Quotes from Michael Greger

While positive mental states may be associated with less stress and more resilience to infection, positive well-being might also be accompanied by a healthy lifestyle. In general, people who feel satisfied appear to smoke less, exercise more, and eat healthier.7 So is being happier just a marker of good health and not a cause of it? To find out, researchers set out to make people sick.

Serving Sizes: ¼ cup of hummus or bean dip ½ cup cooked beans, split peas, lentils, tofu, or tempeh 1 cup of fresh peas or sprouted lentils Daily Recommendation: 3 servings per day

Unless it's specifically labeled Ceylon cinnamon, a quarter teaspoon of cinnamon even a few times a week may be too much for small children, and a daily teaspoon would exceed the tolerable upper safety limit for adults.111

The elevated stomach cancer risk associated with salt intake appears on par with that of smoking or heavy alcohol use but may only be half as bad as opium use

cancer risk, the researchers concluded that it wouldn't be safe to live near the exhaust of a Chinese restaurant for more than a day or two a month.30 What about that enticing aroma of sizzling bacon? The fumes produced by frying bacon contain a class of carcinogens called nitrosamines.31 Although all meat may release potentially carcinogenic fumes, processed meat like bacon may be the worst: A UC-Davis study found

The optimal dose appears to be one-half cup,147 but beet juice is perishable, processed, and hard to find.

Serving Sizes: ½ cup fresh or frozen ¼ cup dried Daily Recommendation: 1 serving per day

I don't recommend fish oil, since even purified ("distilled") fish oil has been found to be contaminated with considerable amounts of PCBs and other pollutants, so much so that taken as directed, salmon, herring, and tuna oils would exceed the tolerable daily intake of toxicity.

in pill form? Sure enough, the pills didn't seem to help at all. Improvements in lung function and asthma control were evident only after subjects increased their actual fruit and vegetable intake, strongly suggesting that consuming whole foods is paramount.59 If adding a few daily servings of fruits and vegetables can have such a significant effect, what if asthma sufferers were put on a diet composed entirely

The CDC estimates that more than twenty-nine million Americans are living with diagnosed or undiagnosed diabetes—that's about 9 percent of the U.S. population.

The good news: Type 2 diabetes is almost always preventable, often treatable, and sometimes even reversible through diet and lifestyle changes.

The good news: Type 2 diabetes is almost always preventable, often treatable, and sometimes even reversible through diet and lifestyle changes. Like other leading killers—especially heart disease and high blood pressure—type 2 diabetes is an unfortunate consequence of your dietary choices.

For some cancers, like our number-two cancer killer, colon cancer, up to 71 percent of cases appear to be preventable through a similar portfolio of simple diet and lifestyle changes.52

While there is no proven way to halt the progression of Alzheimer's, if you do know anyone suffering from the disease, regularly cooking him or her saffron-spiced paella may help.

One of the diseases antioxidant-rich foods may help prevent is stroke. Swedish researchers followed more than thirty thousand older women over a period of a dozen years and found that those who ate the most antioxidant-rich foods had the lowest stroke risk.42 Similar findings were reported in a younger cohort of men and women in Italy.43 As with lung disease,44 antioxidant supplements don't appear to help.45 Mother Nature's powers cannot be stuffed into a pill.

Maybe it's time we stop blaming genetics and focus on the more than 70 percent that is directly under our control.53 We have the power.

Dozens of similar studies demonstrate that if you reduce your salt intake, you reduce your blood pressure. And the greater the reduction, the greater the benefit. But if you don't cut down, chronic high salt intake can lead to a gradual increase in blood pressure throughout life.34

Imagine if there were a pill that could reduce your chance of dying by 10 percent over the next decade and only had good side effects. How much do you think the drug company would charge? Probably more than fifty cents.

Of course making berry ice cream or at least a berry-banana mix is even healthier. My favorite is chocolate. To make it, blend dark, sweet cherries or strawberries mixed with a tablespoon of cocoa power, a splash of a milk of your choice (more if you want a milkshake), a capful of vanilla extract, and some pitted dates. If you didn't yet get your nuts for the day, you can add some almond butter.

Those concerned about exposing their children to mercury-containing vaccines should know that eating just a single serving of fish each week during pregnancy can lead to more mercury in their infant's body than injecting them directly with about a dozen mercury-containing vaccines.

According to the latest national FDA retail-meat survey, about 90 percent of retail chicken showed evidence of contamination with fecal matter.

Biopsies taken before and after the diet and lifestyle intervention showed that the expression of more than five hundred genes was affected. This was one of the first demonstrations that changing what you eat and how you live can affect you at a genetic level, in terms of which genes are switched on and off.

As a dark-green, leafy vegetable, kale is not only one of the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet—it may also help fight off infection. Japanese researchers tried dripping

The number-one source of sodium for American kids and teens is pizza.61 A single slice of Pizza Hut pepperoni pizza can contain half your recommended sodium intake limit for the entire day.62 For adults over fifty, it's bread, but between the ages of twenty and fifty, the greatest contributor of sodium to the diet is chicken—not the canned soups, pretzels