Unlocking the Diet Code: What Science Really Says About Eating for True Health—And Why Everything You Thought You Knew Is About to Change

Ever wonder what ranks as the deadliest culprit in the United States? Spoiler alert: it’s not what you might expect — it’s the American diet. Yep, that very same fare that waves at us from fast-food drive-thrus and stacks our supermarket carts. About ten years ago, the American Heart Association sounded the alarm, confessing doubts that their ambitious goal of boosting cardiovascular health by 20% by 2020 would actually pan out if current habits stayed on course. And guess what? By the mid-2000s, folks had already kicked smoking to the curb and nearly hit exercise targets, but when it came to eating right—only a meager 1% scored anywhere near “healthy” on their diet charts. That’s with such “easy” benchmarks as sipping fewer than four and a half sodas a week! Fast forward to 2019, and things got even grimmer—down to one in a thousand. Teens? They scored a complete zero on healthy eating. No wonder U.S. life expectancy slipped behind countries with fewer resources—it seems billions spent on healthcare aren’t cutting it when the root cause is what’s on our plates. So, what’s really going on with American eating habits, and why is our diet making us sicker despite all the advances in medicine? Let’s dig into the story behind the stats, the societal twists, and what real change might look like. LEARN MORE

The leading risk factor for death in the United States is the American diet.

About a decade ago, the American Heart Association (AHA) expressed concern that its “2020 target of improving cardiovascular health by 20% by 2020 will not be reached if current trends continue.” By 2006, most people were already not smoking and had nearly achieved their goal for exercise. But when it came to healthy diet score, only about 1 percent got a 4 or 5 out of its diet quality score of 0 to 5, as you can see below and at 0:35 in my video, Friday Favorites: The Scientific Consensus on a Healthy Diet. And that’s with such “ideal” criteria as drinking less than four and a half cups of soda a week.

In the last decade, the AHA saw a bump in the prevalence of the ideal healthy diet score to about 1 percent of Americans reaching those kinds of basic criteria, but, given its “aggressive” goal of reaching a “20% target” by 2020, it hoped to turn that 1 percent into about 1.2 percent. (Really, as you can see here and at 1:01 in my video.)

So, how’d we do? According to the 2019 update, it seems we’ve slipped down to as low as one in a thousand, and American teens scored a big fat zero. No wonder, perhaps, that “for all mortality-based metrics, the US rank declined…to 27th or 28th among 34 OECD [industrialized] countries. Citizens living in countries with a substantially lower gross domestic product and health expenditure per capita…have lower mortality rates than those in the United States.” Slovenia, for example, beat the United States, ranking 24th in life expectancy. More recently, the United States’s life expectancy slipped further, down to 43rd in the world, although the United States spent the most ($3.0 trillion) on health care…”

What is the leading risk factor for death in the United States? As seen below and at 2:04 in my video, it is the standard American diet. Those trillions in health care spending aren’t addressing the root cause of disease, disability, and death. 

Here are some of the lung cancer death curves, below and at 2:08 in my video:

It took decades to finally turn the corner, but it’s so nice to finally see those drops. When will we see the same with diet?

“Approximately 80% of chronic disease and premature death could be prevented by not smoking, being physically active, and adhering to a healthful dietary pattern.” What exactly is meant by “healthy diet”? “Unfortunately, media messages surrounding nutrition are often inconsistent, confusing, and do not enable the public to make positive changes in health behaviors….Certainly, there is pressure within today’s competitive journalism market for sensationalism. There may even be a disincentive to present the facts in the context of the total body of information consumers need to act on dietary recommendations.” And there’s an incentive to sell more magazines and newspapers. The paper I’m quoting was written in 1997, before the lure of clickbait headlines. In fact, about three-quarters of a century ago, it was noted: “It is unfortunate that the subject of nutrition seems to have a special appeal to the credulous, the social zealot and, in the commercial field, the unscrupulous….The combination is one calculated to strike despair in the hearts of the sober, objective scientist.”

Indeed, the most important health care problem we face may be “our poor lifestyle choices based on misinformation.” It is like the climate change deniers: “Analogous to outspoken cynics denying climate change and influencing public opinion, healthy lifestyle and dietary advice are overshadowed by critics, diet books, the food industry, and misguided information in the media.” Maybe we need an entity like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—but for nutrition.

These days, “no single expert, regardless of academic stature or reputation, has the prominence to overcome the obstacles created by confusing media messages and deliver the fundamental principles of healthy living effectively to the public.”

What if there were “a global coalition consisting of a variety of nutrition experts, who collectively represent the views held by the majority of scientists, physicians, and health practitioners” that could “serve as the guiding resource of sound nutrition information for improved health and prevention of disease”?

Enter the True Health Initiative, which “was conceived for that very purpose.” A nonprofit coalition of hundreds of experts from dozens of countries has agreed to a consensus statement on the fundamentals of healthy living. See www.truehealthinitiative.org.

Spoiler alert: The healthiest diet is one generally comprised mostly of minimally processed plants.