What You Should Know
The Pritikin Diet was created by Nathan Pritikin in the 1950′s when he found out he had heart disease. Mr. Pritikin created a low-fat, high-fiber diet that he incorporated with exercise to improve his medical outlook. He claims this diet helped to improve his future health reports after starting the diet. Based on the success of this diet he created the Pritikin Logevity Center for a resource to be used by others who had similar health issues.
The Pritikin Diet is only for people ready to make a serious commitment to eating almost exclusively in a vegetarian method. The Pritikin Diet follows a vegetarian program and is low in cholesterol. The diet has almost no fat and is high in fiber. The Pritikin diet recommends the user eat large amounts of whole grain and vegetables. There are six meals every day allowed on the diet. The serving size for each of the meals is limited. No processed grains, such as white bread and instant rice, are allowed.
List Of Ingredients
Not Applicable.
Product Features
The Pritikin Diet requires you to eat a lot of unprocessed complex carbohydrates and low fat foods. The dieter is supposed to eat at least five servings of these unrefined complex carbohydrates every day. These types of foods include oats, potatoes and yams, squash, beans or peas, brown rice, and chestnuts. No more than one or two servings per day are allowed for white bread, rice and pasta.
People participating in this program eat at least 4 servings of vegetables, 3 servings of fruit, 2 servings of calcium rich foods and 1 serving of protein. The vegetable content can come from salads, spinach, peppers, carrots, etc. The fruit can come from bananas, apples, pears and other fruits. The calcium foods can be gotten through nonfat milk, yogurt or soy milk. And the protein serving is best when it comes from fish. The dieters are also allowed to eat nuts and seeds but must limit these to only 1/4 cup per day. Dieters are told to drink only water, cocoa, low sodium vegetable drinks and decaffeinated green tea.
Advantages
- Some feel a vegetarian diet will reduce the risk of many illnesses.
- Weight loss and healthy well being are components of the diet.
- Research is available on the health benefits of the diet.
Disadvantages
- May not satisfy the appetite and be hard to stick with.
- May not satisfy the sensory input we seek when eating.
Conclusion
The Pritikin Diet is hard to follow due to the deprivation some people might feel when the diet is restricted to this level. If you do not care for meat you may like the diet. There are research materials available that support the principles the Pritikin Diet is founded upon.



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