We all know we should be eating better. But getting to a healthy diet can seem overwhelming, with lots of contradicting advice and confusing abbreviations. All we want is a healthy eating checklist.
So what if I told you that there’s a really easy way to eat healthier? A way, where you add healthy foods instead of taking away “bad” ones?
Improving your diet by adding things instead of taking them away sounds amazing, doesn’t it? Well, that’s exactly how Dr. Greger’s daily dozen worked for me! You could say, it is a gamified way of living healthy and eating well.
Before we dive into how exactly it works, let’s start with some background information for you!
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Disclosure: Some of the links below are so-called provision links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I can earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.
What is Dr. Greger’s daily dozen
Dr. Greger’s daily dozen is a list of things to eat daily. But Dr. Greger didn’t just pick those things randomly.
In his New York Times Best Seller Book “How not to die”*, he investigates the fifteen leading causes of death in America. He cites masses of research that shows how nutritional and lifestyle changes can sometimes help more in preventing those causes of death than pills, surgery etc.
Related: 9 books that changed my life
To make his findings actionable, Dr. Greger provides a checklist of the foods we should eat every day “to not die”. For more background information check out his page nutritionfacts.org.
The how not to die Daily Dozen checklist (printable)
Click on the graphic below to get my Dr. greger’s daily dozen checklist printable. The PDF will open in a new window and you can print it out directly!
Notice how there are no meat, cheese or eggs on the list. Dr. Greger’s list is completely plant-based. This doesn’t mean you have to go vegan to follow it. It simply invites you to prioritise the foods on the list and then add whatever you like.
Need some help with planning your meals? Check out the Capsule Pantry Blueprint here*! It’s a simple system that’s faster and easier than any other meal plan!
For more information on the serving sizes, I recommend you download the Daily Dozen app. Find it on the app store here for iOS and here for Android.
Another thing that might catch your eye is the “exercise” checkbox. Exercise is no food, but if we are planning on not to die, adding a “serving” of exercise every day is a great idea!
The vitamin checkboxes at the end might or might not be relevant to you. This depends on where you live and what you eat. If you have a vegan diet, supplementing vitamin B12 is a good idea. If you eat meat, fish, eggs and milk products you most likely don’t need any additional B12.
Vitamin D should be supplemented when you live in an area where you cannot get enough of it through sun exposure. Or if you never go outside during the day.
I personally supplement Vitamin D all throughout winter and make sure to get at least 20 minutes of sun every day between April and September. A couple of years ago I had a serious vitamin D deficit and I plan on never going there again.
How does Dr. Greger’s daily dozen help you to improve your diet
So why exactly is it so easy to improve your diet with this checklist? I will give you two reasons.
The first reason is that everyone loves a good checklist. Checking items off a list is just so satisfying! The concept of gamification works in our favor with the Daily Dozen app: We want to “finish” it! By wanting to finish it, we keep eating things off the list throughout our day. And that brings me to reason two:
While you go through the list of daily foods, you will probably have to introduce some new foods. For me, berries never were on my meal plan before I started using the app. I also had to add greens and cruciferous vegetables.
By doing that I had to find new recipes, centered around the daily dozen. And this automatically meant leaving out other foods, that weren’t quite as healthy.
Especially adding all that salad into my diet I often find it difficult to eat everything on the list, let alone additionally eating junk food. This healthy stuff is really filling!
Seriously, just try this for two weeks or so. I saw a difference in my skin (hormonal acne) pretty quickly.
The Daily Dozen & weight loss
If you happen to want to lose some weight, I am absolutely sure that this is gonna help as well!
In fact, I struggled a bit, in the beginning, to get to my required daily calorie intake. If that happens to you, just top off anything with olive oil or sugar-free and additive free peanut butter.
(I strongly recommend looking for a peanut butter like this one*! Added sugars and salts are super common, unfortunately, so you’ll have to double check the ingredient lists!)
So yes, you could use the Daily Dozen for weight loss. It is definitely not the primary goal of eating like this. And still, eating this way can easily result in dropping a few pounds.
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Daily dozen meal plan for a day: An example
As I said, to check off all items from Dr. Greger’s daily dozen, you might have to introduce some new recipes. Michael Greger published the “How not to die cookbook”* with more than 100 recipes, but I decided to make my own meal plan. This way it is adapted to what I like and can easily find locally.
So this is what one of my typical “Daily dozen meal plans” for one day could look like:
Breakfast
Quinoa breakfast porridge with banana, apple, raspberries, a handful of nuts and a spoonful of linseed flour. The linseed flour makes it almost pudding like.
If I did my workout before breakfast, as I usually do during my morning routine, I can already check off 8 of the 24 servings. One third by breakfast! Not bad, huh?
Adding the two glasses of water and one cup of decaf makes 11 boxes checked.
Lunch
For lunch these days I like eating a mung bean salad. Adding avocado, tomatoes, bell pepper, leafy greens and a spice mix with turmeric. This allows me to check off 6 more boxes, putting me at 17 out of 24.
Related: Quick & easy recipe: Mung bean hummus (no tahini)
Dinner
Now I have to mix a little more, seeing which checkboxes are still open. So I boil some lentil pasta, add some broccoli and a handful of leafy greens. Adding avocado for creaminess. Whew. By now I will also have had at least two more glasses of water throughout the day. 23 of 24.
What is left now is one whole grain checkbox. As it is evening anyways, I simply make some popcorn! Using a popcorn maker that doesn’t need oil*, to not clog my arteries unnecessarily. And that’s it! 24 out of 24!
Keep in mind that this is simply a daily dozen sample meal plan, and there are a million ways to adapt it to your own, personal style and appetite!
Now tell me: Have you tried eating Dr. Greger’s daily dozen? How has it worked for you? I am absolutely convinced by the concept, but I know that experiences can vary. I would love to hear your feedback in the comments!
*These links are so-called provision links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I can earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.
Thanks for the detailed post. I read a similar version in a book, and had success with it. In general I’ve found the concept very helpful of adding certain amounts of healthy food, to sort of crowd out the unhealthy food.
Yes, it worked the same way for me. Thank you for sharing!
Hi Invisible,
I also tried the daily dozen(more like couple dozen, amirite? :)) and it worked out well for a while. Indeed I had trouble eating all those calories and also passing all that fiber, so on workdays it’s a little harder to fulfill, but a few packs of nuts per week can help.
Nothing like a lentil soup, mung bean chilli, lentil falafel loaf, or lentil blended with roasted sunflowerseed “hummus”. Or egg fried mung beans, kimchi mung bean pancakes, or just plain mung beans with a little tomato sauce and pepper.
Those meal ideas sound really good!