Overall, I believe that Whole Food Plant-Based (WFPB) Diet is the best available food system for prevention of serious diseases which also has the backing of scientific research. Why do I think so? There is a mountain of data from thousands of research papers on the basis of which WFPB guidelines have emerged. Hundreds of these papers are cited in the book How Not To Die (576 pages, 2015). Among books on WFPB, this book has the maximum of 5-star Amazon reviews.

Dr Greger is a remarkable individual. He is blessed with not only a sharp and capacious mind but also a magnanimous heart and a sense of purpose. I admire his work and his approach. In this video, he explains the story behind NutritionFacts. He makes no money from his books, his YouTube videos and his talks — all these are acts of service to others.

I place heart disease, diabetes and obesity in this category. The efficacy of WFPB to tackle these diseases and even reverse them to large degrees is well-documented. In the grand scheme of things, heart disease, diabetes and obesity are 'relatively well understood' and 'easier to tackle than other diseases' when compared with other diseases listed below. Food guidelines are simple and clear. WFPB books (and even recipe books) that focus specifically on these three diseases have been penned down by prominent WFPB doctors. There are active FaceBook supports groups that targeting these specific diseases via WFPB!

Under this category, I place various gastrointestinal and autoimmune diseases. These are two classes of diseases — each class encompasses dozens of specific diseases. The underlying mechanisms for these diseases are less well understood; their symptoms are much more diverse. And we don't have high quality trials to demonstrate that WFPB is effective.

… but having watched so many success stories, I have developed some intuition that (a) these diseases are reversible to a large degree by adopting WFPB, but (b) in the short term, it helps to go beyond WFPB and adopt some combination of raw foods and fasts. But where are these raw food and fasting protocols documented? Dr Brooke Goldner writings, the Elimination Protocol by Paddison, and miscellaneous blog posts by those who have experimented with such protocols come to my mind. The safest way today is to work with somebody like Dr Brooke Goldner (she has 4-week and 6-week online programs), or with Dr Paddison, or stay at TrueNorth Health Center in Santa Rosa, California (medically supervised, multi-day juice-fasting and water-only fasting protocols are carried out here), or get help from a WFPB doctor who helps patients tackle these diseases (most WFPB MDs do but WFPB MDs are so few that there may not be any such doctor within dozens of miles near our home). And if somebody is not able to access such resources, what are they to do??

I hope that in the next 20 to 50 years, sufficient money is allocated to studying raw food and fasting protocols as short-term interventions, and how they help us tackle gastrointestinal and autoimmune diseases. Then the situation would be similar to {heart disease, diabetes, obesity} in the sense that we'd have clear guidelines backed by scientific research, books, recipe books and FaceBook support groups in place.

Under this category come various cancers and other diseases not mentioned above. WFPB doctors offer guidelines for cancer prevention, and what to do after receiving a diagnosis. However, the prognosis is bleaker when compared to {heart disease, diabetes, obesity} or {gastrointestinal, autoimmune}. Many cancer patients start exploring raw foods and fasting protocols. But I haven't discovered any book that describes how we may do this safely. My personal intuition says that raw foods and fasting protocols do help! So it would be wonderful if some money is allocated in the next 20 to 50 years to conduct scientific research and develop safe raw food and fasting protocols for cancer patients.

From the Sequence of Eliminations, we see that Step 1 (Eliminate Processed Foods) is the first and the most important guideline (let's not forget that if somebody has a negative reaction to a specific food, then elimination of that food would be the most important guideline for that individual). Every diet implores us to cut down on Processed Foods.

Step 1 is difficult to execute, partly because the term Processed Foods is difficult to understand; it requires a fair bit of education. Next, we have to tackle food addictions (processed meats, sugar, refined grains, refined flours, chemical foods are addictive).