0:00

I, like all of you,

0:02

are completely shell shocked that the

0:05

larger than life giant, Dr.

0:07

John McDougall has died. He

0:09

was one of my great

0:12

heroes in life. He was

0:14

fearless. He was courageous. He

0:16

was a true seeker. He was

0:19

bloody intense like nobody I know.

0:22

He was compassionate and he was

0:24

committed to spreading the good word

0:27

about the benefits of a whole food, plant

0:29

based diet, or as he liked to say, being

0:32

a starchivore until the very,

0:34

very end. And that torch

0:36

that he lit will continue

0:39

to burn brightly and be carried by

0:41

his family, by Mary and

0:44

all those who loved him and cherished his

0:46

message. Here are

0:48

10 quotes from John

0:50

McDougall that I love. And you

0:52

may hear several of these

0:54

in this podcast interview that I

0:57

have with John. People

1:00

love to hear good news about their bad

1:02

habits. That

1:04

is so, John. The

1:07

fat you eat is the fat you

1:10

wear. People

1:12

think that they are free when they are

1:14

on a Western diet, but they are

1:17

slaves to their cravings. The

1:20

joy of living comes from surrounding ourselves with

1:22

people that we love and

1:24

living in a way that promotes our health. If

1:28

you don't take care of your body, where

1:31

are you going to live? Health

1:35

is not something that you need to

1:37

find, it's something that you already have

1:39

if you just don't disturb

1:41

it. The

1:44

food you eat can either be the

1:47

safest and most powerful form of medicine

1:49

or the slowest form of poison. It's

1:53

not the food in your life, but

1:55

the life in your food that counts. If

1:59

you love life, Don't waste

2:01

time, for time is what life

2:03

is made up of. And

2:06

then lastly, it's the food,

2:08

it's the food, it's the food. John

2:12

McDougall was the

2:14

Yoda of the plant-based movement. He

2:17

may be gone, but his work and

2:20

his words will live on, and

2:22

he will never, ever be

2:24

forgotten. I love you, John

2:27

McDougall. Earlier this year,

2:29

I was able to have

2:31

the esteemed Dr. Dean Ornish

2:34

on the podcast, and most

2:36

recently, I welcomed my

2:38

father, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr.,

2:41

to answer your questions as part of

2:43

a special Father's Day podcast. If

2:46

you missed either of these shows, I

2:49

highly recommend listening and watching the

2:52

wisdom of these two pioneers,

2:55

and I'll be sure to put a link into the show

2:58

notes for these episodes so

3:00

that you can go back and take a look. Today

3:04

however, I'm going to

3:06

continue the pioneer world

3:09

tour with none

3:11

other than one of

3:14

the most iconic and legendary people

3:16

in this space, Dr.

3:18

John McDougall. He

3:22

has been an absolute hero and

3:24

mentor of mine for decades, and

3:28

it was an absolute

3:30

thrill for me to talk

3:32

about John's past, present, and

3:35

his future legacy. His

3:38

story is as

3:40

fascinating as the

3:42

plant-based movement that he launched

3:45

back in the late 1970s, early 1980s. John

3:50

was drawn to medicine

3:54

because of his own health fate,

3:57

incredibly at the tender age of just

3:59

18. He suffered

4:01

a massive stroke and was

4:03

a total anomaly to the

4:05

physicians in Michigan who wanted to explore

4:08

why and how. How

4:11

in the world could this happen to someone so

4:13

young? And this is

4:15

what inspired his own

4:18

medical journey, which eventually led

4:21

John and his wife Mary to

4:24

the Big Island of Hawaii as

4:26

a doctor on a sugar

4:28

plantation. And

4:30

it's what he witnessed on

4:33

this sugar plantation that

4:35

changed the course of his

4:37

medical practice forever. Now

4:40

the healthiest people on the island were

4:43

the first generation elders who had

4:46

come from China, Japan, Korea, and

4:48

the Philippines. They

4:51

were the healthiest and

4:53

most vibrant people. They were

4:55

still active, they were on

4:57

zero medications, and they had

4:59

bodies that were fit for movement. However,

5:02

it was their children and their

5:05

grandchildren, those second and

5:07

third generations that were struggling. And

5:10

you may ask why? And

5:13

the answer is because they had adopted

5:15

a Western diet loaded with

5:17

meat, dairy, and processed foods. And

5:21

the secret, the secret

5:23

that Dr. McDougal discovered was

5:25

starch. It's

5:28

considered a bad word here in

5:31

America for all the wrong

5:34

reasons, but those healthy islanders

5:37

subsisted on a diet comprised

5:39

mostly of rice, potatoes,

5:42

vegetables, and fruits. And

5:44

this is what inspired the

5:46

work that Dr. McDougal does

5:49

through all of his programming and

5:52

education today. Now

5:55

animal agriculture as we are

5:58

so abundantly learning is

6:00

also one of the main culprits

6:02

contributing to climate change. We've

6:05

had lots of people on the podcast talking

6:07

about this, and John and

6:09

I discussed this today under

6:11

the umbrella of his four

6:14

deadly dietary deceptions

6:17

as outlined at

6:19

mcdougallfoundation.org. This

6:21

is a super inspiring conversation

6:24

from one of the absolute

6:28

giants and gods in the

6:30

field. It was an

6:32

honor for me to sit down with Dr. John

6:34

McDougall, and I know you're

6:37

going to enjoy this. John,

6:40

this is an absolute pleasure. You know,

6:43

you have been one

6:45

of my heroes since I got into this

6:47

space, really, and started eating

6:51

this way in 1987 personally. I

6:54

know that you were a huge, huge

6:56

influence on my father and him

6:58

getting into plant-based. He read, I

7:00

think it was the

7:02

McDougall program in 1983. I

7:05

think you have probably been practicing this lifestyle

7:08

holistic medicine longer

7:10

than any other person on the

7:12

planet, truly. Yeah,

7:14

I think so, except for anybody alive.

7:18

Yes. Yes. But

7:21

you know, you are an

7:23

absolute giant, giant legend, the

7:25

patriarch of the movement,

7:27

and I want you to know

7:29

how much we owe you a

7:32

debt of gratitude for just

7:34

your insane, ravenous

7:38

personality that takes no

7:40

prisoners, that has fought the

7:43

good fight. And

7:45

this is just one of my dreams to

7:47

have you on the show. So thank you.

7:50

Well, I hope you recorded that. Oh,

7:53

yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. All right.

7:56

Well, thank you, thank you, Rippitz. But

7:58

you know, I look at

8:01

your dad. and T.

8:03

Colin Campbell and even Dean Ornish

8:05

and all the other people. I

8:08

mean, it's been a war that needed

8:10

a lot of soldiers, I'll tell you, and

8:14

yourself. And the

8:17

sad thing is, is we

8:20

haven't won as much territory as we should have, you

8:23

know, but it seems that way in the world

8:25

is that it doesn't matter if you're good

8:27

or evil or you tell the truth or you're

8:29

dishonest, somehow or another, the

8:32

bad guys win too often. Well, I know

8:34

that you, you know, you've

8:36

got a couple people that you really admire that

8:39

influenced you. And for

8:41

example, one of them was Nathan Pritikin. Absolutely.

8:44

Yeah. Yep. And you've written a lot

8:46

about Nathan. You've got some incredible interviews

8:50

with Nathan. You

8:52

have a great YouTube interview that you did with him, you know,

8:54

40 years ago. Yeah,

8:56

I was just a kid. Yeah, you

8:58

were, you were, you were, you were

9:00

absolutely a little kid. But, you know,

9:03

you, I've read a lot of your

9:05

newsletters that are remarkable, you know, going

9:07

back to probably 19, what was it?

9:09

When'd you start those? 1990? Well, 1986,

9:11

I think I wrote my first paper

9:15

newsletter and then went online in 2002. Wow.

9:17

But, you know, you say that, and unfortunately,

9:19

you know, Nathan

9:24

died at the tender age of 69, but

9:26

you said if he would have lived longer, it would

9:29

have made it much harder for, you know,

9:32

paleo, keto and some of these other ones

9:34

to take, to take a foothold. Yeah,

9:37

he was really a really strong man and

9:40

very focused and nobody got in his way.

9:42

He, he took on Robert Atkins

9:44

and, you know, in my opinion,

9:46

to beat him terribly. And yeah, it

9:49

was a sad thing for the world to take him at age 69.

9:52

It wasn't fair. And, you know,

9:54

one of the things I look

9:56

at now, rep, I've outlived not only Nathan

10:00

Pritikin, but Robert Atkins. So

10:03

I'm 75 years old now and hopefully

10:06

I get a few more years to fight the battle.

10:08

I'm certainly looking forward to it. Yeah, well and you're

10:10

75, but you like to say that

10:16

growing up you pretty much

10:18

abused yourself and at the

10:20

tender age of 18, in October of 1965, you

10:26

had an event that

10:28

really informed the direction of

10:32

your medical career. Can you share

10:35

with the Plan Strong audience what happened? Because

10:37

I don't think a lot of my listeners

10:40

know your personal story and I want them to hear

10:42

that. Well, I

10:45

was raised in like so many people in

10:47

the family that believe the most important nutrients

10:49

were calcium and protein. And

10:51

so my parents made sure I had lots of meat

10:53

and lots of dairy and I

10:55

enthusiastically do everything even to this day.

10:58

And so I suffered health problems, stomach

11:01

pains, constipation of a little kid, lost

11:04

my tonsils at age seven, was

11:06

the at the last of the pack out in gym

11:08

class. I had no endurance and

11:11

had the typical oily skin and acne and then

11:13

at 18 years old I had a massive stroke.

11:17

And here what 56 years later I

11:20

still walk with a limp and when I go windsurfing

11:22

I have a terrible poor chive. Good

11:26

to know. It's

11:28

been a major change for me. Actually I look

11:30

at it as one of those things I know

11:32

I would have never been the doctor who had

11:34

the opportunity to be with you today if

11:37

it wasn't for that event where I was

11:39

hospitalized at Grace Hospital in Detroit, Michigan

11:42

for two weeks after I had this stroke because

11:45

there I met doctors and I was

11:47

raised in a family where doctors were next

11:50

to God and I certainly

11:52

was not that quality of a person. So

11:54

I never had an aspiration to be a doctor even though

11:56

I loved the sciences. But once

11:58

I met doctors I figured hey, I can do what

12:00

they do. So I left

12:02

a whole new attitude about the medical

12:04

profession. It was, you know, it's

12:07

just people that were

12:11

involved in this business. It wasn't anything particularly

12:13

special. It was just people who happened to

12:15

get an education. And so I

12:18

took advantage of that. At age,

12:21

let's see, I was about 22 years old. My

12:24

mother called me fat. I think I reached my

12:26

height and my weight at 90 pounds

12:28

more than I weigh now. And

12:31

at 24, I had major abdominal

12:33

surgery. And

12:36

I don't think I'd have made it past my late

12:38

20s or early 30s, but I had heart surgery or

12:40

been dead. But a very

12:43

unfortunate thing happened to me. I met my

12:45

wife, Mary, back in 1971. And

12:47

in 1972,

12:49

we went to Hawaii. And

12:51

the next year after a year of surgical

12:54

internship in Hawaii, I took on a job

12:56

as a sugar plantation doctor. You

12:58

know, people don't even know what a sugar plantation

13:00

doctor is these days, but I

13:02

took care of 5000 people on a

13:05

sugar plantation on the big island of Hawaii.

13:07

And these people were very

13:09

interesting in the sense that I

13:12

was their doctor. I mean, I did everything

13:14

for them. I pronounced them dead. I caught their

13:16

babies. I did brain surgery in the middle of

13:18

the night. And I was

13:20

basically it. And the

13:23

thing is, is that in my general

13:26

practice with these people, I felt like I

13:28

was a terrible doctor, because

13:30

all I was doing was pushing pills. And

13:32

they never never got better from chronic disease.

13:35

And I came from a time when you knew

13:37

what real doctors did, I watched Ben Casey, Dr.

13:40

Kildare and Marcus Welby. And I

13:42

wasn't performing at all like that. I thought

13:44

I was a terrible, terrible doctor. I

13:47

had another enlightenment there on my

13:49

plantation. And that I was I was taking

13:51

care of first, second, third, and

13:54

fourth generation people, first

13:56

generation being born in their native land. In

13:59

this case, we're We're talking about Koreans and

14:01

Chinese and Japanese and Filipinos

14:04

primarily. And the first generation, they

14:06

learned a diet of rice and vegetables. And

14:09

then they moved to the Big Island to start a

14:11

new life and they had their families and their

14:14

families were influenced by Western eating. So

14:17

the second generation, they ate more rich food

14:19

and they got more of a weight

14:21

and sicker. And by

14:23

the time you got to my third generation of patients,

14:25

and I was taking care of all four generations of

14:28

people in my practice. I

14:30

could see it right before my eyes, the

14:32

genes didn't change, the environment

14:34

on the plantation hadn't changed for a hundred

14:36

years. But here

14:38

I saw this drastic change in health where my

14:40

first generation, they never were overweight. They

14:43

were hard working into their 80s and sometimes 90s. They're

14:46

actually father, men were father and children in

14:49

their 70s and 80s. And boy, was

14:52

that an inspiration, I'll tell you. Here

14:54

I am in my 70s. I wanted to be

14:56

just as good as they were. Anyway,

14:59

they had never had diabetes,

15:01

never had a heart trouble,

15:03

breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate

15:05

cancer, no autoimmune diseases.

15:07

This is my first generation. But as I

15:09

mentioned, as the second

15:12

generation, third generation learned the Western diet,

15:14

they became progressively more ill because

15:17

they were being poisoned. This

15:19

is food poisoning, Rep. I

15:21

have to explain on those terms and I do these

15:24

days. So people

15:26

can understand it. This is

15:28

food poisoning. And I try

15:30

and make it simple for people just like I

15:33

could tell your audience about

15:35

tobacco poisoning. And

15:37

they would understand what that is. They'd understand how to

15:39

solve it. You just quit the tobacco or I could

15:42

talk about alcohol poisoning.

15:45

And they would understand what to do. You must stop

15:47

the alcohol. But when it

15:49

comes to food poisoning, people get really confused

15:51

because we're taught all kinds of incorrect

15:54

and ineffective things like skinny

15:57

your chicken and skim milk. You

16:00

know, just all kinds of manby-pamby stuff that

16:02

doesn't work. So what

16:05

I've been trying to teach is that you

16:07

suffer from food poisoning, and

16:09

we can put that into two categories of poisons,

16:11

you know, just like smoking and alcohol have one

16:14

category. The two categories of

16:16

poisons are animal foods, anything

16:19

from an animal, whether you strip off its parts

16:22

or you take the secretions from an animal. So

16:25

any animal food is one category of

16:28

food poison, and the other

16:30

category of food is vegetable oil. So

16:33

you know, there are oils that we need that

16:35

are in plants. As long as

16:37

they're in plants, they're just fine. But

16:39

when you strip it out of the corn or

16:42

the olive, you know, what happens

16:45

is you end up with an

16:47

isolated concentrated nutrient that's poisonous. It's

16:50

at best medicinal at worst. It's a

16:52

serious toxin. So

16:54

knowing that you just have two food poisons

16:56

to deal with, two categories of food poison,

17:00

people can put their arms around it. They know what to

17:02

do except then they say to themselves,

17:05

there's nothing to eat. You know, they

17:07

go, oh, you're just animal foods

17:09

and oils. That's all I eat. Well

17:12

then I have to teach them the other side of the

17:14

coin, and that is what is the diet of the human

17:17

being. And the

17:19

diet of the human being is starch. And

17:22

I know that is hard for people to grasp, but

17:24

you know, a lot of your listeners are

17:27

people of history and people of geography. And

17:30

if you'll just relate to some of the things that you know,

17:32

you know that the

17:34

human being has been

17:36

a starch eater for its

17:38

entire existence with few exceptions. Like

17:42

for example, you know, we're very

17:44

focused on Native Americans. And

17:47

we can find evidence of Native Americans

17:49

eating potatoes 10, 12,000 years ago in

17:51

what we

17:54

call the four corners, which are four states that

17:56

come together. Their archeologic

17:59

findings. Think of the Native

18:01

Americans or you go down into Central America

18:04

You think of people of the corn the

18:06

Aztecs and Mayans were known as the people of

18:08

the corn You know, they

18:10

had babies they went to work They

18:13

fought battles they competed in athletic events

18:16

that you know are comparable to the

18:18

Olympics They did

18:20

that for 1,300 years living on corn If

18:23

you go further south and you look at

18:25

the people who lived in the Andes in

18:27

South America It's like for example

18:29

the Incas The Incas lived

18:31

on potatoes until they went to battle and

18:33

because potatoes are so heavy They

18:36

fought on quinoa And

18:39

you know, there are a couple other examples. I want

18:41

to mention, you know, we're focused

18:43

on Ukraine these days and We've

18:46

been focused a lot on Egypt and Iraq

18:49

and Iran This part of the

18:51

world has been and still is known as the breadbasket

18:53

of the world Okay,

18:55

so bread should come to mind I know it's

18:57

vilified but you know people have

18:59

lived on bread It's the staff of life and

19:02

then when I mentioned the Asian population I

19:05

mentioned Chinese or Japanese or Koreans

19:07

or Ties or you

19:09

know, what do people think about? You know,

19:12

we're immediately rice comes to mind before

19:14

1980 90% of the food Out

19:18

of typical Asians plate was rice. I know

19:21

it was white rice, but you know It

19:23

ain't that big a deal. I'm a good grief

19:26

on white rice. We almost lost to

19:28

the Japanese World War two

19:31

and we lost the

19:33

Vietnamese conflict on

19:36

white rice You know,

19:38

so we've vilified we put

19:41

we put our villains in the wrong place not

19:43

that problem rice isn't better. It certainly is but

19:46

you've got to fight your battles where you have a good

19:48

chance of winning and so What

19:51

people need to do is they need to think of themselves

19:53

as starch eaters and how much starch Well,

19:55

when you look at your plate, and that's what you ought to

19:57

be doing. It's just eyeballing your plate You

19:59

know, I'm just gonna to measure, you don't have to take

20:01

a dietitian along, look it up in

20:03

a dietetic handbook, you just look and

20:05

you go, oh, that's 90% of

20:07

my food is starch, you

20:10

know, maybe 75%. And then the rest

20:12

is green and

20:14

yellow vegetables, which are non-starchy, non-starchy

20:18

plant foods and fruits. Now,

20:20

I know there's a big swing

20:22

out there, and I know many of your guests

20:24

that you've had on have been

20:26

into nutritarian diets that have

20:29

focused green and yellow vegetables,

20:31

but no population ever lived on green

20:33

and yellow vegetables. They lived on

20:35

starch. It's just if you

20:37

try, like, for example, if I was going

20:39

to live on

20:41

cabbage or broccoli or

20:43

kale, I'm sorry, you

20:46

know, you'd eat all day. It

20:48

would take me, I'd have to

20:50

eat like 11 to 22

20:52

pounds of cabbage a day to get my

20:54

calories. So these non-starchy, green and yellow

20:56

vegetables are

21:01

important. They're interesting, colorful, etc.

21:04

But unless you base your diet around starch,

21:06

you just don't have the performance that you

21:08

need. You don't satisfy the

21:11

appetite like you need. And

21:13

again, I offer you as evidence, and then

21:15

I'll stop talking here a second. I offer

21:17

you, I offer

21:19

you as evidence, the fact that 99.99% of people ever

21:21

walk this earth have been starch eaters,

21:27

starchitarians, starchivores, that's

21:30

been their food. And they've had

21:32

a little meat, you know, somebody challenged me a couple days

21:34

ago and said, well, they weren't vegans. You're right, they weren't

21:37

vegans. You don't have to be a

21:39

vegan. If you don't want to be, we just teach a vegan diet.

21:42

You know, the important thing is that the bulk of

21:44

your calories come from starch. I mean, like 90%. And

21:48

the rest shouldn't come from chickens and cows either

21:51

should come from fruits and vegetables.

21:54

Let me go back to the Big Island of Hawaii and

21:56

the sugar plantation and the 5,000 patients.

22:00

How soon were you

22:02

able to connect the

22:05

dots that, hey, it's the

22:07

food. It's the food, it's the food. I mean,

22:09

was it a year? Was it four years? I

22:11

mean, I don't know how long you were there

22:13

on the plantation. It took me three years. At

22:16

the end of three years, I decided that

22:19

I was a terrible doctor, and

22:21

I really did. I blamed myself for

22:23

the fact that my patients weren't getting well,

22:26

and I decided to go back in training and learn how to be

22:28

a good doctor. So I left

22:31

my plantation job, and I moved back to

22:33

Oahu and went to John Burns School of

22:35

Medicine and became a

22:37

board-certified internist. Well, by

22:39

that time, I'd kind of noticed the difference

22:41

between my generations of patients. And

22:44

I'll tell you, my personal diet by then had

22:47

only changed to where we

22:49

were eating range-fed beef, and

22:51

we were eating brown rice. But

22:54

I really hadn't made the real transition until

22:56

about 1977, which is when I can say

22:58

that I became

23:01

essentially a vegan. Then

23:04

I went back, I went back into this university

23:06

setting to become

23:09

a board-certified internist, and had the Hawaiian

23:11

Medical Library on the grounds of the

23:13

Queens Medical Center. Well, I'll

23:16

tell you, I discovered in the library that

23:18

I was not the original inventor of

23:21

this information. There were tens

23:23

of thousands of researchers that

23:25

had studied the fact that and found

23:27

the fact that rich foods make people

23:30

sick. And the most

23:32

important thing was when you change them back to

23:34

the diet that people eat. In other

23:36

words, you got rid of the meat, you got rid of the dairy and

23:38

the oil, and you put them on rice

23:41

and corn and potatoes and sweet potatoes.

23:44

They got well. The angina stopped, the

23:47

blood pressure came down, the diabetes was

23:49

cured when it's type 2 diabetes, the

23:52

autoimmune diseases went away. All this was published.

23:55

It was published before 1880. certainly

24:00

between 1920 and 1980. In 1980, what happened is we had

24:02

cable news network and

24:10

we had, you know, the peak of

24:12

harnessing fossil fuels and technology

24:14

and transportation. And

24:17

industry took over. You

24:21

know, they just took over, they took over

24:23

science, they took over research. And

24:25

so after 1980, you really can't trust things

24:27

that have been published, unless

24:30

you discover the biases of the researchers,

24:33

which I'm very careful to do. But

24:37

you know, that it's just money.

24:39

It's just money. That's all it is.

24:41

Don't take it personal. It's not a

24:43

conspiracy. It's just making money. Yeah. Yeah.

24:45

All right. So you dove in to

24:48

the Hawaii library and saw

24:51

this research that supported what you were kind

24:54

of maybe thinking and maybe allowed

24:56

you to connect all the dots. And

24:58

then was it there that you discovered Nathaniel

25:01

Pritikin and Dennis Burkett and Walter

25:03

Kempner and all these guys? Absolutely.

25:06

That's, that's where I discovered them. I

25:08

actually discovered them in various ways.

25:11

Somebody gave me a set of tapes from Nathan

25:13

Pritikin. And by that time,

25:15

I pretty much figured all this out. I just

25:17

said, how could I see

25:19

this and nobody else does? You know, there's got to

25:21

be something wrong with me. And

25:24

I spent, you know, a good time in

25:26

the library. I tremendous. That's where I spent

25:28

all my entertainment time. And

25:31

then Nathan Pritikin came to me in a

25:33

set of audio tapes. And I

25:35

was in tears. You know, I

25:38

said, you know, somebody else sees this this way

25:40

too. As that was

25:42

a big deal. And Dennis Burkett, he, he,

25:46

I got to know him pretty well. I

25:48

had him on my television show. And in

25:50

fact, the only the only two interviews that

25:53

exist, video interviews that exist of Nathan

25:55

Pritikin and Dennis Burkett, I did. And

25:59

they're on my website. and you

26:01

referenced them so I know you've seen them. They

26:04

were a big influence on me. I have to

26:06

say Nathan Pritikin probably taught me as much about

26:09

how to care for patients as anybody

26:11

except for Walter Kepner. Walter

26:14

Kepner was a medical doctor at Duke

26:16

University. He developed

26:18

the rice diet. He taught me. He

26:20

taught me just on how

26:23

simple a diet could be and provide

26:25

adequate nutrition and also

26:28

provide powerful healing. Walter

26:30

Kepner's rice diet. Walter

26:33

Kepner first of all, you have to understand it

26:35

was one of the most famous researchers in the

26:37

world. Walter Kepner

26:39

supported Duke University for two decades financially.

26:41

His work did. Was this the 40s

26:43

and 50s? Yes.

26:46

The Kepner program was there

26:48

for seven decades. Walter

26:51

Kepner, he taught me not only

26:53

could a simple diet of rice.

26:56

Listen, I'll listen to this. Rice, it was

26:58

white rice, fruit, fruit

27:01

juice and table sugar. That's what affect

27:03

the patients. It gave them a little

27:05

vitamin pill but that's it. How such

27:07

a simple diet could not

27:10

only support good health, you know, you could

27:12

live. I mean my initial thought would be

27:14

you suffer from malnutrition,

27:16

some kind of deficiency diseases and

27:18

that wasn't the case. Wasn't he

27:20

specifically, John, with that,

27:22

you know, the white rice, the fruit,

27:25

the fruit juice and the white sugar,

27:27

wasn't he intentionally trying to

27:29

get his patient's level of protein down

27:31

to about 5%? Or

27:34

less, 5% or less. Protein

27:36

is evil. And if I had to pick

27:39

one thing that has done most harm to

27:41

people, it would be

27:43

the nutrient protein. And the one thing that's done

27:45

the most harm to our environment is

27:48

the idea of protein as an important nutrient.

27:51

There's no such thing as protein deficiency.

27:53

It's never been reported. It doesn't exist.

27:56

And yet almost the entire food industry is

27:58

focused on selling you protein. Why?

28:01

Because that's where you make the money. And

28:03

the other thing they try and say is calcium. His

28:06

diet was about 3, 4% protein. And it was 93% sugar. And

28:17

why was his protein that low? Was

28:19

it because his patients had, what

28:21

did his patients have that he, was it

28:24

some sort of kidney failure or? Yeah, he

28:26

gave a lot of kidney failure patients, but

28:29

protein is hard to process. You

28:32

don't store protein. If

28:34

protein was restored, we'd all look like

28:36

Arnold Schwarzenegger used to look. So

28:39

it's not stored in the muscles. You have to get rid of it.

28:42

And you have to process the processes through the

28:44

liver and the kidneys. And

28:46

he took a lot of care of a lot of kidney patients. Uh,

28:49

Rotorkem was also big on salt. And

28:52

that was another real serious focus. He used

28:54

to wash his white rice just

28:57

to get the extra sodium off the rice. And

29:01

so it was very, very low protein,

29:03

very low sodium diet. And

29:05

with that kind of restriction, he

29:07

took people with malignant hypertension. I mean,

29:09

they're dying with high

29:11

blood pressure and he would cure

29:13

60% of people with terrible heart

29:15

failure. You look at their chest x-rays and

29:17

their heart would be as big as

29:20

their chest cavity. He showed,

29:22

he was the first one to show you could

29:24

reverse heart disease. Long before

29:26

your dad and long

29:28

before Ornish ever

29:30

showed you could reverse heart disease, he did it

29:33

by showing serial EKGs

29:35

where the classic

29:37

sign of ischemia due to blockages

29:39

of the heart arteries is

29:42

called ST depression on an EKG.

29:45

And he showed his patients who had

29:47

angina, in other words,

29:49

had heart disease. They didn't have

29:51

the modern technology like the angiograms and

29:55

heart scans and so on to evaluate it.

29:57

He'd take a simple EKG, he'd show ST

29:59

depression. Put him on the

30:01

rice diet. A few months later, the ST segments

30:03

would be upright, which means the

30:06

ischemia went away. He showed that at the end of the

30:08

40s. Yeah, so, you

30:10

know, it was again,

30:13

he was the pioneer. And

30:15

of all the doctors that had an influence on

30:17

me that he was, and as

30:20

far as a broad spectrum practice, it was Nathan

30:22

Pritikin. You know, can you also, because I know

30:24

in reading a lot of your newsletters,

30:27

another gentleman that you hold

30:30

in the highest regard and

30:32

was very influential was Henry Heimlich.

30:36

Oh, yeah, I know Henry. Henry wasn't

30:38

very much interested in diet until

30:40

he got sick. I'm

30:43

not going to mention what he was ill with, but one

30:45

of the greatest, greatest

30:49

things that I hold up as pride was

30:51

the fact that when Henry Heimlich, the

30:54

man who saved more lives than any

30:56

other person in the world with

30:58

the Heimlich chest tube in the Heimlich

31:01

maneuver, when he got ill, he came

31:03

to my clinic to get well. And

31:05

I believe he was in his early 70s. He

31:07

lived to be in his early 90s with

31:11

his condition. And it's because

31:13

he changed his diet. But

31:15

yeah, I got to know Henry Heimlich. A couple

31:17

of things that he taught me, he said, he

31:20

said, John, you're never going to give you

31:23

a platform, you're going to have to run

31:25

around them. And

31:27

you know, I kind of woke up

31:30

and said, at that point, I stopped

31:32

trying to be friendly. I stopped trying

31:34

to be pretty correct. I just started

31:36

running around my colleagues. And

31:39

the other thing he taught me is if

31:41

you're the people around you understand what

31:43

you're you're what you're

31:45

saying, you're probably not being inventive enough. To

31:48

this day, you know, even though what I teach

31:50

is really simple, most people don't understand what I'm

31:53

saying. Well, you know, and my

31:55

father won the Benjamin Spock compassion and medicine award,

31:58

I think it was in 2000. in

32:01

2005 and Henry Heimlich was one

32:03

of the ones that presented it to my

32:06

father. And he basically said that, you know,

32:08

when you're challenging the system as

32:10

you are always doing John, as my

32:12

father also did, you're gonna

32:14

have all kinds of arrows in your

32:16

back. Everybody's, you know, coming after you. And

32:19

he said, but that's a good thing because

32:21

you know you're doing it right. Never

32:25

seemed to bother me. No.

32:28

So I actually,

32:30

actually I live in a world

32:32

where I think people like me. That's

32:36

how off base I am. I actually think,

32:39

I actually, I just don't feel my

32:41

enemy side. Yeah. Well,

32:43

you like to say that your parents

32:46

taught you to tell the truth, always,

32:50

and that your life is guided

32:52

by your passions. And that certainly is

32:54

true with you. Let me

32:56

ask you this, John. So

32:58

you have a huge new passion

33:01

for diet and climate and how

33:04

the two are so

33:06

interrelated. And on

33:08

your website, mcdougallfoundation.org,

33:11

you basically list four

33:15

deadly dietary deceptions

33:18

that are out there. You touched briefly on protein,

33:20

but do you want to say anything more about

33:22

protein? And then I'd love for you to talk

33:24

about the other three. Well,

33:27

protein, as I mentioned, there's never been a case

33:30

of dietary protein deficiency. It doesn't exist. Any, none

33:32

of your friends have it. Nor do they

33:34

have amino acid deficiency. You've never seen it. It

33:37

doesn't exist. It's impossible. The

33:39

need for protein for the human being is so

33:41

low that you can't,

33:43

you can't possibly not meet it except

33:45

by some synthetic diet. The

33:48

other deception is calcium. And there, again, you

33:51

start out with the fact that there's never,

33:58

there's never been a case of calcium

34:00

deficiency ever described on any natural

34:02

diet and people immediately think

34:04

about osteoporosis And

34:07

osteoporosis is actually due to access a protein

34:10

And what happens is it's kind of a long

34:13

story, but briefly when

34:15

you eat too much protein it breaks down

34:17

to amino acids and That

34:19

means your system becomes acidic and

34:22

your bones dissolve to neutralize the acid and

34:24

that's how you get osteoporosis So

34:27

there's two of the dietary exceptions. So

34:29

tell me this with calcium So

34:32

you're saying that you're saying that we

34:34

can get all the calcium that we

34:37

need for strong healthy bones from the

34:39

plants Well,

34:41

you can't miss I mean, yeah if elephants

34:44

can do it and hippopotamuses Jurassic

34:46

do it or and and and the Asians

34:48

can do it and Aztecs

34:51

and mining the mines can do it. I think we can

34:53

do it You can't

34:55

you can't calcium comes to the ground and

34:58

Our need is so so low. It was there's

35:00

never been a case of insufficiency On

35:03

any natural diet. It just does not exist but

35:06

a whole industry is built on this lie It's

35:09

called unique positioning. It's

35:11

part of public relations for

35:14

anybody in business you find

35:16

something unique about your product and Then

35:19

you advertise it to the death and

35:21

in this case is just to the death of

35:24

your patients of people on the planet Yeah, you

35:26

know when they convince people, you know, you convince

35:28

you have to add a lot of protein a

35:30

lot of dairy You're convincing

35:32

people to eat animal foods

35:34

saturated fats cholesterol

35:37

lack of fiber vitamin

35:39

mineral misbalances and highly

35:42

caught environmentally contaminated food, you know

35:45

full of carcinogens and You

35:47

know, you're convinced. It's not just the fact

35:49

that it's a deficiency problem. It's the most

35:52

toxic thing that you can eat That's why

35:54

I call it food poisoning. Yeah, but so

35:56

tell me this then so if we live

35:58

we live in a country where most Americans

36:00

are probably consuming three to five servings of

36:03

dairy products a day that are loaded with

36:05

calcium. So how is it that

36:07

we somehow have a so-called

36:09

deficiency? Is it because the protein is

36:12

trumping the calcium that's in those products? Right.

36:15

It's because they focus on

36:17

osteoporosis. The bones have a

36:19

lot of calcium in them.

36:21

The bone store minerals. And

36:26

that's where the connection comes in is there's

36:28

calcium in the bones, well there's calcium in

36:30

dairy. So obviously you've got to eat dairy.

36:34

It's like you should eat brains

36:36

to be smart. Right. Right. Or

36:38

testicles to have a good sex

36:41

life. It makes

36:43

or eat meat to grow

36:45

muscle. It's just pretty stupid.

36:48

Anyway, that's the

36:50

kind of

36:52

nonsense people have mixed up they think because

36:55

the dairy industry has taught us that. That plain

36:57

and simple. They've taught us that

36:59

it's a calcium deficiency when, I guess

37:01

I should go into it a little more detail, when

37:04

you eat animal

37:06

foods, they're sold and they truly are

37:08

high in protein. Protein

37:11

breaks down into amino acids. There

37:14

are 20 different amino

37:16

acids that create all

37:19

the different proteins in nature. And

37:21

so you break down into amino

37:23

acids. These are acids. And

37:26

there's a kind of amino acid in

37:28

animal foods that's prevalent. And

37:30

these are sulfur containing amino acids. They

37:32

are methionine and cysteine. And

37:35

they break down into sulfuric acid, a

37:37

very powerful acid. So you

37:39

dump all this acid in the system. The

37:42

body must maintain a pH of

37:44

7.4. You die if you

37:46

don't maintain that pH. So you're

37:48

dumping all this acid meal after meal into

37:50

your system. The primary buffering

37:52

system of the body is the bones.

37:55

Every medical student's taught that. Every dietitian's

37:57

taught that. And so

37:59

the bones have to do that. dissolve and they release

38:01

alkaline material. And in

38:03

the process of dissolving, they

38:05

also release calcium and other minerals

38:08

that end up in the urine. And

38:12

that whole process leads to little

38:14

bones in the kidneys which are called

38:16

calcium kidney stones. That's how

38:19

you get calcium kidney stones. And

38:21

all this is, I mean, the science is

38:23

absolutely solid, but the

38:26

dairy industry, they hire their spin doctors and

38:28

they pay good wages and they get that

38:30

to lie. And so

38:32

the public is confused. You

38:34

know, who are you supposed to listen to?

38:36

Rip Esselstyn and John McDougall are the

38:39

people that can buy a multimillion

38:41

dollar Super Bowl ads. Who

38:45

wins out? They got the money.

38:47

Okay, let's move on. I appreciate you doing a little

38:49

bit more of a deep dive on

38:52

calcium so we can really understand what's going

38:54

on there. So the third

38:57

deadly dietary deception that you

38:59

have on your website is

39:01

omega-3 fatty acids. Right,

39:04

right. Well, omega-3, see when

39:06

you think of omega-3 fats, it comes

39:08

to mind as fish. Just

39:10

like you think of calcium, you come to mind as dairy

39:13

or protein comes to mind

39:15

as meat. You know, that's

39:17

the connection. That's the unique position. So

39:20

you think, well, I got to eat more

39:22

fish. Well, okay. But

39:24

fish never made an omega-3 fat. No

39:27

animal can desaturate at

39:29

the carbon-3 position. It's something only plants can

39:31

do. So how

39:33

did the fish get the omega-3 fats?

39:36

Well, they ate seaweed. They

39:38

ate algae. That's how they got it. And the seaweed and

39:40

algae made the omega-3 fats. So

39:42

my plea is for you to go to

39:45

the original source, the plants. There's

39:47

no such thing as a fatty acid deficiency.

39:49

It doesn't exist. Except

39:51

on any really bizarre

39:54

laboratory-created diets. That's it. In

39:58

other words, they're selling you something.

40:00

that's not a problem. And what they're

40:02

selling is fish. A couple of problems here. One

40:05

is the fish are almost gone rip. You

40:07

know, when I was a young boy and I

40:09

love the ocean, I'm a windsurfer, a sailor, a

40:11

scuba diver, and I just

40:15

love that's been my life. When

40:17

I was a little boy, compared to now,

40:19

90% of the fish are gone. And,

40:23

you know, that strikes me very hard. As

40:25

far as people who eat fish go, you

40:27

suffer terribly too. Fish

40:30

are highly contaminated with, for example,

40:32

methylmercury. I can tell how

40:34

much fish you eat by biopsying

40:37

your fat and

40:39

looking at the methylmercury content of

40:41

your body fat. This is

40:43

a poison. Methylmercury is a poison. You know,

40:47

anyway, you get all kinds of

40:50

carcinogens and

40:52

environmental contaminants that hurt the

40:54

brain across Parkinson's disease, degeneration

40:59

of the brain. They also

41:02

are the initiators and promoters of

41:04

cancer these chemicals are. And

41:06

they get, of course, they get in the food chain. And as

41:09

you move up the food chain, bio

41:12

magnification occurs and you

41:14

concentrate these chemicals so that when you eat on the

41:17

top of the food chain, which

41:19

is the dairy and the meat, or

41:21

worse yet, if you're a baby sucking off mother's

41:23

breast, that's the very top of the food chain.

41:26

Then you get poisoned. It's just, you

41:30

know, it's serious. They declared

41:32

in some research done by

41:34

the Environmental Protection Agency in

41:36

1970s, they analyzed the breast

41:38

milk of 1400 women in 48 states

41:41

for environmental contaminants.

41:45

And they considered milk a health hazard in

41:49

Alaska, the women in Alaska

41:51

who breastfeed

41:53

their babies. Their

41:56

breast milk is considered so

41:58

toxic. They're very

42:00

heavy fish and animal product eaters

42:02

the people living up in the

42:05

Inuit Eskimo It's

42:07

considered so toxic that it should be

42:09

buried in a toxic waste dump You

42:14

know it You

42:17

know just from every point of view you

42:19

look at it from your

42:21

food bill If you're

42:23

concerned about animal rights if you're concerned about

42:26

the planet You know if

42:28

you got heart disease if you've got colon

42:30

cancer if you've got diabetes you've got rheumatoid

42:32

arthritis If

42:34

you're a religious person and you believe in

42:36

your Bible You know it all says that

42:38

you should not be doing what you're doing

42:40

to the temple. Yeah Tell

42:44

me this so then As

42:46

far as the omega-3 fats then that in

42:48

your opinion What's the best place to get your omega-3 is

42:50

if you're not getting it from fish? Anything

42:54

you can't miss you see what

42:56

once you supply the needs Then

42:59

any extra is superfluous You

43:02

can't push the system further by say

43:04

eating more protein more vitamins more

43:06

essential fats You know it's

43:09

like your car requires 12 spark

43:11

plugs you put 18 under the hood, and

43:13

it doesn't run any better So

43:17

you know lettuce rice Right

43:20

even potatoes which are very various

43:22

only 1% fat yeah, fatty

43:24

s deficiency does not occur on any

43:26

natural diet And

43:29

I know people you know people all

43:31

up each to teach otherwise and Once

43:34

they understand the the poison problem with fish

43:36

and what it's you know doing

43:38

to the environment All this

43:41

fish eating then they start looking for

43:43

plant sources of omega-3s and they

43:45

teach people to eat They

43:48

lots of flaxseed oil and things like that. This is

43:50

not a good idea Yeah, flaxseed

43:52

maybe so you know long you don't grind

43:54

it up and extract the oil out of

43:56

it. You probably do okay Yeah,

43:58

yeah The oil promotes

44:01

cancer and it depresses

44:04

the immune system. Well, let

44:06

me ask you this before we move on

44:08

to the fourth deadly dietary deception, which you

44:10

say is starch, which

44:14

we wanna talk about that because you

44:16

are Mr. Starch. Dr.

44:19

Potato. That's right, Dr. Potato.

44:22

So what's your stance

44:24

when it comes to, is there such

44:26

a thing as a healthy fat? Because

44:29

you have all these Keto and Paleo

44:31

people saying, but the brain is 60%

44:33

fat. You need

44:35

fat for the brain to be

44:37

healthy. What's your comeback? Well,

44:41

what they do is they tell you you have to have

44:43

these Omega-3 fats. And

44:45

what they have to do is explain

44:48

why terrestrial bound people, in

44:50

other words, those that don't have access to an

44:52

ocean, how they

44:55

ever survived. Because

44:58

they didn't have that concentrated fish

45:00

fat. The

45:02

need for essential fats is

45:04

small. It's supplied by

45:06

rice, potatoes, beans, corn.

45:09

So, and again, once you get enough, that's

45:11

enough. You

45:14

know, people should go so far as to

45:16

say things like, you'll get Alzheimer's disease. Unless

45:19

you buy my Omega-3 supplement that

45:22

I happen to sell here on my website. You

45:25

know, they say that. That's

45:28

complete nonsense. And actually, I've

45:30

pulled up the studies on

45:33

it. And they

45:37

show clearly that Omega-3

45:40

fats will not prevent Alzheimer's

45:42

disease. And

45:44

even though if you, in a circuitous way, you

45:46

go through a whole bunch of explanations, the bottom

45:48

line is this is nonsense. But

45:50

it's scared people. Yeah, but I think

45:52

it's scared. But I want to move

45:55

beyond Omega-3. It's just a fat in general. Because

45:57

you love to say the fat you eat is the

45:59

fat you wear. I mean, I

46:01

even heard Jay Leno

46:03

say that, you know, 20, 25 years ago on

46:05

the Tonight Show. But

46:09

so, is there such a thing

46:11

as a healthy fat? Are you a fan

46:13

of, I mean, yeah. Yeah.

46:16

Yeah. Fat from rice. Yeah.

46:19

Fat from oranges. So, yeah, you

46:21

need essential fat. Essential

46:24

fatty acid deficiency is a bad thing. The

46:27

only time that I'm aware of that essential

46:29

fatty acid deficiency has occurred was

46:32

when they started making baby formulas in

46:35

the 1930s. What

46:37

they did is they made them out of whole cow's milk. And

46:41

then what happened is the kids got overweight.

46:45

And so, to correct the problem of

46:47

the kids becoming obese from whole cow's

46:50

milk formulas, they developed low

46:52

fat formulas.

46:55

And they took all the fat out of the formula

46:57

and they developed fatty acid deficiency in the children. But

47:00

that's the only situation I'm aware

47:02

of in the scientific literature of

47:05

fatty acid deficiency ever occurring. Right.

47:08

Yeah. And most

47:10

Americans are, they're

47:13

overloading on really unhealthy

47:15

fats, right? The saturated fats, the

47:18

trans fats. You know,

47:20

the omega-6s, all that stuff. And

47:23

yeah, leaps and bounds. So,

47:27

let's move on to number four,

47:29

which is starch. So

47:32

you say starch is also a deadly

47:34

dietary deception. How so? Well,

47:36

it's been the opposite way. You

47:39

know, the deception is that you need these

47:41

things when it comes to calcium, omega-3

47:43

fats, and

47:45

protein. But

47:48

it's the opposite message in the sense

47:50

that people teach starches are bad. Starches

47:53

make you fat. You know, I

47:55

don't know, what else do they say about starch?

48:00

starch is vilified. And

48:02

that's the dietary deception, is people don't

48:04

understand the importance of starch in

48:06

the human diet. Again, I can take

48:08

you back two and a half million years to

48:11

humanoids lived on plant-based diets. Every

48:15

archeologic study that is published over

48:17

the last 20 years

48:21

shows populations of people that

48:24

live primarily on starches. I can take you back

48:26

105,000 years ago to

48:29

Mozambique and show you

48:31

that they ate grains. I

48:34

can show you that the Neanderthal 30 to 40,000 years

48:36

ago was a

48:38

starch eater, all the

48:40

way from the cold North Sea to the steaming

48:43

hot Mediterranean. If

48:45

you look between the teeth of the

48:47

Neanderthal, you find starch

48:50

granules. So these mighty

48:52

warriors that were not hunters to any

48:54

degree. And again, let me be

48:56

clear, it's not that they were vegans or vegetarians

48:58

that didn't hunt, these people did. It's

49:01

just the bulk of the calories came from starch.

49:03

But let me explain to you why this has

49:06

become a misunderstanding. It

49:09

has to do with sexism, gender

49:12

bias. It happens to

49:14

be the way men treat women and always have.

49:17

You see, the men, they went out on

49:19

the hunt, spent a

49:21

couple of weeks looking for some type of animal to kill

49:23

and maybe got lucky. And

49:26

maybe they were fortunate enough to get that animal

49:28

part back to the village before

49:30

it rotted. But

49:32

the people who were providing the calories for

49:34

the village, they were

49:37

the grandparents, the women, the children.

49:40

They didn't get the glory. So

49:42

when you talk about hunter-gatherers, the hunters, the

49:45

men got the glory. Not

49:47

because they provided the calories, it's just so

49:49

that's what men do. That's

49:51

the way we guys act. So

49:53

you're not gonna change that. But

49:56

it's a total myth. Gathering

50:00

the food, in other words, picking

50:03

up various plant parts. And

50:06

of course, a little later on, people, and it

50:08

wasn't just 10, 12,000 years ago, it was 100,000

50:10

years ago. The

50:14

agriculture was developed in various

50:17

societies. People

50:19

get the idea that this is a relatively

50:22

modern change that occurred

50:24

gradually over at least 100,000 years. And

50:28

of course, it was much accelerated 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.

50:32

Yeah, yeah. So it is

50:34

remarkable how it seems

50:37

over the last probably 15, 20

50:40

years starch has been so vilified,

50:42

right? The breads, the pastas, the

50:44

potatoes, oh my God, they're so

50:46

fattening, blah, blah, blah. You

50:49

like to refer to yourself. I

50:51

mean, you are Dr. Potato and you and

50:54

Mary have done some really, really wild experiments,

50:56

right? Like eating only potatoes for 30 days,

50:58

correct? Well,

51:00

you know, we've only done that for

51:03

two weeks, but there are people who

51:05

have done it for, there's

51:09

the head of the Washington Potato

51:11

Commission, whose

51:13

name escapes me right now, but he went on a potato

51:15

diet for 60 days. Yeah.

51:18

And then there's the gentleman from... Australia?

51:21

From Australia, Spudfit. Yeah. Yeah.

51:24

He lived for over a year on potatoes long, but

51:26

there are also experiments from, for example, 1928. Dr.

51:31

Kahn did an experiment. You can look this up,

51:33

by the way, when we're done talking, you can

51:35

go to your internet browser and look up

51:37

Kahn, K-O-N, and

51:39

all potato diet, and it's a free document.

51:43

And you'll see how he took a man and a woman and

51:46

housed them so he had total control

51:48

of their food. And

51:50

for six months, he fed them an all potato diet.

51:54

Now, this man and woman, they were special in the

51:56

sense that they were what is equivalent to marathon

51:58

runners, a very active person. athletic and

52:02

They made a couple of statements One

52:05

is they did not tire of the all potato

52:07

diet. That's pretty important. I think

52:09

I could live on just potatoes alone They're

52:12

so satisfying. They're so enjoyable we

52:15

have we have We

52:17

have probably have probably potatoes four

52:20

times a week, maybe we have sweet potatoes

52:22

a couple times and White

52:25

potatoes a couple times Mary Bice the little law

52:28

the little ones and yeah, I don't know what she calls

52:30

them and then she buys the big ones and and You

52:34

can tell my kitchen skills are not up to what they

52:36

should be That's why I got lucky 50 years ago. Yes,

52:39

and finds somebody to complimented my deficiencies Do

52:41

you do you ever do you ever cook

52:44

or does Mary do like most of the

52:46

cooking? No, I do breakfast

52:48

every morning. Oh, you do. And what

52:50

does that usually look like? It's probably not potatoes. Is it

52:52

oatmeal? What is it? It's always oatmeal

52:54

Yeah, it's oatmeal and fruit and one

52:57

of the things I've discovered recently is that the

53:00

fruit It the fruit that

53:02

you buy fresh spoils And

53:04

we get flies and it's you know, you have to throw a

53:06

good share of it out And so

53:08

what i've been doing lately and when I say lately the

53:11

last few years Is it go

53:13

to the frozen food section? I buy frozen fruits

53:16

and uh heat them up in the microwave

53:19

And cook the the old meal and every

53:22

morning without exception except when we have the

53:24

grandkids over they They

53:26

like to have a hash brown potatoes You

53:29

know a few a few different pancakes and waffles

53:31

and so we fix them But otherwise

53:34

every morning seven days a week. I

53:36

cook breakfast And it's

53:38

the same it's but I never tire

53:40

of it. Is it the old old-fashioned oats or is

53:42

it steel cut oats? Do you know? It's

53:45

it's it doesn't make any difference, but we have

53:47

to have the old old-fashioned kind. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

53:49

Oh, it's a rose pretty much Yeah,

53:51

yeah, so, uh, I want to go back to what

53:54

we were talking about because I interrupted you You

53:56

were talking about those two kind of marathon

53:58

runners that Kahn was

54:01

doing that experiment with. For 60 days,

54:03

they ate just potatoes. Right.

54:06

Yeah, they did. And again, you can

54:08

look it up, Kahn, all potato diet. It'll

54:10

pull up right away for you. Yes,

54:12

they did. And they were in excellent health. They

54:15

declared them in excellent health. When

54:18

they said solely and practically all

54:20

of the protein came from potatoes.

54:23

That's the statement they make. And they

54:25

did not tire of the all potato diet. Can

54:28

you tell me, what are some of the attributes

54:33

of the potato that you're so enamored with? Well,

54:36

they provide carbohydrates. I've

54:40

just put together a talk. I don't know

54:42

how I'll release it on aging. Who?

54:48

It's of course because of my age, I'm interested

54:50

in aging. And you

54:53

go through the animal experiments

54:55

which range all the way from flies

54:58

to rhesus monkeys.

55:02

But particularly the mice and rats studies. I

55:04

know a lot of people, they object to what I have

55:06

to say. It's talking about animal studies, but they

55:09

provide some pretty crucial information. And

55:12

what they find is that the animals

55:15

live longest and

55:17

they have the best brain health. I mean, they run

55:20

maze experiments. They

55:24

put mice and rats through mazes. And

55:27

they have the best brain health on

55:29

a diet that is one to

55:31

10 protein to carbohydrate.

55:35

Okay, one to 10. And

55:37

so the diet we recommend and you recommend

55:39

is one to 10 protein

55:42

to carbohydrate. And in

55:44

other words, it's about 8% protein and

55:47

about 85% carbohydrate. You

55:49

do the math, it's one to 10. And

55:53

then you do the experiments that have been done

55:58

on people, not very many. But

56:01

you have for example the blue zones. I'm

56:03

sure you're familiar with Dan buten's work. Yeah,

56:05

and You're probably familiar

56:07

with the biosphere 2 Which

56:10

is where in Tucson, Arizona for

56:13

two years? They lived in isolated

56:15

confined environment and they grew all

56:17

their own food. They were basically vegans a

56:20

little little goat milk and tiny

56:23

bit of animal food but

56:25

their diet likewise was Was

56:29

a diet that prolonged life. It was

56:31

essentially very low protein

56:33

high carbohydrate And

56:36

then there's there's a new experiment that just came out Which

56:39

I've worked on I'll talk about in You

56:43

know when I get when I give the lecture it

56:46

looked at at brain atrophy

56:50

What they looked at is the hypothalamus And

56:54

As you age your hypothalamus Atrophies

56:58

and so does you know you have a general mental

57:00

decline as you get older I hope it doesn't show

57:03

but anyways what they can do is they can measure by

57:05

doing cat scans they

57:08

can measure the size of the hypothalamus

57:10

and Also the lateral ventricles which

57:13

lie rex right next to the

57:15

hypothalamus and that way you can you

57:17

can show atrophy of the hypothalamus and

57:20

they did this experiment that lasted 18

57:22

months on people and

57:25

they fed him of various diets and They

57:28

fed him the standard diet the America diet

57:31

and then they fed him the Mediterranean diet, which

57:33

is a diet hide fruits vegetables Then

57:35

they exaggerated the Mediterranean diet and

57:38

they made it more in the direction that you and

57:40

I recommend and they added some

57:44

polyphenols in the form of tea

57:46

and No extra

57:48

supplements and what they showed was

57:51

on a diet that the more you increase the carbohydrate

57:54

And lower the protein the less

57:56

atrophie had of the hypothalamus So

58:00

anyway, the it's rather interesting

58:02

experiment. I've just been putting this in a new

58:04

lecture that I'm doing But

58:07

what it turns out is that if you look

58:09

at the animal experiments and the human experiments and

58:12

you want to age gracefully you want to live as

58:14

long as possible and You

58:17

want to keep as much of your intellectual function

58:19

as possible? And that's what

58:21

the research I've been doing is on

58:23

lately is how to again because I'm

58:26

at that phase of Life where you

58:28

want to avoid death and disability. Yeah

58:32

Yeah, well that's exciting and I can't

58:35

wait to hear that lecture Yeah,

58:37

well, it'll be out be out sometime this

58:40

week. I think I'll have it out. Oh

58:42

fantastic So

58:44

we were talking about potatoes and

58:46

all the attributes that were wonderful about about

58:48

the potato And so you

58:50

you would you say you have

58:52

some form of potatoes every single day? It was

58:55

Mary kind of Most

58:57

the time most the time our Meal

59:00

is very simple just like yours is

59:02

and everybody else's is people

59:04

are very monotonous and they're eating They have

59:06

the same thing for lunch and breakfast and

59:08

dinner Pretty much every

59:10

day and they go to a

59:12

restaurant. They order the same thing off the menu

59:14

of that restaurant every time they go There

59:17

are a few people who like to have a wide

59:19

variety, but most of us are very monotonous so

59:22

our meals consist of Oatmeal

59:25

for breakfast. Yep every day

59:28

and then we go on to lunch and dinner We

59:30

have a lot of leftovers for lunch. So basically we're

59:32

talking about the same kind of meal and

59:35

for dinner we'll have we'll have

59:37

potatoes and like like sweet potatoes and broccoli

59:39

is a pretty big deal in our home

59:41

and We'll have

59:45

In all it's all vegan regardless

59:47

of what you may hear me say our diet

59:49

is very strictly vegan and You

59:53

know, we'll have various kinds of low-fat salad

59:55

dressings or sauces over the top of the

59:58

potatoes Mary made

1:00:00

pea pods the last time we had white

1:00:02

potatoes. And then she makes

1:00:04

rice dishes. And we occasionally

1:00:06

have tofu with our rice dishes just

1:00:08

to kind of enrich them a little bit.

1:00:10

Not that you ever have to eat a tofu, you never

1:00:12

have to do that. But it

1:00:15

adds a little bit of richness to

1:00:18

the meal. And so she makes

1:00:20

a lot of what we call fried rice, we don't fry

1:00:22

it, we use no oil at all. And

1:00:24

she'll cook something up in a wok

1:00:27

and put various frozen vegetables. Again, we

1:00:29

use a lot of frozen stuff, because

1:00:32

it's easy for us, Rip. It's, you

1:00:34

know, we go to the grocery store maybe every

1:00:36

10 to 14 days. And

1:00:40

it's really easy, you know, if you don't buy

1:00:42

fresh stuff, if you have a, you know, you

1:00:44

fill up your freezer. And

1:00:46

frozen food is in many ways better

1:00:48

than fresh. Oh, I yeah,

1:00:50

like we, I hear

1:00:53

you loud and clear there, our freezer

1:00:55

is loaded to the brim with frozen

1:00:58

fruits and frozen vegetables. And

1:01:00

last night, my 13 year

1:01:02

old daughter made the most amazing stir

1:01:05

fry rice stir fry with frozen

1:01:07

vegetables, a little bit of cashews

1:01:10

in there. But she had peas,

1:01:12

corn, broccoli, cauliflower,

1:01:14

it was incredible.

1:01:16

Loved it. Loved it. Yeah. It's

1:01:20

been 13 years. I think the last time we

1:01:22

got together, she was just a little baby. She

1:01:25

was actually at the McDougall

1:01:27

when we went to Costa Rica,

1:01:30

or that for in 2010. She was

1:01:33

one year old. Yeah. And now tell me,

1:01:36

so how many children do

1:01:38

you have? Is it Heather and Craig? Am

1:01:40

I correct? Heather and Craig and Patrick. Okay,

1:01:42

Craig Craig is a professor at Oregon Health

1:01:45

and Science University, the medical school

1:01:47

there. And Heather runs the

1:01:49

business now. Yeah. And

1:01:51

my other son, Patrick, he's a

1:01:54

very successful engineer. You

1:01:56

know, he's works in the chemistry

1:01:58

and engineering business. and very

1:02:01

proud of my children. And then

1:02:04

we have seven grandchildren. Wow. Is

1:02:07

it fair to say that most

1:02:10

McDougalls are plant-based like

1:02:12

you? Unquestionably.

1:02:16

Unquestionably. We're here

1:02:18

living in the Northwest.

1:02:21

My granddaughter, she anything

1:02:24

that even sounds like an animal

1:02:26

she won't come close to and

1:02:28

she's now 10 years old. So

1:02:30

yeah, all I can't say that

1:02:32

there, you know, any where anymore

1:02:35

that I'd want to claim that I was

1:02:37

100% pure vegan and never touched leather. You

1:02:40

know, our family, if you walked into any

1:02:42

of our homes, you'd find somewhere between 90

1:02:44

and 99% of what they eat is compliant

1:02:46

with what we believe

1:02:50

is best for them. They

1:02:53

have their birthday cakes and occasional

1:02:57

treats and they go out trick-or-treating on

1:02:59

Halloween. And actually,

1:03:02

you know, one of the jokes in our family is

1:03:04

that, you know,

1:03:06

it is of the seven grandkids,

1:03:08

which one can find Babe Ruth bars for

1:03:10

Grandpa? Is

1:03:13

that your favorite? That

1:03:15

was my favorite in the past. There are

1:03:17

a lot of favorites I've had that I've

1:03:20

decided aren't worth the trouble. Well, you know,

1:03:22

my dad's was Reese's Peanut Butter Cups for

1:03:24

a while. Yeah, that's right. Oh,

1:03:27

yeah. Well, you know, perfection

1:03:29

is not what it has to be about.

1:03:32

But the problem is, is people can't learn

1:03:35

moderation. And, you know, if

1:03:37

they add a little bit to their

1:03:39

life, what happens is they

1:03:41

fall off the wagon. And so that's why you have

1:03:43

to teach an alcoholic that they

1:03:45

can't drink at all in a cigarette smoker and a

1:03:47

drug addict. You just can't touch this stuff. And

1:03:50

when it comes to food, it's the

1:03:52

same thing. People who are very much

1:03:54

involved in a destructive diet, you

1:03:56

have to tell them, look, you just don't do that. You

1:04:00

know one one one birthday cake and

1:04:02

it's down up every buffet line in town

1:04:05

They just never stop So,

1:04:07

you know it you have to teach you

1:04:09

have to teach Perfection,

1:04:12

but in all practicality the more you

1:04:14

do the better results you'll

1:04:16

get Except for the

1:04:18

fact that you can't do just a little bit. I

1:04:21

know that yes as

1:04:23

we as we wrap this up, I want to ask you

1:04:25

two questions and the first

1:04:27

is you know,

1:04:30

there's two basic beliefs that most people

1:04:33

hold That I think

1:04:35

you would say are not true.

1:04:38

And the first is as we age We

1:04:41

naturally become fatter and sicker That

1:04:44

that is a complete falsehood correct as we

1:04:46

age we become fatter and sicker But most

1:04:48

people think that's the case. I

1:04:50

learned that from my plantation patients That

1:04:53

back between 1973 and 1976 when

1:04:56

I was a sugar plantation doctor my

1:04:58

my first generation

1:05:01

Patients they lived into

1:05:03

their 80s and 90s and worked into their 80s and

1:05:05

90s. They were always trim They they never had any

1:05:07

of the problems that I was treating and

1:05:09

as I mentioned my older

1:05:11

Filipino males

1:05:15

They would retire from the plantation. They'd go back down

1:05:17

to the Philippines. They'd buy a young 20 year

1:05:19

old bride And they'd

1:05:21

bring her back and they'd start a family and

1:05:23

I was impressed You know,

1:05:25

I thought wow, that's the way

1:05:27

to spend your 70s and 80s not in

1:05:30

a convalescent home but

1:05:32

yeah, they Absolutely

1:05:34

untrue. Yeah, so it's the food.

1:05:37

It's the food is the food is the food. It's it's

1:05:39

the food Yeah, yeah, and you have it. Don't you have

1:05:41

a trademark on it's the food Well,

1:05:44

yes, we do we started using

1:05:46

that about ten years ago. Yeah. Yeah, but

1:05:50

It's a pretty pretty common it is it's

1:05:52

brilliant and the second thing That

1:05:55

everybody kind of both most people believe

1:05:57

is that a well-balanced diet is best

1:06:01

And what are your thoughts on that? Obviously,

1:06:04

well, it depends on your perspective

1:06:07

What a well-balanced diet is if you happen

1:06:09

to learn how to eat from the from

1:06:11

the food industry the US food industry Then

1:06:14

you have to have of course Plenty

1:06:16

of protein putting calcium if

1:06:19

you were raised for example in China or Japan

1:06:22

You would be taught something completely different

1:06:25

and it's just like when people migrate from

1:06:30

countries where they eat starch-based diets like

1:06:32

for example The

1:06:34

Latinos who migrate here from rural

1:06:37

areas where they still live on corn

1:06:39

and beans and squash There's

1:06:42

some over an adjustment to eating

1:06:44

at McDonald's and the same thing

1:06:46

with people who come from Asia you

1:06:48

know, they still stay with their rice dishes and and the

1:06:51

idea that It's

1:06:54

all a perspective of what your

1:06:56

environment is teaching And

1:06:58

our environment is built around capitalism Which

1:07:01

I'm not trying to say anything negative about it

1:07:03

It's just the fact that the more

1:07:05

you do the more money you make, you

1:07:07

know, the more successful you consider yourself and

1:07:11

the result has been that we have

1:07:13

I Don't

1:07:15

know whether we still have the sickest country. There are

1:07:18

a lot of people competing out there. There are pretty

1:07:21

sick country Yeah, so

1:07:23

you're well-balanced is is again just from

1:07:25

the perspective of who's making

1:07:27

the rules. Yeah, so

1:07:29

John As we

1:07:31

wrap this up. I want to ask you one last question

1:07:33

and that is you know, you

1:07:36

and I were were at that summit that

1:07:39

James Cameron held in 2013

1:07:42

in Santa

1:07:44

Santa Barbara and back in 2013 I

1:07:47

mean this was something that he really wanted us

1:07:49

to try and have this kind of brain Brain

1:07:52

trust and try and figure out how can we get

1:07:54

this message out to as many

1:07:57

of the developed nations as possible Here

1:07:59

we are It's almost 10 years later. It

1:08:03

seems like everywhere I turn, there's

1:08:07

forest fires, it's getting hotter. Climate

1:08:10

change is, it is here and it

1:08:12

is upon us. Your

1:08:15

house burned down in Santa

1:08:18

Rosa, right? You experienced- Yeah,

1:08:20

we lost everything. Yep, you experienced it

1:08:22

firsthand. So my

1:08:24

question to you is, are you optimistic that

1:08:27

we're gonna be able to survive this? Well,

1:08:30

I am, I wasn't up until recently

1:08:32

because of people's inertia. As

1:08:36

far as cutting back on fossil fuel

1:08:38

use, it's obvious people won't

1:08:40

do it or haven't done it to any extent that

1:08:42

they should have. And the

1:08:44

reluctance to change the diet because

1:08:47

the research, the scientific research shows, and

1:08:49

you can find that on the website,

1:08:51

mcdougalfoundation.org, that you

1:08:53

can cut your contribution of

1:08:56

global warming gases by 80% overnight

1:09:00

when you switch from the Western diet to

1:09:02

the kind of diet that we recommend.

1:09:05

There are eight scientific papers. If you

1:09:07

go to mcdougalfoundation.org, and

1:09:09

there are no conflicting papers that show you can

1:09:12

reduce it by 50 to 87%, average 80%. Yeah,

1:09:17

and a lot of that comes

1:09:19

from the work of Celeste Rao.

1:09:22

Well, he's done some of it, and

1:09:25

he's a very important man, but there

1:09:27

are other researchers from around the world

1:09:29

who've done similar studies. So

1:09:31

when people criticize

1:09:34

Celeste Rao, then

1:09:38

that's fine. I mean, I think he's done some

1:09:40

phenomenal work, and I think he'll be one of

1:09:42

the leaders in this movement to

1:09:45

save the planet. But there are

1:09:47

lots of other researchers from very respected

1:09:49

research labs that have come up with

1:09:51

the same or similar conclusions. And

1:09:54

again, they're on my website. So

1:09:56

you asked me, do I have hope? Let

1:09:59

me give you... A final tip

1:10:01

for your listeners and something I've recently

1:10:03

discovered. I do have hope and

1:10:06

I want you to go to a website.

1:10:08

It's meer.org. M-E-E-R.

1:10:12

meer.org is Dr. Yi Tao. And

1:10:15

what his idea is, is because we're not going

1:10:18

to be able to solve the carbon problem. You

1:10:21

know, it's just too much CO2 in the atmosphere.

1:10:23

There's too many global warm gases in the atmosphere

1:10:25

to ever reduce it. Carbon capture is

1:10:27

a joke. Very expensive,

1:10:30

cruel joke. Even planting trees

1:10:32

is not going to do it. I

1:10:34

think the addition of a good diet, at

1:10:36

least I believed up until recently, would

1:10:40

make the difference to save the planet. But

1:10:42

I've gotten to the point where, because of

1:10:44

the reluctance of people to change that I kind

1:10:47

of hold a lot of hope there. But

1:10:49

if you go to meer.org,

1:10:52

you'll hear a discussion of how to control global

1:10:56

warming and how to

1:10:58

control the temperature on the planet, which is our only

1:11:00

card left. And we can

1:11:02

do that by reflecting sunlight using

1:11:05

mirrors. Or

1:11:07

you say it's crazy. Look

1:11:10

at what Dr. Tao has to say. And

1:11:12

he's got it pretty much worked out. The question is,

1:11:14

is, well, we got on it as a planet. Will

1:11:17

the 7 billion people on this planet decide that

1:11:20

the ship is sinking and will

1:11:22

do anything to keep afloat? And

1:11:26

I think that he's got it right. At

1:11:29

least I'd like to see somebody take the

1:11:31

effort to prove him wrong, that we

1:11:33

can reflect enough sunlight away

1:11:35

from the Earth to

1:11:37

cool the planet. So your

1:11:39

children, Rip and my

1:11:42

grandchildren, will have a future. And

1:11:44

right now, it looks pretty dismal. Right.

1:11:47

So you're saying the answer is probably going

1:11:49

to be mirrors and not plants. Well,

1:11:52

it's going to be something besides just carbon

1:11:56

dioxide control, because we're so far past that

1:11:58

when we and I started to think about

1:12:00

it. started talking about this 20 years ago,

1:12:04

it was at a point where we could have done something.

1:12:06

But Al

1:12:09

Gore tells us since his publication in

1:12:11

2006 of

1:12:14

an inconvenient truth, he

1:12:16

tells us, if you compare

1:12:18

the carbon that has been put in the

1:12:21

atmosphere before his presentation and afterwards, we

1:12:23

put in more carbon since 2006 than

1:12:26

we ever did in the entire history

1:12:28

of human existence. So

1:12:31

people just won't stop, industry won't

1:12:33

stop. The

1:12:35

elite, the rich, the bankers,

1:12:38

they just won't stop. Even though I

1:12:40

have to believe they have children and

1:12:42

grandchildren too. I don't understand why

1:12:44

they want to do something more.

1:12:47

Anyway, I believe we're past that point.

1:12:49

Not that we don't have

1:12:52

to do it. You really need to get

1:12:54

off the fossil fuel. You really need to

1:12:56

change to a vegan diet. This

1:12:59

is absolutely crucial to do for hopefully,

1:13:01

we'll be in existence for more than

1:13:03

100 years or 500 years or

1:13:06

1,000 years. But the

1:13:08

immediate concern will be to lower the temperature

1:13:10

on the planet. And

1:13:13

meer.org. Yeah,

1:13:18

you want to hear. I

1:13:20

have nothing to do with these people at all. Just

1:13:23

the day I found out about them, it was the day I

1:13:25

had a bigger smile on my face than I had a long

1:13:27

time. Good, good, good, good. Again,

1:13:31

I want you to know, John, what

1:13:33

a giant you've been in my life.

1:13:35

And so many people admire you and Mary in

1:13:40

just allowing us to literally

1:13:44

stand on your shoulders, on your

1:13:46

head, on every part of your body as

1:13:48

we have done our best to

1:13:51

spread this message that you have been

1:13:53

standing behind since the late 1970s. It's

1:13:58

just remarkable. I want you to know how much. I love you. I

1:14:01

love your passion, the way you've

1:14:03

always challenged the system, the way

1:14:05

you have led with

1:14:07

the truth and you're unwavering.

1:14:10

You're absolutely unwavering. And

1:14:12

I love that about you. And

1:14:15

the world is a better

1:14:17

place because of John and Mary McDougal. So

1:14:20

thank you so much. Well,

1:14:22

thank you, Rip. We've got an army to build. You

1:14:25

know, it's gonna take a lot of us. And

1:14:27

so, you know, the fact that you've

1:14:29

got a following that's dedicated

1:14:32

and understands

1:14:35

the truth and they're trying to spread the word to

1:14:37

whatever your talents are. Now, I just

1:14:39

want to say something to your viewers, whatever your talent is,

1:14:42

use that to spread the word

1:14:45

because we have

1:14:48

to do it. The stakes are so high, not

1:14:51

just for your own health, for everything.

1:14:53

Yeah, yeah. Well, I think you have

1:14:56

something on, I think it's mcdougalfoundation.org where,

1:14:58

you know, the stakes have never been

1:15:00

higher. And we're talking about, you know,

1:15:02

planet earth here. Yeah.

1:15:05

Yeah, just our home. Yeah, just our

1:15:07

home, exactly. John, hit

1:15:10

me with a fist bump. All right, hit me with

1:15:12

a fist bump. All right. Plant

1:15:14

strong, John, plant strong. Thank

1:15:17

you. There we go. I look forward

1:15:19

to the time that we can personally share some

1:15:22

place together, Rip. You're

1:15:24

your family. I've been our

1:15:27

best friends for many years. To

1:15:32

learn more about John's work,

1:15:34

visit drmcdougal.com or

1:15:37

mcdougalfoundation.org. Remember,

1:15:41

as Dr. John McDougal says, it's

1:15:44

the food, it's always

1:15:47

been the food. And as I like to

1:15:49

say, keep it plant strong. The

1:15:56

plant strong podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Lori

1:15:58

Cordova, Farroich, Amy

1:16:01

Mackey, Patrick Gavin, and Wade

1:16:03

Clark. This season is

1:16:05

dedicated to all of those courageous

1:16:08

truth seekers who weren't

1:16:10

afraid to look through the lens with

1:16:12

clear vision and hold firm

1:16:15

to a higher truth. Most

1:16:17

notably my parents, Dr.

1:16:19

Cobble B. Esselstyn Jr. and

1:16:22

Ann Kryle Esselstyn. Thanks

1:16:24

for listening.