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Preface to The English EditionDr. Jan Kwaśniewski, M.D. lives and works in Ciechocinek, a health resort in central Poland. He started his medical career in the 1960s as a specialist in helping people recuperate. After accumulating years of experience and scientific research, he was able to conclude that the wide variety of ailments patients came to him with was not the product of a great many pathogenic factors, as other doctors would claim, but the result of one underlying cause bad nutrition. He also observed that different diseases are caused by different forms of malnutrition. After discovering this, Dr. Kwaśniewski embarked on a search for a nutritional model that would not give rise to any detrimental effects and, moreover, would ensure a bodys health and proper functioning. The fruit of this search is a dietary model he calls optimal nutrition, since it represents the best possible way for a human to feed himself. Its basic premise is that an eater should take care to keep proper proportions among the three fundamental nutrients in food protein, fat and carbohydrates. He found that the ideal proportion is anywhere from 1:2.5:0.5 to 1:3.5:0:5, meaning that every gram of protein consumed should be accompanied with between 2.5 and 3.5 grams of fat and half a gram of carbohydrates. In short, optimal nutrition is a high-fat, very low carbohydrate diet. It becomes obvious that the principles behind optimal nutrition are diametrically opposed to what is officially preached. It is no wonder that, at best, the medical establishment and likewise the press do not deign to acknowledge it. In practice, however, the diet has turned out to be unbelievably effective in treating a good many diseases and the number of its adherents, already very large, is continuously growing. Its popularity is proven by the fact that a few hundred thousand books devoted to the diet have already been sold. The WGP publishing house has so far published the following books by Dr. Kwaśniewski: Tłuste życie*(1997) an anthology of newspaper articles about the optimal diet, Książka kucharska** (1998) contains 30 single-day menus and 700 recipes, all based on the optimal diet, Żywienie optymalne*** (1999) discusses the principles of optimal nutrition in easy to follow language. Optimal nutrition started in Poland, and it is there that there are the most optimal eaters. However, news of the diet has long since spread beyond Poland, mostly thanks to Polonia, the Polish diaspora living in western Europe and North America. The diet is particularly popular in the United States, where there is the largest concentration of people of Polish heritage. At first, the diets popularity came through individual contacts and word of mouth between Poles living abroad and in those residing in Poland. However, when books began coming out, they soon found their way across the ocean. We had received orders from America for Książka kucharska even before it hit Polish bookshops, simply on the basis our stated intentions to publish it! It goes without saying that only people with a good command of Polish were able to benefit directly from those three books. These people spread the word of the diet around, inciting interest, but unless a person could read Polish fluently, he or she had nothing to refer to. For quite some time both Dr. Kwaśniewski and this publishing house have been receiving signals that there is some demand for an English-language publication on the optimal diet. However the number of faxes, letters and calls we received after Książkakucharska was released exceeded all of our expectations. In response to this great interest, we have decided to foster an encounter between anglophone Americans and the optimal diet, the way around two million Poles are taking toward health, wisdom and a better quality of life. The decision about which title to lead the encounter with was obvious from the very beginning. From the letters and conversations with potential readers, a picture of the book they most wanted took form: one that presents the fundamental principles of optimal nutrition, discusses the effect the diet can have on various ailments and diseases, its healing effect and the diet as a way to lose weight. The book would be written in straightforward language without an excess of specialist terminology and incomprehensible medical discursions. Most of all, the book would contain concrete advice and suggestions about how to follow the diet. Fortunately our company already had one title out, Żywienie optymalne, written on the basis of Dr. Kwaśniewskis first handbook from 1990, that perfectly met those criteria. The current version has been expanded, updated, and enriched with the new information and additional experience that the author has gained over the past 10 years. Altogether, this has turned into a practical guide by which a reader will find out why and how to follow the optimal diet in everyday life. In deciding to introduce American readers with the principles of the optimal diet, we were aware that both the theoretical and practical sides of the diet originated in Poland. Żywienie optymalne was written with Poles in mind their habits, lifestyles, culinary tastes and economic reality. We knew that while having the book translated into other languages, we would come up against many difficulties, especially in parts containing menus, recipes and nutritional information about certain groceries. Many products mentioned do not appear on American store shelves. Where possible, we tried to modify the content or data so that they would be more suited to North American conditions. For this, I would especially like to thank Tomasz Zieliński, the head of the Chicago Optimal Eaters Association, who supplied us with information on foodstuffs available in American shops, their composition and prices. To complicate matters, there are also products which, from the point of the optimal diet, are exceptionally nutritious but are present in the United States either exceptionally rarely (e.g., in ethnic shops) or not at all. This includes meat byproducts (kidneys, heart, lungs), certain kinds of animal fats (fresh lard, jowl, beef tallow) and a certain type of Polish unfermented cow cheese, directly translated as white cheese (sold in blocks). There is no way to avoid these, as replacing them with other foods would alter the proportions between protein, fat and carbohydrates in a dish. That is why references to such foods have been left in this book. We trust, however, that any difficulties that may occur will come about only during the first stage of the optimal diet. As a reader stays on the diet, he or she will gain experience and become able to by taking advantage of dietary information placed on almost every packaged product compose his or her own menus and recipes independently and according to his or her own tastes, daily schedule and financial means. The WGP publishing house is very interested in the reception Dr. Kwaśniewskis revolutionary diet will have in the USA. If interest in this first book is as great as we have been led to believe, translations of the authors other books may follow. I would like to take this final opportunity to invite readers to share their comments, suggestions and experience concerning this book and what we hope will be their new and better life on the optimal diet. Grzegorz Podgrski Publisher
*Life on Fat, currently available only in Polish. (Translators note). **The Optimal Diet Cookbook, currently available only in Polish. (Translators note). ***Optimal Nutrition. (Translators note).
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