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John A. McDougall is a celebrity doctor and author who has written that degenerative disease can be prevented and treated with a low-fat, whole foods, plant-based vegan diet—especially one based on starches which excludes animal foods and added vegetable oils. McDougall's diet—The McDougall Plan—has been categorized as a fad diet that carries some disadvantages, such as a boring food choice and the risk of feeling hungry.

Early years education and career

McDougall is a graduate of Michigan State University's College of Human Medicine. He performed his internship at Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1972 and his medical residency at the University of Hawaii. He is certified as an internist by the Board of Internal Medicine and the National Board of Medical Examiners.

In 1965, at age 18, McDougall suffered a massive stroke, which he attributed to his high animal product diet. Since the mid-1970s, he has followed mostly a vegan diet after observing that elderly patients from East Asia and the Pacific Islands, who lived mainly on rice and vegetables, appeared more healthy compared to younger generations who ate a more Western diet.

Between 1973 and 1976, McDougall worked as a physician at the Hamakua Sugar Plantation on Hawaii Island. Between 1986 and 2002, he launched a vegetarian dietary program at St. Helena Hospital in the Napa Valley, California. Between 1999 and 2001, he ran a dietary program for the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

McDougall is on the advisory board of Naked Food Magazine, for which he is also a regular contributor of articles espousing a plant-based diet.

Diet programs and products

In 2002, McDougall began the McDougall Program at the Flamingo Resort in Santa Rosa, California. The McDougall Program is a 10-day residential treatment program based in Santa Clara, CA which features a low fat starch based diet.

McDougall is the co-founder and chairman of San Francisco based Dr. McDougall's Right Foods Inc., which produces dried and packaged soups, and is manufactured by the SF Spice Co. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM). In 2016, McDougall was one of four named plaintiffs in a lawsuit by the PCRM alleging improper industry influence on establishing cholesterol recommendations.

McDougall Plan criticism

McDougall's namesake diet, The McDougall Plan, has been categorized as a fad diet with possible disadvantages including a boring food choice, flatulence, and the risk of feeling hungry. Reviewing McDougall's book, The McDougall Program for Maximum Weight Loss, nutritionist Frederick J. Stare and epidemiologist Elizabeth Whelan criticized its restrictive regime and "poor advice", concluding that the diet's concepts were "extreme and out of keeping with nutritional reality".

Select bibliography

McDougall has written several books, with his wife Mary contributing recipes, that sold 1.5 million copies as of 2008.

• McDougall, John; McDougall, Mary (1 April 1995). The McDougall Program for Maximum Weight Loss. Penguin. ISBN 9781101645123.
• McDougall, John; McDougall, Mary. The McDougall Quick and Easy Cookbook: Over 300 Delicious Low-Fat Recipes You Can Prepare in Fifteen Minutes or Less. Penguin. ISBN 9781101119174.
• McDougall, John (1 August 1991). The McDougall Program: 12 Days to Dynamic Health. Penguin. ISBN 9781101645116.
• McDougall, John (1985). McDougall's Medicine: A Challenging Second Opinion. New Century Publishers. ISBN 9780832904073.
• McDougall, John (1983). The McDougall Plan. New Century Publishers. ISBN 9780832903922.

See also

References

1. "Dr. McDougall's Health & Medical Center » About Us". Drmcdougall.com. Retrieved 2016-01-07.
2. McDougall, John A. "Dr. McDougall's Color Picture Book". Retrieved 18 May 2016.
3. ^ Alters S, Schiff W (22 February 2012). Chapter 10: Body Weight and Its Management (Sixth ed.). Jones & Bartlett Publishers. p. 327. ISBN 978-1-4496-3062-1. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
4. ^ Stone, Gene (28 June 2011). Forks Over Knives: The Plant-Based Way to Health. p. 52-3.
5. ^ "Dr. McDougall, Why Do You Act That Way?" (Vol.8, No.4). The McDougall Newsletter. April 2009. {{cite journal}}: |issue= has extra text (help); Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
6. "Interview with Dr. John McDougall". Famousveggie.com. Retrieved 2016-01-07.
7. "Our Advisory Board". Naked Food Magazine. Retrieved 13 September 2016.
8. ^ Robin Asbell, “Practicing What He Preaches”, Better Homes and Gardens Heart Healthy Online, archived June 17, 2008
9. "Executive Profile John A. McDougall". Bloomberg. Retrieved 13 September 2016.
10. Anderson, Mark (10 December 2014). "Bay Area food company to move operations to Woodland". Sacramento Business Journal. Retrieved 13 September 2016.
11. "John A. McDougall, M.D. & Mary McDougall". Dr McDougall's Health & Medical Center. Retrieved 13 September 2016.
12. "Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine". Actifist Facts. Center for Organizational Research and Education.
13. Sunny Aslam, “Vegetarian diet on solid ground, experts say”, USA Today, 28 November 2001.
14. Tayna, Lewis. "A lawsuit claims government guidelines on cholesterol were tainted by the egg industry". Business Insider. Retrieved 13 September 2016.
15. "The Physicians Committee Sues USDA and DHHS, Exposing Industry Corruption in Dietary Guidelines Decision on Cholesterol". Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. 6 January 2016. Retrieved 13 September 2016.
16. Stare FJ, Whelan EM (1998). The McDougall Program for Maximum Weight Loss by John A. McDougall M.D. (Book review). Hunter House. pp. 202–203. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
17. Peterson, D. 2012, "John McDougall a true believer," Tribune Business News 02 June 2012.
18. Jones, Margaret. "Read more, weigh less!" Publishers Weekly, March 14, 1994, 41+
19. Dahlin, Robert. "Slimming volumes; taking the pulse of diet and fitness books indicates that moderation is the watchword in eating and exercising - and in publishing, too." Publishers Weekly 20 Apr. 1990: 28+

• 20th-century American physicians
• Michigan State University alumni
• University of Hawaii alumni
• Living people
• 1947 births
• Veganism activists
• American people of Irish descent
• 21st-century American physicians