[00:02.4]
Well, welcome back to INSIDE Personal Growth. Many of you know this young man on the other side of the screen here. His name is Dr. Michael Greger. And he is known for really, to be honest with you, much of what he's done is groundbreaking work in his book series how not to Die.

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And we're going to be talking to him. How not to Die Cookbook. Do you want to hold a copy of that book up, please, Dr. Greger? Yes, the How Not To Age cookbook, How not to Die now, and it's 10th anniversary edition coming out December 2025.

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But here's the how not to Age Cookbook which just came out today. It did. Fantastic. And we're happy to have you on the show and to speak about that. And I think many of our individuals who listen to the show know about your nutritional facts website, which we will have a link to as well.

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And that website is just loaded for all of you who have not been to that. But I'm going to let them know a second about you. Dr. Greger, he's a founding member and the fellow of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, physician and internationally recognized speaker on nutrition.

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His science based nonprofit Nutrition Facts.org offers free online portal hosting for more than 2,000 videos and articles and a myriad of health topics. Dr. Greger is a sought after lecturer. He has presented at the Conference on World affairs, the World bank, testified before Congress and and was invited as an expert witness in Oprah Winfrey's defense in the infamous meat defamation trial.

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A graduate of Cornell University School of Agriculture and Tufts University school of medicine, Dr. Greger is also acclaimed author of how not to Die, how not to Die Cookbook, it says, and how not to Diet. And so just go to his website, you can learn more about him there.

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So with that further ado, this cookbook is what we're here how not to Age Cookbook. So I, I know you've written all these other books. You've been on Oprah, you've been everywhere, you're world acclaimed and it's so awesome having you on.

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What inspired you to create this cookbook specifically on aging and how does it build really on kind of your earlier works, how not to Die and How not to Age well, How not to Age Cookbook, but How not to Age well, you know, so I identified a number of foods in how not to Age associated with longevity and benefits for certain preserving certain organ systems.

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But there's a difference between saying, okay, here's a list of foods you should incorporate in your diet and actually Incorporating those foods in your diet, how do you make them delicious? How do you make them convenient? I mean, how do you actually make them into a meal plan? I didn't want it to just be a reference book.

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I wanted it to be kind of a day to day, grocery store style practical guide in terms of incorporating some of these healthy foods into your diet. So that is where the how not to Age cookbook came into being. So look, some people here listening are vegan, vegetarian.

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Some of them are not. And you're kind of known for vegetarianism and leaning more toward what I would call a plant based diet. What are some of the most common misconceptions people have about food and in particular the food they eat and their aging process?

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Oh my God. Well, I certainly was. I had a lot of surprises myself going into this book. You know, I. People don't realize that, you know, I learn as much writing it as anyone does reading. It's not like I was taught any of this in medical school.

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And you know, there were some real surprises to me going into it. But I think people will find my chapter on exercise surprising. On sleep, red wine, resveratrol, NAD supplements, vitamin D, fish protein restriction, micrornas, the list goes on and on.

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I mean, it's just constantly going in with some presuppositions of what I thought I'd find and coming out with a very different story. But you know, that's, that's how you do good science. You don't let your, you know, your theories stem from the evidence, not the other way around.

[04:59.6]
Well, look, you know, people today with the supplements that are available, as you said, resveratrol, I take that. Coq 10, I take that, I take a whole handful of supplements. But the key is to get the nutrients out of the food if we can.

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And you emphasize food as medicine. What ingredients in the cookbook are your all stars when it really comes to, to slowing this biological age? And you and I were talking about Dan Buettner and the Blue Zones.

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I mean, if you look at the National Geographic special, you look at his cookbook, you look at what people eat in different geographical regions of the world that have given them longevity. And that's what we're really talking about here and how not to age and longevity. What are some of the ones that you found that you think are the easiest for people to put in their diet to slow this biological aging process?

[05:58.0]
Yeah, we owe a tremendous debt to Buettner's team for the Blue Zones foundation work to identify these areas of extraordinary Longevity around the world and doing more than 100 dietary surveys to find exactly what they are eating.

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And a few particular foods pop out legumes. So beans, split peas, chickpeas and lentils. Every single blue zone described in history has centered their diet and a central as the primary protein source as some sort of legume.

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And in fact, the Gold Burden of Disease study, which is the largest systemic analysis of risk factors in human history, found that number one cause of death in the United States is indeed the American diet. Bumping tobacco to number two. Cigarettes only kill about half a million Americans every year, whereas our diet kills many more.

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And the five worst things about their diet that they identified, number one on the list, the worst thing about the American diet is inadequate legume consumption, not eating enough legumes like beans. Number two is not eating enough whole grains. Number three, not eating enough nuts.

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So three out of the top five are things we're actually not getting enough of. Number four, too much meat. Number five, too much soda. But just to pull out some of those, the nuts, for example, on a gram per gram basis compared to any other food group, consumption of nuts is associated with the lowest risk of premature death.

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I recommend a palm full of nuts every day. That's a single ounce may be enough to offer maximal benefit. You don't seem to get more. Eating more nuts, you don't want to eat too many. More than a cup a day may risk the kidney stones across the. So any particular nut?

[07:46.1]
We talking cashews, almonds? Are we talking walnuts? Are we talking, I mean, there's a lot of nuts our listeners can buy. There are a lot of nuts. So coconuts don't count, chestnuts don't count. They're, they're, they're nutritionally very kind of different foods. And unfortunately, peanut butter consumption does not appear to have the same dietary effects.

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So we're talking about tree nuts in particular. Walnuts really may be the healthiest now that they have the highest omega 3 content, but they're the only nut that has been found to acutely improve endothelial function, basically artery function. And so I encourage people to eat a palm full of walnuts, ideally raw, unsalted walnuts, every day.

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So that, how do you make, how do you make them tasty, Dr. Greger? I know for me almonds are easy. I'll tell you the nut I like the most is cashews. And I'm curious on walnuts because, you know, yeah, you can buy a bag of walnuts, it's true, but it's probably not the first thing that people think about.

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They either go for the almonds or. Or the cashews, probably, and the unsalted cashews. But is there some trick, too? Because I find them sometimes a little dry, a little bit harder to kind of.

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How do I want to say? Not digest. But any tricks you have. Well, so you want to be getting English walnuts, not black one. That's typically what you find in the stores. English one is black walnuts can be a little bitter. You want to get them fresh again.

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Maybe you've just had some kind of old stale ones. You can use walnuts like you would use cashews to make some nice creamy sauces. So, you know, it's kind of pesto season. You know, it's springtime. And so a nice walnut pesto. So when you blend it up, either in a smoothie or, you know, making some kind of sauce, it gives this really nice richness.

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If you just don't happen to, you know, want to just. Can they eat walnuts? I throw them in my oatmeal, but, you know, there you go. Oatmeal with raisins and walnuts. That sounds good to me. But look, whatever nut you're willing to eat is the nut you should eat.

[09:59.0]
I mean, that's. I mean, but if you really, you know, had to pick one out, if you're on a desert island and could choose one nut, one, that would probably be it. But we want to encourage people to add nuts to their daily diet. Okay, so. So look, a lot of this is all about inflammation, because we know that inflammation is an issue.

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Oxidative stress. Can you explain the science behind how certain foods interact with reduction of inflammation? So, you know, people who get arthritis inflammation, right. And this telomere length, in other words, the length of the telomere and.

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And the oxidative stress. So could you kind of give a little bit of the science? But even more importantly, it's like, so what are the foods that are going to have an effect on this telomere length? The oxidative stress and inflammation. You got it.

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Aging can be thought of in part as an inflammatory disease. A single blood test for inflammatory markers such as C reactive protein can predict future physical and cognitive performance as well as remaining lifespan in elderly individuals.

[11:13.4]
Thankfully, excess inflammation can be extinguished through changes in diet. So I encourage people on a daily basis to reduce their dietary and endogenous exposure to inflammatory age. These are advanced glycation end products, also known as glycotoxins.

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One of the reasons we Prefer raw nuts as opposed to toasted or roasted nuts is because high dry heat exposure to prote enriched foods can cause the formation of these toxins. So that's why. So for example meat better to steam, boil, use moist methods of heating for meat rather than grilling and frying and baking just to keep the temperature to a point where you don't get excess production of these pro inflammatory compounds.

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Boosting autophagy which is this kind of self cleaning process can help clear out some of the inflammatory cell debris that builds up. And you can improve autophagy by eating spermidine rich foods which is found in wheat germ and soy foods and mangoes and autophagy chapter.

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Applying an emollient skin lotion interestingly can actually reduce inflammation. Our skin barrier actually breaks down as we get older and there, there's been trials where you randomize people to just an emollient skin lotion and you can actually decrease inflammation by kind of bolstering your, your skin.

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Pardon me, but are you saying a skin lotion that has like vitamin E in it or. It just has to have. It's just some, some emulsion of, of oil and water. So it can just be whatever cheap, you know, doesn't have to have any special ingredients. It's that, you know, it's adding that extra oily layer to, to basically protect you from environmental contaminants from well, breaking through the skin barrier.

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I love that one because for those who are listening can see, they can't see very well on the right side of my face. I just had 40 stitches and squamous cell cancer removed and the hole got so big they had to put a flap down over it.

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So. Oh no, here's the point. I think having that lotion on and using, I don't know where you are with the use of sunscreen, but definitely a hat as you get older your skin. I'm 70, I'm going to be 71 in July. What happens is the, your skin is thinner.

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There's a challenge. Obviously you being a doctor, you know this. But they say you did the damage when you were a kid. So for all the kids listening, put sunscreen on. So you know, look, one of the big things is people in this day and age, everything's moving so fast.

[14:10.2]
Listeners struggle with daily meal planning, right? It's like, okay, is it the husband or wife that's cooking? The question is what's the meal plan and how does this cookbook make longevity friendly eating approachable, sustainable and put it in some kind of Meal plan where we can say, well, on Monday we're going to have this, on Tuesday we're going to have this.

[14:30.2]
And, and actually make it happen. You know that that's something that the publisher really pushed me to do. It's like, okay, well you know, let's form a meal plan. Take these recipes and you know, and, and I was thinking, well, wait a second, what if you don't like these recipes? Like, it just seems weird to me to be, I'm like, so look, here's all the breakfast recipes.

[14:50.0]
Pick one, find a few you like and go through a rotation. What do you have in the house, what's on sale, what's in season? Like, I don't know, the meal plan. Was that ever made sense to me. I guess some people just like to be kind of told what to do. But you know, do you know there's all sorts of healthy foods that can be combined in all sorts of healthy ways?

[15:13.6]
I agree with you. But I, I do know that I don't do the meal planning in my house. Right. So the reality is, is that it's my wife that does that. So it's always, I think sometimes for some people, I don't know what I'm having from one night to the next with you.

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Bring it on me. What, what is it that we're having? So I like, I, I do a lot of batch cooking. So you know, on a, on a weekend day when I have some time, you know, I'll make, you know, I'll make a big load of beans or whole grains or things that I can kind of use throughout the week. And you know, you can freeze in individual portions.

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Big fan of, you know, chopped vegetables. You can get bags of pre washed, pre chopped greens, anything that kind of saves you time at that last stage, you know. Berry, frozen berries. If you look at my freezer, it's half frozen greens have frozen berries.

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So then you have to worry about seasonality. You don't have to worry about getting to the store. You can get nice fresh produce. All you got to worry about is freezer burn. Well, yeah, no, you do have to keep it airtight, but, but you got to keep rotating it is what I meant to say. Keep eating it.

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Right. So it's getting freezer burnt. You're not eating enough. That's correct. So you need to have it going through the freezer and out into your smoothies or whatever. Brings me to this question, you know, this how not to age cookbook.

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One of the things that I do every morning is Celery and carrots. And I'm sure thousands of my listeners, it's like, okay, I have that routine too. And then I put in spinach and I put in a, a scoop of protein powder, which is organ.

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And then I put in almond milk, right? And then some people tell you, well, you shouldn't do that that way. And I'm like, well, wait a second, I'm getting a lot of greens. I'm getting celery, I'm getting carrots, I'm getting spinach, I'm getting. I'm getting.

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And a half of bananas. So I think that the key is they don't want you putting in the half of the banana because it's got too much sugar in it. Do you have any secret on smoothies? Because so many people out there today are consuming smoothies for breakfast, as they should, particularly as the weather warms up.

[17:30.6]
What a convenient way, you know, to kind of eat breakfast on the go. And the way you described is the way to do it. We want to be blending up vegetables, right? And so when you take. So there's studies showing that you can dramatically increase the bioavailability of some of these brain and eyesight important nutrients in dark green leafy vegetables when you blend up the greens, just chopping the greens improves things.

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Mincing the greens is better. But then actually blending the greens like you get in something like a pesto or a smoothie dramatically breaks open all those cell walls and dramatically increases the bioavailability of these carotenoids like lutein, important for eye health.

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And so, yes, blending greens. So these green smoothies, what a fantastic way to do it. And you can cut down the bitterness of the greens by adding something like mango or banana or half an apple. Potato. Absolutely. No. That's a fantastic way to get, as, you know, stuff your face with as many fruits and vegetables as possible.

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I'm all in favor. Perfect. And I bet you got some kind of recipe in the book. We do. We do have some. We'd have some smoothie recipes. I like to add some ground flaxseed to make it kind of a nice milkshake. Milkshake thickness and add the extra omega threes and the cancer.

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And how about chia seeds? Are you a big fan of those? Cheeses are great too. Unfortunately, to fully absorb what's in them, you need to grind them up. Now, I guess if you have a really good blender, that might work, but unless you're chewing really well, you may want to get pre ground chia seeds or Grind them yourself.

[19:07.0]
Now that's a really good point because I don't think people really realize that pre ground chia seeds are out there. But it just kind of go otherwise, just kind of goes through you right now. It can help with kind of regularity, just a massive gelled chia seeds.

[19:23.0]
But if you actually want to get at the Omega 3s and the good stuff that's in the chia seed, you may actually not not get that good nutrition unless it's ground up. I think the flaxseed is a good idea. Now look, what is your go to meal from the book? When you're short on time but want a longevity boost.

[19:41.1]
In other words, if you were to say, hey, it's a go to meal, our listeners out there today, hey, I'm going to go buy this cookbook, give them a hand on some of these go to quick short meals that they could put together in our nutritious and good forum and also going to extend their longevity.

[20:00.2]
Well, you know, so it doesn't have to be, I mean there are some, you know, recipes in the book that are more involved, maybe say for holidays. But I mean, it can be as quick as taking a purple sweet potato throwing in the microwave and literally, you know, eating it as you run out the door.

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You'll see me on airplanes with my sweet potato, you know, eating my sweet potato. So I mean, it doesn't have to be really involved. But in terms of so I for break. Depending on what people like for breakfast in the cookbook, there's a lot of savory options like breakfast burritos, egg free frittatas, sweet options like baked carrot cake, oatmeal and millet brunch cake with strawberries.

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For lunch, a lot of soup, salad, sandwich options like oyster mushroom chowder or Thai purple cabbage slaw, cheese free quesadillas, lots of creamy pasta dishes. It's very international. There are jambalayas, Indonesian satays, risotto, shepherd pie.

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Most of the berries are, most of the desserts are kind of berry based, a lot of tarts and crumbles. Not only is every recipe in the cookbook healthy, but every ingredient of every recipe is healthy. So wait a second, how do you make something salty without salt or sweet without sugar?

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Well, those are some of the, you know, some of the challenges we face going through it. And I'm really proud of how it all came out. Well, it was obviously you and a team of people, you didn't all do this on your own. So congratulations to your team for helping you put all these recipes together.

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Can you hold the book up again? I want my listeners to be able, able to see it. I mean here we are talking about this wonderful book and it's real. And it's real. It's beautiful. It's really well laid out. Very. Look at that. It's really nicely done and I love the pictures. The pictures are really good.

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So. Yes, that is it. Yeah, it's a very, it's. They, they. It must have taken forever to do all that photography. But it really came out well. Well, it did it. And it looks like it's a paperback book. It's not a hardback. No, it is, it is actually hardback. It is. Oh, well that's good.

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I think that's good as well because most people like to put hardback books on their shelves for their cookbooks. So how do you address this myth that healthy aging food, which I think many listeners think about is bland or boring because obviously your cookbook proves it differently that it's not bland and boring.

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What, what would you tell listeners out there like, and I don't, I don't want this. I'm going to keep my, my regular diet. Well, you know, it's interesting. Some of the most potent anti aging foods are actually spices and it's actually the, the, the flavor compounds that add that that are responsible for the effects.

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So for example, the gingerols in ginger are response which is responsible for the kind of gingery bite is the reason we think that the ginger is so effective. For example, improving symptoms of osteoarth, arthritis of the knees or the, the leading cause of physical disability among older adults.

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And so, and you know, I go through turmeric and black cumin and papala and all these, go through this long list of spices that have found to have these remarkable effects even in randomized double blind placebo controlled trials, which are hard to do with food. You can do it with pills because you can make a pill and a sugar pill that looks identical.

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Well, spices are so potent you could, you know, pack a whole eighth of a teaspoon of spice into a capsule, match it against a placebo capsule and actually prove that, for example, garlic powder can reduce your LDL cholesterol, the primary driver of our number one killer of men and women, heart disease, or that, you know, a single teaspoon of ground raw black sesame seed powder can decrease your systolic blood pressure by 8 points.

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That alone decreases your risk of a stroke by about 26%. I mean, so there's just single foods proven you know, fenugreek, you know, boosts your testosterone. Fennel seeds can help with menopausal hot flashes. And all this is at your website, right?

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I mean, people can go to nutrition facts.org and they can get this. You did say something really interesting, though. You said that ginger was good for people with osteoarthritis. Is that what I heard you say?

[24:23.1]
Yes, there is. There's been four foods that have been shown in clinical trials, controlled clinical trials to improve osteoarthritis. Strawberries, rose hips, which are like the fruit of the rose bush, ginger and turmeric.

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Turmeric. So all of those are good for osteoarthritis. So for all my listeners out there who've got a bum knee or they've got pain in their hip or whatever, try this out before you get a knee replacement or a hip replacement. Exactly. Find that the inflammation will go down.

[24:55.7]
And on top of that, obviously we know that doing exercise or at least going to a yoga class or tai chi class and getting movement is going to help that. So the cookbook isn't just about what to add, it's also about what to avoid. What aging accelerating foods.

[25:14.4]
Should people be cutting back on that? Potentially, the listeners that are listening right now are eating food well. So if there were just three things I would add to someone's diet, first add, it would be berries, the healthiest fruits, dark green leafy vegetables, the healthiest vegetables.

[25:32.3]
And then legumes, the healthiest source of protein, these beans, split peas, chickpeas, lentils. If there were just three things I would first remove from someone's diet, it'd be, number one, anything with trans fats, these partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. Number two would be processed meat, bacon, ham, hot dogs, lunch meat, sausage, known to contribute to colorectal cancer, which is the number one cancer killer among non smokers.

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And number three, it would be liquid candy, sugar, sweetened beverages like soda. So if you just got rid of those three and just added those three foods, you would go a long way towards improving your health. Wow, great advice from you.

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Thank you so much. I think that'll help a lot of people. Hopefully they'll listen to it and read the transcript as well. Are there any surprising foods or techniques in the book that made even you go kind of, whoa, that's a game changer.

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Oh, well, so it was the, it was these individual foods. I mean, I assumed, look, if you're eating healthier, you're going to do better. I mean, you know, but instead of, oh, just Eat a healthy diet. I found these specific foods with specific effects proven in these randomized controlled trials.

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So we talked about osteoarthritis for enlarged prostate. A lot of people take this herb saw palmetto is found to absolutely flop in randomized controlled trials. But what does work? Flax seeds, pumpkin seeds, and cranberries. Cranberries have also been shown to help with overactive bladder syndrome.

[27:07.7]
Pumpkin seeds, along with soy foods and chili peppers, have been shown to protect against hair loss along with dilute at. Topically, you can use a diluted rosemary Essential oil appears to work as well as the drug Rogaine for keeping your hair. I wish I would have known. So you forgot to take.

[27:23.8]
I wish I would. Well, I just. Unfortunately it was too late for me. But don't make the same mistake about fennel seeds for the menopausal flashes. Fenugreek for boosting testosterone.

[27:39.7]
Plain white button mushrooms can help combat the distinctive body odor of the elderly. Something I didn't even know existed. But that was an interesting finding. Nitrate rich vegetables like beets can help maintain muscle mass and performance.

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Broccoli family vegetables and garlic can boost immune function. What do you think? Pardon me, but what do you think about these beets that they're now selling in tablets to reduce blood pressure? Oh, you know, you see a lot of this. They're gummies.

[28:12.2]
They're now selling gummies that you can chew. Gummies that are made out of beets. And, you know, it seems like the real thing would be a lot better. Although they're gonna can of beets. Yeah. It would take you literally 30 seconds to open up the can and you stick a fork in it.

[28:27.8]
Right. And so both dark green leafy vegetables and beets, both concentrated sources. So 90 minutes before your 5k or whatever can significantly improve athletic performance by improving the ability of your little mitochondria, the power plants within your cells to extract energy from oxygen.

[28:46.6]
Something never before shown and can be done with just vegetable nitrates. So. So, yeah, that's. And. And can help improve muscle mass as well. Greens and berries are the best foods for your brain and vision.

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And though sun protection is the single most important thing you can do to slow skin aging, Honey bush tea, almonds and cocoa powder have been shown to reduce wrinkles. Honey. Oh, honey. Honey bush honey. Bush tea. That's amazing. Herbal tea.

[29:17.3]
Yeah, I'll have to. And I think I have some of that. Oh, great. Yeah. You know, look, you've obviously dedicated your life to this work studying nutrition. You've got this non profit nutrition facts.org all the proceeds to your book go to charity and have, and I want to just compliment you on that.

[29:40.0]
And you've written extensively on nutrition. You've been in so many documentaries and so many different documentaries that I've seen. How does the cookbook reflect what you've kind of personally learned and professionally implemented in the, in recent years?

[29:57.6]
So I mean, you've been at this for how many years now? So Nutrition facts started in 2011. How not to Die first came out in 2015. The 10th anniversary edition is coming out this December. Yeah, so, so, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's been a minute, been more than a minute.

[30:17.3]
And the question, you had hair when you started and you don't. I certainly did, yes. I saw pictures of you. So the question I have for you really is of the new findings that you, I mean look, you're always on the hunt. You're a curious guy.

[30:32.4]
You're looking for things all the time. What did you incorporate into this cookbook that our listeners are going to be able to, and viewers are going to be able to take out of it? Yeah, well, there's a lot certainly it changed what I was eating.

[30:47.6]
I mean I, you know, I'm always thinking I'm eating healthy and trying to, you know, to tweak my diet, but I changed a lot. So for example, I added strawberries to my diet which, which is the most concentrated dietary source of a compound called facetin, which we think is a senolytic compound, anti senolytic compound which is basically remove these so called inflammatory zombie cells within the body.

[31:14.9]
I've added cardamom to my diet, wheat germ for the spermidine, the most concentrated source of spermidine, which boosts autophagy. In fact, it is of all the longevity compounds ever discovered, among the small subset with the fewest side effects, spermidine has the longest documented lifespan extension found concentrated in wheat germ.

[31:39.8]
So it's nothing, something I've never even. What do you put the wheat germ in? Do you put it. So what I do. So it's, it's, it's, it's pretty bland and tasteless. So I find I can just sprinkle it on things. So, you know, I want to, I want to add ground flaxseeds to things. I want to add wheat germ. So I basically make a powder contained of all the kind of bland things and then I just sprinkle it on anything so I can sprinkle on something savory.

[32:01.3]
Sprinkle on something sweet. Sprinkle. And I just don't, it just doesn't bother me. I don't mind it. I mean, sometimes it can be a little binding and make things a little thicker. So maybe not great for kind of soups, but. Yeah, so, but I can sprinkle it on.

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But you can, I don't know, you could put in your smoothie, you know. Well, I was using wheat German. I don't know why I stopped. But now that you've reminded me. Yeah, yeah, supplement. I gotta go back. So look, you have, it's packed solid.

[32:32.6]
Look, if our listeners want to go to nutrition facts.org there's videos, there's, there's research papers, there's a plethora of information there. And this book, which now you can get, it's released, it's out there on Amazon.

[32:48.9]
So they're literally, I'm going to have a link for them to be able to go buy this book. So look, for anybody now that's over 50 and they're listening to this show and just how changing their eating habits, you know, is it kind of too late once they've reached 50 or is it never too late?

[33:10.8]
It is never too late. The good news is that we have tremendous power over our health, destiny and longevity and that the vast majority of premature death and disability is preventable with a healthy enough diet and lifestyle. And one need not make drastic changes.

[33:25.9]
It's not all or nothing. Even just basic common sense lifestyle factors can mean living literally a decade longer, not smoking, not being obese, regular exercise, more fruits and vegetables. And it's never too late, never too late to stop smoking, start moving more, to start eating healthier.

[33:43.5]
We really do have the power. So look, we live in a multi generational situation these days. We've got crossing all kinds of generations, like my grandchildren, my children. So how could the cookbook serve as kind of a bridge for families, especially across generations, to connect over healthy food?

[34:08.5]
Because it's like, okay, hey, somebody's vegetarian. Oh no, you got to make a veggie burger or you've got somebody who's got diet carrying their gluten. And you know, we got to do that. This book would be something that a man or a woman could pick up, go to the kitchen and actually make a multitude of foods to be able to cross these generational and dietary restrictions.

[34:35.2]
Correct? Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. The, you know, people ask me all the time, you know, how can I get my kids to eat healthier, right? How can I Get my kids to eat vegetables, etc, and if you look at the literature, if you look at the evidence base, the single most important factor in getting kids to eat healthy is role modeling.

[34:52.9]
Healthy behavior. Right? You can't be do as I say, not as I do. The most important way to get our kids to eat healthy is to eat healthy ourselves. And so this is a great way to do it. And then there's the social benefits. You know, I talk about, you know, you know, these blue zones.

[35:10.2]
It's not just about healthy diets, it's also about social factors and exercise and sleep and stress reduction, etc. Getting people around the table. You know, everyone's kind of lost in their screens these days. Bringing people together to have a meal is, you know, has that extra important social component which keeps people, you know, you know, kind of on the straight and narrow.

[35:33.0]
Whereas if people are off to, you know, fend for themselves in some takeout or some drive through, I'm afraid they're just not going to be eating as healthfully. That is a really important point. You know, I'm reflecting on the fact that my wife's been in Spain for 11 days and comes back tonight and I really made it a point and I'll.

[35:53.6]
For my listeners, I only ate two meals out in 11 days and the rest of the time I literally cooked in. Oh, great. And, you know, that's pretty unusual because I'm not the cook in the house. But the reality is I forced myself and, you know, I found myself using the little chopper machine to make chopped up lettuce and tomatoes and all these kind of things in a big salad.

[36:20.0]
Right. Wonderful. And that's what I was eating for dinner. Right. And I think when you do it, you really realize doesn't take that long, it's easy to do, and the reality is it's healthy for you. Now, if there's one takeaway that you hope that the readers on the listeners and the viewers, because this is on YouTube as well, are going to walk away from with the how not to Age Cookbook.

[36:48.4]
Because this is all about longevity. It's not How Not To Die Cookbook, it's How Not To Age Cookbook. What is it that you'd want them to know? What is it that you'd want them to walk away with here, Dr. Greger, and any references for them beyond the cookbook, maybe?

[37:08.3]
Well, you know, the important thing, look, it's, it's your body, your choice. You know, if you want to smoke cigarettes, go bungee jumping, not wear your seatbelt, Disconnect your smoke alarms, right? It's up to each of us to make our own decisions as to what to eat and how to live. But we should make these choices, consciously educating ourselves about the predictable consequences of our actions.

[37:29.1]
And so that's really, that's my role. That's what I feel the role of all doctors should be is like, look, someone in your circumstance who continues to do X, Y and Z, these are the predictable consequences. Here's the alternatives. You could also do this, and this is what would result.

[37:45.1]
And then it's really up to the individual. And so I just wanted to give people kind of this portfolio of options of, you know, preserving your, you know, skin and your joints and your sex life and your, you know, vision, your cognition.

[38:01.7]
And on down the list, you know, something in your, you know, family, there's, you know, people have been hard of hearing or whatever. What can you do to preserve your, your inner ear? Just to. I. The concern is that it's a little overwhelming, right?

[38:19.2]
I wanted to be as comprehensive as possible, but the, the flip side of that is it's just so much material. But I encourage people, look, take it piecemeal, find out what fits in your life, what doesn't take, really take a step back. In fact, that's the conclusion of the book where I say, okay, let's, let's, let's, let's go back to the basics here again.

[38:39.1]
You know, a decade of life is just super. The basic stuff. Then, yes, you want to tweak around the edges, you want to get some more here and there. Oh, my God, I got tons of stuff people can do. But let's not forget about the real important basics. You know, I can imagine someone, you know, looking through and taking some new fancy supplement while they're puffing a cigarette or something.

[38:58.2]
It's like, no, no, no, let's do the basic stuff first. And then, yes, for all you longevity geeks out there, there's all sorts of cool things you can do, but let's not lose sight of some of the most important things. And that's really, you know, so, you know, 80, 85 of the way there is just really the basic stuff.

[39:17.6]
Well, because I don't have the book itself. I do have the PDF that Martha sent. My, my issue is how much of the book is more of a narrative versus actual recipes. In other words, you speaking to the reader about, okay, here's some things you should do.

[39:40.4]
Because I think a lot of people, when they buy a book and they think it's just A cookbook. I think what you're trying to tell me right now is this is not just a cookbook. Yeah. So it's about, so about an eighth. So the first 25 pages is the narrative where I go through talk about the key highlights in how not to Age.

[40:01.5]
You know, how to Age was just this massive tome, 13, 000 references. And it's just like, okay, let's dumb it way down. Let's do all the basics. So I go through talk about the anti ag etc and then the, the other 200 pages is really going into the recipes again.

[40:21.5]
Try just trying to make it practical, make it doable. You know, it's one thing to tell people to eat these foods, another thing to, you know, make them lick their lips over it. Well, so here's the deal. You've got a new second edition, how not to Die, which I love the book, although it was three, 400 pages, whatever.

[40:40.6]
It's a pretty thick book, right? It's like, like this. And many people aren't going to read through all that. This new one that's coming out in December, you said, is this book with all the new findings that you have in it. Okay, okay.

[40:56.4]
It's even bigger. It's even bigger. Look, there's a whole decade of cool, of amazing new findings. But look, you know, it's also going to be on audiobook and I'll record it. You know, it takes me about two weeks to record the thing, but, you know, so then you can listen to a snippet, you know, on the way to work or while you're jogging around or whatever and you know, or on a road trip or something.

[41:17.5]
You should be able to get it all in there. I'm sure you haven't figured out your voice with 11 labs that, oh, put in the AI. No, it still sounds like Dr. Greger one of these days. I mean, it's really brutal.

[41:33.1]
My vocal cords are very unhappy. Well, I'm sure they are after all these interviews for this book. But the point is, is that your, your people should be thinking about using 11 labs to take your voice. I'm very close. Maybe not this book, but I think the next one in like three years time, I think we're going to be there.

[41:53.8]
Well, you're there now, let me tell you. All right, well, I think for my listeners, for everybody who's still on, having listened to 40 minutes of us, I think you got the point. This is a great cookbook, but it's more than a cookbook.

[42:12.2]
He's allocated some to narrative to let you know what's going on. He's also put in the ingredients that you need in each one of these recipes, which obviously it wouldn't be a cookbook if it didn't have the ingredients in it. He's given you some thoughts here today to think about, especially the one that relates, I think personally was around ginger and inflammation and some of the other things that you could take to reduce inflammation.

[42:40.7]
And obviously that's a key factor as you get older. And I really, I just want to thank you for your dedication to looking at the science behind all of this, for having Nutritional Facts, which is a free portal that people can go to to find out anything they want.

[42:59.7]
They obviously can make a donation. You'd love to have that to go to the non profit, but really, I can't wait for the next book in December. And I hope we can have you back on the show again, Dr. Greger, when your voice is not so strained from doing all these interviews and, and we'll have a lot more fun then.

[43:19.6]
Does that sound good? I love it. Let's do it. Okay, well, thanks for being on Inside Personal Growth. We'll make sure all our listeners hear this and get back to Nutrition Facts. That's N U T R I T I o n fax.org that's where you want to go.

[43:36.6]
You can learn about this book there. We'll have a link to Amazon so that you can buy this book directly off of Amazon. And as he said, it's in audio book format, although a cookbook in audio format. This one, how not to Die.

[43:52.2]
Oh, how not to Die. Yeah. Okay, so this one's not in audio format. I was going to say you wouldn't want to have this book in audio. You want to look at the pictures. So thanks for being on Inside Personal Growth. Thanks so much for having me. Keep up the great work.

[44:07.8]
Namaste.