The Number One Risk Factor To Your Health by Brenda Davis, R.D.

Good morning can you guys hear me alright oh good well it's a real privilege to be here I come from Kelowna British Columbia so it's just a tiny bit colder there than it is here not that much though probably both but pretty close to the same but anyway I am delighted to be with you thank you for coming out so early this morning and and many thanks to the people that came from so far away I met two this morning one from Austria a couple from.

Australia and a couple from Germany so that's pretty exciting so my my presentation this morning is can I can we pause for a second what was my time supposed to start at 1 hour and 30 minutes okay okay so else I guess it's in 113 I'm going and I'm not gonna get it done so okay okay the my talk this morning is called defeating disease with a whole food plant-based diet what to eat and I've basically divided it into.

Overview

Two parts part one we'll be talking about diet and disease and really about the strength of the link and also why the plant-based advantage and the second part is the what to eat part and we'll talk about ten steps to an optimal plant-based diet so part one diet and.

Diet and Disease

Disease this is what we know we know that about 70 percent of the deaths in the developed world are due to chronic diseases of our own making an estimated 90% of type 2 diabetes 80 to 90 percent of heart disease and 40 to 70 percent of cancers are considered entirely preventable in 2011 the World Health Organization identified the four big lifestyle culprits and they identified them as being a pterri lifestyle excess of alcohol tobacco and an unhealthy diet and they identified the unhealthy diet as the.

Number one risk factor and they defined an unhealthy diet as one that is based on processed foods with added fat sugar and salt and animal products rich in saturated fats it's low in vegetables fruits legumes whole grains nuts and other high-fiber foods and I want you to dissect this just a little bit they really identify two categories of foods that are responsible for our epidemic of chronic disease and those are number one processed foods with added fat sugar and salt and number two animal products rich.

In saturated fats those they identifies the two big culprits what do they say can help to prevent disease vegetables fruits legumes whole grains nuts and seeds plant-based foods that are rich in in fiber and phytochemicals and so on at.

PlantBased Foods

The highest risk are inactive populations consuming western-style diets the highest rates globally we find in North America northern Europe Australia and of course the developing countries who are rapidly adopting our Western ways and this is I mean we've probably all seen it but it really is very sad to see because so many of these populations that lived off the land for so many generations very rapidly develop these diseases when they start eating the way that we're eating at the lowest.

Low Risk Areas

Risk our populations who live simply are physically active and consume unprocessed plant-based diets the lowest rates globally are some parts of rural Asia parts of South America and of course the blue zones and the blue zones.

Blue Zones

For those of you that are not familiar with the blue zones these are places in the world where people live the longest healthiest lives they have more centenarians people that live to be at least a hundred than anywhere else in the world but what's really interesting about these populations is not only do these people live a long time but in the latter stages of their lives they're still productive even at ninety or a hundred years of age they're still walking up the sides of the mountains.

And gardening and and that's what's really interesting about the Blue Zones and there are five blue zones Okinawa Sardinia Italy Loma Linda California and that's the seventh-day adventists the vegetarian Adventists II Korea Greece and the Nicoya Peninsula of Costa Rica and if you look at what common sort of thread can you weave through all of these long-lived healthy populations there are several and the first is that they tend to have a very strong sense of family they tend not to smoke they're strongly socially engaged they.

Do constant moderate physical activity so they're moving all day long they're doing their gardening they're walking and so forth and we're diet is concerned there are two big factors that are common to all Blue Zones number one they all consume legumes or beans lentils peas so forth as part of their their foundational foods and two they all consume plant-based diets every single one not necessarily vegetarian or vegan just the Adventists are vegetarian or vegan but very strongly plant-based and this man that you see standing here.

Is an Okinawan centenarian this man is a hundred or more years of age he was just identified as a centenarian and just just look at this man look at he's got a shovel over his shoulders look at the definition of the muscles in the arm his in his arms his veins is this not what we all wouldn't look like 100 years old this is unbeliev he's just he's so cute [Music].