Providence Business News - 4/12/2010 - Doctor's New Book Says Fasting Can Improve Health

210-3-25 Valley Breeze

Scituate doc: Forget starch, aim for 'Zero Calorie Diet'
Dr. Fine tires of 'lie,' writes nutrition book; signings this weekend
By KRISTIN RUSSO, Valley Breeze Staff Writer
SCITUATE - A man cannot live by bread alone. But can he live without any bread at all? According to local family physician Michael Fine, he can, and he should.
"Starch is history," said Fine, who believes starches like bread and pasta should be dropped from the food pyramid that we've all been encouraged to follow by the Food and Drug Administration.
Fine says starches provide no nutritional value that can't be had from complex carbohydrates found in vegetables. According to Fine, there should be "only two food groups from now on: protein and vegetables."
Fine, a community organizer, author of "The Nature of Health," and managing director of HealthAccess RI, a network of family practices that provide affordable primary care, lives with his wife Carol Levit and children Gabriel and Rosie on Gleaner Chapel Road. He makes his claims in a new book with an intriguing title, "The Zero Calorie Diet."
As the title suggests, the book encourages people to consume far fewer calories than they currently do. He notes that many people believe that the FDA recommends that the standard diet include 2,000 calories for women and 2,500 calories for men per day, when in fact, "there really is no recommended number of calories," says Fine, acknowledging that the FDA number is a calculation, not a recommendation.
In addition, he notes in his book, "No one has ever tested the impact of feeding people 2,000 calories a day over time. Well, almost no one. In practice, the nation has tested feeding people 2,000 calories a day for more than the last 40 years, and we have ended up with an epidemic of obesity."
Fine added that Americans are far more sedentary than they have ever been in history, and he says that even if 2,000 calories had at one point been an appropriate recommendation, it is no longer appropriate for people who open and close car windows by pressing a button and who sit on rather than push their lawn mowers.
"We have become victims of our own success," Fine says in his book.
So how do people determine how many calories they should have per day? "You know your caloric intake is right for the life you are living when your weight doesn't change over time," Fine says.
While "The Zero Calorie Diet" appears to be a book about dieting and weight loss, Fine says it's about more than just food consumption.
"On one level, 'The Zero Calorie Diet' is about fasting, and what we can learn about eating from fasting. There is lots of new information inside: that there is no recommendation for daily intake of calories; that most people need few calories, probably about 1,000 calories a day or less; that no one needs to eat any starch, ever, in the U.S.; and that the need for salt is what drives lots of our eating behavior."
He added, "On another level, though, 'The Zero Calorie Diet' is about our culture, about how greed, marketing, technology, and consumerism has created a world that no one can, or wants, to live in."
Fine said his inspiration to write the book is the same disillusionment with the health care industry that prompted him to retire from private practice after more than 25 years as a family physician serving patients in Scituate, Foster, and Pawtucket.
"The inspiration for the book was the same as the inspiration to quit medicine for a while: the perception that we are all living a lie. Medicine exists to sell products, and has totally inflated its social value in order to create profit. The food industry does the same thing, and has created to epidemic of obesity, heart disease, and cancer that the medicine industry profits by selling cures for."
He added, "I learned about the nutrition piece in 25 years of practice, so the second I hung up my stethoscope, I sat down and wrote the book, as a way to share what I had learned, and perhaps a little to, to try to tell the truth, as a way to set myself free."
Fine's book is heavily footnoted, providing "science for those who want the science." But it also provides a lay person's guide to making dramatic diet and lifestyle changes that in some cases are appealing and logical: eat more vegetables, while others are a little unorthodox.
"Shoot your refrigerator," Fine suggests in the book, explaining, "A better way to keep from rummaging through the refrigerator looking for leftovers is just not to have a refrigerator to rummage through," Fine says in the book. "Having no refrigerator would keep us from mindless eating, keep us from mindless shopping, and save electricity and fossil fuel, since the refrigerator is the household appliance that consumes the most electricity."
At the end of the day, Fine says, his book is meant to serve as a guide for people who want to stop spending time and money on navigating a food and health care system that is designed to encourage waste and to cause ill health.
"We need to realize how many activities are designed to make a profit for someone else."
"The Zero Calorie Diet" is available for sale at Amazon.com, at Blanchard's Orchard and Farm Store on West Greenville Road, and at Brigido's IGA Market in the Village Plaza.
Fine is hosting a Publication Party to which the public is invited at Bentley's Tavern, 92 Hartford Pike, on Thursday, March 25 at 8 p.m., and will hold two book signings at Brigido's IGA Market on Saturday, March 27 from 1 to 3 p.m. and Sunday, March 28 from noon to 2 p.m.