Jan Kwasniewski, 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. Kwasniewski embarked on a search for a nutritional model that would not give rise to any detrimental effects and, moreover, would ensure a body's 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.

A comprehensive website on optimal nutrition in English: www.ahoa.org.au