There are so many ways we eat potatoes—baked, mashed, hashed, fried, scalloped, roasted, and more—but should we be eating them at all?Potatoes and DiabetesIn 2006, the Harvard Nurses’ Health Study, which had followed the diets and diseases of tens of thousands of women for 20 years, found that great
What are the effects of plant-based meats on premature puberty, childhood obesity, and hip fracture risk?As noted in an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association on plant-based meats, if you look only at the nutrition facts information for a conventional burger versus a Beyond Mea
What are the different impacts of plant protein versus animal protein, and do the benefits of plant proteins translate to plant protein isolates?Are plant-based burgers healthy or not? The answer is: Compared to what? Eating is kind of a zero-sum game where every food has an opportunity cost. Each t
We had the pleasure of talking with Jenné Claiborne about her work, food, Black History Month, and her new cookbook. We hope you enjoy this interview and her recipe for her Amazing Edamame Salad.Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your work.I am the vegan chef, cookbook author, and conten
What happens when you compare the trans fats, saturated fat, sodium, and cholesterol levels in plant-based meats versus animal-based burgers? Global meat production has skyrocketed over the last half-century. As you can see below and at 0:20 in my video Are Beyond Meat and the Impossible Burger Heal
Environmental assessments of 50 different plant-based meats show them to be vastly more sustainable than animal-based meats.“There is increasing consensus that transitioning towards reduced meat consumption and more plant-based diets is a key feature to address important health and sustainability ch
Learn why sorghum is one of my favorite new grains.“Despite playing a significant role in Africa and Asia as a staple grain, sorghum has only recently emerged as a potential human food source in the developed world.” And it isn’t just a principal grain in many parts of the world, but it’s “critical
How does sorghum compare with other grains in terms of protein, antioxidants, and micronutrients? And the benefits of red sorghum compared to black and white varieties?Sorghum is “the Forgotten Grain.” The United States is the top producer of sorghum, “but it is typically not used to produce food fo
Ozempic and others in a new class of weight-loss drugs have been called “the medical sensation of the decade.” Are they worthy of all the hype?For a deep dive, please see my primer on this topic. OZEMPIC: Risks, Benefits, and Natural Alternatives to GLP-1 Weight-Loss Drugs is available as an ebook,
Can the aroma of wood essential oils replicate the immune-boosting effects of walking in a forest?Studies on the effects of “forest bathing,” or shinrin-yoku in Japanese, “a traditional practice characterized by visiting a forest and breathing its air,” have found it “can induce a significant increa
Natural killer cells are one of the ways our body fights off cancer, and visiting a forest can induce a significant increase in both their numbers and their activity.I’ve previously shown how exposure to nature can have self-reported psychological benefits, but there was a dearth of data on changes
I’m thrilled to announce that pre-orders are now open for The How Not to Age Cookbook, coming out on April 22. This much-anticipated culinary companion to my New York Times Best Seller, How Not to Age, is a beautifully-illustrated cookbook with more than 100 recipes developed again with Robin Robert
The book Dieting Makes You Fat was published originally in the 1980s and then repeatedly republished. Since most people who lose weight go on to regain it, there is a concern that there may be adverse health consequences of “yo-yo dieting.” This idea emerged from animal studies that, for example, sh
Is there a unisex chart for optimal weight based on height?We seem to have become inured to the mortal threat of obesity. If you go back in the medical literature almost a quarter of a century ago when obesity wasn’t run-of-the-mill, the descriptions are much grimmer: “Obesity is always tragic, and
How do we explain studies that suggest overweight individuals live longer?Martin Luther King Jr. warned that human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable, and the same may be true of the human lifespan. In the 1800s, life expectancy was less than 40 years, but it has been “advancing steadily”
What are the effects of weight loss on natural killer cell function, our first line of immune defense against cancer, kidney function, and fatty liver disease?In the ABCs of the health consequences of obesity, I is for Immunity.The SOS trial followed the fates of thousands of bariatric surgery patie
Sufficient, sustained weight loss may cut the risk of fatal heart attacks and strokes in half.In the ABCs of health consequences of obesity, G is for Gallstones.The top digestive reason people are hospitalized is a gallbladder attack. Every year, more than a million Americans are diagnosed with gall
Weight loss can decrease dementia risk and improve mental performance and fertility.As I’ve discussed previously, in the ABCs of the health consequences of obesity, A is for Arthritis, B is for Back Pain and Blood Pressure, C is for Cancer, and D is for Diabetes. That brings us to E, which is for En
Losing weight can reduce sciatica, hypertension, and cancer risk, as well as reverse type 2 diabetes. In the ABCs of the health consequences of obesity, A is for Arthritis, as I discussed in my previous blog post, and B is for Back Pain. Being overweight is not just a risk factor for low back pain,
We create more than a hundred new videos every year. They are the culmination of countless hours of researching, writing, editing, animating, and producing. We comb through thousands of scientific papers from the peer-reviewed medical literature so busy people like you don’t have to!In 2024, I cover
Is there a non-surgical alternative to knee replacement surgery that treats the cause and offers only beneficial side effects? The largest study in history on the health effects of being overweight, analyzing data from more than 50 million people from nearly 200 countries, found that excess body wei
Various fasting regimens have been attempted for inflammatory autoimmune diseases, such as lupus, ankylosing spondylitis, chronic urticaria, mixed connective-tissue disease, glomerulonephritis, and multiple sclerosis, as well as osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia.The strongest evidence of the benefits
Fasting, followed by a plant-based diet, is put to the test for autoimmune inflammatory joint disease. Alan Goldhamer is the founder of the TrueNorth Health Center in Santa Rosa, California, where 10,000 individuals have fasted for “a variety of conditions from diabetes and cardiovascular disease to
The temporary quintupling of heart attack risk associated with cannabis smoking may be due to increased heart rate, blood pressure, and carbon monoxide levels.Does “the dark side of cannabis”—both “synthetic and non-synthetic marijuana”—include stroke?There have been case reports of artery damage du
