Death of Dr. McDougall: Is his plant-based diet really better?

Let's look at the studies and not the politics

Let’s start with the fact that Dr. McDougall was a fantastic man and a real scientist who helped many men and women fix their type 2 diabetes.

I have nothing but admiration for that.

But I watched his videos over the years as he appeared more and more gaunt and unhealthy and then recently we learned he died at age 77, not a particularly advanced age.

Now there are people saying that he had serious health problems as a young adult, and yada yada yada, reasons that he didn’t live long even though his plant-based diet was fantastic.

It’s a religious argument rather than a logical one. I had the same discussions over the years with people who saw my famous Youtube video that mentions Dr. Atkins died at a young age. They say, “oh, Matt, he slipped on ice, you don’t know what you are talking about, it had nothing to do with his diet.”

Then I point out that Atkins had a heart attack before, was fat and obviously very unhealthy looking. As I constantly point out:

Dr. Atkins had a history of heart problems.

He was fat and in very bad shape.

The "slipped on the ice" may have happened to finish him off, or it may not have. I find it a highly suspicious explanation. The family refused to allow an autopsy. 

The Wall Street Journal says:
A medical examiner's report on the death of diet guru Dr. Robert Atkins suggests that he had a history of heart attack, congestive heart failure and hypertension.

The document, a report of external examination from the chief medical examiner's office in New York, also says that at his death Dr. Atkins weighed 258 pounds.

Dr. Atkins died in April last year at age 72 of a head injury from a fall on ice while walking to work. The report attributes the death to a "blunt impact injury of head."

So much for slipping on the ice.

And I have to say the same about Dr. McDougall. He was a great man, but his diet was not so great.

It is true humans can eat a lot of things and live okay. I study very old people for a living, and there are plenty of old people who are vegetarians. Sort of.

Actually there are very few. The biggest vegetarian culture we have is in India, and they eat dairy products.

In fact all vegetarian cultures have eaten plants and dairy products. This plant-based diet thing got started somehow and turned into “vegan” as supposedly more healthy than a diet of animal flesh, dairy and plants.

One of the best analyses was done in the EPIC-Oxford trials. They found first that there is something they call the healthy volunteer effect. Those who volunteer for studies like EPIC-Oxford are much healthier and longer-lived than the general population.

For these and other studies, there is no real difference between healthy vegetarians and healthy omnivores.

In the pooled analysis of mortality in five prospective studies in 1999, the death rate ratio in vegetarians compared with non-vegetarians, based on a total of 8330 deaths, was 0·95 (95 % CI 0·82, 1·11)⁽ Reference Key, Fraser and Thorogood^{20 )}.

However, the death rate ratios for vegetarians compared with non-vegetarians varied between studies from 0·80 to 1·17, and the test for heterogeneity between studies was highly significant (P < 0·0001).

When the diet groups were subdivided, all-cause mortality was significantly lower in occasional meat eaters (death rate ratio and 95 % CI 0·84, 0·77, 0·90), fish eaters (0·82, 0·77, 0·96), and lacto-ovo-vegetarians (0·84, 0·74, 0·96), but not in vegans (1·00, 0·70, 1·44) compared with regular meat eaters (defined as those eating meat at least once per week)⁽ Reference Key, Fraser and Thorogood^{20 )}. ¹

[bold and paragraph divisions are mine]

The Vegans, the hard core plant eaters, did not live as long as those who ate fish, dairy, meat, etc. at least once per week.

To my knowledge, Dr. McDougall was hard core plants-only. And now his supporters are claiming he had early health problems that led to his early death.

His early death had nothing to do with a diet that is plant-based, of course.

Like I said, it’s a religious argument. There are suprisingly few studies on whether a Vegan, vegetarian (plants plus dairy and eggs) and omnivorous people live longer.

One thing is true. Vegans tend to be thinner. But being thin is not a longevity correlator.

Studying very old people, we find that they have MORE bodyfat as well as muscle than average.²

In conclusion, healthy centenarians had a lower FFM [Fat Free Mass] and higher body fat content than aged subjects. Level of physical activity and degree of disability seem to be the major determinants for explaining such differences.

Dr. McDougall was very very thin. I made this screen shot from a recent video.

His mind was alert and he seemed amazingly brilliant as always. But there is something to his look that is overly-lean and unhealthy to my eye. I notice this with most people on extreme diets.

If Dr. McDougall had investigated diet as scientifically as he approached other subjects he would not have been as extreme. I think that some milk and cheese and eggs would have served him well and potentially let him live far longer.

And to watch a short video I made about the death of Dr. McDougall, let’s see if vegan is really better.

1. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/proceedings-of-the-nutrition-society/article/longterm-health-of-vegetarians-and-vegans/263822873377096A7BAC4F887D42A4CA
retrieved 27-Jun 2024

2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0002916523189994
retrieved 27-Jun 2024