Michael Greger

Michael Herschel Greger (born October 25, 1972) is an American physician, author, and professional speaker on public health issues, particularly the benefits of a whole-food, plant-based diet and the harms of eating animal products. He is a vegan.

Greger went to college at Cornell University School of Agriculture, where as a junior he wrote informally about the dangers of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as mad cow disease, on a website he published in 1994. In the same year, he was hired to work on mad cow issues for Farm Sanctuary, near Cornell, and became a vegan after touring a stockyard as part of his work with Farm Sanctuary. In 1998, he appeared as an expert witness testifying about bovine spongiform encephalopathy when cattle producers unsuccessfully sued Oprah Winfrey for libel over statements she had made about the safety of meat in 1996.

He enrolled in Tufts University School of Medicine, originally for its MD/PhD program, but he withdrew from the dual-degree program to pursue only the medical degree. He graduated in 1999 as a general practitioner specializing in clinical nutrition. In 2001, he joined Organic Consumers Association to work on mad cow issues, on which he spoke widely as cases of mad cow appeared in the US and Canada, calling mad cow "The Plague of the 21st Century."

In 2004, he launched a website and published a book critical of the Atkins Diet and other low carb diets.

In 2004, the American College Of Lifestyle Medicine was formed in Loma Linda, and Greger was a founding member as one of the first hundred people to join the organization.

In 2005, he joined the farm animal welfare division of the Humane Society as director of public health and animal agriculture. In 2008, he testified before Congress after the Humane Society released its undercover video of the Westland Meat Packing Company, which showed downer animals entering the meat supply, and which led to the USDA forcing the recall of 143 million pounds of beef, some of which had been routed into the nation's school lunch program.

In 2011, he founded the website NutritionFacts.org with funding from the Jesse & Julie Rasch Foundation.

In his lectures, videos, and writings about nutrition, he tries to persuade people to change their eating habits from a Western pattern diet to a whole-food, plant-based diet, which he says can prevent and reverse many chronic diseases. He is critical of some other doctors for not encouraging their patients to adopt plant-based diets and to avoid animal-based products and criticizes the US government for giving watered-down advice about healthy eating in its guidelines, in order to protect the economic interests of food producers—especially those who make junk food and animal-based food.