Proteinaholic: How Our Obsession with Meat Is Killing Us and What We Can Do About It

I have been following the peer-reviewed medical literature for over a decade and marveling at the continued disconnect between the sheer volume and span of research supporting whole food, plant-based diets and the public perception of what constitutes healthy eating. Dr. Garth Davis, MD, a Texas bariatric surgeon, combines his personal story of transformation with a review of research highlights from the past 20 years. To his credit, it’s a quite enjoyable read.The research is generally in three categories: epidemiological studies of thousands of people over years (and often decades) of time; studies of naturally-occurring populations with exceptional health and longevity (the Blue Zones) versus those without; and clinical experiments. Dr. Davis shows that, taken as a whole, the research overwhelmingly supports whole food, plant-based diets with small or no red and processed meat consumption and much lower intake of animal products than our nation of "Proteinaholics" is currently eating.I like that Dr. Davis takes on common objections raised by people favoring animal product-heavy diets, and I really like how he explains how to look at research studies so as to be a smart consumer of the research. He tells readers to ask what is being compared, how large is the sample population, and how long are the people studied. Short-term studies showing that low carbohydrate or “Paleo” diets improve weight or biomarkers after a few months exist. Dr. Davis explains that the famous Twinkie diet also improved biomarkers and weight. But if you cut through media hype, industry-funded research, and short-term studies to look at what matters most—all cause mortality over decades of time in large populations (i.e., what people who live longest eat)—then the medical literature casts no doubt on Dr. Davis’ conclusion that excess animal protein is killing us, and plant-based whole food diets are most healthful and lead to greater longevity. In fact, thousand of studies confirm it, as evidenced in part by the World Health Organization’s post-publication announcement on red and processed meats and cancer.And if you don’t like epidemiological research, Dr. Davis takes you on a trip through the other major research as well (population studies and clinical studies) so you can form your own conclusions about the healthiest dietary pattern. Unless you go step-by-step through the overwhelming evidence yourself, its hard to believe so much exists and yet we continue to be so confused as a nation.Another thing I like about this book is that even though Dr. Davis is personally vegan, he doesn’t cherry pick what he presents or overstate the case. I can say this with confidence because I’ve been following the research myself. Where the research findings are mixed and/or muddled by industry-funded research, e.g., on eggs and dairy, Davis presents an excellent and objective overview. His basic point is that whereas the preponderance of evidence points to a plant-based whole food diet—and we know animal products are unnecessary—we can’t say a purely vegan diet is the only healthful path if the overall diet is whole food and plant-based.Does Dr. Davis review some studies suggesting it might, in fact, be the case that a vegan whole food diet is best? Yes, but he is very clear that at this point in time at least, while we can reasonably suggest it may be the case, we cannot say that with anything near the certainty with which we can say plant-based whole food diets are the most healthful. I like to think of it this way: If two objective people followed just the peer-reviewed research published in scientific journals over the past twenty years, they’d both agree on about 95% of what to eat—they might bicker over whether the remaining 5% should include some eggs, poultry, dairy and fish or not. That’s an extremely small amount of diet to be uncertain about—far less than most Americans think science is in disagreement about—and would include vastly fewer animal products than most Americans eat. So whether you go vegan whole food plant-based like Dr. Davis or just eat 95% whole food plant-based, by listening to Dr. Davis, you’re going to lower your chance of disease by leaps and bounds compared to the overwhelming majority of Americans.Several adults in my family, including me, have transitioned to whole food plant-based diets over the past 5 years and experiences myriad health benefits. The benefits to my family members include: resolving IBS (which was probably lactose intolerance all along), reversing metabolic syndrome, lowering overall cholesterol levels and dramatically improving ratios, resolving adult acne, resolving PMS, effortless weight loss and maintenance (I weigh just 3 lbs more than I did the day I got married after months of dieting on Jenny Craig—two kids and 15 years ago!), eliminating the need for blood pressure medication, and improved mood.I have some criticisms of this book that are mostly just additional points that I think should have been mentioned. First, the bibliography lists Noto et al.’s 2013 systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies of low carb diets (of which Paleo is one), which found significantly higher all-cause mortality. However, I do not recall Dr. Davis discussing it in the text, which would have been especially useful in the Adkins and Paleo sections. Maybe he did and I missed it? It would be easy enough to check … if the book had an index. Yes, there is no index in this book! How in the world did a reputable publishing company like HarperOne release a book without creating an index?! This makes the book less useful to readers, as those who want to return to specific subjects and references later on in the text and will have to comb through the book to find them.A second point I’d have like to have seen Dr. Davis make is that processed meats include products people generally think of as healthier than pork bacon and beef pastrami—like turkey bacon, deli chicken and turkey slices, and turkey bacon. Granted, the doctor is correctly encouraging people to drastically reduce their meat intake, relative to the US average, but I think helping people realize that processed poultry was part of those higher mortality findings in many studies would have been helpful. If readers are going to continue to consume animal protein, albeit in small amounts, it would be helpful to tell them they can’t replace pork bacon with turkey bacon and think the research shows it’s cutting their mortality risk. Processed poultry is processed meat. Once again, before criticizing a book of this length in a public forum, I’d normally consult an index to ensure I didn’t miss something — but there’s none to check!Third, I think it would have been useful for Dr. Davis to further debunk the Paleo “grains and legumes are unhealthy” myths a bit more specifically. He alludes to the fact that the research supports eating these foods, and how much they are consumed in the Blue Zones, but he doesn’t even mention nor source articles like Wu et al.’s 2015 “Association between dietary whole grain intake and risk of mortality: two large prospective studies in US men and women” published in JAMA Internal Medicine, or Johnson et al.’s 2015 “Whole-grain products and whole-grain types are associated with lower all-cause and cause-specific mortality in the Scandinavian HELGA cohort,” published in the British Journal of Nutrition. Having never written a book myself, I am guessing that these studies came out after the main draft went to editing, but I still feel room should have been made for their mention. I’d have also liked to see more of the published research linking legumes and longevity discussed. Contrary to Paleo claims, studies show legumes and whole grains are associated with better health and longevity. I am very concerned that a nation of largely unhealthy and overweight people are acting on misinformation to cut out these demonstratedly health-promoting foods.The bottom line is that my criticisms of this book are that it wasn’t long enough, in that it could have fleshed out in more detail the information behind the key points and included an index. However, this is coming from someone who searches the medical journals for new studies on diet and nutrition in her free time, just for enjoyment because it’s so incredibly interesting to me. And if that’s the biggest criticism I can muster for this book, it’s truly an excellent one! I am so grateful Dr. Davis laid out the research for a general audience and that he did it in such a clear and highly engaging way.I put my money where my mouth is on this, folks! I’ve already purchased 7 copies and will probably pick up a few more. If you’re on my holiday shopping list, this is what you’re getting. :)[Edit November 23, 2015: Due to popular demand, an index has been made available by the author on the Proteinaholic website.]

Garth Davis, author of Protein/aholic, was a self-confessed protein addict. His professional background makes his story especially compelling. He is a top-rated surgeon who specializes in bariatric surgery, doing stomach bypass operations to help very obese people lose weight. In the early years of his surgery practice, he strongly promoted high protein diets to help people lose weight, believing it was the best route to better health. He wrote and published The Expert’s Guide to Weight-Loss Surgery in 2008, in which he recommended the Zone diet, a popular high protein diet. Since then, he’s had a radical change of mind. Why? Let’s look at his personal story.Garth’s father was a surgeon in Houston, Texas. Garth idolized him and decided at an early age to follow in his father’s footsteps. Garth was a brilliant student, earning a Phi Beta Kappa key in college. In medical school he was invited into Alpha Omega Alpha, the honor medical society. Like his father, he became a highly skilled surgeon. By his mid-thirties he was happily married, professionally successful, and well respected. Yet, there was a cloud on his horizon.Like many children, Garth had eaten processed sugar cereals and lots of junk foods. By his twenties, he cut back on them, knowing they were not good for him. His solution was to eat more and more protein. After all, according to most doctors, trainers, and dietitians, protein was supposed to be the fountain of health. While on the Atkins diet, he had “eggs and bacon in the morning, hamburger without the bun for lunch, and roast beef or steak for dinner.” Even off the Atkins diet, he ate few vegetables and fruit with his protein-heavy meals. But then his health began to deteriorate.By age 35 he was becoming obese. At his routine eye check-up, his optometrist told him with concern that his retinal vessels were filled with cholesterol, something that shouldn’t happen until old age, if ever. Lab tests showed that his blood cholesterol was extremely high, and his liver function tests and triglycerides were also too high. His doctor put him on three medications, including a statin for cholesterol, another med for high triglycerides, and a third for high blood pressure. Besides all this, he had been suffering from irritable bowel syndrome for several years. The idea of being on medications for life at age 36 hit him hard. Garth decided to do his own research, beginning with nutrition - the weakest link in every doctor’s medical training.The more he dug into the nutritional literature, the more astounded he became. What he learned turned his preconceived ideas about good nutrition upside down. All the long-range research pointed to plant-based ways of eating as the healthiest ones around the world. Digging deeply into the nutritional literature, Garth was not able to find any long-term studies that supported a protein-centered approach to good health. Short-term studies of a few weeks or months showed that a protein-centered diet could help with weight loss, but such weight loss was not sustainable for more than a year or two.His research shattered beliefs he had held all his life, namely, that abundant protein is required to keep us strong and healthy, and that animal-based protein is best. He was shocked to learn that animal protein was one of the biggest factors behind the obesity epidemic. In virtually every study, animal protein was correlated with weight gain. It was strongly associated with diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and cancer, the big killers of our time. Animal protein wasn’t one of the healthiest foods around. A lower-protein (and low fat) diet was the most effective way to lose weight, improve health, and prevent future disease.Because of all this evidence, Garth made major changes in his own diet. First, he tried to abandon animal protein and go vegetarian all in one radical step. He had steamed veggies and rice as the first meatless meal of his life. He didn’t like it. In fact, he hated vegetables. For a time he depended on veggie burgers, eating them at every meal. They were bearable, but not the meat he craved. He went back to eating meat for a while. Still, the research he’d done and videos he’d seen of cows being slaughtered stayed on his mind. Eventually, after many efforts, he was able to eliminate meat from his diet for good. Stopping fish, dairy, and cheese took longer, but avoiding them got easier over time. Today he finds it effortless to be dairy-free.Dr. Davis is completely vegan now. What has this done for him? He states that after hitting his plant-based stride, he felt better than ever before in his life. His weight, cholesterol, and blood pressure all came back down to normal, and his energy levels improved so much that he began training for long distance running. Never an athlete before, he has now run several marathons and even completed the Ironman triathlon. He loves eating plant-based foods and his irritable bowel disease symptoms have vanished. His tastes have totally changed to support his new way of eating - an important point for people who think their tastes can’t be changed. In many ways, he’s become a new man. His picture shows him to be a very dynamic, energetic-looking man today.Dr. Davis continues to counsel obese patients and do bariatric surgery. However, he no longer promotes high-protein diets. Instead, he encourages patients to move toward a plant-based diet. He doesn’t tell them to become vegan, but he encourages them to minimize the animal-based foods they’re used to eating. Some patients follow his advice and do so well that they no longer need to have bariatric surgery!I’ve only summarized the first part of the book here. Part II of the book goes into a careful history of how our nation became obsessed with protein. Part III provides scientific detail about how excess protein contributes to our major debilitating diseases. Part IV consists of a proteinaholic recovery plan. The final chapter provides a one-week meal-plan chart, followed by many tasty-sounding recipes. I don’t have space to review all this here, but I encourage the interested reader to get the book. It’s well worth reading.

I’m convinced the overconsumption of animal sourced food is a main factor in our poor health in the US.

Très bon livre en général. J’adore comment l’auteur arrive a synthétiser les articles desquels il parle. Hyper bien documenté avec beaucoup, et je remarque beaucoup, de références.Conseillé pour tout le monde, vegan ou pas vegan !

Había empezado a leer este libro a partir del capítulo XIII ya que está disponible en línea de manera libre pues el autor decidió que era el mas importante a compartir.Después de eso me dieron ganas de tener la información completa.Definitivamente recomendaría este libro a los verdaderos curiosos de una alimentación verdadera.

Il libro è in lingua inglese.Il libro ha una visione sul mondo proteine da un punto di visto di un medico vegano.Interessanti in certi ambiti in altri invece risulta troppo di parte

This surgeon realised his patients were getting fatter and sicker on Hi Protein - as was he! So he researched and found out our high meat intake is killing us. Fruit, beans and salad are the answer to the questions he asked about getting healthy. It pulled me back from prediabetes. It isn't hard. This easy to read science based book is very inspiring. He explains that plant foods have all the protein even elite athletes need. No tricky food combining is needed, just a simple B12 supplement once a week ( because our veges are cleaned of soil bacteria that would provide it in less modern settings). Fruit veg and nuts build strong bones too! Clear instructions on very simple meals are included.

This book will open your eyes about the much-revered and poorly understood protein in your life. Yes, we all need protein, but how much and from what source?Dr Garth gives ample scientific information about the most health-enhancing diet for humans presenting a myriad of studies conducted over the years.His own personal transformation is testimony to the power of a plant-based diet for optimal health.Highly recommended.