10 Years a Vegan

This month marks my tenth year of being vegan. It’s hard to believe that much time has passed, and I thought I’d take some time to write about it.

In some ways, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that my family would be one to go vegan. My parents are very image-conscious, and when I was growing up, they always wanted to project an image of being normal respectable middle-class Americans, whatever the cost.

My mother was the one who originally became interested in veganism. She says that she wasn’t feeling good and started reading more about diet and disease, which led to her reading books such as The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, a comprehensive 3-decades-long study on the link between animal product intake and chronic illness.

She attempted to be vegan as most as possible with a non-vegan family for perhaps half a year. It seems stupid to say it now, but I didn’t understand why there was suddenly almond milk in the house. She never really explained why she was doing what she was doing, likely because her husband would have accused her of “brainwashing” her kids.

In fact, I was somewhat hostile to the different diet she seemed to be following because it was yet another source of conflict between my parents. My father, who had retired years ago and was responsible for watching me and my brother when our mother was at work, complained about how horrible my mother’s diet was whenever she wasn’t in the house (and sometimes when she was in the house).

But then, my dad had blood tests that showed he had high cholesterol and was prediabetic. That shocked him, and suddenly he was receptive to what my mother was saying about diet and disease. It was September 10 years ago when I first started to hear information from my parents about how omitting animal products from the diet resulted in better health, and this information made me interested in reading more about the subject, an interest that stays with me to this day.

It is odd that my mother only regularly started talking about the link between diet and disease when my dad had a personal health stake in it. As an athlete and someone who wanted to be healthier in high school, I think I would have listened. If my mother had told me information about dairy causing acne or the estrogens I was consuming from cheese, I think I would have listened. I can’t say for sure, however, since hindsight is 20/20 and I was just a teenager back then.

At the same time as I started learning about the health benefits of the vegan diet, I also began to learn more about the environmental and humanitarian impacts of the livestock industry. I was amazed that no one else knew this information and tried talking to people at my high school about it – with the result that I either annoyed people or people thought I was insane.

As was later reinforced during my science communication MS program, just because you give someone knowledge does not mean that they will act on that knowledge and change their behavior, even if the new behavior would have positive impacts on their life.

Being image-conscious people, my parents tried to hide their veganism from everyone they knew for as long as humanly possible. It was only when they became too disgusted at the idea of eating animals to look normal that they conceded and admitted that they were vegans to their friends and family. “My family is finally coming out of the closet,” I joked to my one childhood friend, a joke so clever I remember it 10 years later.

The reactions from extended family were horrible to witness. They ranged from mockery to the silent treatment. Liberal or conservative, many were angered by the sudden appearance of vegans in the family. Ten years later, at least some of these relatives have gotten over their initial reaction and are now perfectly nice about it.

In the ten years since I have become vegan, the reaction I get when I tell people I am vegan has changed considerably. Then again, I have also moved from an evangelical town with the most churches per capita of any US city to a liberal university town. But I still appreciate it when people tell me that it’s cool that I’m vegan or that they wish they could do that as well. It is far better than them treating me with scorn.

One thing I am incredibly grateful is that my family (parents and brother) are also vegan. I feel such sympathy for those that live with people who will mock or sabotage their decision. I like that I know I can enjoy plenty of home-cooked vegan food when I go to my parents’ house. In fact, now it’s hard to imagine living with someone who isn’t vegan.

After ten years, it’s hard to imagine not being vegan anymore, and I can genuinely say that I’ve never considered going back. I wish that I had been raised as vegan since birth, knowing what I know now, but I guess making the change at 17 is not too bad.

Dallas High Speed Train & Other High-Speed Rail Projects

This is the 300th week of this blog! I’ll return to the subject of the first blog I wrote on 28 April 2019, trains. After this week I’ll go to a posting schedule of less than once a week. It’s going to be a busy semester ahead and although I really enjoy writing about something new each week, it will be nice not to have this self-imposed responsibility.

It is no secret that the US lags behind other developed countries when it comes to efficient high speed rail networks. In the 1960s, when other countries such as Japan were investing in highspeed rail, the US was focusing on developing the highways of the nation using the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. Highways often offer a better option for traveling between cities than railroads do in the US, especially because freight trains have priority on many lines across the country. This preferential status means that passenger trains can be delayed for hours.

Yet in the past 5 years there has been increased interest in rail transport. In 2018, Brightline became the first private intercity passenger service to open in the US in over 100 years. This rail line with its distinct yellow-patterned trains began on a 70-mile (112-km) stretch of track between Miami and West Palm Beach.

Brightline is one of the only two rail networks in the US considered high-speed, although the speeds of American high-speed trains are low compared to counterparts in Europe and Asia. Amtrak’s Acela, which runs throughout the northeastern US, is the other high-speed railway in the US.

Amtrak hoping to attract 20 million additional passengers each year in the next 15 years. One the company’s major plans is an improved Northeast Corridor (a route that runs from Boston to Washington DC) with a high-speed train capable of traveling at 350 kph (220 mph). Overall, Amtrak will increasingly capitalize on the “too far to drive, too close to fly” routes in the US.

In the past month, another high-speed rail project in the US has moved forward. In early August, the North Central Texas Council of Governments’ Regional Transportation Council (NCTCOG) designated an additional $1.6 million to be given to construct a bullet train between Dallas and Fort Worth.

The project has been in the planning stages for years, and has been proposed as a way to alleviate traffic congestion in the metropolitan areas of Texas. The total cost of the project is estimated to be $30 billion if it was connected to Houston. The train is supposed to complete the journey between Dallas and Houston in 90 minutes, reaching speeds of up to 200 mph (321 kph).

The proposed line has been delayed significantly over objections to its elevated route. The $1.6 million granted by the Council is supposed to be used to study alternative routes that would be more acceptable to all stakeholders in the region.

Although Dallas to Houston is the long-term dream of the individuals involved with designing the route and lobbying for the construction to begin, Dallas to Fort Worth is a more reasonable goal in the short term. NCTCOG expects to get federal approval from the federal government later this year so that the project clears the environmental review stage. The project continues to be bogged down in questions of selecting the most acceptable route, particularly one that is elevated above the city rather than expensively tunneling under it.

One notable high-speed rail project currently being laid down is Brightline West, which links Las Vegas to Southern California. At a cost of $12 billion, the project is intended to be completed by 2028 in time for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics. This train is also intended to travel at speeds of up to 200 mph (321 kph).

California is also investing in high-speed rail, and its plans to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles are estimated to cost $135 billion. The train on this line is supposed to travel at a maximum speed of 220 mph (354 kph), although the earliest we might see it is 2030.

Although technically not high-speed rail (called ”higher-speed” in some news articles), construction has also begun on a rail line that will link Raleigh, North Carolina and Richmond, Virginia. The travel time between these two cities will be an estimated 90 minutes when using this new railway. With Amtrak, the trip takes 3 hours and 45 minutes (this is a prime example of why people choose to drive rather than take a train).

The construction of high-speed rail projects in the US is off to a slow and much-delayed start. The success of the projects mentioned in this blog will determine the rate at which interest in high-speed rail spreads in the country over the coming decade.

Hurricane Ernesto Wreaks Havoc in the Caribbean

On Wednesday of last week, Puerto Rico was hit by Hurricane Ernesto, a former tropical storm that strengthened to Category 1 status. The hurricane resulted in storm surge, heavy rainfall, and winds of up to 74 mph (119 kph) striking the US territory. On Wednesday night, 540,000 Puerto Ricans did not have electricity. By Friday morning, that number was decreased to 220,000. At the same time, around 20% of the US Virgin Islands’ population was without electricity.

On Friday morning, more than 250,000 residents of Puerto Rico were without any potable water because of the extensive damage and flooding from the hurricane. Six inches (15 centimeters) of rain fell on Puerto Rico in one afternoon, causing flash floods around the island.

The storm has since moved on to Bermuda with winds of up to 85 mph (137 kph). As of Saturday evening, the storm has the possibility to dump anywhere from 6-15 inches (15-38 cm) of rain over Bermuda in a single night. As of Sunday, the storm is still far away from the mainland US coast, but has created deadly rip currents throughout the eastern coast. Two men on Hilton Head, South Carolina likely drowned as a result of these rip currents last week.

The destruction of infrastructure in Puerto Rico shows the vulnerability of the territory’s electrical system and the lack of investment that occurred after Hurricane Maria in 2014. On the morning of 20 September 2017, Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico. Intense rainfall and category 4-force winds pummeled the island. Puerto Rico’s power grid was knocked out immediately, leaving all of the island’s 3.4 million residents without electricity.

The vast majority of all above-ground phone and internet cables were also disabled, and most radio stations were also put out of commission by the hurricane. Initial official death counts from Maria were tallied at 64, but this number began rising in subsequent studies, and may be as high as 4,645. The damage dealt to infrastructure was estimated at $90 billion, with roads and bridges destroyed across the entire island.

Half a year after Maria made landfall, large portions of Puerto Rico’s power grid was still non-functional, revealing serious defects in the centralized nature of the island’s power system. At this point, it is difficult to know how quickly the current damage to the pipelines and electric lines of Puerto Rico will be restored after Hurricane Ernesto.

The official Atlantic hurricane season runs from 1 June to 30 November, although of course storms don’t obey arbitrary deadlines and can happen in late May or early December. The most active period for hurricanes is mid-August to mid-October, and the minimum sea surface temperature required to fuel a hurricane is around 80ºF (27ºC).

Scott Ritter, FBI Raids, & Freedom of Speech: A Reflection

Several days ago in the Land of the Free™, the FBI conducted a raid on the home of Scott Ritter. Ritter has served as a US Marine and as a weapons inspector for the UN, and is an anti-war voice with a long history of involvement in international affairs who is willing to call out US war crimes. He was a key speaker in an international peace rally a year ago in New York City. You can guess that the US government is not a fan of that type of person.

Ritter has been an enemy of the US government for years, particularly after he spoke out against the US’ war in Iraq and demonstrated the government’s lie about weapons of mass destruction being present in the country.

This is not the only incident involving Ritter and the US government to occur in 2024. In June of this year, Ritter was removed from a plane on his way to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. Federal agents confiscated his passport without telling him the reason and have never returned it.

It should be noted that Ritter does not have an untainted past. He has been convicted of sex offenses twice: in 2001 when he attempted to set up a meeting with an undercover officer posing as a 16-year-old girl, and in 2009 when he exposed himself on a webcam to an undercover officer posing as a 15-year-old girl. He was found guilty of unlawful contact with a minor, criminal use of a communications facility, corruption of minors, indecent exposure and served 3 years in prison for these crimes. He does have a criminal record and his work in revealing the US government’s crimes does not excuse his own criminal acts.

Nevertheless, federal law enforcement has stepped up their intimidation tactics of Ritter in this past year after he has very publicly denounced the genocide of the Palestinians and warned of a possible widespread outbreak of war in the Middle East if the US continues to back Israel. The timing of this new interest in Ritter is too suspicious to be natural, especially considering the vast power that AIPAC holds over the American Government. From what we know now, the raid appears to be an intimidation tactic because of Ritter’s foreign policy views, a method of deterring others from speaking out.

The US government has never hesitated to punish those who speak out for peace. Only recently was Julian Assange released from prison after the US’s dogged 14-year attempt to silence him. The US government charged the Australian citizen with violating a WWI-act that was passed with the intention of jailing peace activists. Assange was clearly being made an example of, and ended up having to plea guilty to a crime he did not commit simply to be set free from psychological torture. Chelsea Manning served 7 years in prison for revealing US war crimes in Iraq. Her original sentence of 35 years was commuted by President Obama.

A year ago, the FBI raided the home of Omali Yeshitela, head of the US’ African People’s Socialist Party, a group that is (surprise!) vocal against US militarism and imperialism abroad. Then-81-year-old Yeshitela and his wife were forced out on the curb as the FBI broke in windows and threw flash-bang grenades into their home in St. Louis. The FBI agents conveniently informed the Yeshitelas that they had the search warrant for the house “nearby) but never showed it to them before entering the house. Many of the three-letter agencies actively work to silence and intimidate voices for peace.

Perhaps new evidence will emerge and there will be a reason why Ritter’s house was raided besides the fact that he criticizes the military-industrial complex. But let us all remember that the FBI is the same agency that tried to convince Martin Luther King Jr. to kill himself. This is the organization that prosecutes animal rights activists as terrorists for filming inside slaughterhouses. The issue of animal rights, though removed from US militarism abroad, demonstrates another way that the FBI is a tool of powerful corporations and the elite used to eliminate troublesome opponents. The latest raid on Ritter’s home is in all likelihood a continuation of the FBI’s mission to intimidate and neutralize threats to the war machine.

What Is AMPK?

AMP-activated Protein Kinase (AMPK) is an enzyme that is supposed to sense when your body’s fuel reserves are low. If the enzyme senses this lack of fuel, it will activate and issue the command to stop storing fat and start burning it for energy.

The activity of this enzyme affects a person’s weight, but it also affects how long a person lives. When AMPK switches cells towards energy conservation, the cells can begin recycling internal or surrounding debris in a process called autophagy.

From the Greek stems meaning “self-eating,” autophagy occurs when the cell recycles misfolded proteins, damaged cellular components, inefficient mitochondria, and other waste. Autophagy itself is a process that is connected to longevity, likely because the directed sweep of cellular debris results in better functioning cells. AMPK also inhibits mTOR, a component of metabolism that is key to inducing cell growth but is also associated with aging.

Long-term caloric restriction may increase AMPK activity, but this blog will focus on exercise and dietary changes that affect AMPK, particularly since these changes are more achievable for people.

One study had type-2 diabetic people cycle on stationary bikes. Within 20 minutes, the AMPK activity in their bodies tripled. The AMPK from exercise also causes the body to build more mitochondria, which is why consistent exercise results in speed and endurance gains over time. As mentioned above, the autophagic process that AMPK induces also clears out damaged or defective mitochondria, resulting in more efficient fat-burning of cells.

Certain types of food can increase AMPK activity. Hibiscus and vinegar are two foods that can activate the enzyme. But for those that can’t find hibiscus or don’t really like vinegar, it is possible to get the body to produce acetic acid from another source: many of the bacteria in our intestines can create acetic acid from fiber. Thus, eating a fiber-rich diet also increases AMPK activity.

In contrast, the food palmitic acid suppresses AMPK activity. Palmitic acid was named after palm oil, the food in which it was first isolated. However, this compound is actually most concentrated in meat and dairy fat. Inhibiting AMPK activity decreases the chance that cells can switch into the conservation mode where they recycle debris and burn fat

The drug Metformin is meant to boost AMPK through being slightly toxic to mitochondria, but studies suggest that the drug has negative effects on non-diabetic obese individuals that take it. As often occurs, when health is offered in the form of a pill, things go awry.

But fortunately, AMPK can be activated through aerobic exercise and dietary changes, meaning that altering the activity of this critical enzyme is not out of our reach.

Dr. Michael Greger talks more about AMPK here:

American Astronauts Continue to Be Stranded in Space

This story has slipped under the radar with all the other chaos in the world. As of 26 July, US astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams have been in space for 50 days. Sounds like a great adventure, but that is 42 days longer than they were supposed to be there.

As of now, there is no set return date for the astronauts. On 5 June, Wilmore and Williams launched into space on a Boeing Starliner. During the flight, the craft experienced helium leaks and reaction control system thrusters, among other technical difficulties. The astronauts have been forced to stay at the International Space Station for much longer than anticipated as they figure out what is wrong with the Starliner.

Both NASA and Boeing were aware of a problem with helium leaks from the Starliner prior to launch, and this issue postponed the originally planned launch date of the craft to 5 June. But both NASA and Boeing claimed that the technical issue was too small to be a safety problem for the crew prior to the launch.

NASA also has stated that the Starliner is safe to travel home in, and a series of tests are currently being run to see if this is the case. The final series of tests on the ship’s thrusters are scheduled for this weekend. If there are no issues detected in the thruster tests and the helium leaks remain stable, NASA will move forward with the process of sending Wilmore and Williams home.

If the tests reveal serious safety issues, however, the astronauts will likely be transported back to Earth via SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spaceship. SpaceX is Boeing’s rival in aerospace manufacturing, and this latest Boeing crisis has caused the company to receive backlash. Boeing was recently in the news again after the DOJ gave the company a plea deal related to their criminal negligence that led to the crashes of two Boeing 737 planes and resulted in 346 casualties.

This weekend will reveal whether the Starliner is fit to transport the crew back to Earth or if an alternative transportation method must be used, resulting in another strike against Boeing.

Origin & Development of the Word Nihilism

The word “nihilism” today refers to a belief that all values and existence itself is meaningless. It also refers to overwhelming cynicism towards the world or extreme skepticism towards everything. The word has been in the English language for a surprisingly short amount of time.

The stem word of nihilism comes from the Latin word for nothing, nihil. In the Middle Ages, the word was used to describe heresy. It wasn’t until the 1700s that the term nihilismus was used in German texts. Scholars disagree about the exact person to coin the term, but the likely candidate is Swiss philosopher and physician Jacob Herman Obereit. He used the word in 1787 to pejoratively describe the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.

German philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi then popularized the term nihilism in his own works that advocated for faith and revelation instead of more secular Enlightenment reasoning.

Nihilism was often used as a contrast to idealism in the early 19th century, but a political movement in Russia would soon give the word a new connotation. In the early 1800s, nihilism emerged in Russia as a set of beliefs that were connected by anti-establishment ideologies such as anarchism or socialism. Nihilism in this sense was not referring to a belief in nothing, but extreme distrust of existing political institutions and the intent of advocating for an alternative system. It also advocated for utilitarianism and scientific rationality above all.

Russian author Ivan Turgenev helped the term resurge in popularity throughout Europe with his 1862 novel Fathers and Sons, which explores the generational gap between older liberals who want reform and the younger nihilist generation that wants revolution. Turgenev is often falsely credited with coining the term nihilism, even though it had been in use in Europe for decades before he used the term in his novel.

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche also used the term in his work, claiming that the amorphous concept of nihilism would create a great crisis of humanity as it destroyed our moral and religious convictions.

By the early 20th century, the term nihilism was often used as a pejorative term for anyone who was seeking reform. Its use became broader until rather than describing a social movement, as had been the case in 19th century Russia, the term was often used for anyone who critiques modernity or even pop culture. Many social movements and music types (ahem, heavy metal) were described as nihilist in the later 20th century.

The result is that today, nihilism has a very fluid meaning and is often applied to atheists, fascists, socialists, humanism, postmodernism or many other ideologies and movements. In modern times, nihilism is used in popular culture to describe many belief systems that disagree with the status quo, are pessimistic about the state of the world, or advocate a radically different arrangement for society.

Even philosophers themselves disagree on what a nihilist philosophy actually looks like, making it difficult to create a more systematic definition. Perhaps the best way to describe nihilism is the way Justice Potter Stewart classified obscenity in the 1964 Jacobellis v. Ohio case: “I know it when I see it.”

Ants Clean Wounds & Amputate Limbs

A new paper published in the journal Current Biology has documented an interesting behavior of ants. These small creatures sometimes treat the wounded limbs of other ants from their anthill.

The specific ants investigated by the researchers were Florida carpenter ants. Ants have an adaptation known as the metapleural gland that produces antibiotic fluid. The ants in the study were able to identify wounds on the legs of their fellow ants and used the antibiotic secretions in the treatment process.

The researchers studied wounds on the ants’ tibiae (lower part of the leg) or femurs (upper part of leg). The femur wounds were treated with antibiotic fluid and then amputated to prevent the spread of infection, whereas the tibia wounds were only treated with antibiotic fluid.

The researchers hypothesized that the ants behave differently in response to the wound locations because of the circulation changes that occur when the femur area, but not tibia area, is wounded. When the tibia is wounded, bacteria spread faster in the body, whereas circulation slows during femur wounds, allowing time for amputation. It took about 40 minutes for the ants to perform an amputation.

Amputation of legs with injured tibiae increased ants’ survival by less than 40% to 90-95%. For tibia injuries, the ants’ survival rates increased from 15% to 75%.

As far as the researchers could tell, ants’ ability to diagnose wounds is innate rather than learned. There aren’t any medical ant interns observing how the more experienced ones treat leg wounds.

The ability to diagnose wounds and amputate based on the risk of spreading infection is a behavior seen in only one other species: humans. Although ants aren’t conscious of their medical treatment decisions in the same way that people are, it is astonishing to see a relatively complex behavior in a very distant cousin of the animal kingdom.

DOJ Gives Boeing Plea Deal

As Boeing has been in the news once again due to stranding astronauts on a space station after a failure of the company’s Starliner capsule, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has presented the aircraft manufacturer with a plea deal for a completely different matter. This deal will allow Boeing to avoid a trial involving the charge of conspiracy of defrauding the US government.

From 2018-2019, two of Boeing’s Max 737 airplanes crashed, killing a total of 346 people. The charge against Boeing was first filed in 2021 over allegations of misleading the FAA inspectors that examined the Max 737 aircraft.

As part of the plea deal, Boeing must plead guilty to the charge and consent to having an external corporate monitor surveil the company, pay a roughly $200 million fine, and remain on a 3-year probation.

Understandably, the families of the victims of the two crashes are not satisfied with this deal. A $200 million fine is peanuts for a company that made $77.8 billion in revenue in 2023. The plaintiffs want the DOJ to proceed with a trial rather than offering a plea deal, and for the charges to be the maximum of $24 billion, a number that would actually have consequence for the company.

In early 2021, Boeing entered into a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA – where amnesty for the crime is granted in return for fulfilling the prosecutor’s requirements) after being charged following the two crashes. Yet in May of this year, Boeing was found to be in violation of that agreement when a door plug flew off one of its planes when the craft was in the air.

Leaving aside the issue of the two Boeing whistleblowers that “died unexpectedly” this year, reports in the past few months have shown that Boeing knew about defective parts and serious safety violations at the company and ignored or in some cases concealed them. Witnesses in the April Congressional hearings confirmed that rather than focusing on safety, Boeing was focused on cutting costs while increasing output.

This criminality is tied to the deaths of 346 people. An ordinary person can go to jail for manslaughter, but I think we all know that the CEO of Boeing will face no consequences for the company’s criminal negligence. At the most, lower-level employees will be shouldered with all the blame, while those who should be held accountable will go free.

The DPA from 2021 clearly did nothing to improve Boeing’s concern with safety. The fines from the latest plea deal are completely inadequate to change the company’s behavior. The plea deal that the company is now being offered is another example of one set of laws for the rich, another for the poor.

Julian Assange Free!

After twelve years of political prosecution, journalist Julian Assange is finally free. He has been released from deplorable conditions in the UK’s Belmarsh prison and been allowed to return to his home in Australia.

Following five years of imprisonment at Belmarsh and a long trial of fighting against extradition to the US, Assange agreed to plead guilty to the so-called crime of violating the Espionage Act, a WWI-era law used to prosecute political dissidents and peace activists in the US.

Once he agreed to plead guilty, Assange was flown to Saipan, the capital of the American-owned territory of the Marina Islands. At the court in this obscure part of the US, a judge signed off on this deal and sentenced Assange to time served.

Although supporters of freedom of speech around the world should rejoice that Assange is now free, it is an insult that he had to plead guilty to a politically contrived charge in order to earn his freedom. His only crime was rattling the US ruling class through exposure of American war crimes in Iraq and other corrupt features of the country.

The fight to free Assange has been gathering more and more support throughout the years despite media attempts to paint Assange as a criminal. A large series of protests occurred in February of 2024 as London’s high court debated Assange’s extradition. Many people across the world contributed to building pressure for his eventual release. It was starting to become obvious to the American government that it wouldn’t be possible to imprison Assange without provoking a widespread backlash.

It is no coincidence that Assange was released not long before the American elections, because many politicians in the US can now wash their hands of this affair. But we should not forget the people in power who had the ability to stop the prosecution of Assange at any time and chose not to.

Nor should we forget that most journalists (especially in the US) either were silent about or actively cheered on the fascist pursuit of Assange. Even upon his release, news websites such as the New York Times or USA Today described Assange as a hacker and reported his guilty plea as him “admitting” to violating the Espionage Act. Such journalists are a shame to their profession.

Yet we should not forget to celebrate that a political prisoner has been set free, and also be thankful to the many real journalists that continued to get the message of Assange’s prosecution out there. What’s next for Assange? It’s hard to say at this point, but for now he is likely focused on being reunited with his family in Australia.

As a small postscript to this blog, one of the doctors who has been inspirational to me and my family has recently died. Dr. John McDougall was a physician who advocated for a low-fat whole foods plant-based diet as a way to treat and reverse chronic diseases. He served on the advisory board for the nonprofit Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and conducted countless educational events and seminars throughout his professional life. The plant-based community will miss him.

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