How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease

by Michael Greger

water turns blue, your urine is not acidic but neutral or even basic.

Having too much phosphorus in the blood may increase the risk of kidney failure, heart failure, heart attacks, and premature death.

Three of Washington’s largest lobbying firms reportedly now work for the food industry.95 For example, PepsiCo alone spent more than $9 million (£5 million) in a single year to lobby Congress.96 The deeper you dig, the less surprising it is that such food additives as trans fats have been allowed to kill thousands year after year. But hey, according to the manufacturer, they’re safe

the same fermentation that converts nitrates to nitrites can happen when you eat vegetables, thanks to bacteria on your tongue. So why are vegetable nitrates and nitrites okay but the same compounds from meat are linked to cancer?110 Because nitrites themselves are not carcinogenic; they turn into carcinogens. Nitrites only become harmful when they turn into nitrosamines and nitrosamides.

Breast cancer does not occur overnight. That lump you feel in the shower one morning may have started forming decades ago. By the time doctors detect the tumor, it may have been present for forty years or even longer.

The scary reality is that what doctors call “early detection” is actually late detection.

That’s why you can’t just wait until diagnosis to start eating and living healthier. You should start tonight.

limiting alcohol, eating mostly plant foods, and maintaining a normal body weight—was associated with a 62 percent lower risk of breast cancer.14 Yes, three simple health behaviors appeared to cut risk by more than half.

Could something as ubiquitous as the lightbulb be a mixed blessing? Right in the middle of your brain sits the pineal gland, your so-called third eye. It’s connected to your actual eyes and has just one function: to produce a hormone called melatonin. During the day, the pineal gland is inactive. But once the sky darkens, it activates and begins pumping melatonin into your bloodstream. You start getting tired, feel less alert, and start thinking about sleep. Melatonin secretion may peak between 2:00 A.M. and 5:00 A.M. and then shuts off at daybreak, which is your cue to wake up.

Conversely, women who interrupt their melatonin production by working night shifts appear to be at increased risk for breast cancer.35 Even living on a particularly brightly lit street may affect the risk. Studies comparing nighttime satellite photos against breast cancer rates have found that people living in brighter neighborhoods tend to have a higher breast cancer risk.36,37,38 Therefore, it’s probably best to sleep without any lights on and with the blinds down, though the evidence to support these strategies is limited.39

Melatonin production can be gauged by measuring the amount of melatonin excreted in our first pee in the morning. And, indeed, women with higher melatonin secretion have been found to have lower rates of breast cancer.

Meat consumption was the only food significantly associated with lower melatonin production, for reasons that are yet unknown.42

Maspin is one of the tools your body appears to use to keep breast cancer at bay. Breast cancer cells find a way to turn off this gene, but apple peels appear to be able to turn it back on. The researchers concluded that “apple peels should not be discarded from the diet.”100

physician Hippocrates wrote about using them to treat patients.116 Better known as one of the richest plant sources of essential omega-3 fatty acids, flaxseeds are really set apart by their lignan content. Though lignans are found throughout the plant kingdom, flaxseeds have around one hundred times more lignans than other foods.

task is performed by the good bacteria in your gut. The gut bacteria’s role may help explain why women with frequent urinary tract infections may be at a higher risk of breast cancer: Every course of antibiotics you take can kill bacteria indiscriminately, meaning it may stymie the ability of the good bacteria in your gut to take full advantage of the lignans in your diet.121 (Yet another reason you should take antibiotics only when necessary.)

What about soya for women with breast cancer? There have been five studies on breast cancer survivors and soya consumption. Overall, researchers have found that women diagnosed with breast cancer who ate the most soya lived significantly longer and had a significantly lower risk of breast cancer recurrence than those who ate less.135 The quantity of phytoestrogens found in just 250 ml of soya milk136 may reduce the risk of breast cancer returning by 25 percent.

The top-five sources of arachidonic acid in the American diet are chicken, eggs, beef, pork, and fish, although chicken and eggs alone contribute more than the other top sources combined.

“might ultimately die from cancer attributable to the CT radiation.”23 In response to this revelation, the editor in chief of a leading radiology journal conceded, “We radiologists may be as guilty as others when it comes to not watching out for children.”24

Patients undergoing these scans are rarely informed of these risks. For example, did you know that getting a chest CT scan is estimated to inflict the same cancer risk as smoking seven hundred cigarettes?

CT scans and x-rays can be lifesaving, but good evidence suggests that one-fifth to one-half of all CT scans aren’t necessary at all and could be replaced with a safer type of imaging or simply not performed at all.29 Many people expressed concern about the radiation

So should everyone take a “baby”-strength aspirin a day? (Note that aspirin should never actually be given to infants or children.)61 No. The problem is that aspirin can cause side effects. The same blood-thinning benefit that can prevent a heart attack can also cause a hemorrhagic stroke, in which you bleed into your brain.

Aspirin can also damage the lining of the digestive tract. For those who’ve already had a heart attack and continue to eat the same diet that led to the first one (and are therefore at exceedingly high risk of having another one), the risk-benefit analysis seems clear: Taking aspirin would probably prevent about six times more serious problems than it causes you.

All I’m saying is that unprocessed foods tend to be healthier than processed ones. Think of it this way: Eating almonds is healthier than drinking almond milk.

If the only way you’re going to eat a big salad is to sprinkle Bac-Os on top, then sprinkle away.

The problem with all-or-nothing thinking is that it keeps people from even taking the first steps. The thought of never having pepperoni pizza again somehow turns into an excuse to keep ordering it every week.

“If you find you cannot do a plant-based diet 100 percent of the time, then aim for 80 percent.

When I used to speak on college campuses, I would meet vegans who appeared to be living off french fries and beer. Vegan, technically, but not exactly health promoting. That’s why I prefer the term whole-food, plant-based nutrition.

SAD’s clutches before any overt health problems arose.

step one suggests that you think of three meals you already enjoy that are plant based, like pasta and marinara sauce that could be easily tweaked to whole-grain pasta with some added veggies. Step two asks you to think of three meals you already eat that could be adapted to become a green-light meal, like switching from beef chili to five-bean chili. Step three is my favorite: Discover new healthy options.48

Jeff Novick’s Fast Food DVD series.

The DVDs also include supermarket store walk-throughs, shopping tips, and information on how to decipher nutrition labels. Check out his cooking series at JeffNovick.com/RD/DVDs.

I find that if my patients think of it simply as an experiment, they’re more likely to go whole hog (whole grain?) and realize the maximum benefits. But that’s just me being sneaky. I know that once those three weeks are up, if they really gave it their all, they will be feeling so much better, their lab values will be looking so much better, and their palates will have started to change. Healthy eating tastes better and better the longer you stick with it.

But when I discovered such a treasure trove of information, I knew I couldn’t keep it to myself. My hope is to disseminate it in a way that removes me as much as possible from the equation.

because I’m afraid they’ll unduly sway people to make decisions that might not be right for them.

When people hear me talk about the wonders of hummus (a Middle Eastern chickpea spread) but not baba ganoush (a Middle Eastern roasted-aubergine spread), they might come away with the impression that I think one is healthier than the other. This may be (and probably is, actually), but my real reason is simple: I don’t like the taste of aubergine.

While I encourage people to use natural cocoa, I don’t take my own advice in that regard. In some cases, it would be better if people would do as I say, not as I do.

For example, you can apparently live extended periods eating practically nothing but potatoes.1 That would, by definition, be a whole-food, plant-based diet—but not a very healthy one. All plant foods are not created equal.

You could eat tons of other kinds of greens and vegetables on a given day and get no appreciable sulforaphane if you didn’t eat something cruciferous.

flax may average one hundred times more lignans than other foods.

biological classification and may contain nutrients (like ergothioneine)

As the list of foods I tried to fit into my daily diet grew, I made a checklist and had it on a little dry-wipe board on the fridge.

By beans, I mean legumes, which comprise all the different kinds of beans, including soyabeans, split peas, chickpeas, and lentils. While eating a bowl of pea soup or dipping carrots into hummus may not seem like eating beans, it is. You should try to get three servings a day. A serving is defined as 60 grams of hummus or bean dip; 130 grams of cooked beans, split peas, lentils, tofu, or tempeh; or 150 grams of fresh peas or sprouted lentils. Though peanuts are technically legumes, nutritionally, I’ve grouped them in the Nuts category, just as I would consider green (snap or string) beans to be better placed in the Other Vegetables category.

Common cruciferous vegetables include broccoli, cabbage, collards, and kale. I recommend at least one serving a day (30–80 grams) and at least two additional servings of greens a day, cruciferous or otherwise.

30 grams of nuts is considered a serving, or two tablespoons of nut or seed butters, including peanut butter.

Finally, I advise one daily “serving” of exercise, which can be split up over the day. I recommend ninety minutes of moderate-intensity activity, such as brisk (four miles per hour) walking or forty minutes of vigorous activity (such as jogging or active sports) each day. Why so much? I’ll explain my reasoning in the Exercise chapter.

But soya milk and even tofu are processed foods.

Concentrations of Roundup pesticides may only reach a few parts per million in food and a few parts per billion in your body. Researchers, however, discovered the pesticide may still have effects at a few parts per trillion. Even at that minuscule dose, Roundup pesticides were found to have estrogenic effects in vitro, stimulating the growth of estrogen-receptor-positive human breast cancer cells.15

Miso, however, was not associated with increased cancer risk.27 The carcinogenic effects of the salt may be counteracted by the anticarcinogenic effects of the soya. For example, tofu intake has been associated with about 50 percent less stomach cancer risk28 and salt with about 50 percent more risk,29 which explains how they may effectively cancel each other out.

Cancer isn’t the primary reason people are told to avoid salt, though. What about miso soup and high blood pressure? There may be a similar relationship. The salt in miso may push up your blood pressure while the soya protein in miso may lower it back down.