This month, we are thrilled to share an exclusive interview with physician and author, Dr. William Li. Dr. Li is the author of the best- selling book, Eat to Beat Disease, as well as his upcoming book, Eat to Beat Your Diet available for pre-order at drwilliamli.com/etb-diet-book.

Dr. Li is on an anti-diet crusade—a large-scale information campaign to raise awareness of the new science of metabolism and body fat. He believes that scientific insights around food come with unique urgency and this knowledge should be practically accessible to the public, not buried in the pages of medical journals.

This interview will arm you with a fascinating new way to harness food for health.

A conversation with Dr. William W. Li

As president and medical director of the Angiogenesis Foundation, physician and scientist Dr. William Li is pushing the modern scientific community to embrace a forgotten ancient wisdom: Food is medicine.

Drawing on decades of clinical research as well as a longstanding history in Mediterranean and Asian traditions, Dr. Li wants the public to replace the quick-fix mentality of dieting with the “MediterAsian” way—a sustainable, plant-based approach to well-being.

According to Dr. Li, most of what we commonly believe about metabolism is false. Rather than count calories to lose weight, Dr. Li says we should mindfully eat more metabolism-activating ingredients and choose a diversity of foods that help us enjoy life.

“We should not fear food but embrace it,” Dr. Li tells CuraLink. For exactly how to put the new science of metabolism into practice and level up your health, continue reading below.

William W. Li, MD, President and Medical Director of the Angiogenesis Foundation

What inspired you to pursue medicine? Are there any lessons from your early career or life related to metabolism, body fat and nutrition that shape your perspective today?

My family culture gave me a right-brain, left-brain kind of mindset. I grew up in a family of both artists and scientists. My mother was a pianist and my father was a biomedical engineer. Blending my love of both creativity and the logic of science was challenging at first, but during college, I found a way to integrate them nicely.

Dr. Li’s time in the Mediterranean taught him valuable lessons about a sustainable, healthful approach to eating that does not sacrifice pleasure

At Harvard, I majored in biochemistry, but I also loved studio arts, art history, and, in particular, the history of science. I realized that if you take the long view of how society advances, both creative and scientific endeavors have always blended together.

My hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is a multicultural hub with ethnic communities that have proudly maintained their food traditions. This imprinted on me the powerful connections that individuals have with their food cultures. My own background connected me to the food of Asia.

Before I went to medical school, I took a gap year and went to Italy and Greece to study first-hand how food, culture and health are part of life in those Mediterranean countries. I saw how food was integral to the quality of people’s everyday lives. It was not just eating to survive but eating to live. Fresh, local foods were prepared according to regional traditions and were part of their cultural identity.

Fast forward to the present, my early research about the benefits of the Mediterranean diet has become substantiated by science. The eating patterns I observed years ago have become accepted as among the healthiest according to epidemiological studies.

Decades ago, I had watched people eat in ways that we recognize now as healthy: freshly prepared, locally grown food, mostly plants, lots of legumes, healthy fats, less meat, an emphasis on seafood and an abundant use of herbs and spices, as well as drinking coffee and red wine in moderation.

I went to medical school driven by my belief that medical science allows us to help our fellow humans. But in medical school, the focus on pharmaceuticals in treatment made me realize that the medical establishment had somehow lost the legacy of food being integral to supporting health and assisting in healing. I knew I wanted to somehow bring back food as a tool in the toolbox of health care.

Scores of studies suggest that a plant-based diet rich with fish, olive oil and fruits and vegetables is key to longevity

Although I’ve spent decades in my career helping to develop novel therapeutics for cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and vision preservation, I could not stop thinking about two outstanding questions. First: How do we define health? And second: What are the effects of foods when we introduce them into our bodies, and how do they affect health and disease at the cellular, molecular and genomic levels? The sophisticated methods to study these effects existed for drugs, but could we apply those same methods to studying food?

All of these influences have shaped the work I do today to deepen our understanding of how our body responds to the foods (and medicines) that we introduce inside ourselves. My journey has taken me from the lab to the clinic to the farmers market to bring these worlds together.

What inspired you to write Eat to Beat Your Diet? What do you hope your readers will learn from the book?

My background in academic medicine was based on the importance of publishing scientific research for scientists, but when it comes to food and health, there is an immediacy to the conclusions that needs to be heard by the general public.

“There is a certain urgency to nutritional information.”

Dr. Li’s book Eat to Beat your Diet will hit shelves on March 21, 2023. Learn more and preorder the book here

Discoveries on food can have significant impacts on people because everyone can take new insights about food and apply them to their lives immediately. So it became part of my mission to get this knowledge out as urgently as possible. That’s why I gave my 2010 TED Talk “Can We Eat to Starve Cancer?” and why I took on the huge challenge and great opportunity to become an author of health books for the public. My first book Eat to Beat Disease: The New Science of How Your Body Can Heal Itself explored how food can combat illness. And my new book Eat To Beat Your Diet: Burn Fat, Heal Your Metabolism, and Live Longer is the direct sequel that shows how you can move your health to the next level— by improving your metabolism—regardless of where you are starting from healthwise.

How have research breakthroughs over the past few decades upended conventional wisdom about human metabolism?

We have all heard the term “metabolism” and most of us feel like we have a basic handle on the concept. But there are many misconceptions that recent scientific research has upended. For example, we are not born with “fast” or “slow” metabolisms—we are all hardwired to have the same metabolism at birth. Nor is our metabolism programmed to automatically slow down when we reach middle age. In fact, our metabolism is designed to be rock stable from age 20 to 60. Only after 60 does it decline slightly, by about 17% by the time we reach our 90s. The fact that all humans are hardwired to undergo four patterns of metabolism over the course of their lifespan is an amazing discovery. This finding is based on a massive study published in 2021 in the journal Science, which analyzed the metabolisms of 6,000 people across 20 countries. What we eat, how we eat and when we eat can affect these patterns in ways that either optimize or suppress our metabolism.

In Eat to Beat Your Diet I talk about the new science of your metabolism and the foods that you can eat to improve it. This is not a diet book, it is an anti-diet book!

“Our metabolism is not our genetic destiny.”

Most people think that if you eat more food, you will slow down your metabolism. But the latest research reveals some interesting surprises. The first is that certain foods activate, stimulate and increase metabolism. Not only can these foods increase metabolism, but they do this by fighting excess body fat.

Every year, fad diets and metabolism “hacks” spread like wildfire. Why are people attracted to these quick- fix solutions, and what does diet culture get wrong about achieving true health and well-being?

Society has conditioned people to want to fight fat to lose weight. Sometimes this is for vanity. Other times, doctors tell patients they need to shed some pounds. Our culture looks for the easy, quick fix. When it comes to dieting, the crash plans and fads are usually based on severe restriction, elimination and deprivation of food.

These approaches are almost impossible to adhere to over the long haul, and most people give up after a while and rebound in their weight. Vanity is not health, and quick fixes do not lead to long-term health. The good news I share in Eat to Beat Your Diet is that it’s possible to eat foods that are delicious, in reasonable amounts and in ways that allow you to sustainably fight excess body fat and improve your metabolism.

We should think about taming our body fat for the right reasons—and that is to harness our hardwired metabolism.

Can you walk us through the latest science of body fat and disease?

Body fat is healthy tissue. We need it for life itself. We now know that body fat is an organ, just like your heart, brain and kidney. And it’s not just any organ, it’s an endocrine organ that releases hormones that influence our brain, metabolism and circulation. Fat is not our foe—until there is too much of it. Everyone needs to be concerned about this because even people who are slender can have too much body fat packed inside their slender frame.

Too much fat is harmful because it causes inflammation, disrupts immunity, interferes with our circulation, derails our sleep and poisons our liver, among other damaging effects. Excess body fat also suppresses our hardwired metabolism, slowing it down.

The new science of metabolism reveals that not all types of fat are created equal, healthwise

Taken together, abundant body fat sets us up for cardiovascular disease, diabetes and even cancer. So, we want to tame our body fat by keeping it in check. This goes a long way to preventing the chronic diseases that we fear the most.

What is really interesting about the new science of body fat is that we now know there are three types of fat. One is subcutaneous fat. It’s right under the skin. This is the jiggly stuff under your arms and chin and on your thighs and buttocks. It needs to be kept in check for health, but it’s not the most harmful fat. Two, there is visceral fat. This fat is packed inside your belly, like packing peanuts in a shipping box. You can have a slim box that is overpacked with peanuts. Similarly, you can have too much visceral fat regardless of your body size.

A small amount of visceral fat is needed for health, but too much is a setup for a derailed metabolism and metabolic diseases like diabetes. Three, there is a surprisingly useful fat called brown fat. This is not jiggly, but rather paper thin. It is not close to the skin, but rather close to the bone. And brown fat has a unique function. It serves as a space heater in the body and can burn down excess energy by drawing it from the harmful stores of fat. In other words, brown fat is a good kind of fat that can fight harmful fat.

There are some foods that can trigger brown fat to start burning away harmful fat, which increases your metabolism. Other foods have been discovered to prevent fat cells from forming or even keep them from getting larger. The surprising truth is that you can eat food to fight fat.

Can you share five potent foods or ingredients people should focus on adding to their diet?

Apples: They contain an ingredient called chlorogenic acid, a natural chemical that lights up your brown fat to burn harmful white body fat.

Navy beans: The dietary fiber in beans builds gut health, improves your metabolism and can help to shrink your waistline by burning harmful body fat too.

Tea: It contains polyphenols that are beneficial to your metabolism. Not just green tea but also oolong tea, and a smoky, dark tea called Pu’erh tea is also beneficial.

Cinnamon: This spice contains bioactives that control fat cell growth and triggers the brown fat to start burning away excess harmful fat.

Seafood: Not only salmon and oily fish like mackerel, but also cod, hake, and even shellfish like mussels, clams, oysters, and even shrimp, lobster and squid all contain beneficial omega-3 fatty acids that streamline your metabolism.

You can choose delicious meals with these ingredients making the process of improving your metabolism and eating to beat your diet a pleasure, not a chore.

What are the lasting benefits that can stem from the lifestyle changes you describe in Eat to Beat Your Diet? What’s at stake if people do not change their diet and lifestyle?

We all want to live as long as possible, with the best quality of life possible. Our metabolism is responsible for our health and energy levels, which are connected to how we feel. With a healthy metabolism, we have energy, better blood flow and the ability to enjoy our lives.

“If we want to live long and prosper, we need to tend the garden of our metabolism.”

The great news is that there are many foods that can benefit our metabolism. I write about 150 of them in Eat to Beat Your Diet. They are all used in the healthiest food cultures. You can really love your food to love your health.

Healthy aging is more important than ever before. Healthcare systems around the world are buckling under the weight of chronic diseases that arise from unhealthy metabolisms. If we can lower the burden of disease by taking care of our metabolisms, we can make our health systems more sustainable and efficient. We can also become better stewards of our planet by eating the very same metabolism-bettering, mostly plant-based foods because doing so is healthier for the environment.

In the book, you describe applying the legendary Bruce Lee’s philosophies to health. Can you outline the principles involved in his approach and why they may be helpful for mental and physical well-being?

Dr. Li uses the latest clinical research to demonstrate food as medicine

Bruce Lee was a childhood hero of mine. He was a legendary martial artist, pioneer in fitness and philosopher. When I reflected back on his life philosophy,

I realized his practical, flexible and integrative approach to martial arts is exactly how I approach my own dietary choices and eating patterns. Bruce Lee said: “Absorb what is useful. Discard what is not. Add what is uniquely your own.”

This approach emphasizes self- knowledge, so you get to know yourself really well, and fit your food to who you are, rather than blindly following a strict set approach designed to make everyone act in the same way. Each and every day, we find ourselves in different circumstances. Bruce Lee emphasized the value of adapting to whatever situation you find yourself in and using available tools to succeed.

“You can respect tradition, without being a slave to it.”

When it comes to food, we all have our own personal and family traditions. You can take the best of what traditions have to offer, but feel comfortable discarding the rest.

Ultimately, I hope people realize that food is core to our humanity. We should not fear food but embrace it. By embracing it, we can use the wisdom that modern science is providing us and apply it in ways that give us delight.

To learn more about the new science of metabolism and how to fight harmful body fat, visit www.drwilliamli.com and follow Dr. Li on social @drwilliamli.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

If you have any questions or feedback, please contact: curalink@thecurafoundation.com

Newsletter created by health and science reporter and consulting producer for the Cura Foundation, Ali Pattillo, and associate director at the Cura Foundation, Svetlana Izrailova.