When John McDougall was an 18-year-old college student at Michigan State University, he woke up one morning paralyzed on the left side of his body. His roommates took him to the hospital, where he remained for two weeks. His case confounded the doctors. Eventually, through testing, they discovered that McDougall had suffered a massive stroke. The experience, especially the confusion of the doctors treating him and their inability to provide concrete answers, led McDougall to the conclusion that he wanted to go into medicine.
He succeeded in becoming a medical doctor. Experiences early in his career led him to the belief that obesity and many serious diseases can be treated by adapting a specific low-fat, high-starch, vegan diet. He treated over 12,000 patients, encouraging them to make lifestyle and dietary changes. McDougall, who moved to Portland in 2018, passed away on June 22. The family declined to give a cause of death but said he died in his sleep. He was 77.
McDougall was born in Detroit, Michigan, and raised in Plymouth, Michigan, the eldest of four in a tight-knit family. His father, John, was a designer at the Ford Motor Co., and his mother, Betty, was a homemaker. As a child, McDougall had a mischievous spirit. But his father instilled in him a reverence for honesty.
“His father taught him to always seek the truth, even if he got into trouble. That became his lifelong quest, to always tell the truth. That’s what really kept him going,” said his daughter, Heather McDougall, who is the current CEO of the Dr. McDougall Health and Medical Center.
At Michigan State University, he initially studied hotel and restaurant management, until his fateful stroke rerouted his goals and led him to pre-medical studies. After college, he enrolled in the university’s College of Human Medicine. It was there that he met his future wife, Mary, a surgical nurse. The pair got married after a whirlwind three-month courtship.
In 1972, the couple relocated to Honolulu, so that McDougall could do his internship at Queens Medical Center. He accepted a position at the Hamakua Sugar Plantation, where for three years, he cared for the workers and their families. It was in this job that McDougall discovered a connection between diet and disease, when he noticed that the elderly patients who followed traditional Asian diets were in far better health than their children and grandchildren, who ate more Americanized foods.
“He took care of first-, second-, third-, fourth-generation Japanese, Filipino, Chinese plantation workers. He found that Grandma and Grandpa were totally healthy but grandkids were overweight and had high blood pressure. He saw firsthand: it wasn’t genes, it was the food they were eating that was causing these diseases,” Heather McDougall said.
McDougall entered the University of Hawaii Residency Program. He immersed himself in research, reading scientific journals, discovering that other doctors had come to same conclusion he had: that diet could contribute directly to many common illnesses. He reached out to some of these doctors, who became mentors: Dr. Denis Burkett, Dr. Roy Swank, Dr. Walter Willett, and Nathan Pritikin.
McDougall developed his diet, composed of 90% starchy plant foods and 10% fruits and vegetables. He wrote his first book, The McDougall Plan, with his wife, who contributed recipes.
“Nobody was talking about diet as medicine, or how what you ate affected your health. He wanted the world to know,” Heather McDougall said. The book became a bestseller and Dr. McDougall would go on to write 12 more over the course of his career, often with his wife as a co-author.
In 1986, he established the McDougall Program at St. Helena Hospital in the Napa Valley. It was a 12-day, medically supervised lifestyle program. “You would have a full medical workup, he would get you following a starch-based, plant-based diet, and then follow you through 12 days, teaching you how to make a lifestyle change,” Heather McDougall said.
He eventually established Dr. McDougall’s Right Foods, a line of prepared soups that are still sold in almost 4,000 stores. In 2002, he moved his program from St. Helena Hospital to the Flamingo Resort in Santa Rosa, California.
“He treated people that were overweight, had heart disease or high blood pressure, kidney diseases, autoimmune diseases,” Heather McDougall said. “He treated all dietary diseases.”
McDougall was not without his detractors. One of his books was reviewed by prominent nutritionist Frederick Stare and scientist Elizabeth Whelan. They wrote: “The concepts in this book are extreme and out of keeping with nutrition reality. The diet is nutritionally precarious and, we hope, too austere for anyone to think about trying to follow.”
But he was undeterred, his daughter said.
He retired from clinical practice in 2018 but his program continued on, transitioning in March 2020, with the onset of COVID, to an online format.
In his free time, McDougall loved to sail, windsurf, and pilot planes. “He was always passionate about anything he did, whether it was doing things with his family or any of his hobbies. Treating his patients —he always did with a great deal of passion, honesty, and compassion,” Heather McDougall said.
“He was proud of what he created, opening people’s eyes to the power of food as medicine. When he first started doing it, hardly anybody was out there talking about the importance of plants and eating fewer animal products. He was one of the pioneers. There are so many people that are standing on the shoulders of my father,” Heather McDougall said.
McDougall is survived by his wife, Mary, his children, Patrick, Heather, and Craig McDougall, and seven grandchildren.
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