Remembering Dr. John McDougall: A Tribute to His Lifelong Mission of Health Through Diet

I couldn’t believe it when I heard that Dr. John McDougall had passed away. From the accounts his family has shared publicly, he apparently went to bed on Friday night and simply never woke up on Saturday morning. He had led a completely normal day the day prior to his passing and simply left us all, slipping away peacefully and quietly during the night. He was 77 years old.

For those of you who do not know who Dr. John McDougall was, he was one of the most amazing general medicine doctors that has ever lived. With his incredible intelligence he had read and just about memorized an incredible amount of information about the effects of diet and lifestyle on human beings.

With unbelievable clarity and an unwavering commitment to the truth, he swept away dietary confusion brusquely and came up with a very simple explanation of the causes of most chronic diseases that affect us more and more in modern times. He simply referred to it as food poisoning. And as he clearly pointed out over and over, the poisoning was the result of eating animals, animal products and oils.

With the discovery of what causes these diseases, he was also profoundly committed to helping as many people as he could to discover that they themselves held the key to their own health and that key was in the shape of their fork and spoon.

When others suggested that exercise was just as important as diet, he strongly disagreed with a motto that he repeated loudly and often over and over. He simply stated that it is the food. It’s the food, it’s the food, it’s the food. When others would suggest that these diseases were caused by gluten, pesticides, lack of sleep, no access to health care and overly stressful lifestyles and that the cure was sleep, exercise and meditation, he would strongly disagree and proclaim that the strongest medical evidence was strictly dietary and that all other causes and cures were minimally involved compared to the overwhelming and crystal clear evidence pointing directly to the food.

In his lifetime, he treated thousands and thousands of patients very successfully, taking them off of medications that they had been sometimes using for years at that point, by simply prescribing a starch-based diet of rice, potatoes, corn and pasta — as he pointed out, the foods people love and should love as it is their natural diet and the one that makes them the happiest and most satisfied. And of course, with the return to a starch-based diet, there was naturally a normalizing of their weight while optimizing their health.

As a young doctor, he had worked as the sole medical practitioner in the Hawaiian islands on a sugar plantation, and while there he had made the profound discovery that the first generation plantation workers were strong and healthy, eating the vegetables, potatoes and rice from their native countries for the majority of their calories. They ate a simple and traditional diet and were slim and healthy as a result.

As they lived in the United States and became accustomed to American ways, they would start to feed their children heavy amounts of animal products and oil which affected their children’s health and caused all of the diseases of dietary excess that we now commonly see throughout society today. His solution to this was simply to go back to the diet that kept everyone slim and trim, which is a diet made of starches and vegetables with a little bit of fruit.

Dr. John McDougall tirelessly promoted this way of eating and pointed out the obvious healthy benefits of this diet repeatedly in 13 best selling books he wrote and published. He was also a prolific speaker as well as a tireless advocate for this dietary pattern that he knew would help so many people if they could just embrace it, give it a try and allow their bodies to return to a state of optimized health and wellness by eating a natural diet of starches, vegetables, and fruit.

As a young man of only 18 years old, Dr. John McDougall suffered a stroke caused by eating a diet full of animal products and oil which had clogged his arteries at that unbelievably young age. Throughout his life, he suffered the effects of that stroke with a slight limp in his walk. We could have lost him at that young age if he had not recovered from that stroke and I for one am so very, very thankful that his message will continue on, even though he has left us.

So please, eat some potatoes or rice in memory of Dr. John McDougall and give thanks for his incredible intelligence and wisdom that has helped to save countless lives and has shaped a real plan, with real hope, for a return to optimized health and wellness eating the foods people love the absolute most because of course, “It’s the food.”