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

by Michael Greger

Instead of a big bowl of spaghetti with some veggies and lentils on top, I think of a big bowl of vegetables with some pasta and lentils mixed in. Instead of a big plate of brown rice with some stir-fried vegetables on top, I picture a meal that’s mostly veggies—and oh look! There’s some rice and beans in there too.

¼ cup of hummus or bean dip ½ cup cooked beans, split peas, lentils, tofu, or tempeh 1 cup of fresh peas or sprouted lentils

“Our results on miso-soup have shown that [the] anti-hypertensive effect of miso is possibly above [the] hypertensive effect of salt.”33 So miso soup may actually be protective overall.

which in turn feed you right back with beneficial compounds, such as propionate, that relax your stomach and slow the rate at which sugars are absorbed into your system.35 Chickpeas and other legumes were found to have a similar influence, and so this phenomenon was later renamed the “second-meal effect.”

That’s what I do when I make rice or quinoa: I throw a handful of dried lentils into the rice cooker, and they’re done when the grain is cooked. Mashed and seasoned cooked lentils also make a great veggie dip. Double check marks!

Mealtime options can include dishes like bean burritos; chili; pasta e fagioli; red beans and rice; minestrone; Tuscan white bean stew; and black bean, lentil, or split pea soup. My mom turned me on to dehydrated precooked pea soup mixes.

58 If worse comes to worst, there are cheap supplements that contain alpha-galactosidase, an enzyme shown to break up the bean sugars and take the sail out of your wind.59

There are healthy sulfur-rich foods, such as garlic and cauliflower. If you’re about to embark on a long trip in a confined space after a big meal of aloo gobi, Pepto-Bismol and generic equivalents can act as a windbreaker by binding up the sulfur in your gut to eliminate odors. But this should be used only as a short-term solution due to the potential for bismuth toxicity with chronic use.

Hippocrates himself was attributed as saying, “Passing gas is necessary to well-being.”

And the same molecular characteristics that give berries such vibrant colors may account for some of their antioxidant abilities.2

So, given the choice, why buy another white onion ever again?

Red cabbage may contain eight times more antioxidants than green cabbage,4 which is why you’ll never find a green cabbage in my house.

Pop quiz: Which wipes out more free radicals—pink grapefruit or regular grapefruit? Granny Smith or Red Delicious? Iceberg lettuce or romaine? Red grapes or green? Yellow corn or white corn? See, you don’t need me to go to the g...

Shop for the reddest of strawberries, the blackest of blackberries, the most scarlet tomato, the darkest green broccoli you can find. The colors are the antiaging, anticancer antioxidants.

21 More recently, the research group who invented the glycemic index found that feeding subjects a fruit-, vegetable-, and nut-based diet that included about twenty servings of fruit per day for a couple of weeks had no adverse effects on weight, blood pressure, or triglycerides

To make it, blend dark, sweet cherries or strawberries mixed with a tablespoon of cocoa power, a splash of a milk of your choice (more if you want a milkshake), a capful of vanilla extract, and some pitted dates.

The more you eat, the healthier you are. That’s my kind of ice

Gojis have the third-highest antioxidant capacity of any common dried fruit—five times more than raisins and second only to dried pomegranate seeds and barberries (a fruit commonly found in Middle Eastern markets and spice stores).

What passes for currants in the United States are usually champagne grape raisins, not actual black currants, which were banned in the country a century ago at the behest of the lumber industry. (The industry feared they might spread a plant disease that affects white pines, a tree we hardly harvest anymore, so the ban has since been lifted in some states.)

I have tried dates from most of the major online retailers and always go back to ordering from the Date People, a small farm in California. I

Date People’s annual harvest comes in around my birthday in October, and I always splurge as a present to myself and get a big box to put in our freezer.

Refined olive oil (nonvirgin) is even worse. I would classify it, along with other vegetable oils, as red-light foods, as they offer such scant nutrition for their heavy caloric loads. One tablespoon of oil can contain more than one hundred calories without filling you up. (Compare that single tablespoon to the one-hundred-calorie serving sizes of other foods here.)

think of oil as the table sugar of the fat kingdom.

Cooking without oil is surprisingly easy. To keep foods from sticking, you can sauté in wine, sherry, broth, vinegar, or just plain water. For baking, I’ve successfully used green-light ingredients such as mashed bananas or avocado, soaked prunes, and even canned pumpkin to substitute for oil to provide a similar moistness.

When I eat olives, there’s no way I’m going to eat those waxy black abominations in a can. I’m going to slice up some purple kalamatas that actually have some flavor.

Seedless or not, watermelon contains a compound called citrulline that can boost the activity of the enzyme responsible for dilating the blood vessels in the penis that result in erections.

A group of Italian researchers found that citrulline supplementation at the level of five servings of red watermelon a day improved erection hardness in men with mild erectile dysfunction,

Yellow watermelon has four times more citrulline,14 though, so just about one wedge a day (one-sixteenth of a modest melon) may have the same effect.

I also like drying thin apple slices. I either sprinkle them with cinnamon or rub them with freshly grated ginger. They can be just dried until chewy or completely dehydrated into crunchy apple chips.

Kiwi is one of the fruits I’ve prescribed to my patients with insomnia (two an hour before bedtime appears to significantly improve sleep onset, duration, and efficiency)20

Adding citrus zest to your meals not only adds color, flavor, aroma, and a bit of culinary flair but also nutrition. Citrus zest lives up to its name in terms of enlivening dishes, and it may do the same to your DNA-repair capabilities.

The dietary factor found best able to boost DNA repair was citrus fruit.28 Within two hours of consuming citrus, your

I like to freeze lemons, limes, and oranges whole so we always have them on hand to grate onto meals that could use a little zing.

My only whole-citrus caveat: Inform your physician if you eat grapefruit. This fruit can suppress the enzymes that help clear more than half of commonly prescribed drugs, and less drug clearance means higher drug levels in the body.36 This may actually be good if you want a better caffeine buzz from your morning coffee

Dr. Greger’s Favorite Cruciferous Vegetables Arugula, bok choy, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, collard greens, horseradish, kale (black, green, and red), mustard greens, radishes, turnip greens, and watercress

which is inactivated by cooking8 (though microwaved broccoli appears to retain some cancer-fighting capacity).

If you chop the broccoli (or brussels sprouts, kale, collards, cauliflower, or any other cruciferous vegetable) and then wait forty minutes, you can cook it as much as you want. At that point, the sulforaphane has already been made, so the enzyme is no longer needed to achieve maximum benefit. It’s already done its job.

What about frozen broccoli and other crucifers? Commercially produced frozen broccoli lacks the ability to form sulforaphane because the vegetables are blanched (flash-cooked) before they’re frozen for the very purpose of deactivating enzymes.11 This process prolongs shelf life, but when you take the veggies out of your freezer, the enzyme is inert. At that point, it doesn’t matter how much you chop or how long you wait—no sulforaphane is going to be made. This may be why fresh kale has been shown to suppress cancer cell growth in vitro up to ten times better than frozen kale.

Boiling broccoli prevents the formation of any significant levels of sulforaphane due to inactivation of the enzyme. However, the addition of powdered mustard seeds to cooked broccoli significantly increases sulforaphane formation.14 Then it’s almost as good as eating it raw! So, if you don’t have forty minutes to spare between chopping and cooking, or if you’re using frozen greens, just sprinkle the crucifers with some mustard powder before you eat them, and you’ll be all set.

talk about some of the more traditional ways I prepare greens in the next section, but kale chips deserve a special mention. You can use a dehydrator if you have one, but I often don’t have the patience. When I’m in the mood for kale chips, I want them now. They can be as simple as one ingredient: kale. Pull the leaves off the stems and tear into large pieces. Make sure that they are dry, or they’ll steam rather than crisp. Lay out the torn leaves in a single layer on a cookie tray lined with parchment paper or a silicone mat to prevent sticking, and bake at a low temperature (about 250°F) and check often to make sure they don’t burn. Within about twenty minutes, they transform into light, crispy snacks. Preseason the leaves before you roast them, or add your spices after they’re done.

There are thousands of recipes online. I recommend starting with Ann Esselstyn’s recipe on her son Rip’s website, Engine2Diet.com.16 With kale chips, the more you snack, the healthier you are.

In 1777, General George Washington issued a general order that American troops should forage for wild greens growing around their camps “as these vegetables are very conducive to health, and tend to prevent … all putrid disorders.”

Six cups of spinach worth of chlorophyll appeared to block about 40 percent of the carcinogen.13 Amazing! But that’s not all chlorophyll can do. In college, you learn that

Just three grams of fat in an entire hot meal may be sufficient to boost absorption.25 That’s just a single walnut or a spoonful of avocado or shredded coconut. Snack on a few pistachios after a meal, and you’re all set. The greens and the source of fat just have to end up in your stomach at the same time.

So adding vinegar to potato salad or to rice (like the Japanese do to make sushi rice) or dipping bread in balsamic vinegar may blunt the effects of these high-glycemic foods.

Type 2 diabetics consuming two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar at bedtime, for example, were found to wake up with better blood sugars in the morning.

and indeed there is a study purporting to show blood pressure benefits from a tablespoon of vinegar a day.35

Both vinegar groups lost significantly more weight than the control group. Though the effect was modest

about four pounds over a three-month period—CT scans showed the vinegar groups’ subjects lost a significant amount of their “visceral” fat, the abdominal fat that is particularly associated with chronic disease risk.

My current favorite dressing recipe is a Caesar spin-off shared by Dr. Michael Klaper from the TrueNorth Health Center: 2 tablespoons almond meal 3 cloves crushed garlic 3 tablespoons dijon mustard 3 tablespoons nutritional yeast flakes 2 tablespoons white miso 3 tablespoons lemon juice 1/3 cup water