- When a health guru who looks the model of health
has a heart attack social media lights up
with speculation on what happened.
Could it have been their diet
or is nature sometimes just random.
When pondering the case of biggest loser trainer, Bob Harper
I realized no one had collected the stories
of how health influencers died
to see if a pattern had emerged.
So I decided to do it.
In this episode I'll tell you the stories
behind the names that fascinate me
and end the episode with patterns that jump out at you,
once you see them as a group
instead of speculating about just one person.
I've lined them up from the 30 somethings on the left
all the way to the centenarians on the right.
It gets pretty crowded past 80 as it should.
Starting with the 30 somethings on the left
that died way too young
and tragically left behind young families,
the curious thing is they all promoted the dietary theories
of the Weston Price Foundation
which advocates a diet centered
on full fat animal foods like butter and cream.
The oldest of the three was Stephen Byrnes
who wrote four books like this one on heart disease.
He died of a stroke around age 40.
He wrote very hard hitting essays that are still online
on the myths and dangers of vegetarianism.
The younger two died of liver and brain cancers.
Moving onto the 50 somethings you may wonder
why Bob Harper is here because he's not dead anymore.
Dead anymore, what does that mean?
He explains it in the book he wrote in his second life.
February 12th, 2017 is a day I don't remember at all
and a day I won't ever forget.
I died that day in a gym
in my New York neighborhood sounds dramatic
but it's very much a true story.
What makes Bob so fascinating is he's living his second life
on a completely different diet than he did in his first.
And his first carbs were the devil and they made you fat.
But then after consulting with Sinus for his second life
he's living on super carbs.
Then there's Jim Fixx who believed that being
in four-hour marathon shape made you heart attack proof.
That hypothesis took a big hit
when he died of a heart attack while out running,
he was an ex overweight smoker
and my understanding from people who knew him is
he wasn't focused on a healthy diet.
Next is Charles Poliquin, the author of almost a dozen books
about fitness and health, like manly weight loss
for many who hate aerobics and carrot stick diets.
Finally, a weight loss program that melts the fat
and spares the muscle.
He was a revered strength coach
and spoke to packed audiences.
- Soy is very bad for you.
- Yeah, and protein is something that you eat a lot of.
I think there was a video that you recently posted
about like you eat two to three kilograms
of meat protein per day.
- Pretty much.
I really like yak.
- [Host] He died at 57 tragically,
apparently of a heart attack.
If Charles had an opposite, it was Jay Dinshah
the founder of the American Vegan Society who died at 66.
Apparently also of a heart attack.
I've read a lot of what Jay wrote
but never found details about what he ate.
Just his very admirable activism for kindness to animals.
So I don't know,
did he indulge in some vegan junk food
or did he to a healthier version of veganism?
Leave a comment if you know.
The next person up is Nathan Pritikin
who came to a plant dominant Mediterranean Diet
after he got heart disease and leukemia around age 42.
- My cholesterol was running about 300 in those days
I was trying to figure out
how to substitute my pint of ice cream from every night.
It took me three years
until my cholesterol dropped to a hundred.
- [Host] It appears the leukemia finally got to him
at age 69.
Adelle Davis was the most popular nutritionist in America
for much of the middle 1900s, selling 10 million books.
She had that confident demeanor that consumers seem to love.
- I think adults should be much healthier
if they had a whole quart of milk a day.
- [Host] Some of her recipes sounded healthy
like pumpkin wheat brown cookies, but most of their calories
came from butter, sugar, and white flour.
She died of cancer at 70.
One of the most polarizing figures was Dr. Atkins
who sold more books than anyone, 15 million.
And he championed a very low carb diet.
Dr. Atkins had trouble keeping his own weight down
and to the endless frustration of scientists,
he couldn't show studies that proved his diet was healthy.
- Now this diet's been out there for 30 years
or close to 30 years.
- And I haven't been able to fund a study.
- Excuse me, 10 million books in print
and you can fund the study.
- Now I can and I'll be the first doctor
to dig in to his own pocket to do a study.
- [Host] He died at 73 and even that was controversial.
Did he have a heart attack?
Did he slip on the ice and bang his head?
Maybe he banged his head because he had a heart attack.
We'll never know, but I don't usually think
of a guy dying by falling on a sidewalk
as a sign of great health.
Onto the 80 somethings.
Mary Enig was a professor of biochemistry for awhile
and wrote the book, "Eat Fat Lose Fat."
She was a skeptic about the growing belief
that saturated fat led to heart disease
and believe butter and coconut oil are good for you.
- What they're going to find in a number of years
down the road is that children who don't get whole milk
they're not going to end up
with their brains functioning as well.
- [Host] She co-founded the Weston Price Foundation
in 1999 and died at 83 of a stroke.
John Yudkin was a professor of nutrition
at Cambridge who became famous for the book about sugar
called "Pure White And Deadly."
He too favored a low carb diet
and believe sugar was a bigger factor
in heart disease than saturated fat.
- There's one food which has most of these elements.
And it talks about the proportion that the body needs
and this food is milk.
- He died at 84.
Okay, a lot of that was sad
but we're about to get to the very inspirational stories
starting with the hilarious Dick Gregory.
- I came back in from Buick last month.
CNN, "Mr. Gregory, you think we'll ever catch Bin Laden?"
I said "We."
I ain't looking for him.
I'm still trying to find out who my daddy is.
- [Host] Hard to believe he was once 300 pounds
and a two pack a day smoker until nutritionist
Alvenia Fulton got him to go whole plant vegan
and they wrote a cookbook together.
He was not only a famous comedian with a Hollywood Star
but he promoted his vegan diet widely.
His motivation for going vegan was
he had feared a predisposition to a heart disease
and that's what he died of at 84.
The most unlikely nutritionist on this list
is Ellen White co-founder of the Seventh Day Adventist
who the Smithsonian calls one of the hundred
most influential Americans of all time.
In 1863, she wrote the simple vegetarian health code
that can be summarized in a sentence, eat beans,
veggies, fruits, whole grains, and nuts,
and as close to their natural state as possible.
She allowed dairy, but expressed misgivings about it.
Her church has grown to 20 million active members
around the globe, and they're now the longest
lived population in the world.
She died at 87.
Then there was Gypsy Boots.
What a character.
He was all about yoga, being vegetarian and loving life.
He could still throw a mean football pass at 77.
He died at 89.
- Now to John Harvey Kellogg, one of the most famous doctors
in the world in his day, inventor of corn flakes,
a Seventh Day Adventist.
I can't even count how many books he wrote.
- Celebrities, including Henry Ford, Amelia Erhart
and future president Warren Harding eagerly submitted
to Kellogg's vegetarian diet and antibacterial treatments.
They really wanted to dethrone protein
which was the morning meal, eggs and bacon and sausage.
And they thought that carbohydrates
were the clean blessed nutrient.
- [Host] He died at 91.
Alvenia Fulton was the feisty nutritionist
who influenced Dick Gregory to go vegan
and helped him write his cookbook.
She had intestinal problems when she was younger
and had several surgeries, which inspired her to do
intermittent fasting once a week and eat healthy.
- If one wants to be a vegetarian.
I say this that a vegetarian live longer,
have better health, less cancer.
- [Host] She lived to 92.
Donald Watson was the founder of the British Vegan Society.
And with his wife, they coined the term vegan
which they shortened from vegetarian.
He lived to 95 and apparently died of a heart attack.
The great Jack Lalaine who got me interested in nutrition
when I caddied for him as a teen
was America's fitness and nutrition guru
for something like 60 years, he would tell us
if it came from a cow or a pig, don't eat it.
He was all about the fruits and vegetables.
He lived to 96.
I'm gonna go oldest to youngest with the centenarians
starting with the Chinese nutrition professors Zeng Jie,
very famous in China who worked as a professor
until well past 100.
Here he is looking pretty good for a man of 108.
He's written several books like "The Wisdom to Stay Young"
which has written in Chinese.
So it was kind of a pain to translate
with my handheld translator, but I can summarize,
as far as nutrition goes,
he thought a whole food diet that looks like 10% protein,
20% fat and 70% carbohydrates was ideal.
He was interviewed in a study of Chinese centenarians
where they described the Chinese diet.
The main course is vegetables for all three meals
and they don't eat much dairy.
When they surveyed the 878 centenarians in the study,
aged a hundred to 117.
The most popular food group by far was vegetables.
He also wrote a three volume set in Chinese
called health maintenance is the best doctor.
- You drove here today.
- Driving is nothing.
I worked till I was 95.
- [Host] Ellsworth Wareham was a heart surgeon
until he was 95 and everyone's favorite great grandpa
who was out mowing his lawn
and promoting a healthy lifestyle, well past 100.
- As far as my dietary program is concerned
I happen to be a vegan.
I've been a vegan now for about half my life
but I was concerned about the adequacy of the nutrition.
When I found out that I could get by,
by taking a little vitamin B12.
Well, of course, I then became entirely vegan.
- What motivates you nowadays?
- I feel that I have to make a contribution.
When I was doing surgery, I made it by operating.
Now I try to make it by speaking about preventive medicine.
- Ellsworth lived to 104.
Fred Kummerow professor of bio-sciences
who spent 50 years raising awareness about trans fats.
Hero, he didn't think cholesterol was a problem
and he ate an egg every day at breakfast.
He believed in a balanced diet
where you ate enough protein to repair cells
but not so much that it got used by the body for energy.
I bought his book
and here's what a typical dinner looked like.
Meat or fish prepared under the broiler, baked potato,
some fresh or frozen vegetables, lettuce salad,
fruit, a cup of tea.
- So if you eat what nutritionists consider
a well balanced diet and don't eat too much of fried foods.
Maybe you will eat some, but you can't eat too much of it.
Then you'll never have to worry about heart disease.
That's what I believe.
- Dr. Kummerow lived to 102.
I saved the most famous and polarizing figure
for last, Ancel Keys.
The man who popularized the Mediterranean Diet.
The internet has decided he was an evil scientist
who got the US to panic about fat in the eighties.
They blame him for the obesity crisis
who caused millions of deaths,
all because of his massive decades long
seven countries study.
Most conspiracies are hard to disprove.
So maybe NASA really did fake the moon landing
but you would think this particular conspiracy
would be easy to disprove just by looking at the cookbooks
that he and his wife Margaret, a biochemist wrote
to promote the Mediterranean Diet.
With cheese and fish on the cover,
does the diet they promoted famous for all of oil
look zero fat to you.
They simply promoted a diet low in saturated fat
the Mediterranean Diet, the most popular diet in the world.
Adding fuel to the conspiracy fires is the journalist
Nina Teicholz, who has no scientific background.
- Keys did a lot of, there's hardly a better word
for it than kind of saying fudging the data.
- I guess it's possible for Ancel to have convinced teams
of scientists across seven countries
to fudge their data for decades.
If NASA could fake the moon landing
I guess anything's possible.
And why would the scientists do it,
to keep us from buying the butter
so they could hoard it all?
I guess there's hardly a better word for it
than Nina's a conspiracy theorist.
- And he published it in obscure German only journals.
I had to go back to obscure places.
He really didn't want this data to get out.
- Or you can just go to Amazon and buy the whole study
or go to Harvard University Press
and download a digital copy for free
or go to sevencountriesstudy.com
and get links to 10 books about the study
and 580 peer reviewed papers from all over the world.
My favorite book about it was from a real scientist
a professor of lipid metabolism from Rutgers
who believes the Ancel was a genius.
Ancel died at 100 and his wife Margaret
who assisted him all those years died at 97.
You may have noticed someone peeking up from the top
of my chart that centenarian Jerry Stamler,
still working on heart disease funded by the NIH
with a team of researchers at 100, it gives me comfort
that Ancel's colleagues are still publishing real science
when science denial has gone mainstream in America.
He eats the Mediterranean Diet.
So what jumps out at you from this page?
The first thing for me is the two main camps.
The low-carb high-fat gang to the left
many of whom looked amazing in their day
and the high plant group to the right
some of whom also looked amazing.
I didn't include Adelle Davis or Jim Fixx in either group.
And yeah, I could have included more names
like Norman Walker, the raw food vegan juicer pioneer
who sold so many books and died at 99 and Linus Pauling,
the mega vitamin no sugar man who died at 93,
and Rynn Berry, the vegan who wrote about famous vegetarians
and died at 68 of a heart attack while out jogging
and any number of Weston Price and low carb tragedies.
But none of them really changed the pattern.
The second thing is the high percentage
of overlap in the diets to the right, in an interview
when Ancel was 93, he described the Mediterranean Diet
as it was when his study began as mainly vegetarian.
My perception is the Chinese diet is 90% Mediterranean like,
but with very little dairy.
Even the vegans which are somehow perceived as extreme,
have 80% overlap with the Mediterranean Diet
that Ancel described.
By contrast the overlap between the low carb diets
on the left and the diets on the right
is much less, maybe 20 to 30%.
The third thing is the education level
and scientific stature is highest on the way right side.
The fourth thing is the very popular gurus
in their day span the spectrum from left to right.
I get the impression that what they had in common
was they had some charisma.
- You know what I want you to do, get up on your feet
give me a big smile.
- [Host] They spoke with great confidence.
- Yeah, I'm not kidding you.
If you like really jump on this bandwagon
like your body's going to start burning fat like crazy.
- Okay.
- [Host] And they let you eat foods with mass appeal,
for example Ancel and Margaret had cheese and wine
right on the cover of their cookbook.
Okay, Chris, but who's still alive, still publishing
and speaking, and has the stature of that far right column.
I'll let Ellsworth answer that question.
- This, as it says
is the most comprehensive study of nutrition ever conducted.
How do you like that?
- Lucky for all of us, one of the true greats
is still a spring chicken at 87
and just published a new book "The Future of Nutrition,"
an insider's view of the science.
I can summarize what he believes very simply.
It isn't just about the saturated fat as Ancel believed
in his day, but also about the toxic effects
of too much animal protein and the perils
of letting protective whole plants like veggies
get pushed off the plate.
- Almost every time we looked
what we found was the same answer, just glaring at us.
And that was the closer we get
to a plant-based diet the healthy we're going to be.