Legacy Podcast - Dr. David Katz, Physician and Medical Journalist
An interview with Dr. David Katz, Founder and CEO of Diet ID
In this episode of Chapter's Legacy Podcast, Mariana Thomas interviews Dr. David Katz, founder and CEO of Diet ID, who promotes healthy eating, preventative medicine, and living a quality life.
Three Things You'll Learn
Why preventative medicine is necessary.
The importance of eating well.
Why diet quality is vital.
A summary of the episode
Dr. David Katz, Founder and CEO of Diet ID, discusses healthy eating, preventative medicine, and living a quality life.
David first became interested in healthy eating from trying out for sports. When he started thinking about food as fuel, he realized in order to live well, he also has to eat well.
While he was in residency to become a doctor, David realized that many patients suffer from very preventable illnesses. He became interested in small things people can do to help them live healthier lives.
David fell in love with writing partially through the influence of his mother, who was a poet. Writing became a way of expressing himself and organizing his thoughts. He has authored two books, The Truth About Food, and How to Eat, which he wrote with Mark Bittman.
His passion for helping people improve their diets led him to create Diet ID, an app that allows people to easily describe and assess their diet. Diet ID asks them to identify what foods they eat, rather than ask them try to keep track of each meal. He thinks that diet quality should be considered a vital sign, like blood pressure or heart rate, because of how important it is to a person’s health.
[28:51] “Our mission is to make diet quality a vital sign, because if we can get upstream and look at people’s diet quality, we can intervene before bad diet quality becomes problematic obesity, problematic hypertension, type II diabetes, coronary disease. Which is what we currently do. We basically wait for Humpty Dumpty to fall off the wall, often pushed by bad diet, and then deal with the aftermath. We really ought to get as far upstream as possible, and say; can we keep healthy people well by making sure we’re aware of threats to their health.”