Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen

Give Us This Day Our Daily Dozen

This is Dr. Michael Greger. He’s a physician-turned-author-educator, and we’ve featured him and his work occasionally over the past year or so:

• Brain Food? The Eyes Have It! ← this is about dark leafy greens, lutein, & avoiding Alzheimer’s
• Twenty-One, No Wait, Twenty Tweaks For Better Health ← he says 21, but we say one of them is very skippable. Check it out and decide what you think!
• Dr. Greger’s Anti-Aging Eight ← his top well-evidenced interventions specifically for slowing aging

But what we’ve not covered, astonishingly, is one of the things for which he’s most famous, which is…

Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen

Based on the research in the very information-dense tome that his his magnum opus How Not To Die (while it doesn’t confer immortality, it does help avoid the most common causes of death), Dr. Greger recommends that we take care to enjoy each of the following things per day:

Beans

• Servings: 3 per day
• Examples: ½ cup cooked beans, ¼ cup hummus

Greens

• Servings: 2 per day
• Examples: 1 cup raw, ½ cup cooked

Cruciferous vegetables

• Servings: 1 per day
• Examples: ½ cup chopped, 1 tablespoon horseradish

Other vegetables

• Servings: 2 per day
• Examples: ½ cup non-leafy vegetables

Whole grains

• Servings: 3 per day
• Examples: ½ cup hot cereal, 1 slice of bread

Berries

• Servings: 1 per day
• Examples: ½ cup fresh or frozen, ¼ cup dried

Other fruits

• Servings: 3 per day
• Examples: 1 medium fruit, ¼ cup dried fruit

Flaxseed

• Servings: 1 per day
• Examples: 1 tablespoon ground

Nuts & (other) seeds

• Servings: 1 per day
• Examples: ¼ cup nuts, 2 tablespoons nut butter

Herbs & spices

• Servings: 1 per day
• Examples: ¼ teaspoon turmeric

Hydrating drinks

• Servings: 60 oz per day
• Examples: Water, green tea, hibiscus tea

Exercise

• Servings: Once per day
• Examples: 90 minutes moderate or 40 minutes vigorous

Superficially it seems an interesting choice to, after listing 11 foods and drinks, have the 12th item as exercise but not add a 13th one of sleep—but perhaps he quite reasonably expects that people get a dose of sleep with more consistency than people get a dose of exercise. After all, exercise is mostly optional, whereas if we try to skip sleep for too long, our body will force the matter for us.

Further 10almonds notes:

• We’d consider chia superior to flax, but you do you. Flax is a fine choice also.
• We recommend trying to get each of these top 5 most health-giving spices in daily if you can.

Enjoy!