Amazon.com.au:Customer reviews: How Not to Die: Discover the foods scientifically proven to prevent and reverse disease

Top positive review

Living, not existing.

Reviewed in Australia on 26 June 2017

Amazingly brilliant book. With three chronic diseases and a family history of heart attack and stroke on both sides, I was apprehensive about the book, but the reviews for it made me reconsider.
Despite all my health issues, I haven't felt so healthy for many years. It's all the food I love to eat, and have now reincorporated back into my life after trying Paleo (and getting sicker and sicker). Now I'm brimming with energy, smiling, and living, not just existing.
Best money I have ever spent.

11 people found this helpful

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Just poor science

Reviewed in Australia on 17 May 2020

Poor science

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From Australia

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Just poor science

Reviewed in Australia on 17 May 2020

Poor science

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Good advice mixed up with a great deal of salesmanship

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 February 2020

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I will start at the end in the hope that more people will read some useful advice. A huge amount of ill health is caused by today's indulgent western diets. There is no doubt that eating sugar and unrefined carbohydrates takes a lot of the blame. Eating lots of fat, especially animal fat, and other animal products, probably shares the blame, but the science is less certain. A lot of confusion arises because people who stop eating animal products often switch to refined carbohydrates so they are swapping one bad diet for another one. Dr Greger has much less to say about carbohydrates and it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say the book is grossly biased. That doesn't mean his advice is bad. If you follow his recommendations, you will get the best of all worlds (except gastronomical pleasure) because he does not recommend switching to refined carbohydrates, he recommends switching to healthy whole grains, vegetables and fruit. The challenge is that if you stop eating meat, dairy, and all the yummy foods he goes on about, and also stop eating all the refined carbohydrates like bread, potatoes, and pasta, that he doesn't say so much about, you are going to have to eat an awful lot of those healthy fruits and vegetables.
Now I go back to the beginning. Once upon a time a man called Dr Joel Furhman wrote a book called Eat to Live, which recommended, in sensationalist prose, that we should all eat a lot of varied plant material, little or no animal material, cut back heavily on saturated fat and sugar, and basically avoid just about everything really yummy like cake, chocolate, meat, biscuits, ice-cream, cheese, crisps. Dr Fuhrman became very rich selling books, healthy foods, health retreats, and running a clinic.
20 years later a man called Dr Michael Greger repeated the trick by by writing a book offering the same advice. Dr Greger's style is even more sensationalist than snappy Dr Fuhrman's and at times he sounds more like a salesman than a scientist or doctor. His solution to everything is to stop eating animal products and eat a lot of plant products. How not to die from suicide? become a vegan. How not to die from pollution? don't worry about air quality, just become a vegan. Flatulence from beans? Just cut out the dairy. Heart condition? become a vegan and whatever you do, don't take those dreadful statins which, in his world, have no role to play.
The book is stronger in places than others. The dietary advice in the second half is well balanced and sensible. The same can't be said about the dismissive remarks about statins scattered throughout the first half of the book in contradiction to the vast respectable medical orthodoxy. In this his style is well into the conspiracy theory that characterises medical quackery, and indeed his chapter on how not to die from iatrogenic causes i.e. doctors killing you, treats the whole medical profession as a conspiracy to get rich without caring much about the health of their patients.
A lot of his recommendations are properly backed up by science but I noticed that many of his assertions are carefully phrased using the word "may" as in "X may help with Y". This word "may" is littered through the book. Probably most of his recommendations are sound, but they reek of bias. I will focus on the heart disease chapter as I spent several hours studying his references. The problem is that he keeps talking about the damage caused by animal fats but the evidence mostly shows that heart disease is caused by fats in the blood. It doesn't necssarily follow that high fat in the blood is caused by eating fat. Indeed there is a strong body of opinion that says the opposite - this is the low carb school (strictly, the low refined-carb school). He cites a book called The Low-carb Fraud which has been convincingly discredited, and some of his references go back 40 years and more. Four of his key references are from the same self-confessed maverick. He does not mention a single risk or dietary disadvantage from turning vegan (although he does recommend B12 supplements). He ignores the array of scientific literature that disagrees with him, for example a huge, meta-study that showed only a very modest benefit from eating fruit and vegetables and no significant benefit from eating more than 5 a day. (If you are interested, look for the BMJ meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies by Wang). I sent this to Fuhrman's Institute and they did not seem to have heard of it either, although they did at least make an attempt to respond, thoughnot a very convincing one.
In the heart chapter which I studied in detail, I was concerned to see that some of his evidence is presented erroneously. I have to go into some detail to explain this. He says on page 22 that two papers prove that (a) fish oil supplements don't work, (b) eating more fish doesn't work, and (c) fish oil doesn't help even if you have already had a heart attack. The paper which he says proves (c) actually proves (a). The one he says proves (a) and (b) is actually positive about fish oil. Neither of them support his assertions (b) or (c).
Overall it is difficult to rate the book. The advice is probably worth following (if you can), and probably will make a big difference to your health. There is a lot of excellent discussion based on science but the salesmanship and the bias is a serious concern. For a more balanced, honest discussion it is worth reading Graham Lawton's This Book Could Save Your Life. However, it is so broad and so balanced, it doesn't go as far as it could safely go in making recommendations, and its discussion only skims the surface compared with the detail in Dr Greger's book. It is also worth reading The Diabetes Code by Dr. Jason Fung, a brilliant book with the same faults as Dr. Greger's. For Dr Fung, the solution to everything is to reduce sugar and his interpretation of the evidence is biased in the opposite direction to Dr Greger's. In Dr Fung's view there isn't a "shred of evidence" that a high fat diet is bad for you. I would love to get Dr Greger and Dr Fung in the same room together.

849 people found this helpful

DACO Technology

Outdated information

Reviewed in Canada on 15 December 2019

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The so called science presented in this book has been debunked in more recent studies. I would recommend books by Robert H. Lustig and "Food: What the Heck Should I Eat?" by Dr. Mark Hyman MD instead.

Eating meat won't harm you. And eating fat is not as bad as historically thought. Those are old theories and it has been proven many times to be bad science. It is sugar and especially fructose that ruins your health.

Eating plants is great but that is only a part of a healthy diet. I can't understand why this book has so many great reviews...

85 people found this helpful

Simon Kelly

A plant based diet made me sick

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 December 2020

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After reading this book I was sold on a plant based diet. I tried it for 18 months until I felt so tired and had other issues that I went to see my doctor. Blood tests followed which found that I was deficient in a number of nutrients and vitamins. I read further and re-introduced meat and other animal products. My problems resolved very quickly. I now see this book as very clever one-sided propaganda. Our ancestors ate lots of meat and so should we.

15 people found this helpful

davetaxi

Don't be mislead, turns out the plants are the problem!!!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 October 2019

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I read this book a year or two ago, when I was still a little naive about the human condition and what we should eat to be healthy.
If you read this book, you may come away thinking you should eat more plant based food and less meat. The reasearch comes across as plausible and persuasive, and I even tried to put the ideas in to practice for my own diet.
However, I still felt I needed additional supplements and vitamins etc. etc. to feel healthy and even then did not feel optimal. I have previously been keto which was certainly better than vegetarian, but still thought things could be better.
Finally I took the plunge and went "carnivore" and now I can see it is the vegetables and plant based foods that are the problem in the human diet.
Turns out fibre is completely unnecessary in our diets (does more harm than good!); leafy greens are full of oxalates which are the main component of kidney stones; lectins (plant defence chemicals) give you leaky gut, autoimmune issues, joint pain etc.
Now I only eat meat and fat (exactly what we evolved eating), salt and water. My only plant food now is coffee (with loads of double cream). My weight continues to drop even though I average 3000 calories a day and am not very active, my muscle mass is very slowly INCREASING without any exercise, I no longer need my asthma meds, my neck isn't stiff anymore, I feel great and my blood work is the best it's ever been!
It is so liberating not having to plan meals anymore, just meat and some butter if the meat is too lean. If you think you're health could be better, stop eating plants and you won't look back!

14 people found this helpful

AMI

Not worth a read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 March 2019

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Unless you have a degree in medicine, I would not buy in view of the terminology. If you are a medic I think the cost of the plan identified would deter you from reading this. I brought as a present for my boyfriend but gave up after 3 pages. Plus so did my medic friends in terms of their knowledge

20 people found this helpful

Mrs A Grew

Not what I thought

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 May 2020

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Basically go vegan...eat plants...meat puts on weight, dairy is bad and no mention of low carb reversing diabetes...just a plant based diet. Returned

12 people found this helpful

Paul Nicholson

Junk science

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 February 2022

Verified Purchase

I purchased this book to see what all the fuss is about luckily it was only £4 .I am sure it will appeal to the majority of highly emotional teenage girls or mid twenties borderline anorexics that make up the vegan community ,but as far I can see it's a mixture of junk science and more disturbingly Dr Goebbels style half truths and outright lies .There are plenty of unhealthy Vegans and Vegetarians out there 'Plant Based ' is a marketing strategy for a lot of highly processed junk food that is no more healthy than the other highly processed garbage consumed in developed societies.

3 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 December 2020

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Misleading and cherry picking .
Don’t get me wrong , there are lots of good advices here , but it dosent take in calcul lots of factors ...
hearth disease ....meat
Lung disease ..... meat
Everything ...... meat
That’s the issues ... it Dosent take in calcul the quality ... because it’s a very big difference between someone who eat some clean meat , proper diet , doing their exercise and have a positive lifestyle and someone who’s eating meat McDonald’s ... lots of sugars , smoke , drink etc .... but for him is same ... meat meat meat( and eggs and everything that’s not vegan ) ... the evil .
This is another Vegan manifesto book .

6 people found this helpful

Matthew Cox

Some good stuff , but a bit behind the latest knowledge of Microbiome

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 May 2021

Verified Purchase

Very USA based and seems to be completely missing the latest information on the gut Microbiome?
Surely a huge mistake …

The Mediterranean diet and olive oil seems to be mistaken as bad health ?

We do agree that anything processed and particularly USA processed foods and cheeses are killing people and your Microbiome.

There are a few small manufacturers fighting back , but the government are still subsidising the monoculture huge farming and chemicals due to huge lobbying. It’s sad , bad , and money over lives… Overall lots of good stuff but you need to read Tim Spector and the diet myth or spoon fed - with the still USA biased “ fiber fueled . To get more on your unique Microbiome… that’s the future

2 people found this helpful

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