Born in 1947, I am a prime-time Baby Boomer, and the world has dramatically changed in my lifetime. There were two billion people on the planet in 1950, and now there are over seven billion. As the population has grown, so too has the food industry. Much of the food we eat today is not the same as it was just 50 years ago, and the changes have resulted in widespread, often life-threatening diseases such as obesity, diabetes, asthma, heart disease, and acid reflux.1-5
When I was a child, my mother had dinner on the table promptly at 6 o’clock every night. Once a month we went out to eat at a steakhouse or a Chinese restaurant. All the food we consumed was local. We actually knew the man who supplied our chickens, and we got corn on the cob in late July or August when it ripened on the farm two miles from our house.
In those days, there was no such thing as fast food, no soda machines, and no Food and Drug Administration (FDA)–approved list of “Generally Recognized as Safe” (GRAS) food additives.1,6-8 Wouldn’t it be nice if we could go back to that earlier time and eat the way we did before food changed so much for the worse?
I have spent my career as a physician and scientist focused on the problem of acid reflux. With the 2010 publication of Dropping Acid: The Reflux Diet Cookbook & Cure,1 the floodgates opened in my practice—I suspect because of the three words reflux, diet, and cure. That book is still the most popular book on acid reflux. Since its publication, I have continued to learn about healthy eating, and almost everything that I know about reflux and nutrition I have learned from my reflux patients.
Dropping Acid: The Reflux Diet Cookbook & Cure will help you conquer reflux through healthy diet and lifestyle. But if that book has one flaw, it is that it assumes the maintenance phase is intuitive: just avoid trigger foods and eat healthy. Dr. Koufman’s Acid Reflux Diet is its companion book designed for the long haul. This is intended to be a longevity diet that is demanding and assumes that you are willing to make changes in what you eat and when you eat it.
When Sonia Huang, my outstanding physician assistant, suggested that we write a cookbook, I seized the opportunity. As Sonia and I worked with reflux patients individually to establish dietary health, we often observed a transformation that included weight loss and collateral disease control. In many cases, patients were able to come off their cholesterol and diabetes medications.
Sonia was the stimulus for our collaboration with her friend Chef Philip. I wrote the medical and dietary sections of this book, and Sonia and Chef Philip developed a range of delicious new recipes, most of which are vegan and gluten-free. Together, in this book we offer a new and healthier approach to eating.
Jamie Koufman, New York, October 2015