How Not to Diet

by Michael Greger

We can preserve this “botanical integrity” of grains by sticking to whole kernels.

Aside from just whole-grain over white, which breads are better than others? From a glycemic-index standpoint, breads made from sprouted grains4947 or with added cracked wheat4948 are preferable.

Some breads don’t just incorporate cracked grains but entire kernels. Bread with added wheatberries results in a lower glycemic index4953 and improved satiety compared to straight whole-wheat bread,4954 and pumpernickel bread, which often includes whole rye kernels, has comparably blunted blood sugar and insulin responses.

I thought the glycemic index of wheatberries was low at 45.4956 Rye berries are even lower at 34, perhaps due to their higher fiber content,4957 which is down around legume territory.

People feel fuller eating whole-grain pasta compared to refined-grain pasta, but apparently not enough to affect subsequent meal intake hours later.4968 Similarly, people fed pasta for breakfast don’t appear to eat any less at lunch than after a bready breakfast,

The reason I have always considered whole-grain pasta to be a Green Light food, but whole-grain bread, even if it’s 100 percent whole grain, as a Yellow Light food, had nothing to do with the structure. It was all due to Green Light’s “nothing bad added” caveat. Bread-makers add salt, making bread a leading contributor of sodium intake, second only to chicken for most American adults.4976

If we all just reduced our salt intake by about a half teaspoon a day, we could potentially prevent between 86,000 and 165,000 strokes and heart attacks and save 44,000 to 92,000 lives in the United States every year.4977

Eating whole grains is good, but eating whole-grain kernels is better. Former Harvard nutrition chair Walter Willett has argued that the term whole grain should probably be reserved for only whole intact grain kernels.4978 So eat the wholiest of grains: intact grains, also known as groats.

Take oats, for example. They’re found out in the fields as oat groats and then have their inedible outer husks removed during processing.

Groats can then be sliced into two to four pieces to make steel-cut (also known as pinhead or Irish) oats, coarsely ground into Scottish oatmeal, or steamed and flattened into “old-fashioned” rolled oats.

Quick-cooking oats are just old-fashioned oats rolled even thinner, and instant oats are steamed longer and rolled even more thinly.

Then, at the bottom of the list, the most processed would be powdered oats, which you might find in oat-based breakfast cereals. Instead of buying boxed breakfast cereals, make oatmeal out of whole, intact oats. They’re gr-r-oat!

In How Not to Die, I compiled the healthiest of the Green Light foods into my Daily Dozen checklist of foods I encourage people to try to fit into their daily routines. I made it into a free app, Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen, available for iPhone and Android, so anyone and everyone can try to check off all the boxes every day and track their progress over time.

As the feedback poured in from people giving the app a try, two themes of complaints arose. The first was that it was just too much food. There was no way they could eat all that food in one day.

I explained that the Daily Dozen was aspirational, something to shoot for, just a tool to inspire people to include some of the healthiest o...

The vast volume of food I prescribed was on purpose. I was hoping that by telling people to eat so much healthy stuff, it would naturally crowd out some of the less-healthy stuff. After checking off all twenty-four servings in the Dai...

A systematic review of successful weight-loss strategies concluded that given the metabolic slowing and increased appetite that accompanies weight loss, to achieve significant weight loss, calorie counts may need to drop as low as 1,200 calories a day for women and 1,500 calories a day for men.

Preload with Water Time your metabolism-boosting two cups of cool or cold unflavored water before each meal to also take advantage of its preload benefits.

Preload with “Negative Calorie” Foods As the first course, start each meal with an apple or a Green Light soup or salad containing fewer than one hundred calories per cup.

Incorporate Vinegar (2 tsp with each meal)

extend meal duration to at least twenty minutes to allow your natural satiety signals to take full effect.

Take Your Daily Doses Black Cumin (Nigella sativa) (¼ tsp)

Garlic Powder (¼ tsp)

Ground Ginger (1 tsp) or Cayenne Pepper (½ tsp)

Nutritional Yeast (2 tsp)

Cumin (Cuminum cyminum) (½ tsp with lunch and dinner)

Green Tea (3 cups)

Drink three cups a day between meals (waiting at least an hour after a meal so as to not interfere with iron absorption). During meals, drink water, black coffee, or hibiscus tea mixed 6:1 with lemon verbena, but never exceed three cups of fluid an hour (important given my water preloading advice).

Deflour Your Diet Check this box every day your whole grain servings are in the form of intact grains. The powdering of even 100 percent whole grains robs our microbiomes of the starch that would otherwise be ferried down to our colons encapsulated in unbroken cell walls.

Every Night Fast After 7:00 p.m.

The fewer calories after sundown, the better.

Get Sufficient Sleep