How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease
Spoiler: eat plants. I love this book, and am frustrated by it. Lots to love: Dr. Greger is motivated to help people be healthy and live longer; there's nothing else. The first part of the book looks at all the top modern killers (heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer, ...), and gives evidence supporting plant-based diets. It's very well cited, and he's quite intelligent. Just like when reading Keto books, there's almost this underlying conspiratorial overlay on much of the evidence. Our science is largely funded by the food industry, who are in charge of informing policymakers of latest science. So, we end up with monoculture foods, sickly animals, and sugar-packed diets. The latter part of the book was more enjoyable for me, because it gave practical advice. I've increased my berry, spice (especially turmeric), and flexseed consumption based on the evidence he cites.
Frustrated: the science is cherry picked to form the larger point: you should be vegan, or at least vegetarian. I don't think it's wrong, but feels incomplete. If he disagrees with other modern research, such as with saturated fat consumption or the role of dietary cholesterol in blood cholesterol, he should have confronted it directly. Instead, it's just assumed that dietary saturated fat and cholesterol are awful. Absolute vs relative risk is frequently ignored for many risk factors. The chapter on diabetes spends more time talking about saturated fat than sugar. So, lots to learn from, but feels a bit dogmatic.
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