Food as Medicine
A conversation with Dr. Neal Barnard, founder of the Physicians Council for Responsible Medicine
As a physician, Dr. Neal Barnard wanted to do more for his patients. After founding the Physicians Council for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), he accumulated the latest nutrition science and conducted additional research independently.
He’s written over a dozen books on diet and diabetes, pain, weight loss, anti-aging, cancer and being vegan, including his latest The Power Foods Diet: The Breakthrough Plan That Traps, Tames, and Burns Calories for Easy and Permanent Weight Loss.
He frequently teaches the science of diet and nutrition through his podcast, TED talks, and PBS fundraising specials. He's presented his research at Google and even to Congress. He is changing people's attitudes toward food, spreading the message that it is the most important medicine we can take.
This interview was first published in Point of Light in 2009.
Q: Dr. Barnard, let's talk a little bit about motivation. What motivated you to found this organization, the PCRM?
A: It was back in 1985, and at the time, I was concerned that doctors were pretty good with diagnosis and pretty good with treatment in certain cases, but they really weren’t savvy about prevention. Nutrition wasn’t on their radar at all, and that seemed to me to be an enormous area that we really needed to bring back to medical practice.
Q: And is the cancer project an offshoot of that? Is there a particular motivation there?
A: Even today, a lot of people are not really aware that cancer, to a great degree, is preventable, and even after it has struck, there is a lot you can do to improve survival, and number one is changing your diet. Many people today are not aware of that, and unfortunately, even the big cancer organizations are not advocating diet changes. They focus more on finding and treating cancer. Well, let’s bring in the diet. It’s a piece of that puzzle, too.
Q: Why aren’t they more focused on diet?
A: Historically, we didn’t have enough evidence to go on. People didn’t know that food would play a significant role, but starting in the 1960s, it became clear that when comparing countries, certain people were largely free of illnesses very common in other countries. I’m talking about cancer, diabetes, being overweight, heart disease, and other conditions. But that’s not a genetic difference because when people move from a safer area to a not-so-safe area, they get the same conditions, and people realize that before too long, it’s because of how they eat in these different places.
Q: But now, with all the science that’s out there, particularly with the work that you are doing, why do you think we see such resistance in the medical community?
A: Well, things are changing. More and more doctors are realizing that food plays a role, and not just a small role, but sometimes a decisive role in health, either for good or for ill. A lot of people have had very serious conditions, which they didn’t realize and their doctors didn’t realize were caused by the food that they were eating. Many people have had remarkable recoveries, which is also due to changing what people eat.
Q: So, we talked a little about motivation. What have you seen that internally motivates people to change their lifestyles?
A: The first thing is that people have to see a pathway. If you have never, ever heard that food is going to make any difference, if you can’t understand any rationale for why it would, why are you going to change? But when people can see that, yes, it really can make a difference, then I think that people understand that there are biological explanations for why people get better, and then they want to put it to work in their own lives.
Q: Externally, what tools or methods have you found are most effective in getting people to change their lifestyles?
A: Once people understand that diet can make a difference, the second thing is that people need a certain amount of support. You need support from your family, your physician, your friends, or other people who are dealing with the same condition you have. Here at PCRM, we bring in groups of people, maybe 15 or 20 people, who all have the same problem, it might be diabetes or a weight problem, and we get together and share our challenges and successes, and we share recipes. It’s really a way of being supportive so you can go down the same exploration together.
Activism by Billboard
Q: Your organization will put up a billboard at the All-Star game this year. What is the billboard, and what is the hotdog and cigarette connection?
A: Yes. The billboard looks like a pack of cigarettes with hotdogs coming out of it instead of cigarettes, and basically, it says that they can strike you out for good. It’s sort of an unlucky strike, if I can put it that way. Now, everyone knows that if you smoke cigarettes, you get lung cancer or at least you have a high risk of lung cancer, but they may not know if you eat processed meat, you have a higher risk of colon cancer or other kinds of cancer. That’s not controversial scientifically. We all know that’s the case. But the average person bringing their kid to the game and buying them a hotdog has no idea, and the people who make it are not going to tell you that. So that’s up to us.
Q: Do you hope it inspires, outrages, or gets people talking? What do you hope will happen?
A: The key thing is to get their attention, whether they’re inspired or outraged or whatever. As long as they talk about it and elbow each other and say, “Look at that.” That’s what we need because silence is death. If people aren’t talking about how foods can affect them, we’re in trouble
Q: Let’s discuss processed meats specifically. What does the scientific data now say about processed meat increasing the risk of colon cancer?
A: Processed meat includes bacon, ham, and cured and smoked processed foods. They are strongly linked particularly to colon and rectal cancer but also some other forms of the disease. There are several possible explanations. Nobody knows exactly why; it’s sort of like tobacco and lung cancer, which of the hundreds of chemicals is the cause is still not clear. But the reason we know there is a connection is that there have been 58 different research studies, and the evidence is extremely clear that the more processed meat you have, the higher your risk of colon cancer. It’s not just that people who eat more processed meat get more cancer; if you have one a day, you have a certain amount of cancer risk. If you have two servings a day, you have even more risk; if you have three servings a day, even more risk. So when you see that dose-response relationship, the cause and effect become pretty clear.
The Case Against Processed Food
Q: Jack Lalane said, “If man made it, don’t eat it.” Does that help us understand the difference between whole foods and processed foods in a straightforward way?
A: There are a lot of things you could say. As I think about them, healthy foods are vegetables, fruits, beans, and whole grains in as simple a form as possible. And, of course, nowadays, we have industries that are happy to turn these simple foods into heavily processed foods. They remove all the fiber, vitamins, and healthy ingredients and turn them into something with very little nutritional value. So, the closer you get to how nature made it, the better off you will be.
Q: Describe some of the work you are doing on the political side. How are you trying to shape policy?
A: The federal government does a dance with industry every year or two. In 2007, it was the Farm Bill. How much money should we give to support the dairy industry, the meat industry, the livestock feed grain industry, the sugar industry, etc? All the different groups converge on Washington; some are trying to increase subsidies, and others, like me, are trying to eliminate those subsidies. So far, all the victories have been on the side of the people who want more money for bad foods. In 2009, the issue with Congress, in their minds, was school lunches because if you can sell something to school kids, you’ve got 94 thousand schools in the U.S., all of which are a place where you can make a ton of money. These are also places where you can do a lot of harm to a lot of children, so we have been working on that, too.
Q: Are you also seeding a whole new generation eating bad food?
A: If you look at what kids eat, it’s been changing gradually. But from one year to the next, the changes are quite dramatic. When I was a kid, we wouldn’t have known a vegetarian meal if it hit us in the face. At the same time, we didn’t have a really healthy diet; it was sort of a meaty diet, and vegetables were kind of an afterthought. On the other diet, we had some healthy habits. We didn’t have a lot of sodas in those days, maybe every three or four months on someone’s birthday, but today things have changed a lot. Sodas are used daily; kids eat more meat than ever and a lot more cheese. They might not have realized it, but about a hundred years ago, the average American consumed 3.8 pounds of cheese per year. In 2009, it was 32 pounds of cheese per year. Where am I putting all that cheese? Well, I guess we know where they’re putting it.
Q: This kind of points to the inertia of family traditions and centuries of our eating this kind of diet, and in some way, as you say, it’s getting worse and worse. We’ve got the beef industry touting it as healthy food, and pork and dairy are doing the same. Are you seeing progress? Do you think more people are waking up to a healthy lifestyle?
A: There are signs of progress. The way I put it is like this. If you look at the population overall, frankly, we are in the worst shape we’ve ever been. People are heavier than they’ve ever been, there is more need for medical care than ever, and it’s a big, big problem. But within that, many people are saying, “Wait a minute, I want a better way. I want to feed myself better. I want to feed my kids better.” That group is bigger than ever before. The reason you can see that is to walk into any health food store. Twenty years ago, it was a little dingy, dark place playing folk music; the guy behind the counter was named Sunshine and was wearing a tie-dyed shirt. You go in there today, and health food stores are huge. The number of people who want to buy that stuff is enormous, and they’re not playing folk music anymore. So that tells me that the demand is now there.
Q: So we truly are in the best of times and the worst of times.
A: The population overall is in the worst shape it’s ever been, but the number of people who want a better way is also bigger than it’s ever been. I think it gets played out every night on the nightly news. Half of the commercials are for snack foods, and the other half are for medication to undo the effects of the snack foods. Many people like me feel strongly that we need to be on a better path.
Q: Your book, “Foods That Fight Pain,” details how foods, supplements, and herbs can help cure chronic pain. What kind of pain did you deal with specifically?
A: There are many different kinds of pain related to food. If it’s pain that relates to blood flow, well, the heart needs blood flow in order to function. If you eat the right kind of food, the arteries that supply blood to the heart stay wide open. Those arteries get clogged if you eat the wrong kinds of foods, meat, dairy products, etc. It’s not just the heart. You have the carotid arteries going to the brain and the lumbar arteries going to the back. Those arteries are the first ones to get blocked off. How many people thought that their lower back pain could be caused by the fact that their back isn’t getting an adequate blood supply? Now we know that’s probably the leading cause of chronic back pain. Can it be reversed? I think so if you get to it early in life. We’ve known for twenty years that arteries will reopen, but they will never reopen unless you change your diet and lifestyle.
Q: You can’t do it with just medications.
A: You really can’t. You’ve got to stop the cause, and the cause is bad foods.
Find out more about Dr. Barnard and the Physicians Council for Responsible Medicine at PCRM.org.
Dr. Barnard will speak at the Vegan Summerfest in Johnstown, PA, from July 10 to 14, 2024. Visit summerfest.navs-online.org for more information.