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[Gordo]

If you find any valuable resources let us know.  Personally I prefer a keep it simple approach.  By keep it simple I mean this - we know the biggest killers are heart disease/stroke/high blood pressure (they are all basically the same disease) and cancer.  So you'd want to start with "what diets have been scientifically proven to reverse and prevent the leading causes of death"?  There are a lot of opinions out there, but few offer hard core, convincing evidence, published in reputable peer reviewed journals.

 

The next best thing to pouring over pubmed yourself for countless hours, is to rely on a non-profit team of people who do this full time for us.  Thankfully that exists in the form of nutritionfacts.org (Greger has a dozen full time staff now that do nothing but pour over the research and summarize the findings).  There are over 2000 topical videos  with transcripts and references when you want to go directly to the source.  Sure they make some mistakes, but overall I think they have it more right than anyone else out there and they are doing a big public service:

 

1. The Story of NutritionFacts.org
2. Why You Should Care About Nutrition
3. Taking Personal Responsibility for Your Health
4. The Philosophy of NutritionFacts.org
5. Behind the Scenes at NutritionFacts.org
6. How Not to Die from Heart Disease
7. How Not to Die from Cancer
8. How Not to Die from Diabetes
9. How Not to Die from Kidney Disease
10. How Not to Die from High Blood Pressure
11. How Not to Die: An Animated Summary

 

From a medical practitioner standpoint - I can see this being aggravating.  Most people will not be willing to do what the science says is best for their health and longevity.  They want to be told that all the steak and cheesecake they can eat is good for them, hence the popularity of fad diets.  Even the well regarded DASH diet turns out was a compromise from the ideal diet, to come up with something more "acceptable" for average Americans.  But in all fairness if I were a doc, I'd probably recommend both the DASH diet and a plant based whole food diet to everyone and let them decide what they were willing to do for better health and longer life.  I love the fact that people can pretty easily track the effectiveness of their diet changes for themselves with basic bloodwork to see what is working.

 

For what it's worth, I think the plant based movement, while still in its infancy, is making a lot of headway, and eventually I think this will become pretty popular.  A little take out place for example just opened in my own small hometown called "Gangster Vegan Organics" - their food is great, they have really mastered the art of palatable plant based whole food dishes without resorting to typical vegan junk (they don't use oils, refined sugar, or flour for example).  Also in the same town is a place that sells nothing but produce (for far less $ than any grocery store) -- it's my favorite place to shop, I go 1-2 times a week, if I could invest in that chain I would, they only have about a dozen locations in NJ and PA but should expand to hundreds of locations.

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