Eat
More, Weigh Less
Founded in 1985, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) is a nonprofit organization that promotes preventive medicine, conducts clinical research, and encourages higher standards for ethics and effectiveness in research. PCRM resources help both medical professionals and laypeople put powerful preventive medicine to work. The leading killers in the Western world—heart disease, cancer, and strokes—can often be prevented and even treated with dietary and lifestyle measures. Explore nutrition’s role in combating specific illnesses and ensuring good health with these informative books from PCRM.
Healthy
Eating for Life for Children by Amy Lanou, Ph.D.
Nourishing growing children is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The foods
we eat during pregnancy affect not only our child’s development,
but his or her health later in life. And the preferences that babies learn
early on will influence which foods they pull from the refrigerator as
teenagers or pick from a menu in adulthood.
Children who learn to enjoy healthy foods have a tremendous asset. The
right foods can help them stay slim and healthy, strengthen their immunity,
reduce the risk of health problems as they age, and even boost their learning
ability. It’s easier than many of us might imagine. Healthy cooking
and eating will soon be second nature for the entire family.
Author Information
Amy Joy Lanou, Ph.D., is director of the nutrition department at the PCRM,
overseeing PCRM’s Cancer Project, conducting clinical research,
working with cancer foundations, and promoting a vegetarian diet among
policymakers, dietitians, and researchers.
Healthy
Eating for Life for Women by Kristine Kieswer
Until now, to battle headaches, arthritis, or menstrual cramps, many women
have needed fistfuls of over-the-counter remedies. Menopause has meant
lifelong dependence on prescription hormones. Preventing cancer has meant
yearly mammograms and precious little else. These approaches are certainly
useful, but they are also expensive, riddled with side effects, and, far
too often, simply inadequate.
Through simple diet changes, headaches can become a thing of the past.
Menopausal symptoms may never even start. And women can gain new power
over the most common and problematic forms of cancer. Everything from
improving fertility to erasing the signs of aging to managing osteoporosis,
arthritis, and urinary tract infections has been subjected to new methods
of research and can now be dealt with more easily than ever. The answer,
more often than not, lies in nourishing the body in new and healthy ways.
It’s a prescription that women will be happy to fill.
Author Information
Ms. Kieswer is the editor of Good Medicine magazine, PCRM’s
quarterly publication for member physicians and laypersons. Her freelance
articles on vegetarian nutrition have appeared in Minority Health
Today, Plus, Better Nutrition, Vibrant Life,
Essence, and other magazines. She has a B.A. in Journalism from
the University of South Carolina.
Healthy
Eating for Life to Prevent and Treat Cancer by Vesanto Melina, M.S.,
R.D.
Cancer has leapt from being a fairly rare disease just a few decades ago
to what is now a condition of everyday life. Far too many of us find ourselves
in doctors’ offices having frank and frightening discussions about
what this diagnosis means, desperately trying to sort through difficult
treatment choices.
However, that dismal scenario is rapidly transforming into a far more
optimistic one. New approaches come from researchers who have carefully
studied people with cancer and those seemingly protected from it. They
have examined individuals who, despite the diagnosis, have lived far longer
than expected or even had complete remissions. In teasing apart their
diets, clues have emerged that have then been put to the test in confirmatory
studies. While this line of research is still ongoing, we have already
learned enough that if people everywhere took full advantage of its findings,
many cancers would never occur.
Author Information
Vesanto Melina, M.S., R.D., was trained at the University of Toronto and
the University of London. She has taught nutrition at the University of
British Columbia in Vancouver, B.C., and at Seattle’s Bastyr University.
She was a coordinator for the American Dietetic Association’s Manual
of Clinical Dietetics and co-authored the nutrition classic Becoming
Vegetarian (now in nine countries and three languages) and its companion
volumes, Cooking Vegetarian and Becoming Vegan.
Healthy
Eating for Life to Prevent and Treat Diabetes by Patricia Bertron,
R.D.
Many people with diabetes—and their doctors—think of the condition
as a one-way street. After diagnosis, we begin a never-ending series of
blood-sugar tests, medication adjustments, and gradually worsening symptoms.
Happily, that has begun to change.
In a research study at PCRM, in cooperation with doctors at Georgetown
University, a group of people with Type 2 diabetes, the kind that typically
begins in adulthood, tested a new diabetic diet. They found that their
blood sugars got better and better, and their need for medication quickly
fell. Many have found that as improvements continue, the disease simply
disappears.
Author Information
A former nutrition director for PCRM, Patricia Bertron, R.D., has also
worked as a clinical and renal dietitian in a teaching hospital in New
Jersey, counseling patients with various health conditions, including
cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, and diabetes. She has worked as
a sports nutritionist for a fitness facility and currently teaches classes
on weight control through a hospital-based program in New Jersey.
