Book Review: Super Immunity by Joel Fuhrman, M.D.
This book is the exact book you think it is. It's a painfully sincere tome from a man who really, really wants everyone to eat more vegetables. That's the whole basic message of the book: Eat. More. Vegetables. Please. Right. Now. Please.
And why should we all do this? Because vegetables contain the stuff our bodies need to fight off any invaders, and to defeat any invaders that get inside the castle. Also to defeat any home-grown terrorists like our old friend, Timothy McCancer. TL;DR version: pls eat kale, mushrooms, and berries.
All of that stuff made great sense. Dr. F. brings a ton of research to support his program and I enjoyed it. However, he was oddly stupid on the topic of animal foods. He literally said that chicken breast and a cookie are the same, both having no nutritional value. Here's a quote in the same vein: "Since neither processed foods nor animal products contain a significant load of antioxidant nutrients or any phytochemicals, the modern diet is dramatically disease-promoting." Now, I can agree about the modern diet. And the processed foods, yep. But don't lump in all animal foods with this term, "animal products." Don't act as if a gross, manufactured Oscar Mayer Weiner is the same as a beautiful piece of grass-fed beef liver. Don't try to say that animal foods have no nutrients! That is just ignorant. So this gave me a very bad impression of Dr. F. at first.
However, everything he had to say about vegetables was great, so I just sort of allowed myself to ignore most of what he had to say about meat, which wasn't very much anyway. In a funny way, this book is actually a terrific resource for anyone in the Paleo/Ancestral lifestyle. He's completely passionate about a diet rich in plant matter. He opposes the use of sugar and isn't really a fan of grain, either. He doesn't bash grain, but he also very noticeably has nothing good to say about it either. And he does have this fun gem to offer:
"The whiter the bread, the sooner you're dead."
My daughter and I just started laughing when we saw this.
Dr. F. spends plenty of time critiquing the modern medical establishment. He also spends a lot of time laying out all the ways that different plants can help our immune system in different ways. No book will make you feel more motivated to eat kale chips, okay?
So overall, I really do recommend this book. It's packed with useful and thought-provoking stuff. Just ignore how ignorant it is about meat, that's all.
