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

by Michael Greger

So when it comes to many of the fat-soluble pesticides and pollutants, every time you eat a burger, you are, in effect, eating everything that burger ate.

In other words, the feed industry has known for more than two decades that what they were feeding to animals (and, ultimately, to most of us38) may contain dioxins, but apparently, they continue this practice unabated.

But what if you could get the benefits of smoking without the risks? Maybe you can. The neuroprotective agent in tobacco appears to be nicotine.

Maybe Parkinson’s—even decades before it was diagnosed—led to constipation. This idea was supported by anecdotal evidence suggesting that throughout their lives, many who would go on to develop Parkinson’s reported never feeling very thirsty and, perhaps, decreased water intake contributed to their constipation.

Researchers tested forty-eight different plant compounds able to cross the blood-brain barrier to see if any were able to stop alpha synuclein proteins from clumping together.

To their surprise, not only did a variety of flavonoids inhibit these proteins from accumulating but they could also break up existing deposits.

Lead accumulates in animal bones and mercury in animal protein123 (which is why egg whites contain up to twenty times more mercury than do yolks).124

Taking antioxidant supplements may be more than just a waste of money. People given 500 mg of vitamin C a day were found to end up with more oxidative DNA damage.33

For several decades, researchers have followed thirty-six thousand survivors of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those who ate

vegetable- or fruit-rich diets appeared to cut their cancer risk by about 36 percent.

We saw the same thing in the aftermath of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in Ukraine, where consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables apparently protected children’s immune systems, while egg and fish consumption was associated with a significantly increased risk of DNA damage.

The ginger compounds protected DNA nearly as well as the leading radiation sickness drug41 at 150 times lower the dose.42 Those taking ginger in order to prevent motion sickness during air travel may be protecting themselves against more than just nausea. Other common foods that may be protective against radiation damage include garlic, turmeric, goji berries, and mint leaves,

Well, maybe you can. The willow tree isn’t the only plant that contains salicylic acid. It’s widely found in many of the fruits and vegetables in the plant kingdom.66 That’s why you often find the active ingredient of aspirin in the bloodstreams of people who aren’t taking it.67 The more fruits and vegetables you eat, the higher your level of salicylic acid may rise.

With all that salicylic acid flowing through their systems, you might think plant eaters would have higher ulcer rates, because aspirin is known to chew away at the gut. But those following plant-based diets actually appear to have a significantly lower risk of ulcers.70 How is that possible? Because in plants, the salicylic acid may come naturally prepackaged with gut-protective nutrients.

While salicylic acid is ubiquitously present in fruits and vegetables, herbs and spices contain the highest concentrations.74

Chili powder, paprika, and turmeric are rich in the compound, but cumin has the most per serving.

Because the plant uses the compound as a defense hormone, its concentration may be increased when that plant is bitten by bugs.

Pesticide-laden plants aren’t nibbled as much and, perhaps as a result, appear to produce less salicylic acid.

Why do doctors push colonoscopies in the United States when most of the rest of the world appears to prefer noninvasive alternatives?97 It may be because most doctors in the rest of the world don’t get paid by procedure.98 As one U.S. gastroenterologist put it, “Colonoscopy … is the goose that has laid the golden egg.

So which foods are good for you, and which are bad? This sounds like a simple enough question. In truth, I’ve found it difficult to answer. Whenever I’m asked at a lecture whether a certain food is healthy or not, I have to invariably reply, “Compared to what?” For example, are eggs healthy? Compared to oatmeal, definitely not. But compared to the sausage links next to them on the breakfast platter? Yes.

What about white potatoes? They’re vegetables, so they must be healthy, right? Someone asked me this a few years ago after a group of Harvard University researchers raised concerns about baked and mashed potatoes.1 So are they healthy? Compared to french fries, yes. Compared to a baked or mashed sweet potato? No, they’re not.

So anything we choose to eat has an opportunity cost. Every time you put something in your mouth, it’s a lost opportunity to put something even healthier in there.

If your intent is to shovel as many calories as possible into your mouth for the least amount of money, then healthier foods lose out, but if you want to shovel the most nutrition into your mouth as cheaply as possible, look no further than the produce aisle. Spending just fifty cents more per day on fruits and vegetables may buy you a 10 percent drop in mortality.

For example, when a USDA employee newsletter even suggested trying a meat-free lunch once a week as part of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Public Health “Meatless Mondays” initiative,17 the resulting political firestorm from the meat industry led the USDA to retract the advice just hours later.

For example, three out of four Americans don’t eat a single piece of fruit in a given day, and nearly nine out of ten don’t reach the minimum recommended daily intake of vegetables.

On a weekly basis, 96 percent of Americans don’t reach the minimum for greens or beans (three servings a week for adults), 98 percent don’t reach the minimum for orange vegetables (two servings a week), and 99 percent don’t reach the minimum for whole grains (about three to four ounces a day).

Save the Children used to be a leader in the push for taxes on soda to offset some of the costs of childhood obesity. Then the organization did an abrupt 180-degree turn, withdrawing its support, saying that such campaigns no longer “fit with the way that Save the Children works.” Perhaps it is only a coincidence that it was seeking a grant from Coca-Cola and had already accepted a $5 million grant from Pepsi.

(White rice is now fortified with vitamins to compensate for the “refinement.”) A Nobel Prize was awarded for the discovery of the cause of beriberi and its cure—rice bran, the brown part of rice that was removed.

Similarly, the removal of fat from cacao beans to make cocoa powder improves the nutritional profile, because cocoa butter is one of the rare saturated plant fats (along with coconut and palm kernel oils) that can raise your cholesterol.

So for the purposes of the Traffic Light model, I like to think of “unprocessed” as nothing bad added, nothing good taken away

Using my definition of nothing bad added, nothing good taken away, steel-cut oats, rolled oats, and even (plain) instant oatmeal can all be considered unprocessed.

I would also consider no-salt-added almond butter to be a green-light food, but even unsweetened almond milk is a processed food, a food from which nutrition has been stolen.

Am I saying almond milk is bad for you? Foods are not so much good or bad as t...

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

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

Sometimes people’s diets take on a religiosity of their own. I remember a man once telling me that he could never “go plant based” because he could never give up his grandma’s chicken soup. Huh? Then don’t!

We cannot let the “perfect” be the enemy of the good.

It’s really the day-to-day stuff that matters most. What you eat on special occasions is insignificant compared to what you eat day in and day out.

From a nutrition standpoint, the reason I don’t like the terms vegetarian and vegan is that they are only defined by what you don’t eat.

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.

There’s a concept in psychology called “decision fatigue” that marketers use to exploit consumers.

Realizing that most American families tend to rotate through the same eight or nine meals, 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.

Participants’ health is assessed at baseline on their regular diets, and then they’re switched to a therapeutic diet. In an effort to make sure any health changes participants experience on the new diet aren’t merely a coincidence, they are then switched back to their regular diet to see if the changes disappear. This kind of rigorous study design improves the validity of the results, but the problem, Dr. Barnard related, is that sometimes people improve too much. After a few weeks on a plant-based diet, sometimes people feel so much better that they refuse to go back on their baseline diet49—even though it’s required by the study protocol.

I’m regularly asked what I eat every day. I’ve always been hesitant to answer for a number of reasons. First, it shouldn’t matter what I or anyone else eats, says, or does. The science is the science.

Conversely, just because I eat something doesn’t mean it’s healthy. For example, people are surprised to hear I use dutched (alkali-processed) cocoa. In that process, more than half of the antioxidants and flavanol phytonutrients are wiped out.50 Why would I use it, then? Because it tastes so much better to me than unprocessed cocoa.

As you eat healthier, your palate actually changes. It’s an amazing phenomenon.

If you drank some orange juice right now, it would taste sweet. But if you first ate some candy and then drank the same OJ, it could taste unpleasantly bitter.

Arkansas decided to have it both ways, declaring tomatoes both the official state fruit and the official state vegetable.

Some bean-counting researchers found that canned beans can be about three times as expensive as home cooked, but the difference only came out to about twenty cents per serving.

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.