Quotes from Michael Greger

diagnosis is considered a "teachable moment" when we can motivate a patient to improve his or her lifestyle.152 By then, though, it may already be too late.

They aren't smaller in general, though: Vegetarian boys and girls measure up to be about an inch taller than their "omnivorous classmates."1798 They just aren't as wide.

eight cups of water, add a handful of bulk dried hibiscus or four bags of tea in which hibiscus is the first ingredient. Then add the juice of one lemon and three tablespoons of erythritol, and leave it in your fridge to cold-brew overnight. In the morning, strain out the hibiscus or take out the tea bags, shake well, and drink throughout the day.

study when chewing a bite thirty-five times was shown to beat out chewing only ten times and resulted in 12 percent fewer calories eaten at a meal.

Of all the nuts studied in PREDIMED, the researchers found the greatest benefits associated with walnuts, particularly for preventing cancer deaths.15 People who ate more than three servings of walnuts per week appeared to cut their risk of dying from cancer in half. A review of the scientific literature concluded that "the far-reaching positive effects of a plant-based diet that includes walnuts may be the most critical message for the public."16

Ketogenic diets are also not recommended. When you think of the ideal attributes of a diet for weight control—safe, effective, protective, healthful, wholesome, sustainable, nutritionally complete, and life-extending—typical keto diets guarantee none of them.

Heart attacks are considered 96 percent avoidable in women who eat a wholesome diet and engage in other healthy lifestyle behaviors.113 The number-one killer of women need almost never happen.

Within eight weeks, those in the green tea group were down an average of ten pounds compared to about four pounds in the placebo group. Given the identical diets and no significant change in exercise, this suggests the primary green tea benefit is from burning more calories, which was confirmed by calorimetry. The green tea resulted in a significantly higher resting metabolic rate.

The healthiest snacks are fresh fruits and vegetables, of course, but I also enjoy snacking on nori sheets, lentil sprouts, "air-fried" purple sweet potato fries, edamame, and seasoned air-popped popcorn.

Unlike waist circumference, body mass index has the advantage of taking height into account. Waist-to-height ratio may offer the best of both worlds, and the cutoff value is the simplest to remember: Keep your waist less than half your height.506 The goal for adults and children six years or older is to get a waist-to-height ratio under 0.5.507

Researchers found the addition of milk "completely prevents the biological activity of tea.

The worst snacks, according to national snacking guidelines from around the world, are snacks that are sugary, fatty, or salty.

A meal eaten at 7:00 a.m. can cause 37 percent lower blood sugars than an identical meal taken at 1:00 p.m.

So consuming more calories in the morning relative to the evening may actually have the triple benefit of more weight loss, better blood sugar control, and lower heart disease risk.

number of chemotherapy drugs have been developed to restore our bodies' natural defenses, but their use has been limited due to their high toxicity.107 There are, however, a number of compounds distributed widely throughout the plant kingdom—including beans, greens, and berries—that appear to have the same effect naturally.108 For example, dripping green tea on colon, esophageal, or prostate cancer cells has been shown to reactivate genes silenced by the cancer.109

What do you think happened when people were given a cup of chickpeas or the same number of calories of white bread and butter? Those who had eaten the chickpeas ate nearly two hundred fewer calories of a meal served a few hours later.2323 Navy beans may work even better than chickpeas, and lentils best of all.2324 How do legumes fare compared to something a little more substantial than Wonder Bread, though?

not smoking, not being obese, getting half an hour of exercise a day, and eating healthier—defined as consuming more fruits, veggies, and whole grains and less meat. Those four factors alone were found to account for 78 percent of chronic disease risk.

Large-scale population studies have found that the consumption of artificial sweeteners, particularly in diet sodas, is associated with increased weight gain and abdominal fat over time.1538

Night-shift workers have higher rates of obesity, as well as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer2884—graveyard shift indeed!

Cognitive defusion was tested head-to-head against cognitive restructuring in the same chocolate experiment, and those who had gotten an hour of defusion instruction had three times greater odds of remaining "chocolate abstinent" in the face of a week of constant temptation.

Researchers compared patties made with fava beans and split peas to protein-matched patties made out of meat. The title of the study gives it away: "Meals Based on Vegetable Protein Sources (Beans and Peas) Are More Satiating Than Meals Based on Animal Protein Sources (Veal and Pork)." Even lower-protein patties in which most of the mashed beans and peas were replaced with potato held their own against the meat.

Though traditional Indian diets can include up to about a teaspoon of turmeric daily, the average intake in India is closer to a quarter teaspoon a day.14 So that's how much I recommend you get as part of your Daily Dozen.

There may be no such thing as dying from old age. From a study of more than forty-two thousand consecutive autopsies, centenarians—those who live past one hundred—were found to have succumbed to diseases in 100 percent of the cases examined.

Most deaths in the United States are preventable, and they are related to what we eat. 4