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Joel Fuhrman's Eat to Live Diet

If you are reading this, you are most likely familiar with Fuhrman's Eat to Live, a best-selling diet book, claimed by its author as "the amazing nutrient-rich program for fast and sustained weight loss."
This website does not endorse or dispute any nutritional principles established by diet book authors or other authorities, Fuhrman included.
On this webpage, we just provide objective nutrition analysis tools tailored specifically to Fuhrman's Eat to Live Diet so that our website visitors can evaluate and make their own judgment about its nutrition and potential effectiveness. And if they are adopters of the diet, they can make optimal food choices and gain additional insight about their nutrition.

Browse Joel Fuhrman "Eat to Live" Products on Amazon

Nutrient Density

Fuhrman's Eat to Live principle can be stated in one sentence: "The main principle is that for both optimal health and weight loss, you must consume a diet with a high nutrient-per-calorie ratio." This is "all the information that you need to succeed," the author claims on page 9 of the 2011 paperback edition of his book.

Fuhrman goes one step further and provides his nutrition formula H = N/C (Health = Nutrients / Calories), equating its significance to Einstein's E = mc²:"Your key to permanent weight loss is to eat predominantly those foods that have a high proportion of nutrients (noncaloric food factors) to calories (carbohydrates, fats, and proteins). In physics a key formula is Einstein's E = mc². In nutrition the key formula is H = N/C." (page 7)

Although he refers to "nutrient density" multiple times, nowhere else in the book does Fuhrman elaborate on this concept except for a Nutrient Density Line table (page 118) in which he lists over a dozen categories of foods, giving them each a nutrient density value ranging from 0 for Refined Sweets, 15 for Eggs, 30 for Raw Nuts and Seeds, 40 for Beans, 45 for Fresh Fruits, 50 for Non-Green Nutrient-Rich Vegetables and 100 for Dark Green Leafy Vegetables, etc.

Even here, no algorithm or formula is spelled out to tell readers how these numbers were arrived at other than a vague clue: the nutrient density scores are based on total vitamin and mineral content, antioxidant activity and phytochemicals.

Obviously, these round numbers are Fuhrman's rough guesstimates of nutrient density of different categories of foods.

Because this is absolutely the key concept of Fuhrman's Eat to Live diet, we provide objective charts using concrete data that illustrate the vitamin and mineral contents of nearly 7,000 foods in our database. The nutrient contents of a food item are compared against those of other foods. In addition, they are compared against the established RDAs from the National Research Council. The higher the nutrient bubble is on the chart, the higher its content in comparison with that in other foods. The bigger the bubble, the greater its contribution towards satisfying the RDA. This is how the nutrient quality of a food should probably be evaluated, not on how the food looks (leafy or not leafy, green or not green). Imagine the confusing uncertainty of a Eat-to-Live dieter when facing the choice between red and green apples/tomatoes, or "leafy" pale-green cabbage vs. "non-leafy" dark-green broccoli, etc.

Fiber

Fuhrman singles out fiber as a "critical nutrient" and describes it as "magic." He states that the deficiency of fiber in American diet has led to many health problems including hemorrhoids, constipation, varicose veins, diabetes and cancer. (Page 52)
We include fiber data for all foods in our database for your information. Foods can be sorted by fiber content by clicking on the Fiber column header.

Protein

Fuhrman recommends minimum animal protein. He also recommends less protein consumption than the RDA amount. An interesting anecdote from Eat to Live: Fuhrman always asks his new patients Which has more protein? One hundred calories of sirloin steak or one hundred calories of broccoli? According to Fuhrman, most people don't know that "broccoli has about twice as much protein as steak" (Page 142). And Fuhrman was wrong or exaggerating! After carefully checking the USDA nutrient databases, we found no data to support Fuhrman's claim that broccoli has twice as much protein as steak (per calorie).

You can find out for yourself: protein and fiber data in our table above are specifically based on each 100-calorie amount of food. Foods can be sorted by name, fiber or protein content (within a category, search result, or the whole database). This is probably the most interesting feature of our food finder tool and can help you identify foods optimal for Fuhrman's Eat to Live diet.

Popular diets and food databases for weight control

• Dukan Diet by Pierre Dukan
• Eat This, Not That! by David Zinczenko
• Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman
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• Glycemic Index Diet
• Low Carb Diet
• Paleo Solution Diet by Robb Wolf
• The 17-Day Diet by Mike Moreno
• Sugar: The Bitter Truth by Robert Lustig
• Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes

Easy Tips

Finally, Fuhrman gives a list of easy tips to help staying within the diet, such as:

• Eat as much fruit as you want
• Limit starchy vegetables to 1 cup a day
• Eat beans or legumes daily
• Eliminate animal and dairy products
• Eat lots of mushrooms all the time, etc.

We hope that the tools we offer give you additional insight about your diet and help you make better food choices.

Usage Note

• Fiber and protein values in table are in grams and calculated per 100-calorie amount of food.
• Click on column header to sort foods by name or by Fiber or Protein content.
• Pie chart shows relative contributions to total calories from carbohydrate, protein and fat (and alcohol, if exists).
• The color coding under the Charts buttons is for those interested in Glycemic Index of foods. We color code about 3,800 foods in our database based on their glycemic index ratings: Red for High GI, Green for low GI and Yellow for medium GI foods with gradual gradation between GI values. This means, for example, among the high GI foods, those with lower GI ratings will be less red and more yellow. Similarly with low GI foods. Those with lower GI are coded with greener color.
  For numerical values of glycemic indices and glycemic loads of foods, see our Glycemic Index database.

Starchy Vegetables List

Eat to Live diet recommends limiting starchy vegetables to 1 cup a day. Below is a list of the starchiest vegetables to help you recognize those in this category. Starch content is in grams per 100 grams of food weight.

Or use our online Starch Content of Foods database.

Starchy Vegetables to Limit in Eat to Live Diet

Starch

Potatoes, mashed, dehydrated, flakes without milk, dry form

70.6

Potatoes, french fried, shoestring, salt added in processing, frozen, oven-heated

23.2

Potato pancakes

20.9

Potato puffs, frozen, oven-heated

20.8

Potatoes, french fried, all types, salt not added in processing, frozen, oven-heated

20.1

Potatoes, french fried, all types, salt added in processing, frozen, home-prepared, oven heated

20.1

Potatoes, french fried, crinkle or regular cut, salt added in processing, frozen, oven-heated

20.0

Potato puffs, frozen, unprepared

19.8

Corn, yellow, whole kernel, frozen, microwaved

18.2

Potatoes, white, flesh and skin, baked

18.0

Potatoes, french fried, crinkle or regular cut, salt added in processing, frozen, as purchased

17.7

Potatoes, Russet, flesh and skin, baked

17.5

Potatoes, french fried, all types, salt not added in processing, frozen, as purchased

17.4

Potatoes, french fried, all types, salt added in processing, frozen, unprepared

17.4

Potatoes, french fried, steak fries, salt added in processing, frozen, as purchased

17.4

Potatoes, baked, flesh and skin, with salt

17.3

Potato, baked, flesh and skin, without salt

17.3

Potatoes, french fried, steak fries, salt added in processing, frozen, oven-heated

17.3

Potatoes, french fried, shoestring, salt added in processing, frozen, as purchased

17.1

Potatoes, russet, flesh and skin, raw

15.9

Potato, flesh and skin, raw

15.4

Potatoes, red, flesh and skin, baked

15.2

Corn, sweet, yellow, frozen, kernels cut off cob, unprepared

15.1

Potatoes, white, flesh and skin, raw

13.5

Potatoes, red, flesh and skin, raw

13.4

Corn, sweet, yellow, canned, whole kernel, drained solids

13.1

Sweet potato, raw, unprepared

12.7

Corn pudding, home prepared

8.7

Potatoes, mashed, dehydrated, prepared from flakes without milk, whole milk and butter added

8.5

Starchy Vegetables to Limit in Eat to Live Diet

Starch

Corn, sweet, yellow, cooked, boiled, drained, with salt

7.2

Corn, sweet, yellow, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt

7.2

Sweet potato, cooked, baked in skin, with salt

7.1

Sweet potato, cooked, baked in skin, without salt

7.1

Corn, sweet, yellow, raw

5.7

Sweet potato, cooked, boiled, without skin

5.2

Sweet potato, cooked, boiled, without skin, with salt

5.2

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