With all the fad diets, health crazes, daytime doctor shows,
and sensational news stories out there,
it can be difficult to know what foods and activities
are really in the best interest of our health.
Well my guest today has been fighting against all the hype for years,
providing a clear, science-backed resource of free nutrition education.
And now, he’s refined thousands upon thousands of studies
into one easily approachable and engaging text
explaining what the science actually says.
Not one to beat around the bush or mince words,
the book is appropriately entitled, How Not To Die.
Hi it’s Emily from Bite Size Vegan and welcome to another vegan nugget.
I’m so excited and honored to welcome back Dr. Michael Greger of Nutritionfacts.org.
If you missed his previous video series
covering all of the common nutrients of concern when going vegan
you can check it out later here and linked below.
Dr. Greger is a physician, a New York Times bestselling author,
and an internationally recognized speaker on nutrition, food safety, and public health issues.
He has dedicated his life to providing accurate, unbiased,
science-based, free information on nutrition and overall health
on his non-profit website Nutritionfacts.org.
Today you’ll hear what inspired him to take this path in life and why he’s so passionate.
Dr. Greger’s book How Not To Die came out on December 8th, 2015
and instantly became a New York Times Best Seller.
The book reveals the top 15 causes of preventable death in the United States
and Dr. Greger’s daily dozen of foods that add years to your life.
Without further ado, let’s hear from Dr. Greger.
In the book you tell a personal story about what it is
that even got you on this path of talking about nutrition.
Could you share a little bit about that?
It’s nice to, you know, have an opportunity to kind of share
how I got involved in all this.
You know because, you know the website, so NutritionFacts.org
I just wanted it to be the science, to kinda take me out of it, and just be like
‘alright, here’s the science’ but all this other stuff I’ve been wanting to share
but I never had an opportunity to until the book came about.
Like what do I eat, how do I make it all happen, ya know
and so that’s what I actually started the book with is - how I got into this.
Why I’m even a doctor, how, why I practice the kind of medicine I practice today,
why I’m so kind of compelled to dedicate my life to this work,
and it’s because of my Grandma,
who was diagnosed with end stage heart disease aged 65
I was just a little kid, when ya know,
the doctor sent my Grandma home to die, confined to a wheelchair, crushing chest pain,
she’d already had so many open heart surgeries she basically run out of plumbing at some point,
you get so scarred up inside. Nothing more they could do, her life was over aged 65.
And then, she was watching 60 Minutes, and there was this section on this crazy guy,
named Nathan Pritikin, who claimed to be reversing heart disease with his new clinic in California.
She somehow made the cross-country trip, and became one of his early patients.
In fact she’s featured in his biography as one of his early success stories.
It talks about Frances Greger. Shows up in this wheelchair,
and ya know they wheel her in, put her on a plant based diet,
graded exercise program and within a few weeks she’s walking ten miles a day,
goes on to live another 31 years, til 96, getting to enjoy her six grandkids,
including me. Inspiring one of them to go to med school,
and living long enough to see him graduate from med school,
and that’s why I practice lifestyle medicine.
So your book is addressing the top 15 causes of premature death,
and I think most people tend to think that
“maybe I have a few unhealthy habits but it’s not that bad”
so as someone who is routinely surveying the state of nutrition in America,
could you tell us exactly how bad is it right now?
Hey, it’s pretty bad. But yeah, so you know I talk about how
sad the Standard American Diet is
and how few even get like a serving of fruit a day, a serving of vegetables.
96% don’t get the recommended three servings a week of beans.
97% of Americans are fiber deficient.
98% of Americans are Potassium deficient
And these nutrient deficiencies are because people aren’t eating enough plants.
In your book you reveal the daily dozen, the foods that, you know,
we should all consume on a daily basis.
If you had to choose the most powerful disease-fighting food, what would it be?
Oh, it’d be greens, dark green leafy vegetables. We need more greens.
Now that’s not what the data, I mean uh, the data suggests nuts actually the most healthful,
fruits and then nuts are the two most health promoting, but I think people tend to eat fruit
people tend to eat nuts, but what they don’t eat is greens.
And so in terms of something I really want to encourage people to eat,
like dark green leafy vegetables and legumes: beans, split peas, chickpeas and lentils.
These are the two foods we’ve really got to get into people’s diets.
But the number one killer (dietary risk factor) in the world:
not eating enough fruit.
It’s interesting because like I know that you’ve done videos on this,
but you hear people talking about the sugar in fruit and diabetics are avoiding fruit.
Where do you think that type of misinformation comes from?
Oh well I think it’s just this ya know, so we realize the industrial sugars
high fructose corn syrup and table sugar are bad for us. Why?
Maybe it’s this overload of fructose
causing liver problems and all sorts of other problems, and so hey!
Where’s fructose found? In fruit, so fruit must be bad too. Uh, okay…
How about but you look at the science? It’s just absolutely not true, right?
Fruit helps liver health, helps with hypertension.
helps all the things that fructose...
I mean, it’s just like, in fact, I actually have a video coming up.
We’ve evolved to eat fruit, in fact we’re actually more frugivores than folivores.
So actually, we are designed to eat fruit. And then that’s the number one risk factor,
dietary risk factor for death is inadequate fruit consumption.
In fact if you take diabetics, split em into two groups, half are told limit your fruit,
half are told eat more fruit, guess who does better? The diabetics told to eat more fruit.
Packed with fiber, I mean, come on people!
OK, so your book of course is focusing on the healing power of diet and exercise.
Is diet and exercise really enough to reverse, and even cure diseases?
Or are there times when other medical intervention is sometimes necessary?
Even just diet alone can reverse disease. How about our number one killer,
number one killer of men and women, the number one reason you and everyone you love will die:
Heart disease. Can be prevented, arrested, treated and cured with diet alone.
As Dr Esselstyn has shown other ya know, lifestyle medicine pioneers such as Ornish and Pritikin
used a combination of lifestyle approaches including a plant based diet plus exercise, stress reduction,
all these other things, Esselstyn just in terms of lifestyle interventions, just used diet,
showed the same remarkable reversals, opening up arteries, in some cases, without drugs,
without surgery. Now are drugs and surgery useful in some indications? Absolutely.
Particularly for acute conditions. You break your leg? You want someone to set it.
You have an infection? You want antibiotics to cure it. But chronic diseases, we’re talking
85% of our health-care dollars go to chronic diseases. Diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity,
heart disease, these cancers. These are chronic diseases for which modern medicine has little to offer.
In terms of treating the cause of the disease, because the cause is lifestyle.
It’s not medication deficiency.
You have a chapter on healing suicidal depression with diet.
Are there any times when mental health issues are beyond the realm of dietary influence?
Or are there any statistics about, is it even possible to know when something is caused by lifestyle,
or when something might be some other pathology.
I think diet plays a minor role in mental health.
I mean the surprise with that chapter is that it plays any role at all.
And in fact it plays the most, so a plant based diet is found to be the most
powerful intervention in improving mood within a matter of weeks.
No other diet has ever been shown to have the effects.
But having said that, that doesn’t mean that it's going to,
I mean just because it works better than everything else
doesn’t mean it works particularly well.
And so ya know there’s lots of mental disorders
for which we have no data on diet at all, all we have is the depression/anxiety data
But it’s remarkable, and hey, people suffering from these mental disorders
need all the help they can get.
OK, for a lot of people, diet comes down to finances, at least that’s what they'll say.
And there’s this predominant belief that a plant-based diet is expensive.
How do you respond to that assertion?
It’s ridiculous! I mean, what could be cheaper than like a can of beans?
Sweet potatoes, cabbage, frozen vegetables, like a can of canned tomatoes,
like whole grain pasta, like come on!? So in fact, isn’t there a book, Vegan On Four Dollars A Day?
Right? And it’s like per family member. Four bucks a day period. Right?
So you can eat healthier than anybody else, cheaper than anybody else.
More environmentally sustainably than anybody else. It’s the same diet.
I hope you enjoyed hearing from Dr. Greger. How Not To Die is available now
and 100% of proceeds go to charity. Check out the link in the description to grab your own copy.
And head over to Nutritionfacts.org for free daily videos on the most current nutrition science.
I’d love to hear what you thought of what Dr. Greger had to share.
Have you lost any loved ones to preventable illnesses?
Have you known anyone who’s reversed their conditions?
Let me know in the comments!
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Now go live vegan, stick to the science, and I’ll see you soon.
People who are walking around the street may know more about nutrition than their doctors.
And we all know how much people walking around the street know about nutrition. Right?
Yet people continue to go to their doctors for unhealthy eating advice, right?
And what their doctors may be telling them may be killing them!