How Not To Diet By Michael Greger

In my late teens I listened to a cassette tape of a medical doctor promoting a multi-vitamin pill. The pill’s big selling point was its special ingredients, collected from parts of the world where people lived the longest.

His sales pitch included some of the most compelling stories I’d ever heard. They convinced me that he’d indeed found the secret that, for just $2 a day, would guarantee me a long and healthy life.

Only the $150 price tag for an initial order prevented me from purchasing his pills. But I didn’t forget about them.

That doctor’s miracle-cure cassette came to mind again as I read How Not to Diet: The Groundbreaking Science of Healthy, Permanent Weight Loss. Dr. Michael Greger’s latest book sounds the alarm about taking other people’s success stories and pseudoscience at face value.

Instead, he cautions:

“When it comes to making life-and-death decisions that concern something as important as your own health and that of your family, as far as I’m concerned, there’s only one question: What does the best available balance of evidence say right now?”

And Dr. Greger means what he says. He and his NutritionFacts team pore over about 25 thousand scientific studies each year. Their goal is to stay abreast of the latest dietary and nutritional research.

How Not To Diet shares some of their most important evidence-based findings. And none involves secret potions or $2 vitamin pills!

At times, in fact, his recommendations border on yawn-worthy. What’s more boring, for example, than fiber?

Yet for those concerned about their waistlines (and that would be millions of us), Dr. Greger offers this fiber-friendly fact:

“Telling people to increase their intakes of fiber-rich foods may actually be one of the single most effective pieces of advice for weight loss.”

And he follows it up study after study supporting the benefits of adequate fiber intake.

My takeaway messages from How Not To Diet?

“You don’t need to follow any expensive plans, swallow any questionable pills…

There are no magic-bullet infomercial gadgets…”

The research is plain: If you really want to live a long and healthy life, eating whole plant-based foods is the way to go!