Americans have yet to decrease their consumption of processed meat as they did nearly two decades ago, according new a study published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
Dr. Michael Greger, a plant based physician and author of “How Not To Die,” has identified certain foods that that will help you avoid the biggest killers like heart disease and cancer. He said people have tremendous power in over their health destiny and longevity.
“The vast majority of premature death and disability is preventable with a plant based diet and other lifestyle behaviors,” Dr. Greger told FOX Business.
Processed meat includes red meat or poultry “transformed through salting, curing, fermentation, smoking, or with the addition of chemical preservatives,” the study said. It analyzed data from 43,995 adults aged 20 and up who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) between 1999 and 2016. The study found that the top processed meats consumed were luncheon meat, sausage, hot dogs, ham and bacon.
Dr. Greger encourages everyone to implement a plant based diet with greens as the healthiest vegetables, berries, the healthiest fruits, whole grains, legumes, and a tablespoon of flax seeds a day to help shed weight and be healthier.
There is a wide variety of diets for losing weight and living healthy. Mediterranean, Paleo, Keto diet, South Beach, Adkins are amongst the more popular diet options. Most diets have been shown to result in short-term weight loss.
However, a plant-based, unprocessed food diet with no salt, sugar or added oil is the only diet that has been proven to result in short- and long-term weight loss, to improve longevity, and to prevent and in many cases reverse most of the chronic diseases that sicken and eventually kill people. The chronic diseases include obesity, high blood pressure, heart attacks and strokes, diabetes, inflammatory and auto-immune diseases, dementia, osteoporosis, and many types of cancer.
“We have tremendous power over our health destiny and our longevity,” Dr. Greger said.
“How Not to Die” focuses on the U.S.’ 15 leading causes of death, while its upcoming companion will include healthy recipes that will help prevent and reverse disease.
Dr. Greger agreed that doctors excel at treating acute conditions like mending broken bones and curing infections. However, for chronic diseases which are the main causes of death, Dr. Greger said that diet surpasses the drugs offered by modern medicine. Even the salicylic acid found in baby aspirin, which is widely prescribed by doctors as a heart-disease preventative, is widely found in fruits and vegetables.
Dr. Greger made a powerful argument that a plant-based diet, along with regular exercise, is the gateway to a longer and healthier life and can reverse chronic diseases even after they have progressed.
His “daily dozen” list includes: berries, beans, other fruits, cruciferous vegetables, greens, other vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds, flax seeds, herbs, beverages, exercise.
“The sustaining motivation is how good you feel when you start eating healthier. That’s why I encourage to try a healthy diet. Like a free sample. Give me two weeks, give me three weeks, try eating healthy, and then there’s the internal motivation. All of the sudden, you’re feeling better, you’re sleeping better, your digestion is better. Then you have that internal motivation to continue to eat healthier because you feel so much better, but you don’t know how good you feel until you give it a try.”
“What this new study shows about processed meats is the abject failure of the public health community to warn consumers of the dangers of processed meats. Bacon, ham, hotdogs, lunchmeat, sausage. These are known human careenage since we know they cause cancer in people,” he added.
Dr. Greger pointed out that medical education is lacking in courses on nutrition. But, medical education also provides minimal information on autoimmune disorders and for the most part, they remain a mystery to doctors.
