CONTROLLING YOUR `FAT TOOTH'

Nobody counts his fat like Joe Piscatella.

He's got good reason to. Seventeen years ago, at age 32, he had a coronary bypass.

Since then, he's harped on health -- selling off his Seattle hotel business and establishing the Institute for Fitness and Health.

"I had to get my chest ripped open in order for my brain to function," he confessed.

Since his bypass surgery in 1977, Piscatella has become one of the nation's leading advocates of healthy eating, both on the lecture circuit and in print.

The Tacoma, Wash., resident, with the assistance of his wife Bernie, has written five books on healthy eating, including "Controlling Your Fat Tooth."

Not the stern-professor type, Piscatella dispenses his fat facts with the engaging smile of a man who loves his mission.

Piscatella was in Cape Girardeau this week. He spoke to staff at St. Francis Medical Center and then held a free seminar for the public, sponsored by the hospital's heart institute. About 400 people attended the seminar.

At age 49, Piscatella is lean, handsome and soundly sincere about his cause. He takes his health seriously and thinks others should do the same.

But when Piscatella was growing up in Connecticut, he didn't think about the amount of fat he was eating.

"My lifestyle was not very different from the average American. I grew up eating red meat and whole milk."

Athletic by nature, he played two sports in college. "I played tennis and golf after I got out of college."

In fact, it was after he played tennis for 30 consecutive days that his heart problem was discovered. "I actually had a pain the whole time, but I kept thinking it would go away, because at 32, you (think) are going to live forever."

After undergoing bypass surgery, Piscatella started searching for information on heart-healthy eating. "There was literally no information about it. The Heart Association had a cookbook out and that was it."

So he did his own digging, learning about fat grams and healthy meals. His own detective work led him to write the "Don't Eat Your Heart Out" cookbook, which is used in about 5,500 hospitals nationwide.

"It's still used as a teaching text for patients who need to lose weight and lower cholesterol," said Piscatella.

Spurred on by his own health problem, Piscatella has become an expert on fat.

Americans as a whole eat too much fat and are overweight, he said.

A high fat diet is directly linked to five of the 10 most common causes of death in the U.S., he readily pointed out. Americans, on average, eat fat equivalent to one and a half sticks of butter a day.

"We will lose enough people to heart disease this year to equal 10 Vietnam Wars," he noted.

"In this society, we are 1.5 billion pounds overweight."

Breast, colon and prostate cancer are all linked to a high fat diet, Piscatella said.

Most Americans know they shouldn't eat a lot of fat. But doing it is something else, particularly when most people eat frozen dinners or eat out, he said.

"Most Americans no longer cook. Most Americans reheat," he observed with a smile. And most people are ignorant of the fat content in the food they eat, said Piscatella.

"We do have cravings for fatty food," he pointed out. "A sweet tooth only exists in children." With adults, it's fatty food.

A glazed, chocolate doughnut, for example, has less than 20 percent sugar, but more than 80 percent fat.

Over 40 years of "quick weight loss and diet gimmicks" haven't worked, said Piscatella.

He said people stay on a diet for a while, only to end up going on a food binge. Then they start the yo-yo cycle all over.

"We get these overwhelming feelings of denial and then we binge." Such diets send out the wrong message, he said.

"There's no such thing as good or bad foods," he explained.

The real solution is not to avoid fat, but to budget for it, said Piscatella, who practices what he preaches. "It's like a checkbook," he added.

"London broil might be perfectly acceptable; prime rib is probably going to break your budget."

For women, the fat budget is 30 to 50 grams a day. For men, it's 35 to 55 grams.

Americans need to cut their fat intake in half, double the amount of fruits, grains and vegetables they eat, and exercise regularly, he said.

Exercise helps reduce stress and is the first step a person should take in moving toward healthier eating, he advised.

Piscatella said his goal is to help educate people on how to make healthy choices in the real world.

"If we think people will sit in a sealed room and eat bananas and tofu casserole, it isn't going to work."

But some foods are clearly healthier than others.

"Fettucine Alfredo is a heart attack on a plate," he warned. "There's three and a half sticks of butter in one serving of Fettucine Alfredo. It's over 90 grams of fat."

Ironically, many people consider a Tuna salad sandwich to be a healthy meal. It's not, said Piscatella.

"You literally can have two or three sirloin steaks and get less fat than Tuna on a croissant." That's because Tuna salad has a lot of mayonnaise in it, he explained.

But Piscatella said eating healthy doesn't mean you have to eat bland food.

"There's a lot you can eat that is tasty," he noted. It's just a matter of sticking to the fat budget.