Dr. Fred Pescatore

Just got home from a lecture tonight at the 92nd street Y to hear Dr. Fred Pescatore talk about food allergies and sensitivities. The talk centered around sensitivities rather than allergies and after defining the difference between them he never went back to allergies. Hmmm.

The crux of the talk was all the reasons why it’s necessary for most Americans to eat a better diet and if possible an anti-inflammatory diet. An anti-inflammatory diet consists of a few basics that, to those of you who have read this blog before [or even the title!], will sound VERY familiar:

--Eat only “real foods”, i.e. whole and unprocessed fruits, veggies and meats; local and organic when and if possible.
--Eliminate all sugar, wheat, and dairy.
--Add probiotics and certain vitamin supplements.

Those rules in general are solid, and from what I’ve read and more importantly done and experienced, are helpful. If that’s all he pushed that would have been cool however, throughout the talk, there were informational asides that were confusing and conflicting, and not helpful, to me anyway.

--Never cook with olive oil, only use it in it’s raw state because when cooked it looses all of it’s nutritional value. [He said use avocado oil or macadamia nut oil instead. Of course no macadamias for me].
--90% of the people in the lecture hall room [I was the youngest person by 20 years] has leaky gut syndrome and Candida.
--"IBS doesn’t exist.” He then added that none of his patients have IBS anymore. Huh?
--WE all have heavy metal poisoning.

Sigh.

He wasn’t talking allergies which was my reason for checking him out. I already follow a healthy diet so much of his talk washed over me as redundant information or worse, unhelpful. I felt like he was pitching me for of the time. And I recognize that part of being on the lecture circuit is having a product to push, usually one’s self. [By the way the first row was filled with his patients, he brought his own cheering section of ladies. And there were Hamptons books for sale in the back]. He just came across as a doctor looking to make his mark, to differentiate himself from the Master, or just take a small slice of the Master’s massive pie. I’m talking about Atkins. Atkins is the Master: of diet books, merchandising, and self-promotion. And this is the doctor with whom Dr. Fred worked for many years [and from whom it looks like he poached most of his current staff]. So all in all, I’m glad that according to him I’m pretty much eating the best diet available but I wish that allergies as a topic had been more central to the lecture.

Comments

Anonymous said…
You are absolutely correct! I attended that lecture with my husband who thought the information was presented in a self-promoting, pedantic manner.

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