Caldwell Esselstyn's book is aimed at prevention and cure of heart disease. Neal Barnard's book is specifically for diabetes. The other three authors — Dean Ornish, Joel Fuhrman and John McDougall — have a general audience in mind.
If you have time to read only one book on whole-food plant-based diet, I'd recommend this one. Dr Greger is a physician. He has a unique style of presenting information: his writings are somewhat funny and peppered with snippets and citations of hundreds of medical studies.
As of 2018, "How Not To Die" had 2700+ 5-star reviews on Amazon. Dr Greger maintains Nutrition Facts, a free website with dozens of videos and articles. His YouTube channel: NutritionFacts.
Also check out the companion The How Not to Die Cookbook (272 pages, 2017) by Dr Greger and Gene Stone.
Dean Ornish surprised the medical community in 1990 by demonstrating that heart disease could be cured by adopting four guidelines: (a) eat vegetarian food, (b) no alcohol, (c) walk half an hour every day, and (d) pursue stress reduction activities like yoga and meditation. Before Ornish's work, nobody believed that heart disease could be reversed. The prevalent belief was that after a heart attack, one had to be on medication for life.
Soon after publication of his initial research in 1990, Dean Ornish convinced an insurance company to try his program on patients scheduled for bypass surgeries. The results were fantastic: the insurance company saved about $30K per patient. Over the next 20 years, Dean Ornish continued his research. Over time, the medical community and insurance companies were convinced.
In 2010, Medicare (US Govt health care system) approved the Dean Ornish Program for rehabilitation of heart patients (see this memo). To participate in this program see list of providers who offer this program.
'The Spectrum' is different from other books in the 'Plant Based Diets' genre in that Dean Ornish provides a whole spectrum of choices. At a high level, he divides people into 'healthy' (who seek lifestyle guidelines for prevention) and 'sick' (who seek lifestyle guidelines for cure). For healthy individuals, small amounts of animal products and refined sugars are allowable. For sick individuals, there are sharp boundaries — cutting out animal products and refined sugars is best.
For more information, see 2004 TED Talk (16:53).
Chapter 1 of the book is available for free here.
Caldwell Esselstyn is a former heart surgeon from Cleveland Clinic. After Dean Ornish, he is the second doctor to demonstrate that heart disease may be reversed by following a plant based diet and moderate exercise. By reversal of heart disease is meant that the plaque in the arteries goes away! Esselstyn is famous for a 20-year study that is summarized below (text copied verbatim from his website):
Two differences between Dean Ornish's program and Esselstyn's guidelines relate to dairy and stress reduction. Esselstyn does not allow any dairy and he does not emphasize stress reduction, making it optional. According to him, simply changing food habits and ensuring daily exercise is sufficient for reversing heart disease. Both Ornish and Esselstyn emphasizes complete elimination of oils for heart patients. Other plant based diet advocates do not emphasize elimination of oil.
For more information, see Heart Attack Proof (website) — 14-minute TED Talk (great summary of Esselstyn's work) — The Last Heart Attack (CNN documentary) by Dr Sanjay Gupta — Out of the Closet (a detailed and inspiring personal story of Rhandeev, a Google employee who helped his entire family switch to Esselstyn's food guidelines following his dad's heart attack).
Neal Barnard has shown that type-2 diabetes can be reversed by adopting a plant based diet. In 2006, he published results of a clinical study in the journal Diabetes Care. As explained in this article, Neal Barnard's plant based diet was shown to be superior to the diet recommended by the American Diabetic Association in alleviating type 2 diabetes. The research paper for the study is: A Low-Fat Vegan Diet Improves Glycemic Control and Cardiovascular Risk Factors in a Randomized Clinical Trial in Individuals With Type 2 Diabetes.
Comparison with Gabriel Cousens' book on the same subject: Gabriel Cousens is another doctor who advocates plant based diets. He runs the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center in Arizona, USA, where he has been treating type 2 diabetes for several decades now. Gabriel Cousens also write a book: There Is a Cure for Diabetes: The Tree of Life 21-Day+ Program. Some Amazon reviewers suggest that Cousens' book lacks details (it is more of an advertisement for his Tree of Life Center) and recommend Neal Barnard's book on diabetes instead.
The Tree of Life Center by Gabriel Cousens produced a documentary called (DVD) Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days (92 minutes, 2009) — available for free on YouTube. I encourage my friends to watch this documentary. Six patients with diabetes were tracked for 30 days as they lived at the Tree of Life Center. They followed Cousens' diet guidelines and daily exercise routines. Within days, all patients improved dramatically. All of them continued with their lifestyle changes beyond these 30 days. The documentary is uplifting because each patient showed remarkable improvement in health and spirit.
Further information: Neal Barnard's Website and diet guidelines. Some Youtube videos: "A Cure for Diabetes through Veganism" (Part I — Part II — Part III) and Neal Barnard for Reversing Diabetes.
Dr Joel Fuhrman is a general practitioner who advocates plant based diets for everybody, without focus on any one specific disease. Eat To Live was on the New York Times bestsellers list in 2011 — 2012 time frame. He quickly followed up with another book called Eat for Health (453 pages, 2012), whose preface is quoted below:
In the same book, on pages 29—35, Fuhrman concedes that even though the science underlying the individual guidelines in his diet is well established, there are no medical studies or randomized controlled trials specifically for his diet, which is a combination of many such guidelines. In contrast, studies on diets (a combination of guidelines) by Dean Ornish, Caldwell Esselstyn and Neal Barnard have been published in peer reviewed scientific literature. So it is largely from his 20+ years of experience in curing patients that he speaks of the efficacy of his guidelines in curing various diseases listed above.
Further information: Dr Fuhrman website is an extensive website with many articles. I found Joel Fuhrman's talk shows (free mp3's) quite helpful. In these talk shows, Dr Fuhrman answers questions posed by listeners. Among doctors who advocate plant based diets, Joel Fuhrman is the only one who has a book specifically for children: Disease-Proof Your Child: Feeding Kids Right (288 pages, 2006). In addition, he's the only one with a book on fasting: Fasting and Eating for Health (1995, 255 pages). Joel Fuhrman is also the doctor who cured Joe Cross in the documentary Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead (available for free). Joe did a 60-day juice fast.
Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman: Food List — What To Eat is a great summary of this book.
John McDougall is a general practitioner who treats patients with a variety of ailments. He is the doctor who influenced Carl Lewis to switch to a plant based diet in 1990. He runs a clinic in Santa Rosa.
In 2012, when I switched to a plant based diet, it was John McDougall's website which influenced me. In particular, a friend pointed me to his diet guidelines (click on 'Next' repeatedly or click on Quick Links on the right). I was hooked!
Further information: John McDougall website — YouTube videos by him — List of Books by him at Amazon.
In Defense of Food is a delightful book! Chapter by chapter, Michael Pollan studies the history of food production and food guidelines over the last century. He emphasizes that food sold in the supermarket is not real food, it is a 'food like substance' produced by industrial processing with the inclusion of myriad chemical compounds.
Several decades ago, food guidelines were in terms of real substances like bread, grains, fruits and vegetables. Nowadays, food guidelines are in terms of invisible substances like carbohydrates, fats and vitamins, collectively called 'nutrients'. How did this shift in thinking occur? Michael Pollan traces the history of this phenomenon in Chapter 1 ('From Food to Nutrients'). An excerpt from that chapter:
An excerpt from Chapter 3, in which Michael Pollan traces the history of food additives:
'Eat Food, Mostly Plants, Not Much' is a lovely slogan by Michael Pollan which summarizes his philosophy. First, eat 'food', not 'food like substances' being sold in superstores. Second, eat mostly plants. Michal Pollan is an advocate of plant based diets, like Ornish, Esselstyn, Barnard, McDougall and Fuhrman. He is an omnivore, so he does not recommend that animal products be eliminated. However, he recommends that most of the calories should be derived from plants. Finally, his guideline is to eat less via calorie restriction and portion control. In contrast, plant based diet advocates put such restrictions only on nuts and seeds. For other ingredients (whole grains, beans & lentils, vegetables and fruits), they impose no restrictions because these foods are not calorie dense, so we naturally feel full quickly.
Michael Moss is a Pulitzer Prize winning author who wrote a NYTimes Bestseller tracing the history of three addictive food additives: salt, sugar and fat. See NYTimes Review. Each letter in the book cover was derived from a food product available in the supermarket: