Heather McDougal said her father’s passion was born out of “a desire to tell the truth,” a value instilled in him by his parents while he was growing up in his hometown of Detroit, Michigan.
“He taught the Bible, he wanted people to eat good food and he wanted to protect the environment. His greatest joy in life was helping others and his family,” she said.
He had his share of skeptics and critics, especially in the early days, some of whom dismissed his diet as extreme and unsustainable. But recent research seems to support the health benefits of a plant-based diet. A study published in May by the University of California, San Francisco found that men with prostate cancer could significantly reduce their risk of their cancer worsening by eating more fruits, vegetables, nuts, and olive oil and less meat, dairy, and fish.
A sign of good luck
At the age of 18, McDougall suffered a severe stroke that temporarily paralyzed the left side of his body and left him debilitated for the rest of his life, he said in his autobiography on his website. He walked with a limp.
Still, he considered the incident “one of the great blessings of my life” and it led him to go to medical school and meet Mary, a surgical nurse, in the operating room in 1971.
“She was his operating room nurse and he just fell in love. He tried to ask her out on a date and finally she said yes and three months later they were married,” Heather McDougall said.
In 1972, the newlywed couple moved to Hawaii, where they started a family and the young doctor served his internship. He also worked as a general practitioner for the Hamakua Sugar Company. It was there that he discovered his life’s work.
“The patients on the plantation taught me how to eat,” he told the Press Democrat in 2010. “The first generation Japanese, Filipinos and Chinese ate the same diet. They were slim and never had heart disease, arthritis or diabetes.”
The second generation was a different story.
“Kids who grew up in Hawaii ate more nutritious foods,” he said. “They were a little bit heavier and a little bit more likely to get sick.”
“I watched before my eyes as healthy older people thrived on grains, fruits and vegetables. When the other two staple food groups, meat and dairy, were added, their offspring declined,” he writes.
After earning his medical license in 1978, McDougall opened his own dietetics clinic in Hawaii. He began to speak out, pushing for the removal of talc from processed rice in Hawaii, California and Puerto Rico, and leading the successful fight to require surgeons to inform women with breast cancer of options other than surgery.
In 1986, McDougal moved his family to Santa Rosa when he was recruited to run the McDougal program at Adventist Health Hospital in St. Helena, a major center for cardiac surgery. By 1999, he was delivering programs remotely for Blue Cross Blue Shield from a hotel in Minnesota and for a supermarket company in Florida. In 2002, McDougal went out on his own and set up a permanent location at the Flamingo Resort. People came there to stay for 10 days and learn “a new way of living,” said Jill Nassinow, a Gualala nutritionist, culinary educator and cookbook author who worked with McDougal for years.
“He has inspired thousands of people to examine their behavior and make significant changes for their health and overall benefit,” she said.
The McDougall family lost their home in the Tubbs Fire in 2017. That same year, McDougall retired from running the program but continued to work as a speaker and on her own YouTube channel.
“McDougall completely changed the way I thought about medicine,” said Dr. Anthony Lim, who took over as clinical director of the program after McDougall’s retirement. He said that during medical school and residency, he learned to manage illnesses and symptoms with medicine. But McDougall’s contribution was to show people that they could not only manage symptoms, but also regain their health through diet, he said.
When he’s not advocating for health through diet, McDougall enjoys windsurfing, traveling, fly fishing and spending time with his family.
“When we lived in Hawaii, we dedicated our lives to sailing,” his daughter Heather said. “He loved adventure. He was a pilot.”
Heather McDougall said it was unclear what caused her father’s death. “He had a stroke and damaged arteries. The ideal death is to die in his sleep. He died the way he wanted to. He passed away sooner than we would have liked, but it was the way he would have wanted to die. I take comfort in that.”
In addition to his wife, Mary, and daughter, Heather, he is survived by sons Craig McDougal of Lake Oswego, Oregon, and Patrick McDougal of Orinda, brother William McDougal of Brookings, Oregon, sisters Linda Dupuy of Michigan and Kay McDougal of Ecuador, and seven grandchildren. The funeral will be private.
Staff writer Meg McConahey can be reached at 707-521-5204 or [email protected].
