Dr. Doug Graham Part II: No Need to Take Notes on the 80/10/10 Diet

Sunday, June 07, 2009 by: Kevin Gianni
Tags: raw foods, health news, Natural News

(NewsTarget) This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni's Rawkathon, which can be found at http://www.Rawkathon.com. In this excerpt, Dr. Doug Graham shares on the 80/10/10 lifestyle and why you'll never have to take notes or do math to follow this lifestyle.

Rawkathon with Dr. Doug Graham. Dr. Doug Graham has a background in sports science and nutrition and is a chiropractor as well. Dr. Graham: is a raw food eater and the mind behind the 80/10/10 principle.

Kevin: Let's just start with this. We'll just get into it right away. 80/10/10 is different than a lot of what people have heard of if they haven't been introduced to raw through you.

Dr. Graham:: No question. No question. A lot of people have a misunderstanding of what 80/10/10 is.

Kevin: Explain it.

Dr. Graham:: 80/10/10 is incredibly simple. In fact I was just working on this again last night. 80/10/10 is amazingly simple to describe. First of all it's a caloric-nutrient ration, there's only three foods that provide us with calories or three nutrients that provide us with calories - protein, fat and carbohydrates. Although there are advertisers who would have you believe that alcohol is not part of the carbohydrate group and so they can tell you that their beer has no carbohydrates. It's not true. Alcohol is a type of carbohydrate. Anyway, there's only proteins, fats and carbohydrates. The sports scientists, the health scientists, the longest study ever done on human health, the largest study ever done on human health, those two and literally thousands of others have continuously guided us towards certain understandings about how much protein, how much fat and how much carbohydrate we are designed to thrive on.

As human beings we can survive on practically anything. We can survive for a fairly long time in a dungeon on bread and water but it is not thriving. If we want to hit at our fullest, for instance if you're not well, you're looking to stack all the lifestyle cards in your favor. If you're really well and competitive you're looking to stack all the lifestyle cards in your favor including those of nutrition. If we're trying to reach our absolute best, then science has already told us why and where that will happen in terms of how much protein, how much fat, how much carbohydrates.

What they've come up is that we require between three to nine percent of our calories from protein. That if we go below three percent we're likely going to run into problems eventually but there are no foods that offer less than three percent, or there are no whole foods that offer less than that. Certainly rock candy offers no protein, or olive oil offers no protein, but there are no whole foods. Nothing that grows or lives that goes under four percent, I don't believe, in terms of its total caloric value. Three to nine is easy to hit. In fact most fruits fall between four and nine although a few go to ten, eleven, twelve and most vegetables are in the low teens to mid teens, although a few are higher.

They also suggest to us that too much protein is equally if not more of a problem as not enough protein. With the understanding, which is one of the huge ones, one of the big misunderstandings in nutrition is that more is better. We fall for it over and over and over and over even after we're patting ourselves on the back for having gotten it. We still fall for the misunderstanding that more is better. We know that more sunlight is not better, you can get too much, and that sunlight is a nutrient. Then we go right back and go, "Ah, more vitamin A that's better." Or, "More Omega 3, that's better," and it's not the case.

Optimum nutrition defined as the consumption of foods whose nutrient content most closely mimics our nutrient needs. Those are the foods that are easiest to digest. Those are the foods that are most appealing to our senses, to our emotions, to our ethics and those are the foods that invariably provide us with the ideal levels of health and nutrition, foods whose nutrient content most closely mimic our nutrient needs. So three to nine percent in terms of protein is what Framingham study, China study, McDougal, Ornish, Howell, all of the credible, and almost all of non-credible, people in the world of nutrition say, three to nine percent in terms of our protein intake.

Interestingly when they study fat intake, they've come up with similar conclusions, for different reasons, but similar conclusions. They found that when fat intake goes beyond three to nine percent of calories the predictable health decline ensues. It'll be different for different people depending upon their genetic background and their strengths and weaknesses in terms of their lifestyle but when you go beyond ten percent of calories from fat predictable health decline invariably is accompanied. For some people we'll see that as the development of heart disease, some people as candida, some people chronic fatigue. Some people it's diabetes, some people it's cancer, some people it's just digestive
disorders but those are basically the big six and everybody according to modern medicine has three or four of those at least. Modern medicine says that 97% of America has heart disease but only two thirds die of heart disease because the other third die of cancer. They say that over 90% of Americans have cancer but only one third die of cancer because the others die of heart disease first. That as well as that, that currently almost half of America has diabetes or pre-diabetic tendencies and in order for it to get to 100% by 2050 all we have to do is keep doing what we're doing and all Americans will be diabetic. These are statistics that are a little spooky when we know that on the standard American diet we're eating 40% of our calories from fat with the recommendations of 10%.

The sports scientists tell us some rather more telling information I think. They explain very clearly that when your fat intake goes beyond 10% that your ability to uptake, transport and deliver oxygen to your cells goes down - uptake, transport and deliver. So if you have emphysema you can't uptake as well if you're eating more than 10% of your calories from fat. If you have cancer you can't transport oxygen to the necessary tissues as well as if you lower fat intake. If you're trying to be athletic you can't deliver oxygen to your muscles as well if your fat intake goes beyond 10%. Once again the numbers are identical and the authorities have come up with the same numbers. They're recommending three to nine percent of calories from fat as a ratio of your total caloric intake for the day.

Wonderful thing is if we take all of the various fruits and vegetables, mix them in a bag and pull out any five or ten, chuck them in a blender and do a nutritional assay you're going to come up with three to nine percent of calories from fat. It's almost as if it was, we were defining the species specific diet by their caloric - nutrient ration. A lot of people do nutrition by the micro nutrients. They worry about every single individual little thing. This is the tail wagging the dog; they're not paying attention to the macro nutrients - protein, fat and carbohydrates. It turns out that if you get your macro nutrient ratio correct, all the other micro nutrient ratios will fall into place on a raw vegan diet. On a vegan diet, you'll still experience some problems. It's great for heart disease but not so great for other conditions. So the cooked vegan diet doesn't hold a candle to the raw
vegan diet in a wide variety of ways that we won't even begin to go into here.

By the time we define human parameters of protein intake at three to nine for fat and three to nine for protein we're left with only one option for the carbohydrate intake. That is it must be more than 80. This is how 80/10/10 came into being, is the idea that we're looking for a caloric-nutrient ration where carbohydrates make up a minimum of 80% of your calories on average, and protein and fat make up a maximum of 10% each. It's not a number we're trying to hit; it's numbers that we're using. We don't want to hit them in fact. I want to be above 80, below 10, below 10. Those are the red lines.

Kevin: Right and with the 80/10/10 it's not like taking notes and making sure you hit 80/10/10 every day.

Dr.. Graham:: You don't have to take any notes. I've done all the math.

Kevin: Yeah.

Dr. Graham:: The math comes out to meet the science, it's rather nice. All you have to do is eat fruits and vegetables but that's where the misconception comes in because most people see me eating more fruit than they do. They put the focus on the fruit and they go, "Oh it's a fruitarian approach." It's not, it's a frugiverous approach. Fruit predominates my diet in terms of caloric consumption. Vegetables predominate my diet in terms of volume but we don't measure our food intake in terms of volume. It's not a realistic way. The average guy eats a million calories a year. He never has to do any math. The average American eats a million calories a year without ever doing math. We just eat according to our hunger and requirements and just fill up that satiation need. If you're off by a half of one percent, you're gaining weight or losing weight every year noticeably. We hit that million for guys and ladies about 750,000 on average without ever doing any math. You don't have to do any, you don't have to figure stuff out. Basically you have to know that if you're not eating fruits and vegetables you're doing so for reasons other than nutrition and health.

There's lots of other reasons to eat, I recognize that. I like to eat for nutrition and health as my predominant reasons and then all the other reasons in alignment with that: so rather than be incongruous and say, "Well, I'm going to have a party tonight and so I'm going to order out Domino's Pizza." I'm going to say, "I'm going to have a party tonight; we're going to eat mangoes." Or in other words, I'm going to eat the foods that I love that love me back as much as I love them. And that just is a matter of developing a mindset like any change, like becoming fit or getting enough sleep or having emotional poise or having a positive mental attitude. It takes a little practice to grow but then it becomes who you are. So eating healthfully for me is effortless. It's much easier than being sick. I
find that's really hard to do but so it's not about good or bad, right or wrong, but there's always consequences to everything we do. This became so easy, 80/10/10 became so easy when I just realized if it has a label I probably don't need to be eating it. If it comes in a bottle, bag, can or box, it's not really food for me. It's whole, fresh, ripe, raw organic plants that's what I'm looking for.

Kevin: It's pretty simple.

Dr. Graham:: It's really simple and it's easy to describe. You eat all the fruit you care for and follow it with all the vegetables you want.

Kevin: Simple as that.

For more from this excerpt of the Rawkathon, plus 14 other amazing raw food interviews, please visit http://www.Rawkathon.com.

About the author

Kevin Gianni is a health advocate, author and speaker. He has helped thousands of people in over 85 countries learn how to take control of their health--and keep it. To view his popular internet TV Show "The Renegade Health Show" (and get a free gift!) with commentary on natural health issues, vegan and raw food diets, holistic nutrition and more click here.


His book, "The Busy Person's Fitness Solution," is a step-by-step guide to optimum health for the time and energy-strapped. To find out more about abundance, optimum health and self motivation click here... or you're interested in the vegan and raw food diet and cutting edge holistic nutrition click here. For access to free interviews, downloads and a complete bodyweight exercise archive visit www.LiveAwesome.com.