How does the Rice Diet differ from the other popular low fat diets like the plan associated with Dr. Dean Ornish?
Dr. Dean Ornish actually based his diet on Dr. Kempner’s Rice Diet, but made some changes. His diet is completely vegetarian and he added sodium to the Rice Diet to bring it up to 2400 mg a day. On the Rice Diet, we have fish as well as small amounts of lean meats, and poultry (at home), as long as it doesn’t “make you sick”, meaning raise the blood pressure, blood sugar, or cholesterol. A lot of people eat these foods to excess and then need to give them up later on. Our sodium level is quite low in the treatment phase, then runs between 500-1000mg at home. The Ornish diet is also VERY low fat. Less than 10% of total calories come from fat. The Rice Diet is initially less than 10% fat when in the treatment phases at the Rice House, but upon going home, patients are recommended to stay between 10 – 20% for heart disease reversal as well as weight loss. When on the Dean Ornish diet, people are told to eat his foods until they feel full (but not stuffed), therefore not attaching specific
