For those of you who watch public access TV you may have seen Dr. Nicholas Perricone pontificating about healthy diet. It is amazing someone who knows so little about health can be so financially successful. Surely you heard of his best selling book "The Wrinkle Cure". Little of what he says or writes makes any sense. He keeps babbling about how unhealthy "no-fat diets" are. What no-fat diets? He promotes the myth that olive oil is somehow "good" for you so you can eat all you want. He actually said the more "good fats" we eat the slimmer we'll be, and the better we'll burn off fat generally! I didn't make that up folks. His logic is something to behold isn't it? Steamed brown rice has about 8% fat calories and plain boiled oatmeal made with water has 14%. Basically you'd have to eat all fruit to accomplish a no-fat diet. Instead of advising people to eat a 1,000 mg of flax oil daily to get the omega-3 fatty acids they need he wants you to eat a lot of salmon. Really good advice there Nick.

He just loves that glycemic index and he never once recommended any whole grains. Please read the articles on the glycemic index in the library to see how silly it is. Whole grains are literally the staff of life yet he doesn't seem to eat any. Instead he wants you to eat huge amounts of protein- i.e. poultry, meat and egg whites. Just ignore the fact that eggs and poultry are two of the most prominent allergenic foods known. He says men need 80 grams of protein a day and women need about 60. This is simply wrong. He feels many Americans are somehow "protein deficient"! Folks, Americans eat twice the calories they need and TWICE the protein they need. This is a major reason we suffer from so many horrible diseases.

The healthiest diet in the world is based on the Asian diet, yet he promotes the Mediterranean diet (he's Italian) so you can put lots of olive oil in your food. He also wants you to eat five times a day. Seriously, he actually says this. He criticizes people who only eat one or two meals a day and tells them to eat five instead. Seems Nick doesn't realize Americans already eat twice as much as they need, and calorie restriction is THE most effective way to extend lifespan.

He promotes that drink-as-much-water-as-you-can myth as well. Drink lots of water even when you're not thirsty. Now, what kind of sense does that make? Your body has a true sense of thirst (unlike hunger), and when you need water you darn well know it. Drink only when thirsty is the obvious thing to do. Don't drink unless you're thirsty- listen to your body wisdom.

He knows even less about supplements than he does about diet, but that doesn't stop him from preaching about that either. He has four supplements he wants you to take. Vitamin E, and he is very correct here. The huge doses of vitamin C he wants you to take all day in portions (seriously, this is what he is telling people) will acidify your blood and make you sickly. We only need about 60 mg of vitamin C every day. If you want to take a supplement do not take more than 250 mg. Megadoses of anything are bad for you including sex, sunshine, oxygen and anything else (again, please see the library articles). Next he recommends alpha lipoic acid, which is a wonderful supplement everyone over 40 should take. The problem is that he says to take a mere 50 mg. This simply isn't going to do it at all. 200 mg is generally the correct dose. Lastly he wants you to take DMAE. This enjoyed brief popularity almost 20 years ago until people found out it simply didn't work. In the hundreds of thousands of abstract references I've gone through in the past few years there has never once been a mention of DMAE for any disease or condition whatsoever. If DMAE had legitimate use we'd have it here for you.

Now we come to his lipoic acid face cream for $70. You need less than 50 cents worth of lipoic acid to make a proper 4% cream, yet he wants to gouge people for $70. On top of that, he refuses to state the amount of lipoic acid in the cream! Go to his website and e-mail the company and ask them and they'll refuse to tell you. For seventy bucks you don't even know how much is in there! Legally he can put one milligram in there. Young Again Lipoic Acid 4% is only $19.95 which is the least expensive price in the world. Ours is clearly stated on the label.

Why is someone like this so popular and why does his book sell so well?