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

by Michael Greger

Fenugreek appears to significantly improve muscle strength and weight-lifting power output, allowing men in training, for example, to leg press an extra eighty pounds compared to those ingesting a placebo.

Of 115 different foods tested for anti-inflammatory properties in vitro, oregano made it into the top five, along with oyster mushrooms, onions, cinnamon, and tea leaves.

The most antioxidant-packed common spice is the clove.81 It has an exceptionally strong flavor, so try adding just a teensy pinch to anything you’d normally put cinnamon or ginger on. Ground cloves are great on stewed pears and baked apples, giving them a pleasant, mulled cider taste, and a mug of chai tea is a fantastic way to pack in a bunch of high-impact common spices at once.

packed uncommon spice is amla,82 which is powdered dried Indian gooseberry fruit.

Researchers concluded: “This argues strongly for the need to include high antioxidant foods in each and every meal in order to prevent this redox [free-radical versus antioxidant] imbalance.”

I still encourage Ceylon cinnamon consumption, given that it is one of the cheapest common food sources of antioxidants, second only to purple cabbage.

I am sufficiently convinced by the available body of evidence to single turmeric out as something everyone should add to his or her daily diet.

The reason people may feel better on a gluten-free diet—and therefore conclude they have a problem with gluten—is because they’ve suddenly stopped eating so much fast food and other processed junk.

As with vegetables, use color to make decisions at the grocery store. If you have a choice, pick red quinoa over white quinoa, blue corn over yellow, and yellow corn over white.

Beyond just comparing antioxidant content, there’s experimental evidence to suggest that pigmented rice—red, purple, or black—has benefits over brown.

Improved production technologies have created a new generation of whole-grain pastas that no longer have the rough and mealy texture of yesteryear. My favorite brand is Bionaturae because of its deliciously nutty taste

If you buy packaged grain products, anything labeled on the front with words like “multigrain,” “stone-ground,” “100% wheat,” “cracked wheat,” “seven-grain,” or “bran” is usually not a whole-grain product. They’re trying to distract you from the fact that they’re using refined grains. Here, color may not help. Ingredients like “raisin juice concentrate” are used to darken white bread to make it look healthier. Even if the first word in the ingredients list is “whole,” the rest of the ingredients could be junk.

suggest using the Five-to-One Rule. When buying healthier, whole-grain products, look at the Nutrition Facts label on the package and see if the ratio of grams of carbohydrates to grams of dietary fiber is five or less

Ezekiel bread, a sprouted-grain bread based on a biblical verse. It has 15 grams of carbohydrates and 3 grams of fiber, and, just like that, passes the test. So do Ezekiel english muffins, which taste great with fruit-only jam and nut butter.

Apply the same Five-to-One Rule to breakfast cereals, another grocery category that can lull you into believing nearly everything is healthy.

Compare that with Uncle Sam cereal, sliding in with a ratio under 4. Others that make the cut include some no-added-sugar puffed-grain cereals like puffed barley, but the healthiest whole grains are the least processed, the so-called intact grains.

Even though wheat berries, shredded wheat, whole-wheat flour, and puffed-wheat cereal may all be 100 percent whole wheat, they are handled by the body very differently. When grains are ground into flour or puffed, they are digested more rapidly and more completely. This increases their glycemic index and leaves fewer leftovers for the friendly flora down in your colon.

There is so much more left over for your gut flora to eat when you eat your grains intact. Few people realize that the bulk of stool is not undigested food but pure bacteria—trillions and trillions of bacteria.

Coffee,16 tea,17 and beer can leave you with more water than you started with, but wine actively dehydrates you.

Your hydration status may also affect your mood. Restriction of fluid intake has been shown to increase sleepiness and fatigue, lower levels of vigor and alertness, and increase feelings of confusion.

Interestingly enough, cold water gets sucked in about 20 percent faster than body-temperature water.

In addition to making water more interesting, carbonation may also help relieve gastrointestinal symptoms. A randomized trial of the effects of sparkling versus still water found that drinking carbonated water may improve symptoms of constipation and dyspepsia, including bloating and nausea.

However, when a study looked at people under the age of fifty-five, the opposite effect was found: Drinking more than six cups of coffee daily was found to increase the risk of death. “Hence,” the researchers concluded, “it may be appropriate to recommend that younger people, in particular, avoid heavy coffee consumption (less than 28 cups per week or less than 4 cups in a typical day).”

Coffee is not for everyone. For example, be careful if you have gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). While a population study found no link between coffee consumption and subjective symptoms of GERD, such as heartburn and regurgitation,33 scientists who actually stuck tubes down people’s throats to measure their pH found that coffee does seem to induce significant acid reflux, whereas tea does not. Caffeine does not appear to be the culprit, since caffeinated water doesn’t cause a problem. However, the coffee decaffeination process seems to reduce the level of whichever compounds are responsible, since decaf coffee appeared to cause less reflux. The researchers advised that people who suffer from GERD should consider switching to decaf or—even better—drink tea instead.34

If you don’t have optimal cholesterol levels, you should consider sticking to filtered coffee or using instant coffee, which also lacks these compounds.

I cannot recommend drinking coffee, though. Why? Because every cup of coffee is a lost opportunity to drink a potentially even healthier beverage—a cup of green tea.

Black, green, and white teas are all made from the leaves of the same evergreen shrub. Herbal tea, on the other hand, involves pouring hot water over any plant in the world other than the tea plant.

Both white and green teas are less processed than black tea and are probably preferable.

Cold-steeping is a popular way to prepare tea in Taiwan, especially during the summer months. Cold-steeped tea is not like conventional iced tea, in which you brew your tea hot and then cool it down. Rather, cold-steeping involves tossing the tea in cold water and letting it sit at room temperature or in the fridge for at least two hours. This method has been found to reduce the caffeine content and is said to reduce bitterness and improve the aroma.

You don’t have to care how much nutrition is extracted from tea leaves, though, if you simply eat them. Matcha is powdered green tea, produced by milling whole tea leaves into a fine powder that can be added straight to water. Why waste nutrition by dumping a tea bag when you’re done, when you can drink the leaves instead?

There is one tea beverage I’d stay away from, though. Based on a few cases of serious, life-threatening outcomes linked to kombucha tea, a type of fermented tea, the consumption of kombucha “should be discouraged,” according to one case report of a person who ended up in a coma after drinking the stuff.

The only two concentrated, green-light sweeteners may be blackstrap molasses and date sugar.

Drink five glasses of water a day, be they plain tap water or flavored with fruit, tea leaves, or herbs. Keeping hydrated may elevate your mood (and vigor!), improve your thinking, and even help cut your risk for heart disease, bladder cancer, and other diseases.

Based on a study of about nine thousand adults followed for seven years, researchers calculated that every additional hour spent watching TV per day may be associated with an 11 percent increased risk of death.

In other words, people who religiously hit the gym after work may still have shortened life spans if they are otherwise sitting throughout the day. Sitting for six or more hours a day appears to increase mortality rates even among people who run or swim for an hour a day, every day, seven days a week.

Whether you’re at the office, reading the newspaper at home, or, yes, even watching TV, why not find a way to stand while doing it? In fact, most of this book was written while I was walking fifteen miles a day on a treadmill underneath my standing desk. Prebuilt treadmill desks are expensive, but thrift stores are often awash with old exercise equipment. My treadmill “desk” is just a treadmill stuck under some cheap plastic shelving.

Muscle biopsies of athletes have confirmed that eating blueberries, for example, can significantly reduce exercise-induced inflammation.

2,000 mcg (µg) Vitamin B12 (Cyanocobalamin) at Least Once a Week

For adults under age sixty-five, the easiest way to get B12 is to take at least one 2,000 mcg supplement each week. If you take too much, you merely get expensive pee. Well, not all that expensive: A five-year supply of vitamin B12 can cost less than twenty dollars.

I recommend that people unable to get sufficient sun take one 2,000 IU vitamin D3 supplement each day,18 ideally with the largest meal of the day.

Farther north, at 40° latitude (Portland, Chicago, or New York City), the sun’s rays are at such an angle during the months of November through February that vitamin D may not be produced.

Vitamin D supplements are therefore recommended for people at higher latitudes during the winter months and year-round for those not getting enough midday sun, regardless of location. This may also apply to those living in smoggy cities, such as Los Angeles or San Diego.

Iodine, a mineral essential for thyroid function, is found predominantly in the ocean and in variable amounts in the soils of the world. To ensure everyone was getting enough, table salt was fortified with the mineral starting in the 1920s. So if you do add salt to your food, use iodized salt (not sea salt or “natural” salt, which contains about sixty times less iodine

The most concentrated green-light source is seaweed, which has the iodine of seafood without the fat-soluble pollutants that build up in the aquatic food chain.

One last note about iodine: Although people who avoid seafood and dairy products do not appear to have impaired thyroid function,36,37 I would not leave it to chance during pregnancy, where iodine is critical for proper brain development.38 I agree with the American Thyroid Association’s recommendation that all North American pregnant and breast-feeding women receive a prenatal vitamin containing 150 mcg of iodine daily.39

Until we know more, I recommend taking 250 mg of pollutant-free long-chain omega-3s directly. I don’t recommend fish oil, since even purified (“distilled”) fish oil has been found to be contaminated with considerable amounts of PCBs and other pollutants, so much so that taken as directed, salmon, herring, and tuna oils would exceed the tolerable daily intake of toxicity.

Thankfully, you can get the benefits without the risks by getting long-chain omega-3s from algae instead,47 which is where the fish primarily get it from to begin with.