Healthy Food Habits with Dr. David Katz

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In this episode of The Functional Medicine Radio Show, Dr. Carri’s special guest Dr. David Katz talks about healthy food habits and the state of our health.

Dr. David Katz is the founding director of Yale University’s Prevention Research Center and current President of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. He is a two-time diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine, and a board-certified specialist in Preventive Medicine & Public Health.

Dr. Katz has published roughly 200 scientific articles and textbook chapters, and 15 books to date, including multiple editions of leading textbooks in both Preventive Medicine, and nutrition. In 2015, Dr. Katz established the True Health Initiative to help convert what we know about lifestyle as medicine into what we do about it, in the service of adding years to lives and life to years around the globe.

Main Questions Asked about Healthy Food Habits:

If we know how to prevent chronic diseases, why aren’t we doing it?
What is healthy eating?
What are the other components of the true health initiative?
Is there anything else you want to add?
What is the 4S approach?

Key Points Made by Dr. Katz about Healthy Food Habits:

Modern healthcare is a mess. Obesity and chronic disease are on the rise.
The average person doesn’t know what a healthy diet is.
There is enormous profit in maintaining the status quo – the food and pharmacological industries want to keep things the way they are instead of creating healthy food habits.
Evolution and history have made us poorly adapted to the modern environment.
We have reliable knowledge of healthy eating – we just have to accept it.
Confusion is very profitable.
If your diet is mostly made up of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, nuts, legumes, plus water when you’re thirsty, you are on track. These are healthy food habits.
How strange is it that we know how to feed wild animals but not our own species?
Changing and improving our diet will have huge impacts on human health as well as the health of the planet.
Your diet should be around 75% plant based.
As a culture, we eat too much beef.
It takes over 600 litres of water to produce a single litre of soda.
The True Health Initiative is about uniting the voices of influential people and declaring what healthy food habits are.
Healthy living in the modern world takes skills which can be learned.