How Not to Die

It took years for nearly five hundred researchers from more than three hundred institutions in fifty countries to develop the 2010 Global Burden of Disease Study. Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, it is the largest analysis of risk factors for death and disease in history.1 In the United States, the massive study determined that the leading cause of both death and disability was the American diet, followed by smoking.2 What did they determine to be the worst aspect about our diet? Not eating enough fruit.

Whatever genes we may have inherited from our parents, what we eat can affect how those genes affect our health. The power is mainly in our hands and on our plates.