John McDougall - The Healthiest Diet on the Planet

Contents

This book is dedicated to our grandchildren:

Jaysen Wilson

Ben Wilson

Ryan Wilson

Sam McDougall

Chloe McDougall

Nolan McDougall

Logan McDougall

And all other grandchildren

The world is ours to save. The Healthiest Diet on the Planet

will change our present course of global warming, environmental

destruction, and species extinction, hopefully overnight.

D amned lies harm the public and planet Earth. In June 2015, the Journal of the American Medical Association, in a reckless opinion piece, called for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to remove an upper limit on the intake of total dietary fat in its most recent Dietary Guidelines for Americans 20152020. To my dismay, the authors of this article also applauded the elimination of dietary cholesterol as a nutrient of concern.

The facts behind the journals article are deeply flawed and grossly and irresponsibly skewed in favor of the meat, poultry, dairy, fish, and egg industries, public enemies when it comes to our health. For most Americans, these animal-derived foods are the primary sources of cholesterol and fat. The next largest source of dietary fat is vegetable oil (such as canola, coconut, corn, flaxseed, olive, and safflower). Although the human body does require fat, especially during times of extreme food shortage, plants provide all of the essential fats we need. Removing an upper limit on fat intake promotes obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and common cancers (breast, colon, and prostate). Furthermore, regardless of its source, the fat you eat is the fat you wear. So-called good fat like olive oil is no more attractively worn around peoples waistlines than bad fat from lard.

Lying about our dietary needs is inexcusable. Rather than encouraging the consumption of animal products and vegetable oils, as the authors of this opinion piece suggest, the USDA and the DHHS need to classify these foods as toxic, and the federal government needs to regulate the production, marketing, and selling of these foods in the same way it regulates tobacco and alcohol. Seven decades of personal and professional experience have taught me that these foods will kill you, slowly and surely.

The Problem: Improvements in Our Diet

During most of human existence, the average life expectancy was an astonishing twenty-five years or less. To date, no prehistoric remains have been found of people older than fifty years. With few exceptions, war, accidents, starvation, or infection ended lives before any telltale signs of aginggraying of the hair, wrinkling of the skin, memory loss, a reduction of strength and loss of muscle mass, and decreased visual acuityappeared. With the development of civilization, however, people learned to master their environment and to better protect themselves; with these advances some people survived to a ripe old age. Passages from the Bible, written more than twenty-five hundred years ago, report that death from old age typically occurred between seventy and eighty (Psalm 90:10), while other passages predict a maximum life-span of 120 years (Genesis 6:3).

In the nineteenth century, the introduction of immunizations, better nutrition, proper sanitation, and possibly antibiotics resulted in an unprecedented boost in life-span. Life expectancy has increased since the beginning of the twentieth century from age forty-seven to the current seventy-nine years by effectively stopping infectious diseases that killed people from birth to young adulthood. At the same time, nutrient-deficiency diseases that were once considered life-threatening, like scurvy, beriberi, pellagra, and goiters, have been reduced through public nutritional advice focused on eating more fruits and vegetables (and secondarily on taking vitamin and mineral supplements).

By the middle of the twentieth century, it seemed we were well on our way to enjoying a lifetime of sustainable good health and remarkable longevity. But it didnt turn out that way. Not even close. Because chronic and degenerative diseases like obesity, heart disease, strokes, type 2 diabetes, arthritis, and cancers quickly replaced nutritional deficiencies and infectious diseases as the predominant causes of disability and death in the country.

How did this happen? What changed? How did we go from achieving the healthiest and longest life-span in the history of humankind to suddenly becoming chronically sick and in constant danger of dropping dead before reaching our golden years?

The answer is simplestartlingly, maddeningly simple. The food industries got involved.

The Food Industries and the McGovern Report

Jumping on the national health bandwagon, the food industries started pushing meat, poultry, fish, and eggs as invaluable sources of protein, and dairy foods as essential for our calcium needs, which, both the meat and dairy industries claimed, were cornerstones of a healthy diet, even though protein and calcium deficiencies were nonexistent problems (except during starvation, and then all nutrients are deficient). It was not uncommon for Americans during the mid-twentieth century to die from heart attacks in their fifties and sixties.

At the same time, pockets of the country were suffering from hunger and malnutrition, most notably in the rural South, where emaciated children were testing positive for diseases that had only existed in underdeveloped countries. Recognizing this downturn in Americas health, the U.S. Senate took formal action. Between 1968 and 1977, the Senate convened on numerous occasions its Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, which ultimately produced the countrys first Dietary Goals for the United States, then known as the McGovern Report, in recognition of George McGovern, the Democratic senator from South Dakota and chair of the committee.

Although it initially focused on hunger and malnutrition, the committee expanded its scope to include all aspects of nutrition, from eating too little to eating too much. In doing so, the committee took on obesity, heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and certain kinds of cancer. There is a great deal of evidence and it continues to accumulate, which strongly implicates and, in some instances, proves that the major causes of death and disability in the United States are related to the diet we eat, wrote Dr. D. Mark Hegsted, of the Harvard School of Public Health, in the