- Hey everybody, this is Klaus from Plant Based News,
and I'm with Dr Michael Greger.
- I am excited to be on Plant Based News.
Check it out!
(whooshing)
- Let's talk about your new book, "How Not to Diet."
Has that been in the works, like the last,
how long has it been? - Oh my God, yeah.
So I spent over a year of my life.
It has been the toughest research project
I've ever taken on in my life.
- Because of the success of "How Not to Die,"
the previous book,
do you feel like you've got a potential, like,
second-album syndrome,
where it's like, you're probably busier now
than you were in 2013 and '14 and '15,
doing "How Not to Die?"
How has it been?
- It's just a tougher book to write,
just because the obesity literature is not only massive,
but it's very contradictory.
So very simple research questions,
like, "Should you skip breakfast?"
"Should you exercise before or after meals?"
Little teeny things.
These are each thousand-paper research questions.
There's 1,000 papers on this!
Some say one thing, some say...
And you say, "Wait a second.
"How could similar experiments come to different results?"
So you really have to dig deep into the primary literature,
read all the original studies yourselves
and make up your own mind,
and bring it out to people.
And so, once I was doing this, I realized,
no wonder there's never been a resource like this before.
Because it's just too big to take on.
But, you know, I've got an army of researchers,
and so we were able to distill
all the best science on the topic into one resource,
and I just can't wait for it to get out
and to get into people's hands.
- What is the executive summary of that one resource?
What are the key take-home pieces of information?
People know they wanna,
for example lose weight, and tackle obesity?
- Yeah, so originally,
I mean it kinda, to the title "How Not to Diet,"
I was originally gonna have a chapter
on each of all the kind of leading popular press diets,
like the keto diet and the paleo diet,
and just kinda hone that list.
Normally, US news will report a dietary panel of experts.
You know, every year, we do,
like, the best diets kind of thing.
And so, I realized how many diets are out.
I mean there's just, every year,
there's 30 new diets are out.
And I realized,
no matter how up-to-date I am,
by the time the book comes out,
it's already gonna be out-of-date.
'Cause there's already new diets.
And so it's like playing whack-a-mole, right?
And so, instead of just going
through each of the current diets,
I decided to kind of create the optimal wight loss diet
from the ground up, by coming up with a list of criteria
for what an optimal weight loss diet would look like.
So I came up with 17 criteria.
So these are the 17 things
that you can put any new diet plan in the future against.
You say, "Okay, well how good is this for weight loss?
"Let's put it up against the 17 criteria."
You can do it for any eating pattern,
any meal plan, any meal,
any particular food, individually,
and just see it, so it's like
a little workbook kind of thing.
"Here's the 17, how many check-marks does it get?"
And so from then, you can come up
with kind of the optimum wight loss diet.
That's the first half of the book.
So, if you're doing everything right,
and you've still got high blood pressure,
okay, hibiscus tea, Flaxies,
"Oh, cholesterol's still too high."
Do this, this, this and this.
So, the average vegan for example,
perfect body weight, 22.5 BMI.
Okay, but it's a bell curve.
So if there's still any stubborn pounds
you're difficulty getting, there are specific foods
that act as fat-blockers and starch-blockers
and appetite-suppressants,
and you know, on down the list.
Metabolic boosters, foods that interfere
with the metabolic slow-down that happens with weight loss.
On down the list.
So, you know, this is the Daily Dozen, "How Not to Die."
And we're actually gonna be updating the
Dr Greger's Daily Dozen app
on iPhone and Android, free of course.
We're gonna be updating it.
It'll be updated by the time the book comes out.
And so there'll be like a weight loss setting.
So you switch over to the weight loss setting,
and it'll add these 21 tweaks
to accelerate weight loss,
regardless of what you eat.
Now, of course, ideally we want people eating healthy
and then accelerating weight loss after that.
And so, for example, there are simple spices,
proven in randomized, placebo-controlled trials
to accelerate weight loss for literally pennies a day,
like garlic powder.
Like ground ginger.
And so I go through, how much, garlic...
It's like two cents' worth of garlic a day,
found to accelerate weight loss.
So some foods are so potent, you can pack it into a pill,
and you can, you know, pit it head-to-head
against a placebo sugar pill,
and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt
that this food substance itself accelerates weight loss
or, you know, on down the list.
And so there's a bunch of spices,
there's a negative-calorie pre-load,
and there's some foods you can eat that basically
end up actually kind of subtracting calories from your diet
as opposed to adding.
I talked about exercise optimization, sleep optimization,
stress, every possible kinda tip and technique
that's been proven in the scientific literature
to accelerate weight loss,
I have included in the book, right.
But, look.
If you want, you know, testimonials,
and before-and-after pictures,
you have come to the wrong place.
I'm not interested in anecdotes, I'm interested in evidence,
and that's what this book does.
It puts the science together.
And so if anyone wants to know
what the science actually says,
cutting through all the BS in the diet industry,
I've got a book for you!
- There's a little information
about the carnivore diet recently.
How does that one, for example,
Jordan Peterson is on this carnivore diet kick.
How does that stack up against the criteria
that you mentioned?
- So one of the criteria is lone added sugars.
So presumably, someone who's eating a lot of meat
is not eating a lot of sugar.
So they would get...
So I think it's, they would get one out of 17.
So it could be worse!
So if you were eating a meat and cotton candy diet,
that would be worse.
- And what are other criteria?
- So the other criteria including rich and high-fiber foods,
water-rich foods, lone added fats, particularly satiating,
there's the low insulin impact,
anti-inflammatory, clean from
the so-called obesogenic pollutants,
and on down the list.
- Are you worried that it would maybe complicate it
for people that just wanna
kind of get into plant-based living,
for example Dr McDougall, you've been to his conference,
you've worked with him.
He's very much all for making it very simple.
Do you worry that maybe perhaps
honing on these little details
makes it more complicated for people?
- Well, see, I don't want to be anybody's guru, right.
I don't want anyone to be like,
"Well, just tell me what to eat."
In fact, that is the root of the problem,
is people giving up their,
their own kind of,
giving up their power,
and saying, "Look, it's too complicated,
"throw my hands up in the air,
"I'll just let you decide what I should eat."
That's dangerous, because who knows
what crackpot will come along
and say, "Ah, you gotta drink celery juice,"
or whatever, right?
I mean, if there was any decision in life
to be based on best available balance of evidence,
based on evidence,
it should be the health and wellbeing
of yourself and your family.
Look, if you want to buy a new toaster on Amazon,
then the random opinion of strangers may actually be useful!
Right, someone has a little review,
says, "I love this toaster."
You're like, "Okay, okay, fine," right.
But when it comes to something...
You know, when I was in clinical practice,
I'd ask, "Well, why are you eating this way,"
"Oh, someone at the gym told me..."
What?!
You know, a checkout aisle magazine
is what you're feeding your family?
If there's anything to actually do some digging on,
you know, see what the actual evidence says,
it would seem to be kind of,
you know, your health and longevity, right?
And this is the resource.
I mean NutritionFacts.org is the resource
I wish I had as a medical student.
So when patients asked me,
"Should I take a multivitamin,"
I was like, "I don't know,
"no-one ever taught me this."
So I had to do, I had to look it up,
and once I already look it up,
"Okay, now I have this information I wanna share,
"how do I get it out to people?
"I can tell that one patient,
"but I'm sure lots of other patients have that same idea."
And so that's where this kernel
of the idea for NutritionFacts.org came from.
"I want this resource to be the go-to resource
"on what does the best available balance of evidence
"say right now about all the questions you have
"about health and nutrition?"
- You mentioned that the book and what you're saying
is based on thousands of studies.
What are some stand-out studies
that really make you think,
"Wow, that was really influential and influenced--"
- Oh my God, there are some crazy studies.
I didn't think I'd be surprised.
I mean, there were some questions
that I knew there was evidence of both ways,
and I was just curious as to where they'd fall out.
But then there's just some crazy stuff out there.
So some of my favorite things,
so I do a whole chapter on chronobiology,
which is kind of the effects of your circadian rhythms
on your biology.
So the US Military did a study
where if you feed people 2,000 calories,
one meal, either breakfast or supper,
exact same foods, exact same calories,
you gain different amount of weight.
So it turns out morning calories don't count
as much as evening calories.
You gain more weight eating the same snack in the evening
than the same snack in the morning.
That's mind-blowing, right.
So, I mean, a calorie is not a calorie, right?
It's not just what you eat, but when you eat it,
and what combination you eat things,
and what context you eat things.
I mean, crazy stuff like that.
After how much sleep do you eat something,
does it have a different effect on your body?
So I did a whole chapter.
I mean, this is just remarkable stuff.
You take drugs at different times,
give chemotherapy at different times,
you try to commit suicide
at different times from poisoning,
totally different results based on what time of day.
Absolutely cool.
So that whole chronobiology thing just rocked my socks off.
I'm actually gonna have a whole long series of videos
on nutrition facts about it.
In fact, you know, 'cause I wanna do videos
on everything I learned in the book.
The book's so incredibly long
that I'm gonna go for years
and years putting out these videos,
but the first thing I wanted to cover
was chronobiology stuff.
That's just cool stuff.
What are some other crazy results?
- The BROAD study?
- Oh, well how about the single,
well, see, you didn't want to give it away.
Spoiler alert everybody!
So I wanted to know, what is...
So after I go through,
"Here's the 17 criteria."
And I say, "Okay, so let's see how good this is.
"So let's put 17 criteria together."
And turns out, the single diet
that best matches all 17 criteria for ideal weight loss diet
is a diet centered around whole plant foods.
Okay, so, let's now look into the medical literature
and see if our prediction came true.
Let's look at all randomized control trials
that didn't have some exercise component,
that didn't restrict people's calories.
I mean, you know, you lock someone in a room,
you lose as much weight as they want.
Okay, but in terms of, "Eat as much as you want,"
and they thought, "Let's look at all the randomized trials,
"See what the single best,
"most effective weight-loss intervention
"ever in the history of medicine."
And it was a study in 2017,
the BROAD study by a group of New Zealand researchers
that went into one of the poorest areas of the country,
with the highest obesity rates,
and they randomized people to either stay on medical care
or, just information about plant based eating.
No meals were provided.
They were just informed.
Semi-weekly meetings about the benefits
of plant based eating.
So a three-month study,
and so even though there were no restrictions of portions,
no counting calories or any of that stuff,
those in the BROAD study lost 19 pounds.
Now, 19 pounds is pretty respectable weight loss
for three-month study.
But then the study was over,
and the researchers were just curious,
and decided to call everyone back at six months
just to see how much weight they gained back.
"Yeah, sure, in the study, you lost 19 pounds," right?
But then, "Okay, six months,
"let's see how much you gained back
"after being kind of released out into the wild.
"No more instruction, no more anything."
So they come back six months later,
and so at the end of three months,
at the end of the study they were down 19 pounds.
But after six months,
they were only down 27 pounds!
They lost even more weight!
They got even better, why?
Because they felt so much better on a plant based diet.
Their physical symptoms improved.
Their mental health improved.
They got off so many of their medications
that they were sticking to it on their own.
Forgot about the researchers,
they felt so good, they were sticking to it.
They came back at a year later, they kept the...
Even studies that last a whole year,
where you're actually instructing people
to stick to whatever diet for a whole year,
yeah, the first few months it goes down,
but then it creeps back up.
After a whole year...
They were out of the study for a year,
and still retained that weight loss.
Dozens of pounds of weight loss.
And so it is the most,
even though it only lasted three months,
it is the most effective weight loss intervention,
6 to 12 months in any other comparable study in history.
And so that just gives credence to this whole...
So that's how I end the first part of the book,
say, "Okay, here it is, and it really works!"
I mean really, when we actually put it to the test,
you know, the low-calorie density,
all those various criteria,
and it actually translates out.
Okay, and then we spend the rest of the book,
you know, tweaking that, and making it work even better.
- Do you ever bring into the book
the kind of old-school studies from Ornish
and that sort of thing,
or is this completely immaterial?
- Oh, well so--
- I guess they're all still relevant, right?
- Well, so you know,
what's interesting about plant based eating,
is that even in studies that weren't about weight loss...
I mean, if you put someone in a weight loss study,
regardless of the intervention,
and it's something called the Hawthorne effect,
meaning just being in a study affects your weight status,
because you know they're looking over your shoulder,
and they're gonna weigh you again in three months,
you gotta go back at six months, right?
And so, even people who are in like a control,
who are just like, "Yeah, continue to eat
"whatever you were eating,"
people actual change what they're eating
because someone's looking over their shoulder.
It's like a quantum physics kind of thing.
You look at a particle, and it can affect the measurement.
And so that's why even in control groups,
that's why we have control groups,
is because people tend to lose weight regardless,
just because just being in a study.
And so you have someone in a weight loss study,
they're like, "Oh, I'm supposed to be losing weight."
Okay, but lots of plant based diet studies
are done on, like, rheumatoid arthritis,
and reversing migraines,
or Crohn's disease, or multiple sclerosis,
or heart disease, or diabetes, right?
Nothing to do with weight loss.
It's not explicitly.
They're like, "Look, we want to make
"your rheumatoid arthritis go away.
"So we're gonna put you on this kind of diet.
"We're not talking about calories,
"we're not talking about anything."
And so then, let's look at those studies.
The reason you look at those studies is,
"Well, let's just see if they incidentally
"lost weight without even trying."
And in many cases, they're not even overweight.
"But let's just see what happens."
No, and they lose weight.
And so you can see,
even in studies that aren't around weight loss,
put people on a plant based diet,
and they can't help but come down to a healthier weight.
- So if there's so much evidence for this,
why isn't it implemented, and what is it about the system...
This is a big question, but what is it about the system
that means that the sort of assimilation
and distribution of the data isn't what you say,
and it doesn't reflect what you also say?
- Yeah, so it turns out,
I mean, you'd think if there was safe, simple,
side-effect free solution to obesity,
we'd know about it right now, right?
So it takes, on average, about 17 years
for research findings to make it
into day-to-day clinical practice.
And look, I mean, and I think
the heart disease example's a perfect one, right.
I mean, I know it from my personal life,
particularly poignant for my family
was heart disease, right?
The reversal of my grandma's heart disease
from Nathan Pritikin.
Ornish published 1990, July 21st, decades ago.
And even that, our number one killer of men and women,
still lost in some rabbit hole,
still hundreds and thousands of Americans alone
continue to die needlessly
from this preventable, arrestable, reversible condition.
So, wait a second.
If the cure to our number one killer
is still lost and out there,
When then, pfft, obesity, forget about it, right?
I mean, it just shows
that you can have all the science in the world,
but the system can be aligned against you.
And why?
It's because of reimbursement issues,
doesn't make anybody money.
You cannot really profit from eating real food.
The junk food industry, the processed food industry,
trillion-dollar industry,
would love to sell you vegan junk food, low-carb junk food,
even, ironically, paleo junk food, right?
Keto junk food, any kind of...
What they can't make money from is whole food, right?
So I mean, "We can sell you Apple Jacks,
"but selling apples just doesn't work.
"Orange Crush, but not actually oranges."
Because, I mean, real food goes bad.
I mean, produce actually goes bad.
No, you want something that sits on the shelf,
very good for shelf life, not good for human life.
The system is just set up, it's not like
the CEO of Coca-Cola's thinking,
"Oh, how can I contribute
"to the childhood obesity epidemic?"
They're just thinking,
"How can I satisfy my shareholders
"for the next quarter?"
And how do you do that?
Well, you sell something for a couple of bucks a bottle
that costs literally a few pennies, right?
'Cause you have this sugar subsidized by tax-payers.
I mean, it's just a slam-dunk.
Whereas if you're trying to sell broccoli,
it's not even branded.
Even a broccoli-grower's not
gonna put an ad on TV for broccoli.
The competitors will just, you buy a competitor's broccoli.
It doesn't even make sense.
The system is not set up to reward healthy behaviors,
and so that's why all the ads on TV are for garbage.
The system is set up, really,
against the health of you and your family.
So you have to take responsibility for your own health,
for your own family's health,
for your own community's health,
and stick to what the science says.
(whooshing)