A doctor has revealed what sort of diet people should be on if they wish to have 'perfect, optimal health'. Speaking to podcast host Steven Bartlett on a recent episode of Diary of a CEO, Dr Philip Ovadia - who is an American heart surgeon and author of ' Stay Off My Operating Table ' - revealed the exact types of foods humans should and shouldn't be eating
Steven began by asking: "What is the diet that is going to avoid my metabolic health breaking down, going to keep my off your operating table and keep my health intact - which diet should I go for, Dr Philip?" The surgeon replied by stating how it is all to do with "whole real food."
Going into more depth, he explained: "I go into this in my book and what I really tried to look at was 'what are the common things amongst all diets that will keep people metabolically healthier and make people metabolically healthy'. And really it comes down to eating whole real food.
"Elimination of processed food is I think the most important step if you want to get metabolically healthy and remain metabolically healthy. Within that framework, there are lots of different possibilities - some people have great successes as a carnivore, some people have success as vegans.
"You can do Keto [diet], you can do Mediterranean, you can do Paleo, you can do lots of things in between. But when you really look at what is the one commonality that we can point to that will predict best success of being metabolically healthy, it's eating whole real food."
Asked what sort of food he means by this, the doctor said: "Great question because it's hard to tell these days. So the kind of rule that I give people around eating whole real food, is eat the things that grow in the ground, and eat the things that eat the things that grow in the ground.
"So these are going to be your plant products, and these are going to be your animal products." Steven jumped in to ask: "So you're pro-animal products?"
He replied: "I am very pro-animal products. I actually think that when you look at the balance between the two, you're probably better off eating more animal products than plant products - and again that's something that goes very counter to the mainstream narrative.
"Understand that as human beings, we evolved eating animals, we evolved eating meat. Our bodies are uniquely designed to process that meat. Our bodies are not well designed to extract nutrients from plants."
He continued: "And in fact when you look at the sort of evolutionary system, what developed is that the animals - especially ruminant animals with multiple stomachs - they are designed to extract nutrients from plants. Those nutrients end up in their muscle, in their meat, and then we are designed to get the nutrients from the meat.
"So I do think meat, animal proteins, are essential to human health. And yes, being a vegan is going to be healthier than eating a diet full of processed food, the sort of standard Western diet. But I don't think it's optimal for human health, ultimately."
