Food As Prevention

Avoiding chronic disease through a healthy diet

The ABCs

To start, you need to understand the problems with our current diet (often referred to as the Standard American Diet or SAD for short).  In 2013 approximately 37% of all deaths and 24% of disability was due to poor diet.  The most important components of diet in this study were diets high in sodium and low in fruit followed by low whole grains, and low vegetables.

Here are links to a couple of excellent video’s by Dr Greger (a family physician who now devotes all of his time to educating the public about advances in the field of nutrition):

  1. Video 1:  Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death
  2. Video 2: Combatting Common Diseases

Note that to the right hand side of all his videos is a button to view a transcript of the talk as well as a full list of sources cited in the video.  Most of his over 1000 videos are 3-5 minutes long and address specific questions so feel free to explore his site.

Now watch the DVD ‘Forks over Knives’ which examines the claim that by making changes to our diet we can prevent, control, or even reverse most degenerative diseases.  This video was made by Dr T Colin Campbell (a nutritional scientist at Cornell University) and Dr Caldwell Esselstyn (a top surgeon and head of the Breast Cancer Task Force at the Cleveland Clinic) and is available as a DVD in most public libraries, on Netflix in the USA and Canada and on iTunes, Amazon, or by direct download.  Dr Campbell was the main investigator in The China Study which was the most comprehensive study of nutrition ever conducted and looked at the diet of 6500 people in China and its association with mortality (to learn more about the China Study see here).

There are an extensive set of resources available at the Forks Over Knives site including multiple books, recipes, apps, and even suggestions for hosting your own ‘Forks over Knives’ party !  Many of the recipe books are probably in your public library.

For those who would like more evidence to support this type of diet, I recommend the book, ‘How Not To Die’ by Dr Greger.  Published in December 2015 this book became a best seller in 10 days and went through more than 8 re-printings in its first 6 months.  The first half of the book addresses the role of diet and lifestyle in the top 15 causes of death in the USA (which Dr Greger also covers in a free video here).  The second half of the book tells you what to eat.  It contains over 2000 references to the peer-reviewed medical literature and there is also a very simple free app which tells you what you should be eating on a daily basis.

By this point, I hope that you are convinced of the risks of the current Western diet, and realise the direction you need to turn to in order to be more healthy.  If you want more evidence, please see the references at the bottom of this page.

Click here for a quick 3 minute survey to assess how healthy your current diet is.

Click here for important information about the need for supplements.

References

  1. Video (Dr Greger, 2014): Combating Disabling Diseases with Food
  2. Video (Dr Greger, 2015): Preventing and Treating the Most Dreaded Diseases with Diet.
  3. Video (Dr Klapper, 1993): Food That Kills.
  4. Video (Dr Greger, 2015, 4 min): What are the Healthiest Foods ?