Michael Greger

Michael Greger is an American physician and nutrition researcher whose How Not to Die advocates for a whole-food, plant-based diet as the primary means of preventing chronic disease.

Michael Greger is a physician, author, and the founder of NutritionFacts.org, a non-profit website dedicated to providing free access to the latest nutrition research. How Not to Die (2015) and its companion How Not to Diet (2019) represent his most sustained popular works — comprehensive surveys of the research on diet and chronic disease, organised around the leading causes of death in the United States and the nutritional factors that the evidence suggests can prevent or reverse them. Greger is a committed advocate of whole-food, plant-based eating, and his books are written from that perspective.

The strengths of How Not to Die are real. Greger cites the research extensively, he engages seriously with the scientific literature, and many of his core recommendations — eat more vegetables, reduce ultra-processed food, prioritise legumes, nuts, and whole grains — are genuinely well-supported across multiple lines of evidence. The book’s organisation by cause of death is an effective way to communicate the cumulative health benefits of dietary change, and Greger’s writing is accessible without being simplistic.

The honest limitations are also significant. Greger is an advocate, not a disinterested reviewer of the evidence: he consistently selects and emphasises studies that support plant-based eating, and critics have pointed to instances of cherry-picking. The research on nutrition is genuinely uncertain in ways the book does not always reflect, and some of Greger’s more specific claims outrun the available evidence. Readers should treat the book as a well-argued case for one dietary approach rather than a comprehensive and balanced review of nutritional science. NutritionFacts.org provides ongoing access to his reading of the evidence for those who want to go deeper.