I am a nutrition nerd. I love digging through the scientific literature for the fun of it, for the sheer fascination of how our body works, for all the puzzles to be solved. In high school, I used to skip class to hang out in the science library at the local university, spending countless hours trying to read the new issues of all the journals. I hardly understood any of it, but I just loved the whole concept of scientific inquiry: using experimental evidence to test our theories about the universe.
In college, I pursued a biophysics major. I was most interested in the mysteries of the universe inside each of us. As enthralling as all of science and mathematics was, I came to realize that our number one cause of death and disability wasn’t the Higgs boson—it was our diet. My mother’s deep involvement in the civil rights movement inspired me to dedicate my life to making the world a better place, and my grandmother’s miraculous recovery from end-stage heart disease, due to a change in her diet, provided the direction: I would become a doctor and specialize in nutrition.
Even if it didn’t help a soul, though, I could happily spend seven days a week lost in the dusty stacks of some medical library basement to satisfy my own curiosity. But what most motivates me every morning to jump out of bed (and onto my treadmill desk!) are all the lives I’m able to help change and save with the information I uncover. For years, my work had touched millions through NutritionFacts.org, but it wasn’t until How Not to Die was published that the deluge started. My inbox, mailbox, and voice-mail box have been flooded with profound expressions of gratitude from readers telling me how the science I’ve shared has helped them and their families become healthier. They are such a gift.
Even better is to experience that appreciation for my work face-to-face and heart-to-heart. As I’ve traveled around the world to share the book, I’ve been witness to countless stories of transformation. So many people line up to talk with me after my lectures that sometimes it can be several hours before I can dash back to the airport.
The stories often shared with me are not the ones most doctors hear, tales of pain and sickness. These are stories of regained health and happy endings. What could be more satisfying—for both of us?
Let me share one of these stories with you.
I met Chris, a middle-aged man, after a presentation I gave in Boston at Harvard’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where he was employed. Chris had come to my talk because although his type 2 diabetes diagnosis was about ten years old, he wasn’t willing to settle for a lifetime of medication and monitoring as his doctor contended was to be his fate.
His physician had told him his diabetes was probably just the result of bad genes and Chris would need to take pills, adding he should “watch his sugar” (whatever that means). Chris knew diabetes was linked to such complications as blindness and amputations, and his doctor didn’t seem very optimistic about the prognosis, nor did he offer any other recommendations.
Ten years earlier, Chris left his doctor’s office feeling hopeless and helpless. He felt that he had just been given a death sentence. But he never stopped trying to seek out other answers, which brought him to my lecture.
After Chris recounted his experience, I told him that despite what his doctor might think, we actually have tremendous power over our health destiny. The vast majority of premature death and disability is preventable with a plant-based diet and other healthy lifestyle changes, and type 2 diabetes is a perfect example of a correctable disease.
Chris then handed me a copy of How Not to Die to autograph. As I always do when signing books, I included my personal e-mail address and cell phone number, and encouraged him to contact me if there was anything I could do to help him or his family.
About ten months later, Chris sent me this e-mail:
Dear Doc,
You won’t believe this. My diabetes is GONE. I beat it, doc! How Not to Die really did save my life! Guess what else? My wife has had problems with her weight since she was a teenager. We went on a plant-based diet together, and she has, for the first time in years, gotten to a normal weight! We are both so happy, we feel like teenagers again. (Did I tell you we were high school sweethearts? That was a very long time ago, but it doesn’t feel so long ago anymore!)
Also I want to mention that this diet is saving us some serious cash! I used to spend over $70 per month on my diabetes medications, my sugar meter, and test strip supplies. Now we are putting that money saved on medicine into … guess what … a Happiness Savings Account!
We have both always wanted a dog, and when I finally beat diabetes, my wife said, “Your getting your health back is the best day of my life. We should celebrate it.” And I told her I wanted to go to the shelter and get a dog. When the staff at the shelter asked what kind of dog we wanted, I said, “A nice dog who you don’t think anyone else will want. The dog who everyone else gave up on. Second-chance dog, that’s MY dog, please.”
The shelter folks talked for a minute, and then they brought out a big black dog with her head down and her tail tucked between her legs. We took one look at each other. Found out her name was Joy. Strange name for a sad dog, right? Well, we bonded fast, and now Joy, my wife, and I walk together every morning. We call it our JoyWalk! Joy is now living up to her name, and I think she saved me as much as I saved her.
Most days I find all these new healthy choices easy, but when I get sidetracked, I just look at my Joy and remember how things were, and I remind myself that we are never going back there.
Thank you for talking to me and for caring about me and my family. You will never know how much it means to me. I hope you can tell everyone what you told me about genes NOT being our destiny. There is hope and (at least in my house) there is Joy! Thanks, Dr. Greger!
Not everyone is so magnanimous, though. Others are angry. Why didn’t their doctor tell them about how lifesaving our dietary choices can be? When I present decades-old studies showing how easily some of our leading killers can be reversed, the audience is left thinking, “Wait a second. Does that mean my brother didn’t have to die?!” Or their sister or mother or best friend. Dr. Dean Ornish was publishing studies back in the 1990s proving heart disease could be reversed.1 The diabetes reversal study I presented at the event Chris attended was published in 1979. It showed that people who had been living with type 2 diabetes for as long as twenty years, injecting up to 32 units of insulin a day, could get off all their insulin in as few as thirteen days.2
Let that sink in for a moment: People with diabetes for twenty years can go off all insulin in less than two weeks. They endured diabetes for twenty years because no one had told them about a plant-based diet. For decades, they had been just thirteen days away from being free … .
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Although it technically is one, I don’t think of this as a vegetarian cookbook. Eating healthfully is not about vegetarianism, veganism, or any other “-ism.” From a nutrition standpoint, the reason I don’t like the terms vegetarian and vegan is that they are defined by what you don’t eat. Too often I meet vegans who proudly tell me about their animal-free diet … which seems to be composed primarily of french fries, fake meat, and nondairy ice cream. That menu may be vegan, but it isn’t particularly health-promoting.
This is why I prefer the term whole-food, plant-based nutrition. The best available balance of evidence suggests the healthiest diet is one that minimizes the intake of meat, eggs, dairy, and processed junk, and maximizes the intake of fruits, vegetables, legumes (beans, split peas, chickpeas, and lentils), whole grains, nuts and seeds, mushrooms, and herbs and spices—basically, real food that grows out of the ground. Those are our healthiest choices.
What do I mean by whole food? I mean a food that is not overly processed. In other words, nothing bad has been added, and nothing good has been taken away.
A classic example of food processing is the milling of grains, such as transforming whole wheat into white flour or “polishing” brown rice into white rice. White rice may have a clean look, but it’s also practically devoid of the essential nutrients found in brown rice, such as B vitamins. Before food manufacturers started refortifying white rice with vitamins, millions of people died from beriberi, a vitamin B-deficiency disease that resulted from eating nutritionally empty white rice. Even though refined grains are now typically fortified with a few vitamins, they are still deficient in all the myriad phytonutrients found in the whole grain.
Using my definition of nothing bad added, nothing good taken away, I consider steel-cut oats, rolled oats, and even (plain) instant oatmeal relatively unprocessed, though the best option whenever possible is whole, intact grains.
By plant-based, I mean centering one’s diet on as many whole plant foods as possible. For How Not to Die, I created a traffic-light system to classify the Green Light foods people should eat more of, the Yellow Light foods we should eat less of, and the Red Light foods we should ideally avoid on a daily basis. It matters little what healthy folks eat on their birthday, holidays, and special occasions. It’s the day-to-day stuff that adds up. As Kaiser Permanente’s guide The Plant-Based Diet: A Healthier Way to Eat puts it: “If you find you cannot do a plant-based diet 100 percent of the time, then aim for 80 percent. Any movement toward more plants and fewer animal products [and processed foods] can improve your health!”3
I’ve tried to ensure all the recipes in this book are composed only of Green Light ingredients. This is not to say that all processed foods are bad for you. Foods are not so much good or bad as they are better or worse. Unprocessed foods tend to be more healthful than processed ones. Think of it this way: adding almonds to your oatmeal is better than putting almond milk on it, whereas almond milk would be better than putting dairy milk on it.
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How Not to Die was inspired by my remarkable grandmother who was told at just sixty-five years old that her life was over. Her doctors sent her home in a wheelchair to die. However, soon after being discharged from the hospital, she was watching television and saw a 60 Minutes segment about Nathan Pritikin, who was a pioneer in reversing heart disease through eating a plant-based diet. My grandmother flew to Pritikin’s center in California to see whether his plan might help her. They wheeled her in, and she walked out on her own two feet, healthy. She was able to live thirty-one additional years beyond her death sentence—to continue to enjoy life with her six grandkids, including me.
This book was inspired by you, my readers and supporters, who have asked me so often about my favorite recipes, specific recommendations on meal planning, and the best ways to get as many of the Daily Dozen into your life as possible. I hope I can do for your family what Pritikin did for mine.