The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life: How to Reduce Fat in Your Diet and Eliminate Virtually All Risk of Heart Disease and Cancer [Paperback]

Raymond Kurzweil (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 27, 1994

Reducing the level of fat in your diet to 10% can save your life, and this book gives you all the tools you need to do just that. Everything you need to know about is in this book: recipes, conversion charts, pantry staples, dining-out tips, progress tables, an exercise program, and detailed appendixes.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Reducing the level of fat in your diet to 10% can save your life, and this book gives you all the tools you need to do just that. Everything you need to know about is in this book: recipes, conversion charts, pantry staples, dining-out tips, progress tables, an exercise program, and detailed appendixes.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press (December 27, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0517883015
• ISBN-13: 978-0517883013
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #94,631 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good book but sadly out of date!, June 7, 2006

By 

Chris M. Mcmahon (Omaha, NE USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life: How to Reduce Fat in Your Diet and Eliminate Virtually All Risk of Heart Disease and Cancer (Paperback)

I own and have read this book as well as the newer follow up (published in 2004).

This book is now nearing 15 years old. I read it very recently and began to employ the methods taught in the book. It was not until reading Kurzweil's newest book that I saw he has changed many of his ideas since the writing of this book in 1992-93.

For example; in 10%, you should not eat more than 10% of your calories from fat. Carbohydrates are encouraged, sugar is not *that* big of a deal, and caffeine is the enemy. In the new book, fat can be 25% of your calories each day, carbohydrates must now stay very low, sugar is to be avoided at all costs, but caffeine is ok! In fact, the author now drinks 8 cups of green tea per day. Green tea is lower than coffee in caffeine, but 8 cups a day is still a lot of it.

I enjoyed reading this book, but I wish I had realized that the information contained within was out of date and no longer to be followed. It would have saved me $20.

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Kurzweil vs Fuhrman, September 6, 2005

By 

Venkat Raghavan Rangamani (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life: How to Reduce Fat in Your Diet and Eliminate Virtually All Risk of Heart Disease and Cancer (Paperback)

When I started reading this book, I had already read enough to be convinced about the effectiveness of a low fat diet in both weight loss and disease prevention. I had read Joel Fuhrman's "Eat to Live" (read my review) and bought into the idea quite fully. Nevertheless the 10% solution added much to my knowledge on the subject. In particular, I found Kurzweil's clarifications about healthy and unhealthy fats particularly insightful and some of my faulty beliefs about polyunsaturated fats were rectified. Canola oil may be free of cholestrol but that doesnt mean its harmless ! Olive oil is a little better but go easy on that too.

Kurzweil has organized this book as a question and answer conversation between himself and a skeptic. This interesting format makes for easier reading. There are also some useful charts about ideal weight based on a system that are a little more advanced than the simplistic Body Mass Index. You are probably going to find out like me that you have a few more pounds to shed than you initially thought !

My only complaint about this book is that it hasnt been revised in almost a decade and so doesnt contain a lot of lessons learned from recent research. While the book does talk about caloric restriction as a life extension method, it does not stress adequately, the recent findings of the CRON (Calorie restriction with optimal nutrition) diet. While the importance of cutting down fat is explained very well, the disease fighting capabilities of fruits and vegetables and their extraordinary importance in a healthy diet are not adequately emphasised in this book.

Recent research shows us that many of the cancer fighting properties of fruits and vegetables may come from compounds whose importance we dont fully understand yet. Perhaps we may never fully isolate all compounds and we almost certainly wont be able to put them all into pills. Many of the recipes in the book are focussed on cutting down fat but dont try hard enough to make the non fat calories nutritionally dense. In that respect the book doesnt go far enough. Joel Fuhrman succintly summarizes it all in his book "Eat to Live" when he asks the reader to go right now and paste a note on the fridge that says "The salad is the main dish!"

In conclusion, this is a great book but if you are going to read only one book, that better be "Eat to Live".

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must-Read for those who want to LIVE!, May 4, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life: How to Reduce Fat in Your Diet and Eliminate Virtually All Risk of Heart Disease and Cancer (Paperback)

The author is a scientist, not a nutritionist, who literally saved his life from terminal illness by researching how diet correlates with disease. The "hook" is that virtually EVERY reader in the USA has atherosclerosis --but does not know it! One detail overlooked (but noted by Andrew Weil, MD, elsewhere) is the essential ratio of omega-3 to omega-6. Very practical suggestions. You will die unnecessarily early if you fail to follow this advice. Makes tough technical stuff easy to read, understand & live by.