A Basis For Health

One of the truly serendipitous events of my life occurred several months after we had corrected my wife’s high blood sugar.

We had effectively cured her of diabetes through aggressive dietary measures. It was through nutritarian style eating, though we didn’t know enough to call it that.

We met the Jerry Taylor family at church, and invited them over for dinner. 

Now, let me explain. We accomplished something we’d been told by the “best” experts was impossible. We had reason to believe the effective cure would be long term, as long as we kept up the changes we’d made, and similar benefits would come to anyone who tried this. Every meal was an adventure. We were delighted to confirm new eating habits, leave behind old ones, try new combinations and recipes, and occasionally to share the wonderful things we learned.

We have done this before and since, invited people over and shared this, including some who are in critical need of this information. Usually our efforts to explain are met with politely, but not with much real interest.

This time though, our story was met with unabashed, raging enthusiasm. You see, they had experienced the same type healing of an "impossible to cure" disease in their family. Not only that, but Dr. Taylor had just graduated with a naturopathic medical doctor (N.M.D.) degree, and come to Montana to heal diabetes in one of the many native American communities critically needing such a thing.

Note: I’m using the word “heal” and “cure” guardedly, as it’s a dangerous, controversial thing to do. “Heal” and “cure” when used in conjunction with the word “diabetes” is a politically incorrect thing, as it is in association with the word “autism” which was the Taylor family’s experience. 

The standard medical community doesn't believe and doesn't support that “cures” can ever take place with such difficult chronic illness. After all, if such things could be healed, these doctors would be doing it, right? And they don’t.

The one thing, though, exciting me more than anything else about Dr . Taylor was he recommended every single one of his patients read The China Study. This book was also a foundation of healing my wife’s diabetes.

In Dr. Fuhrman’s book Eat To Live, on pages 83-85, is the best summary of the “China Project” I’ve ever seen. The China Project is the main study reviewed in the book The China Study. It’s the largest study of diet and disease ever done.

The study found as animal source calories approached zero, cancer almost disappeared. So did diabetes, heart disease and autoimmune diseases. Low fat meat and milk made no difference. Even relatively small amounts of any kind of meat, milk and cheese significantly increased disease, and real reductions in disease did not take place until animal source calories dropped way below what most people in the U.S. as well as most other western countries eat.

The main point is, the China Project showed these diseases don’t have to even start. Curing and treating these can become all but totally unnecessary.

Now, if this is true, it has vast significance. It means cancer, heart disease, diabetes and many other diseases can be eliminated.

It also means we can live longer, healthier, more productive lives.

From my experience with this over the last four years, I believe it can happen. It will happen, when we’re ready for it.

And if animal source calories are the cause, and drastic reductions are almost totally preventive, then treating these diseases almost certainly involves removing the cause. In other words, cutting out the crap causing these in the first place. 


That’s what Dr. Taylor prescribes for every single patient, and he’s had some amazing results. Obviously, we thought it could work just that way.

Going from proven prevention to proven cure is a leap. Couldn’t say it’s true.

Unless it works.

And now my wife is cured.

A Gift of Truth (The List)

I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t understand a lot of things.

For example, I’m not sure what I’m about to put in here is completely legal or honest.

It's completely copied from Eat To Live, 2011 edition, pages 118 – 120.

I’m counting on someone to tell me, please, if I should take it down.

But it’s such a fabulous outline, I truly think it’s worth a shot. It’s what impressed me as being the heart of the book, the most essential and powerful summary of what to eat and in what quantities.

It’s got numbers.

It’s a summary of huge amounts of information.

It gives incredible detail without overwhelming (in other words, it's really useful).

But for real understanding and appreciation, you gotta read the book. So with those qualifiers, here goes, without discussion, editing or changes except my mistakes (and a teensy bit of condensing):

The Nutrient-Density Line
The nutrient-density scores below are based on identified phytochemicals, antioxidant activity, and total vitamin and mineral content.
Highest nutrient density = 100 points		Lowest nutrient density = 0
100	Dark green leafy begetables kale, mustard greens, collard greens, Swiss chard, watercress, spinach, arugula
95	Other green vegetables romaine, bok choy, casbbage, Brussels sprounts, asparagus, broccoli, string beans, snow peas, green peas
50	non-green nutrient-rich vegetables Beets, eggplant, mushrooms, onions, radishes, bean sprounts, red and yellow bell peppers, radicchio, cauliflower, tomatoes, artichokes, raw carrots
45	Fresh fruits strawberries, blueberries, other berries, plums, oranges, melons, kiwifruit, apples, cherries, pineapple, peaches, pears, grapes, bananas
40	Beans lentils, kidney, great northern, adzuki, black, pinto, split peas, edamame, chickpeas
30	Raw nuts and seeds Sunflower, pumpkin, sesame, flaxseeds, almonds, cashews, pistachios, walnuts, pecans, hazelnuts
25	Colorful starchy vegetables butternut and other squash, sweet potatoes, corn, turnips
20	Whole grains/white potatoes
18	Fish
15	Fat-free dairy, eggs, wild meat and fowl
8	Full-fat dairy
6	Red meat, refined grain products
3	Cheese
0	Refined sweets, cookies, candy, soda

I like it better than anything else I’ve seen in this regard. Better than more exact listings of foods, better than the new food pyramid in the book and on Dr. Fuhrman’s website.  Better than any information I’ve seen about the book or the nutritarian diet. Can’t find it anywhere on the web or in any other source.

Of course, this probably means I’ve violated some fundamental principle of decency, and if I have, I truly apologize.

Great truth is sometimes worth a risk.

The Power Of Truth

In his exquisite book People of the Lie, M. Scott Peck identified evil, lies and death as closely associated. He identifies the first, evil, as a direct cause and inseparable from the second and third, lies and death. 

In fact, evil and lies cause death.

These are powerful concepts, but I much prefer to revel in the positive corollaries. Truth, goodness and life also run in a pack, reinforcing, promoting and causing each other.

I love to reflect on these associations as I contemplate the nutritarian diet. There are strong indications that the nutritarian diet is based on principles of truth. Truth supports life, and the nutritarian diet promotes better health, longer life, more sure recovery.

It appears to me to be more effective than medications in both preventing and healing disease. It ought to be a first line defense of every family hoping to raise truly healthy children. It should be the first thing anyone confronted with any illness should be taught and supported in. It ought to be the foundation of medical treatment, that supports and makes more certain all that medications and medical technology is intended to accomplish.

The healing power of good nutrition is much more powerful than what is taught in medical schools.

The reality is, it’s all but ignored. That is, it appears to me, a direct result of rat pack from the first paragraph.

Part of the lie is that good nutrition is all about making a few changes to your diet. The reality is, our normal American diet, also called the Standard American Diet or SAD diet (for good reason), is, literally, a killer.

Even a lot of changes, but keeping the same basic diet, does not make much difference. Real healing, real prevention takes a total paradigm shift.

The nutritarian path is the most complete and well founded paradigm shift I’ve ever seen. Here’s  an example we experienced.

In late 2007 my wife was diagnosed as firmly diabetic, referred to a local hospital diabetes education program, given a blood sugar monitor and told to prepare for a lifetime program that would certainly lead to insulin. Maybe, just maybe she wouldn’t die young, if she learned and followed the American Diabetes Association diet and recommendations.

It was all bunk. Bunk bordering on lies. Not deliberate lies, not conscious lies from individual diabetes educators, doctors or the hospital, but major, culturally based, research reinforced, medically supported lies.


Those lies would have led to her death. Maybe not soon, but certainly over time, they would have shortened her life.

We attacked her diabetes, not with the full nutritarian plan, but with a few ideas based on The China Study, and a brief reference in the main Wikipedia article on diabetes about a low-fat, vegan and low glycemic approach to dealing with diabetes.

Three months later, her blood sugar was normal. When we told what we’d done, her doctor said, ”I’ve heard of people doing this but I’ve never actually seen it.”

A year after that, her doctor declared “You haven’t had any symptoms in over a year – I’m taking the diagnosis off your chart.”

We call that cured. Cured from a dread disease that has killed lots of people, that we were told was incurable and always leads to insulin use. We were prepped to become steady consumers of diabetic testing supplies, insulin, the whole gamut of normal diabetes progression.

Instead, my sweet and precious wife was cured by nutritarian principles before we ever appreciated what that meant.

Along the way, Larry H. Miller, a local multimillionaire business owner, died a miserable, hacked off (literally) death from diabetes. He could afford any kind of treatment, any kind of advice, anything at all that would have made a difference.

He was never a nutritarian.

Don’t know him personally, but I doubt he was ever given a real chance or medical advice to become one.

It really can be, it really is, lies vs. truth, life vs. death.

2 Nuts: The Real Meaning

2 Nutritarians refers to the two people who are nutritarians and founders of this blog, Chris Daines and David Higbee of North Logan, Utah. It also is addressed “To Nutritarians,” or people who want to be or could benefit by learning about becoming nutritarians.

That includes everybody we know.  Every man, woman, child of every shape, age and size.

Bold stuff for such an awkward word.

The first time I read it I was offended.

What is this, I thought when I first came across the word. Who is making this word up? Who needs it! Certainly not me.

Harrumph.

Then I read the book Eat To Live. I was blown away.

More precisely, I felt infused with the light of truth.

Nutritarian describes a plan of eating that makes sense. It combines best nutritional truths I know. It has the power to promote health, vitality, long life, cure from of the disabling and killing diseases around me, including those that affect so many people I know and love – and miss because they’re no longer around.

It has the power to cure me.

And when I saw it, what I consider the heart of the book, I was ecstatic.

Finally I understood what to do. I understood how to do it. Everthing I had done, read, studied and hoped for physical health-wise was embodied in a page of text. A list that rated foods. A principle of truth.

It is, for me, a form of Truth.

Many of my friends and relatives think this already.

Yes, I am nuts.

I’m nutty about truth, head over heels excited about it. Especially great, healing truth. There’s plenty of if out there. It’s not popular. But it’s powerful, it’s effective, it works every time, and it heals everyone and everything it touches.

So the title of this blog, 2 Nutritarians, is I think a title of honor. So much so I thought I’d make it even more useful and shorten it to 2 syllables: 2 Noots. Or even better, the phonetic version, 2 Nūts.

So even if you take that as pronounced “2 Nuts,” I’ll take that as a compliment.

Thank you.

Thirty Six Words

I learned about nutritarian eating when my friend Chris Daines recommended the book Eat To Live after my heart attack in October 2011. The doctors at the hospital found my condition was serious but inoperable, and told me basically, “Eat better, live better and you’ll live a long life.”

But their demeanor told me they didn’t believe I would. Their preferred fix, inserting a stent to open up my artery that was 80% closed, was impossible. A previous stent put in 6 ½ years ago in “The Widowmaker” artery blocked all their attempts. Ominous, right?

No wonder. In my prior heart attack three arteries were 99% blocked and one was 75%.  I asked my cardiologist back then if I should change my diet and he said, “Nah, you can’t change heredity. Just exercise and take medications. When it closes up again we’ll just put more stents in.”

Notice the word when, not if. Standard stuff for a cardiologist!

I even called an old friend, who majored in nutrition (so I figured if anybody knew he would) before he went to medical school. I asked him if there was anything new, different or more effective. He answered there was not.

I wish I’d have kept looking for answers, but I didn’t.

So they couldn’t put in a stent I knew it was serious, even fatal, if I didn’t figure out better answers. I also knew the standard approaches wouldn’t cut it. So when my friend told me about the book Eat To Live, I was more than a little interested.

It’s a matter of life or death for me.

I got the book. It was everything I’d hoped for, and more.

The first part of the book, even before the title page, is testimonials from people like me. Lots of medical and health situations are described that had proven difficult to handle otherwise. They found real answers through nutritarian eating.

I’ll summarize the 45 testimonials:

• Weight loss after years of trying, and the weight stayed off, 15 to 150 pounds, in two weeks to a couple of years.
• Major cholesterol reductions, often over 100 points.
• Many otherwise incurable diseases, including hepatitis C and diabetes, were effectively treated.
• Lots of difficult health issues turned around, like depression, migraines, blood pressure, diverticulitis, sleep disorders, digestion problems, back pain and heart disease.

So here’s my statement in the thirty six words below, like you’d see in Eat To Live:

"My doctor said I’d need a repeat heart catheterization, it was a genetic certainty. He was wrong. I wish I’d found the answers in Eat To Live years ago. I could have avoided another heart attack."
–   David Higbee, 25 pounds in 6 weeks