press,” do not influence the vast majority of people. A member of the Royal College of Physicians committee in Britain, which is examining the role of fibre in diet, said recently “simply telling the facts has very little effect.” Do we want a diet, or merely to enjoy our food and leave nature to look after the results? Most nutritionists in New Zealand want us to have a diet that is significantly lower in fat, sugar and salt, and to add complex carbohydrates. The Pritikin diet could introduce a deficiency in essential fatty acids. The American Heart Association classes this diet as far too severe; our own Heart Foundation has published an excellent guide to diet. Fortunately the Pritikin diet will

only be followed by the highly motivated and self-disciplined who can evaluate this themselves. Michael Turner, director general of the British Nutritional Foundation, says “a blunderbuss approach to implementation of dietary changes is entirely unsuitable.” In the United States the Health and Agriculture Departments of the Government have joined in making a new set of guidelines, “Nutrition and Your Health.” This specifically breaks away from prescribing quantities; instead it emphasises starch and fibre, and drops red meat to fourth or fifth status. Remember that each individual differs in nutritional needs, though fat reduction is essential. Read Pritikin’s book by all means; it has an important message. But in your own interests, Obtain personal medical advice before embarking on this radical dietary change. The author warns in an introduction that the programme wasdesigned primarily for those people who consider themselves reasonably healthy. The author notes: “There is a serious risk for sick people to attempt to solve medical problems without trained supervision.” (Dr Jepson retired recently as Medical Officer of Health in Christchurch.)