Discussion Board

3 to 4 million people in the USA have chronic Hepatitis C. The new triple therapy says patients MUST take their dose of the anti-viral such as Telaprevir with 20 grams of fat, 3 times a day. This is for at least 3 months, with an additional 3 months with just the interferon and ribavirin. What would the best way for patients to fit this much fat into a low-fat vegan diet? Thanks....Mike

60 grams of fat (20 grams 3X/day) without any other fat would be a moderately high fat diet, nowhere even close to "low fat", so I don't have an answer. Probably need to know what the purpose of the fat is with the medication and if there is a work around. Otherwise my best guess is that they would have to either just do it or find an alternative therapy.

Then perhaps a person who must use the fat regimen should be on Fuhrman's diet until the course of meds has ended. An ounce and a quarter of walnuts three times a day would fulfill the requirements for fat and, according to Jeff, actually expand the arteries by 24% (in a brachial artery test.) And would avoid the necessity of getting the required fat through eating meat, dairy, or seed oils.

Didi

Thanks for the tip. Yes, the goal would seem to be to get the 60 g fat from healthy sources. They often recommend for 20 g fat: 3 T peanut butter, cream cheese & bagel, 1 cup ice cream, 6 oz salmon, salad w/3T olive oil....Mike

Good call Didi. Yes, go the walnuts, hemp, flax, chia... You could still do Dr McDougall's format in every other respect.

Thanks. Any other ideas on "healthy" vegan based fat foods?...Mike

Avocado. I'd love having an excuse to eat guacamole every day!

I'd probably lean toward walnuts and avocado, maybe throw in peanut butter now and then. You could toss flax seed meal into the equation somewhere, but if you're eating it plain you'll need to eat a lot of it to get 20g of fat. One cup avocado would be more palatable to me than 1/2 cup of flax. YMMV Maybe you could make flax crackers? or crank up the % of flax added in a bowl of oatmeal and eat that before the medication. Or maybe a super flax smoothie concoction. I don't know. I'd go with walnuts and avocado. Easier.