Browsing nutritional videos on the web can be fun for some of us, but not everyone has the time for it, or knows the best places to look. For that reason, we’ll save you some trouble. Here are, in no particular order, five of the best nutritional videos to be found on the internet. Just watch these five videos and you’ll learn far more about nutrition than most doctors know after four years of med school (and often, sadly, after years of medical practice).
1. Dr. John McDougall, as a guest on Chef AJ Live!, gives a presentation entitled, “What is Protein?” that demolishes the protein-centric argument for eating flesh foods. Dr. McDougall boasts decades of clinical experience that fuel his outrage against the medical establishment, and that outrage animates this no-holds-barred talk. The presentation starts about nine minutes into the video.
2. Dr. Michael Klaper was filmed addressing medical students, essentially trying to persuade them to make their careers useful and meaningful by actually helping patients, in a talk he calls “What I Wish I Learned About Nutrition in Medical School.” He explains the food-based origins of all of the common metabolic disorders that his audience of future doctors will surely go on to address in their careers, and then he of course explains the dietary cure. There’s plenty of science here, and even more common sense.
3. Those of us who advocate for a vegan diet encounter a repetitive repertoire of lousy arguments from those who try to make whatever desperate case they can muster for eating animal foods. There’s the protein argument, of course, that Dr. McDougall dispenses with so
thoroughly. There’s the argument that humans evolved as hunters, which, while not highly accurate (the evidence shows that our paleolithic ancestors ate a diet largely based on plants), is irrelevant to health and longevity in any case. There’s the canine tooth argument, a
particularly laughable rationalization given that we humans have such unimpressive canines. There’s the lamentable refrain that “sugar is the real problem in the American diet”—a classic straw man argument because nobody in the whole food, plant-based movement defends sugar. All of these arguments have been readily dispatched, in books and lectures, by numerous plant-based advocates. But one argument has rarely been countered: “Sorry, but I just love the taste of meat.” How, after all, can you dispute taste? Well, just watch Dr. Milton Mills answer persuasively that actually, no you don’t love the taste of meat, in his eye-opening lecture “Meat Eating and Mind Games.” Impressively, the man gives this talk while wearing a lei.
4. Dr. Neal Barnard, founder and President of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, gives a charming Ted Talk that explains all you need to know about diabetes in his talk, “Tackling Diabetes with a Bold New Dietary Approach.”
5. Finally, watch this short video from Dr. Michael Greger, the founder of NutritionFacts.org, about one of the most accurate predictors of heart disease. It is entitled “Survival of the Firmest: Erectile Dysfunction and Death.” You don’t want to miss this one. It’s less than five minutes long, and, fair warning, it will be sobering for some.
>Links:
Dr. McDougall: What Is Protein? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7330hPYHWjs
Dr. Mills: Meat Eating and Mind Games https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiqsy7JZWoE
Dr. Barnard Tackling Diabetes with a Bold New Dietary Approach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktQzM2IA-qU&t=983s
Dr. Greger: Survival of the Firmest: Erectile Dysfunction and Death https://nutritionfacts.org/video/survival-of-the-firmest-erectile-
dysfunction-and-death/
Dr. Klaper: What I Wish I Learned in Medical School: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fobYY3158fM&t=98s