the foundation for a staying healthy dietthroughout this book. They are living laboratories that can give us
simple, doable solutions to our healthcare crisis. We need to study
them before these populations die out. As mentioned in Chapter
6, my favorite books on this subject are The Blue Zone (2008),
The Okinawa Program (2001), The Okinawa Diet Plan (2004), and
Healthy at 100 (2007).
“One-Rule Diet”
If I had to make a “one-rule diet,” it would be simply to eat
whole, unprocessed food. That’s it! This by itself would wipe out a
large portion of chronic diseases—your grocery store would prob-
ably be a fraction of its size if only whole, unprocessed foods were
available (fruit, vegetables, beans, whole grains, nuts, seeds, eggs,
fish, poultry, and meat; dairy products are not whole foods, in my
opinion). Even if you did the opposite of what I recommend with re-
gard to portions of food groups (more than half your food intake as
vegetables and more than 90 percent plant foods), but still ate only
whole unprocessed foods, the average American would do consid-
erably better. This is because we would not be eating refined grains,
added fats and oils, added calorie sweeteners, creams and cheeses,
or other calorie-dense, nutrient-poor foods. This one rule leaves
only one of the unhealthy dietary changes that have occurred over
the last century resulting in excess calories to be present: the in-
creased consumption of predominantly factory-farmed meats.
Then Why No Meat?
Though I would prefer everyone be vegans, the data is unde-
niable that you can consume animal products and be healthy. The
living data clearly show that people can eat animal foods with sig-
nificant amounts of unrefined plant foods and live long and healthy
lives. We cannot, however, simply analyze this data in a vacuum.
Rather we must look at the global big picture and ask ourselves
three questions: