Quotes from Michael Greger

Those who chewed thirty-five times per bite ended up eating about a third of a cup less pasta than those who had only chewed ten times per bite.

Studies show obese individuals tend to remain seated for about two and a half hours longer each day than the average, inactive yet lean, shoestring couch potato.3174 Normal-weight individuals just tend to get up and move around more.

Most people with multiple myeloma live for only a few years after diagnosis. Though treatable, multiple myeloma is considered incurable. That's why prevention is key. Fortunately, dietary changes may reduce our risk of all these blood cancers.

They are both centered on plant-derived foods, such as grains and vegetables. By eating so much fiber and so little animal fat, their total cholesterol levels averaged under 150 mg/dL,6,7 similar to people who eat contemporary plant-based diets.8

Serving Sizes: ½ cup chopped ¼ cup brussels or broccoli sprouts 1 tablespoon horseradish Daily Recommendation: 1 serving per day

Take chicken, for example. In 1896, the USDA determined chicken was about 23 percent protein and less than 2 percent fat by weight,1857 which is even leaner than some wild game like venison.1858 Today, with ten times the fat, chicken has 1,000 percent more fat than it did just over a century ago.1859 These days, more than 70 percent of the calories in chicken may come from fat.

I personally do mostly kale, collards, and arugula, which also happen to have the added benefit of being cruciferocious. And you can enjoy it with a cup of hibiscus tea for added zing.

If you chop the broccoli (or brussels sprouts, kale, collards, cauliflower, or any other cruciferous vegetable) and then wait forty minutes, you can cook it as much as you want. At that point, the sulforaphane has already been made, so the enzyme is no longer needed to achieve maximum benefit. It's already done its job. (You can also buy bags of fresh greens and other crucifers that are prechopped or shredded, which can presumably be cooked immediately.)

Commercially produced frozen broccoli lacks the ability to form sulforaphane because the vegetables are blanched (flash-cooked) before they're frozen for the very purpose of deactivating enzymes.11 This process prolongs shelf life, but when you take the veggies out of your freezer, the enzyme is inert. At that point, it doesn't matter how much you chop or how long you wait—no sulforaphane is going to be made.

If you sprinkled some mustard powder on frozen broccoli that's been cooked, would it start churning out sulforaphane? Yes!

a single fast-food meal—Sausage and Egg McMuffins were used in the original study—can stiffen your arteries within hours, cutting in half their ability to relax normally.

So, if you don't have forty minutes to spare between chopping and cooking, or if you're using frozen greens, just sprinkle the crucifers with some mustard powder before you eat them, and you'll be all set. Daikon radishes, regular radishes, horseradish, and wasabi are all cruciferous vegetables and may have the same effect. All it appears to take is a pinch to revitalize sulforaphane production.

We don't get reimbursed for time spent counseling our patients about the benefits of healthy eating. If doctors were instead paid for performance, there would be a financial incentive to treat the lifestyle causes of disease. Until the model of reimbursement changes, I don't expect great changes in medical care or medical education.5

To drastically reduce LDL cholesterol levels, you need to drastically reduce your intake of three things: trans fat, which comes from processed foods and naturally from meat and dairy; saturated fat, found mainly in animal products and junk foods; and to a lesser extent dietary cholesterol, found exclusively in animal-derived foods, especially eggs.26

Thousands of edible mushrooms grow naturally, with worldwide annual commercial production in the millions of tons.71 But check the nutrition label on a carton of mushrooms and you won't see much beyond some B vitamins and minerals. Is that all mushrooms have? No. What you don't see listed is the array of unique myconutrients that may boost our immune function.72

horseradish has the smallest serving size, which means it's the most concentrated of the cruciferous vegetables. One tablespoon and your Daily Dozen is down to an Everyday Eleven. Horseradish can be made into a sauce, relish, or dressing to score an extra check mark with a kick. It's great in mashed potatoes or, for a healthier option still, mashed cauliflower.

JeffNovick.com

I slice raw cauliflower into "steaks," roast at 400°F for about a half hour, and then smother it in a lemon-tahini sauce. Sometimes I go minimalist and just sprinkle on lemon juice, zest, capers, and garlic.

There are thousands of recipes online. I recommend starting with Ann Esselstyn's recipe on her son Rip's website, Engine2Diet.com.16 With kale chips, the more you snack, the healthier you are.

cell chronic lymphatic leukemia (including small lymphocytic leukemia and prolymphocytic lymphocytic leukemia).34 The EPIC study found that risk increased between 56 percent and 280 percent for every 50 grams of poultry consumed daily. For comparison, a cooked, boneless chicken breast may weigh as much as 384 grams.35 Why is there so much lymphoma and leukemia risk associated with eating such relatively small amounts of poultry?

Serving Sizes: 1 cup raw ½ cup cooked Daily Recommendation: 2 servings per day

Drinking just one can of soda a day appears to raise the odds of getting fatty liver disease by 45 percent.25 Meanwhile, those who eat the meat equivalent of fourteen chicken nuggets or more daily have nearly triple the rate of fatty liver disease compared to people who eat seven nuggets' worth or less.26

Dr. Ornish "realized reimbursement is a much more powerful determinant of medical practice than research."97

Each of us contains tens of billions of miles of DNA—enough for one hundred thousand round trips to the moon if you uncoiled each strand and placed them end to end