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

by Michael Greger

Red cabbage averages about one dollar per pound,17 is found at pretty much any grocery store or market, can last weeks in the fridge (though if it does, that means you’re not using it enough!), and has more antioxidants per dollar than anything else you’ll find in the produce aisle.

After chopping and discarding the waste, red cabbage averages 45 cents a cup.19 But broccoli sprouts—if you make them yourself—may be even cheaper. Broccoli sprout seeds can be purchased online or at natural foods stores for about twenty dollars a pound, but that makes about seventy-five cups of sprouts. In terms of sulforaphane content, that may be around three hundred cups of mature broccoli. So DIY broccoli sprouts provide a green-light sulforaphane source for about a nickel a day.

Sprouting broccoli sprouts is as easy as sprouting lentils. Start with a mason jar with a sprouting (screen) lid. Add a tablespoon of seeds, let them soak overnight in water, drain in the morning, and then after that, just quickly rinse and drain twice a day. Most people wait for about five days, until the seeds fully sprout (taking on the look of alfalfa sprouts), but new science suggests sulforaphane content peaks at forty-eight hours after the seeds are initially drained.

CoQ10, also known as ubiquinol, is an antioxidant. When ubiquinol extinguishes a free radical, it is oxidized to ubiquinone. To act as an effective antioxidant again, the body must regenerate ubiquinol from ubiquinone. Think of it like an electrical fuse: Ubiquinol can only be used once before having to be reset. That’s where sunlight and chlorophyll may come in. Researchers exposed some ubiquinone and dietary chlorophyll metabolites to the kind of light that reaches your bloodstream … and poof! CoQ10 was reborn. However, without the chlorophyll, or without the light, nothing happened. All along, we’ve been thinking that the main benefit of sunlight was only the formation of vitamin D and that the main benefit of greens was the antioxidants they contain. But now we suspect the combination of the two may actually help the body create and maintain its own internal stock of antioxidants.

I would suggest using black kale (also called lacinato, dinosaur, or Tuscan kale), red kale (also found as red Russian kale), or baby kale, since these varieties are all milder and more tender than the more common mature green (curly) kale.

If you want to make it even easier on yourself, just use whatever type you can find frozen. Frozen greens are cheaper, last longer, and come prewashed and prechopped.

great way to introduce greens into children’s diets. The basic triad is a liquid, ripe fruit, and fresh greens. I’d start with a two-to-one ratio of fruits to greens to start with before tipping heavier toward greens on the scale. So, for example, one cup of water, a frozen banana, a cup of frozen berries, and a cup of packed baby spinach would be a classic green smoothie 101.

fresh mint leaves as well for a boost of flavor (and even more greens).

When you’re thinking about ways to pair your greens with something you already love to make the greens more palatable, consider mixing them with a green-light source of fat: nuts, seeds, nut or seed butters, or avocados. Many of the nutrients greens are famous for are fat soluble, including beta-carotene, lutein, vitamin K, and zeaxanthin. So pairing your greens with a green-light source of fat may not only make them taste better but will maximize nutrient absorption. This can mean enjoying a creamy tahini-based dressing on your salad, putting walnuts in your pesto, or sprinkling some toasted sesame seeds on your sautéed kale.

With a fat-free dressing, carotenoid absorption flatlined down to negligible amounts; it was as if they’d never eaten the salad at all.23 Similarly, adding some avocado to your salsa may triple the amount of fat-soluble nutrients that make it into your bloodstream (in this case, the lycopene in the tomatoes).24 It doesn’t take much. 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.

Whenever I’m boiling pasta, for example, I’ll add a bunch of fresh greens to the pot a few minutes before I’m ready to drain the pasta. I know I’ll be losing some nutrients when I pour off the cooking water, but it’s worth it to me for the convenience of throwing everything into one pot and getting my family to eat even more greens.

Vinegar may be one condiment that’s good for you. Randomized, controlled trials involving both diabetic and nondiabetic individuals suggest that adding two teaspoons of vinegar to a meal may improve blood sugar control, effectively blunting the blood sugar spike after a meal by about 20 percent.

Microgreens are the perfect plants for the impatient gardener—fully grown in just one to two weeks.

advice in all of nutrition is to eat more fruits and vegetables, which is to say eat more plants, since the term vegetable basically just means all parts of the plant that aren’t fruit.

white mushrooms may look pretty drab, but they can provide myconutrients not found in the entire plant kingdom.

One of the reasons certain tomato products appear to be protective against heart attacks6 is because the yellow fluid surrounding the seeds concentrates a compound that suppresses platelet activation.7 (Platelets are what help trigger the blood clots that cause heart attacks and most strokes.) Aspirin has a similar effect, but it doesn’t work in everyone and can increase bleeding risk—two limitations that the tomato compound may be able to overcome.8,9 But if you only consume tomato sauce, juice, or ketchup, you may be missing out10 since the seeds are removed during processing. So when picking out canned tomato products, choose whole, crushed, or diced tomatoes instead of tomato sauce, purée, or paste.

What are the best dietary sources of ergothioneine? The highest levels by far have been reported in mushrooms. For example, oyster mushrooms, which you can grow yourself in only two weeks from a just-add-water kit, have more than one thousand units (μg/dag) of ergothioneine, about nine times more than their closest competitor, black beans.

Just thirty seconds in the microwave wipes out most agaritine in mushrooms. Freezing also gets rid of most of it, but drying does not. If you put dried mushrooms in your soup, it’s best to boil them for at least five minutes.

Pop quiz: Which is healthier? Plain white mushrooms or portobellos? Trick question! They’re the same mushroom. The little white button mushrooms grow up to be portobellos. White mushrooms are just baby ’bellos.

My favorite way to eat raw veggies is to dip bell pepper strips, carrots, or snap peas in a hummus or bean dip, and my favorite way to eat them cooked is by roasting them. Roasting can transform vegetables into otherworldly creations. If you don’t believe me, try roasting red bell peppers, brussels sprouts, beets, or squash. Never thought you liked okra because it’s too slimy? Try it roasted.

Sweet potatoes are one of my favorite snacks.

It’s actually better to boil them, though, to best preserve their nutritional content.33 Regardless of your cooking method, be sure to keep on the skin. The peel of the sweet potato has nearly ten times the antioxidant power as the inner flesh (on a per-weight basis), giving them an antioxidant capacity approaching that of blueberries.34

When picking out varieties at the supermarket, remember that a sweet potato’s nutritional content is tied directly to the intensity of its color. The more yellow or orange its flesh, the healthier it may be.

Sweet potatoes are healthier than plain potatoes, but if you’re going to choose the latter, seek out those with blue or purple flesh. The consumption of one boiled purple potato a day for six weeks was found to significantly decrease inflammation, something neither white nor yellow potatoes were able to accomplish.

Purple sweet potatoes may offer the best of both worlds.

If one of your choices was brussels sprouts, cabbage, curly cabbage, or kale, and the other choice was garlic, green onions, or leek, you get a gold star! Of all the vegetables tested, those had the most cancer-preventing potential. Notice anything they have in common? All the top choices belong to one of only two superfood families: cruciferous vegetables and the allium veggie family, which includes garlic and onions.

The single most effective vegetable was garlic, which came in first against breast cancer, both child and adult brain cancer, lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, prostate cancer, and stomach cancer, and second after leeks against kidney cancer.

Other nutrients, however, actually become more absorbable after cooking. For example, you end up with more than six times the vitamin A in your bloodstream from cooked carrots compared to raw ones.

Of the six cooking methods studied, griddling and microwaving were actually the gentlest. Nuking your veggies appears to preserve, on average, more than 95 percent of antioxidant capacity.

Which do you think was the most vulnerable vegetable—that is, the one probably best eaten raw? If you guessed bell peppers, you’re right.

three vegetables hardly seem to be affected at all by cooking: artichokes, beets, and onions. You can even boil them, and they’ll still retain 97.5 percent of their antioxidant power.

Finally, there are two vegetables that may actually become healthier through cooking: the humble carrot and the celery stalk. No matter how you prepare them—even by boiling—carrots and celery appear to gain in antioxidant power.

Thankfully, there is a solution that is both cheap and effective: salt water. A 10 percent saltwater rinse has been found to work as well as full-strength vinegar.86 To make your own pesticide-reducing bath, add one part salt to nine parts water. Just make sure to rinse off all the salt before eating.

The fact is that being organic doesn’t mean a food is healthy. The organic food industry didn’t become so lucrative by selling carrots. For instance, you can now buy pesticide-free potato chips and organic jelly beans.88 There are even organic Oreo cookies. Junk food is still junk food, even if it was produced organically.

At least half your plate should be filled with vegetables. Here’s a simple rule: Include vegetables in everything, and the more the better. Bean burritos are better than carnitas, but better still is a bean burrito with lots of veggies wrapped inside. Instead of spaghetti with marinara sauce, make it spaghetti with marinara sauce … and loads of veggies. Marinara is certainly better than Alfredo, but it’s even better still to go the extra veggie mile and heap on your favorite vegetables.

If you eat flaxseeds whole, they’re likely to pass right through you without releasing any of their nutrients. So, for best results, first grind up the seeds with a blender or coffee or spice grinder, or buy them preground or “milled.” (The other option is to chew them really well.)

There are a lot of convenient flax bars, crackers, and snacks on the market these days, a few of which even have all green-light ingredients.

This same binding quality makes flaxseeds a green-light thickener to replace cornstarch.

You can even use ground flaxseeds to replace eggs in baking. For each egg in the recipe, whisk one tablespoon of ground flaxseeds with three tablespoons of water until the mixture becomes gooey. Unlike chicken eggs, “flax eggs” are not only cholesterol-free but they’re also packed with soluble fiber to bring your cholesterol down11 instead of up.

The Global Burden of Disease Study calculated that not eating enough nuts and seeds was the third-leading dietary risk factor for death and disability in the world,

Which nut is healthiest? Normally, my answer is whichever you’re most willing and able to eat regularly, but walnuts really do seem to take the lead. They have among the highest antioxidant3 and omega-34 levels, and they beat out other nuts in vitro in suppressing cancer cell growth.

Regardless of which group participants were assigned to, those eating more nuts each day had a significantly lower risk of dying prematurely overall.12 Those who consumed more red- and yellow-light sources of fat—olive oil or extra virgin olive oil—failed to have any survival benefit.13 This is consistent with the way Ancel Keys, the so-called father of the Mediterranean diet, viewed olive oil. He thought of its benefit more as a means of replacing animal fats—that is, anything to get people to eat less lard and butter.14

Of all the nuts studied in PREDIMED, the researchers found the greatest benefits associated with walnuts, particularly for preventing cancer deaths.15 People who ate more than three servings of walnuts per week appeared to cut their risk of dying from cancer in half.

The bottom line? Yes, nuts are high in calories, but through a combination of dietary compensation mechanisms, your body’s failure to absorb some of the fat, and increased fat-burning metabolism, nuts can be a lifeline without expanding your waistline.

We learned from the Harvard Nurses’ Health Study that eating just two handfuls of nuts weekly may extend a woman’s life as much as jogging four hours a week.

Why are beans, nuts, and whole grains so health promoting? Maybe it’s because they are all seeds. Think about it: All it takes for an acorn to explode into an oak tree is water, air, and sunlight. Everything else is contained within the seed, which possesses the entire complex of protective nutrients required to mature into a plant or tree. Whether you’re eating a black bean, a walnut, a grain of brown rice, or a sesame seed, in essence you’re getting the whole plant in a tiny little package.

The bitter and pungent compounds in the cruciferous and allium families are thought to be responsible for their health benefits. Intense colors and intense flavors can be signs of intense benefit. For optimum health, you should try to eat both colorful and flavorful foods.

There’s evidence to suggest that the cooked and raw forms may have different properties. Cooked turmeric appears to offer better DNA protection, while raw turmeric may have greater anti-inflammatory effects.

Consuming turmeric with soy may offer a double benefit for osteoarthritis sufferers.23 Scrambled tofu is the classic turmeric-soy combination,

Prepared yellow mustard typically already has turmeric in it for color, but try to find a salt-free variety—one that’s essentially just vinegar, a cruciferous vegetable (mustard seeds), and turmeric. I can’t think of a healthier condiment.