DR. MCMACKEN: It turns out that dietary risks are actually the most important risk factor
for chronic disease. There’s actually studies that show they even trump smoking, not that
we should smoke. But dietary risks are incredibly important for preventing and even reversing
chronic disease. DR. PINEDA OCHOA: What kind of diet are you
recommending?
DR. MCMACKEN: So I spent some time — I spent quite a bit of time looking at nutrition research.
I actually received a grant a couple of years back to study the evidence behind different
nutritional strategies —
DR. PINEDA OCHOA: Oh, wow.
DR. MCMACKEN: — and that’s a huge, there’s a lot of things published about nutrition
— and to then develop a curriculum to teach my colleagues and doctors-in-training about
nutrition. And you know, what I really wanted to study was not what does the USDA say I
should eat, what does this organization say I should eat, but what does the evidence actually
say we should eat. And it’s impossible to read all of the published studies. But when
you do read a lot of studies, you start to see trends.
So the trends that I’ve seen are when people turn their attention to plant foods, they
tend to have much lower levels of disease. It’s quite simple. And that’s what I tell
my patients.
And in populations, when you compare different levels of meat eating, for example, different
levels of eating animal products, those that tend to eat mostly plant-based diets tend
to have extremely low risk of disease, such as the Adventist population, for example,
where you can really look at groups of people who are omnivores versus semi-vegetarians,
lacto-ovo vegetarians, pescetarians, and then vegans. With each decrease in animal products
in the eating pattern, you see a step-wise benefits in terms of heart disease, diabetes,
cancer risk, obesity.
And then when you look at randomized control trials, really the only pattern of eating
that’s been shown to reverse heart disease, for example, is a plant-based diet, one that
doesn’t have animal products. And there’s so many benefits to eating that way that we’re
only starting to understand. So in terms of our microbiome, our gut flora, our genes,
lengthening our telomeres — the caps on our DNA, that —
DR. PINEDA OCHOA: That have to do with aging.
DR. MCMACKEN: — that have to do with aging, exactly. So there are so many benefits that
we’re only starting to understand. But my feeling and my understanding from my own research
and the benefits that I’ve seen in my patients is that a diet based in plant foods is the
way to go and is the most beneficial.
DR. PINEDA OCHOA: What’s wrong with eating these animal products, even if they are farm-raised
and organic and no hormones added?
DR. MCMACKEN: There’s a lot of concerns that I would have with that. So, we know from
many, many studies that there are aspects of these foods, the animal protein itself
has been closely linked to increased production of IGF-1, insulin-like growth factor, which
is very closely tied to cancer. We also know that these types of foods are — whether
these animals are given antibiotics or hormones from the outside, they contain hormones, because
they’re living beings. And particularly with milk, we get milk from animals, from
cows that are pregnant. So there’s going to be extra hormones.
And so I think that’s a common misconception that, if you buy something that’s hormone-free,
it doesn’t have hormones in it. It just means they weren’t added. And we see a lot
of health consequences from these foods. We know that even small amounts of fish, for
example, in the diet increase the risk of diabetes. We know that eggs in the diet of
someone who already has diabetes dramatically increases the risk of heart disease.
And I think it’s very tempting to take things and divide them into smaller parts and say,
well, what about saturated fat or what about cholesterol or what about animal protein.
But I like to think about food in the package that it comes in. So of course, we need protein.
But what kind of package are you going to get your protein in? Are you going to get
it in a package that has other things that have been shown to be harmful? Or are you
going to get it in a package that has phytonutrients and antioxidants and fiber that have been
shown to be beneficial.