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

by Michael Greger

Committee recommendations.55 The salt industry has its own PR and lobbying firms to play tobacco-industry-style tactics to downplay the dangers of its product.56 But the real villains aren’t necessarily the salt-mine barons—it’s the processed food industry. The trillion-dollar

own snack-food companies. A cold drink and a salty snack go hand in hand. It may be no coincidence that Pepsi and Frito-Lay are part of the same corporation.59 Pop quiz! Which has been reported to contain the most sodium: a serving of beef, a serving of baked all-natural chicken, a large McDonald’s french fries, or a serving of salted

poultry industry commonly injects chicken carcasses with salt water to artificially inflate their weight, yet they can still be labelled “100 percent natural.” Consumer Reports found that some supermarket chickens were pumped so full

The number-one source of sodium for American kids and teens is pizza.

There are three things you can do to shake the salt habit.69 First, don’t add salt at the table. (One out of three people may add salt to their food before even tasting it!)70 Second, stop adding salt when cooking. The food may taste bland at first, but within two to four weeks, the salt-taste receptors in your mouth become more sensitive, and food tastes better. Believe it or not, after two weeks, you may actually prefer the taste of food with less salt.71 Try any combination of such fantastic flavorings as pepper, onions, garlic, tomatoes, sweet peppers, basil, parsley, thyme, celery, lime, chili powder, rosemary, smoked paprika, curry, coriander, and lemon instead.72 Also, it’s probably a good idea to avoid eating out as much as possible. Even non-fast-food restaurants tend to pile on the salt.73 Finally, do what you can to avoid processed foods. In most countries studied, processed foods provide only about half of people’s sodium intake, but in the United States, we consume so much sodium from processed foods that even if we completely stopped adding salt in the kitchen and dining room, we’d still only reduce our salt intake by a small fraction.74 Try to buy foods with fewer milligrams of sodium on the label than there are grams in the serving size. For example, if it’s a 100 g serving size, the product should have less than 100 mg of sodium.75 Alternatively, you can shoot for fewer milligrams of sodium per serving than there are calories.

Approaches to Stop Hypertension, an eating plan specifically designed to lower blood pressure.

Dr. Sacks had even shown that the more dairy vegetarians consumed, the higher their blood pressure appeared to rise.108 But he figured there was no point in calling for a diet he believed few would follow. This is a recurring theme in official dietary recommendations. Instead of simply telling you what the science shows and then letting you make up your own mind, experts patronize the population by advocating what they think is practical rather than ideal. By making the decision for you, they undermine those willing to make even greater changes for optimal health.

cardiovascular mortality.”111 There appears to be a stepwise drop in hypertension rates the more plant-based foods you eat. Based on the same study of eighty-nine thousand Californians featured in chapter 6, compared with people who eat meat more than once a week, flexitarians (those who eat less meat, perhaps a few times a month) had 23 percent lower rates of high blood pressure. Those who cut out all meat except for fish had a 38 percent lower risk of high blood pressure, and those who cut out all meat had a 55 percent lower rate. People who cut out all meat, eggs, and dairy did the

Apparently, eating standard American fare even when running two thousand miles a year may not bring down your blood pressure as low as a being a couch-potato vegan.

Ground flaxseeds alone “induced one of the most potent blood-pressure-lowering effects ever achieved by a dietary intervention.”116 Eating just a few tablespoons a day appears to be two to three times more powerful than adopting an aerobic endurance exercise program117

Ground flaxseeds may work two to three times better than these medicines, and they have only good side effects. In addition to their anticancer properties, flaxseeds have been demonstrated in clinical studies to help control cholesterol, triglyceride, and blood sugar levels; reduce inflammation, and successfully treat constipation.

In a comparison of the antioxidant content of 280 common beverages, hibiscus ranked number-one, beating out other heavyweights, including the oft-lauded green tea.128 Within an hour of consumption, the antioxidant power of your bloodstream shoots up, demonstrating that the antioxidant phytonutrients in the tea are absorbed into your system.

No side effects were reported for hibiscus tea, though it isn’t called sour tea for nothing. If you drink it, make sure to rinse your mouth with water afterward to keep the natural acids in the tea from softening the enamel on your teeth.

a quart of it a day. The Power of NO Nitric oxide (NO) is a key biological messenger within the body, and its message is: “Open Sesame!” When released by your endothelium (the cells lining your arteries), it signals the muscle fibers within the walls of your arteries to relax, allowing them to open up and for more blood to flow. That’s how nitroglycerin pills work: The nitroglycerin people take when they’re

dilation only gets a little bit worse. It seems we’re already near the bottom of the barrel arterial-function-wise, so there’s not much room for further decline. But put people on a high-antioxidant diet by, among many other things, switching their bananas for berries and their white chocolate for dark, and within just two weeks, they experience a significant boost in their arteries’ ability to relax and dilate normally.143 In addition to eating antioxidant-rich foods that can boost your body’s ability to produce NO, you can also eat certain vegetables, such as beets and greens, that are rich in natural nitrates, which your body can convert into nitric oxide.

The optimal dose appears to be one-half cup,147 but beet juice is perishable, processed, and hard to find. A typical fifteen-ounce can of beets would provide the same dose of nitrate, but the most concentrated sources of the compound are dark-green, leafy vegetables.

Arugula comes out on top with a whopping 480 mg of nitrate per hundred-gram serving, which is more than four times the content of beets.

You can make do with only one kidney. You can survive without a spleen or a gallbladder. You can even get by without a stomach. But you can’t live without a liver, the body’s largest internal organ.

Whatever you absorb through your digestive tract isn’t immediately circulated throughout your body. The blood from your intestines first goes straight to the liver, where nutrients are metabolized and toxins are neutralized.

Your best bet for avoiding NAFLD, the most common cause of liver disease, may be to avoid excess calories, cholesterol, saturated fat, and sugar.

While hepatitis A virus is foodborne, hepatitis B virus is bloodborne and is transmitted sexually. As with hepatitis A, an effective vaccine is available against hepatitis B that every child should get. Hepatitis D virus infection can only occur in someone who is already infected with hepatitis B and so can be prevented by preventing hepatitis B.

Unfortunately, there is currently no vaccine for the hepatitis C virus, the most dreaded of liver viruses. Exposure can lead to a chronic infection that, over decades, can lead to cirrhosis and liver failure. Hepatitis C is now the leading cause of liver transplants.

Experts suspect that much of the American population has been exposed to this virus, as there is known to be a relatively high prevalence of HEV antibodies among U.S. blood donors. This exposure may be a result of individuals consuming HEV-contaminated pork.45 So do

a study they paid for to support its assertion that their product is “safe for everyone.” The study involved exposing just thirty people to their product with another ten people given a placebo. With so few people tested, the stuff could literally kill 1 or 2 percent of users and you wouldn’t know.54 A study that the multilevel marketing company behind a supplement called Metabolife cited for safety placed

of disease, but that’s not the same as showing that if you start eating more oatmeal, your risk will drop. To prove cause and effect, we need to put it to the test by performing an interventional trial: Change people’s diets and see what happens. Ideally, researchers would randomly split people into two groups and give half of them oatmeal and the other half a placebo—a fake, similar-tasting and -looking oatmeal. Neither the study subjects nor the researchers themselves can know who’s in which group until the end. This robust, double-blind

with increased risk of the disease.64 So lay off the Wonder Bread and stick to truly wonderful whole-grain foods, including oatmeal. Making

of getting lymphoma compared with those who ate less than one serving a week.12 Some of the plant-based protection might have been due to the antioxidant properties of fruits and vegetables. Higher dietary intake of antioxidants is associated with significantly

cells in a test tube), so more testing is needed. Indeed, the only clinical studies on açai berries published so far were two small industry-funded trials that showed modest benefit for osteoarthritis sufferers22 and some metabolic parameters of overweight subjects.23 In terms of antioxidant bang for your buck, açai berries get honorable mention, beating out other superstars, such as walnuts, apples, and cranberries. The bronze for best bargain, though, goes to cloves, the silver to cinnamon, and the gold for most antioxidants per dollar—according to a USDA database of common foods—goes to purple cabbage.

with an increased risk for pancreatic cancer. Similar findings were found for blood cancers. Of all the animal products studied (including unusual categories, such as offal, or entrails and organs), poultry tended to be associated with the greatest increased risk of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, all grades of follicular lymphoma, and B-cell

the cooked meat carcinogen MeIQx.38 How could less cancer be linked to more carcinogen exposure? MeIQx is one of the heterocyclic amines created by cooking meat at high temperatures, such as baking, broiling, and frying.39 If, in the case of blood cancers, one cause is a poultry virus, then the more the meat was cooked, the more likely it is that the virus was destroyed. Cancer-causing poultry viruses—including the avian herpesvirus that causes Marek’s disease, several retroviruses like reticuloendotheliosis virus, the avian leukosis virus found in

with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.54 A 2003 study by University of California researchers revealed that nearly three-quarters of human subjects tested positive for exposure to the bovine leukemia virus, likely through the consumption of meat and dairy products.55 Approximately 85 percent of U.S. dairy herds have tested positive for the virus (and 100 percent on industrial-scale operations).56 However, just because people are exposed to a virus that causes cancer in cows does not mean that humans themselves can become actively

hey, according to the manufacturer, they’re safe … Can Diet Protect Against Kidney Cancer? Each year, sixty-four thousand Americans are diagnosed with kidney cancer, and about fourteen thousand die from it.97 Approximately 4 percent

to fifty-four who died from unrelated causes, such as car accidents, had so-called “occult” (or hidden) breast cancers growing inside them.3 Sometimes there’s nothing you can do to prevent the initiation stage of cancer, when that first normal breast cell mutates into a cancerous one. Some breast cancers may even start in the womb and be related to your mother’s diet.4 For this reason, we all need to choose a diet and lifestyle that not only prevents the initiation stage of cancer but also hampers the promotion stage, during which the cancer grows to a size large enough to pose a threat. The good news is that no matter what your mom ate or how you lived as a child, by eating

per day (except, perhaps, for red wine—see box below). They estimated that, every year around the world, nearly five thousand breast cancer deaths may be attributable to light drinking.20 The carcinogen isn’t alcohol itself. The culprit is actually the toxic breakdown product of alcohol called acetaldehyde, which can form in your mouth almost immediately after you take a sip. Experiments show that even holding a single teaspoon of hard liquor in your mouth for five seconds before

it out results in the production of potentially carcinogenic levels of acetaldehyde that lingers for more than ten minutes.21 If even a single sip of alcohol might produce

is probably best to refrain from using such products if they contain alcohol.22 Red Wine Versus White Wine The Harvard Nurses’ Health Study found that even less than one drink a day may be associated with a small increase in breast cancer risk.23 Interestingly, drinking only red wine was not associated with breast cancer risk. Why? A compound

benefit,25 since it’s produced without the skin. The researchers concluded that red wine may “ameliorate the elevated breast cancer risk associated with alcohol intake.”26 In other words, the grapes in red wine may help cancel out some of the cancer-causing effects of the alcohol. But you can reap the benefits without the risks associated with imbibing alcoholic beverages by simply drinking grape juice or, even better, eating the purple grapes themselves—preferably ones with seeds, as they appear to be most effective at suppressing estrogen synthase.27 It’s good (and

The number-one killer of women is heart disease, not breast cancer, so women still need to bring down their cholesterol. You can likely achieve this without drugs by eating a healthy enough plant-based diet.

considering these subjects’ intake of vegetables and other fruits, suggesting

so revved up.102 Might this process work for those cooked meat carcinogens as well? To find out, researchers fed a group of nonsmokers pan-fried meat. They then measured the levels of heterocyclic amines circulating in their bodies by sampling their urine. For two weeks, the study subjects added about three cups of broccoli and brussels sprouts to their daily diets and then ate the same meat meal. Though they consumed the same quantity of carcinogens, significantly less came out in their urine, consistent with the subjects’ broccoli-boosted liver detox ability.103 What happened next was unexpected. The subjects stopped eating their veggies and, two weeks later, tried eating the meat meal again. Presumably, their ability to detox carcinogens would by then have reverted back down to baseline. But instead, the subjects’ liver function remained enhanced even weeks later.104 This finding suggests that not only might a heaping side of broccoli with your steak decrease carcinogen exposure but also that eating your veggies days or even weeks before the big barbecue may help shore up your defenses. Choosing the veggie burger may be the safest choice, though, as it may have no heterocyclic amines to detoxify.105 So are women who eat a lot of green vegetables less likely to get breast cancer? A study of fifty thousand African American women (a sadly neglected demographic in medical research, but a population group who

in remission? Green vegetables may still be protective. Over the past decade, scientists have been developing a new theory of cancer biology based on the role of stem cells. Stem cells are essentially the

a result, stem cells are a critical component of the body’s repair system, including regrowing skin,

of the gene through a process called methylation. While the gene itself is operational, the cancer has effectively turned it off or at least turned down its expression, potentially aiding the metastatic spread of a tumor.143 That’s where soy may come in. The isoflavones in soy appear to help turn BRCA protection back on, removing the methyl straitjacket the tumor tried to place on it.144 The dose breast cancer researchers used to achieve this result in vitro was pretty hefty, though—the equivalent to eating about a cup of soybeans. Soy may also help women with variations of other breast cancer susceptibility genes known as MDM2 and CYP1B1. Women at increased genetic

surprise, she was supportive. Well, I’ve been whole food and plant based for nine years and haven’t had a further relapse. Not that I haven’t been sad from time to

own lives each year,1 and depression appears to be a leading cause.2 Thankfully, lifestyle interventions can help repair your mind as well as your body. In 1946, the World Health Organization defined health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”3 In other words, you can be in excellent physical shape—enjoying low cholesterol, a healthy body weight, and good overall physical fitness—but that doesn’t

including tranquilizers, aspirin, insulin, blood pressure pills, pain medications, antacids, laxatives, or sleeping pills.12 (Being able to avoid doctor visits and health insurance hassles would make anyone less irritable, stressed, and depressed!) The researchers also suggested a more direct explanation for their results: Maybe the

isn’t always bad, of course. When the area around a splinter gets all red, hot, and swollen, it’s a sign that the body is using arachidonic acid to mount an inflammatory response to help fight off infection. But your body already makes all the arachidonic acid you need, so you don’t need to take in any more via your diet.14 In this way, arachidonic acid resembles cholesterol, another essential component that the body makes all on its

called monoamine oxidase (known as MAO) that breaks down any excess monoamines. People who are depressed appear to have elevated levels of this enzyme in their brains.28 Thus, the theory goes, depression is caused by abnormally low levels of

meal has been shown to improve depression, tension, anger, confusion, sadness, fatigue, alertness, and calmness scores among women with PMS.38 In a yearlong study, about one hundred men and women were randomly assigned to eat either a low-carb

up to make the spice. You need more than fifty thousand crocuses—enough to cover a football field—to produce just a single pound of saffron.45 A Prozac-equivalent dose of saffron may cost more than twice as much as the drug, but a subsequent study found that even just smelling saffron appeared to have psychological benefits. Though researchers diluted the spice so much that