Source: San Francisco Chronicle

June 13, 1988

Hartford, Conn. - When Ann Louise Gittleman was the director of nutrition at the Pritikin Longevity Center in Santa Monica, she had a chance to observe firsthand the effects of Nathan Pritikin’s radical diet.

Pritikin, who died of cancer in 1985, advocated a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet – the opposite of the typical American diet. Patients who checked into the Pritikin Center often suffered from heart disease, diabetes and other health problems.

Gittleman, who resigned her position in 1982, still sees merit in the Pritikin philosophy, but she has taken his eating plan a few steps further. The road to her conclusions as well as her “New Nutrition Diet: are outlined in her book “Beyond Pritikin” (Bantam, $16.95)

“My diet is essentially the important additions,” she says. The diet is low fat, but we have included essential oils as an essential nutrition. The high-carbohydrate component (emphasizes) starchy root vegetables rather than grains.”

Gittleman, who has a master’s degree in nutritional education from Columbia University, says many people are sensitive to the gluten in grains such as wheat, rye, oats, and barley.

But fats- the right kinds of fats – are a key in Gittleman’s diet philosophy.

“Fats have been misunderstood and maligned,” she said. “Essential fats are vital to the integrity of the cell membrane, which is a defense against virus and infection.” Fats are also the building blocks of hormones called prostaglandin’s, she said, which help to regulate the immune system and other bodily functions.

When Gittleman refers to “essential fats,” she means vegetable oils and the omega-3 fatty acids found in such fish as anchovies, salmon, herring, albacore, tuna and pacific halibut.

The vegetable oils – sunflower, safflower, corn and olive are examples – must be unprocessed, she stressed. “Look for the words “unprocessed, ‘unrefined’ or ‘expeller pressed’ on the label,” she said. Commercially processed oils are treated with chemical solvents or refined by heat.

Aside from discouraging the use of hydrogenated oils and margarines, as well as liquor and sources of saturated fats such as beef tallow and palm oil, Gittleman permits only nonfat milk products in the diet.

She favors eating at least three fish meals per week, two tablespoons of essential fat a day and up to three fruits and high fiber oats, beans and vegetables a day. She advocates using onions, garlic, lemon, herbs, flavor extracts and alcohol in cooking to season food and drinking at least eight glasses of water a day.