Dr Garth Davis
Garth Davis is an American bariatric surgeon, physician and author. He promotes a wholefoods plant-based diet as a means of losing and controlling weight. Unlike many health professionals, who only seem interested in the (very substantial) health benefits of a plant-based diet, Dr Davis is an outspoken defender of the animals and cites his own reasons for being vegan as reducing cruelty to sentient beings.
Davis was the medical director of the Davis Clinic in Houston, Texas, and the medical director for bariatric surgery at the Memorial Hermann Memorial City Hospital before becoming the medical director of the weight management centre at Mission Hospital in North Carolina, where he was a board-certified surgeon. He is now the medical director for the Comprehensive Metabolic Disease Management Center at Houston Methodist and Methodist West. Davis is also a council member of the True Health Initiative.
Davis has authored the books, The Experts Guide To Weight Loss Surgery and Proteinaholic: How Our Obsession with Meat Is Killing Us and What We Can Do About It, in which he argues that a high-protein diet of animal source foods causes people to be overweight and more susceptible to diseases, such as cancer and diabetes.
In addition to his medical career, Davis is also an ultra-marathon runner and Ironman triathlete. All fuelled by plants.
“Veganism is simply about the animals. It is the idea that animals are sentient beings and, as such, should be afforded rights. At the very least, they should not be subjected to pain and torture especially if it is completely unnecessary to do so (…) I can’t say I am ‘proud’ to be vegan. It has nothing to do with pride. I simply want to contribute as little as possible to an industry that cares so little about the animals.”2Davis, G. World Vegan Day. Available: https://www.drgarthdavis.com/blog/world-vegan-day [Accessed 6 January 2022].
“I am simply vegan because I have no need to take the life of another being, especially not an animal bred into a hellish life of captivity and torture. The hardest part about being vegan is really knowing right now, as I type this, millions of animals are confined in cramped, filthy conditions. They feel fear and they feel pain and that kills me.”1Davis, G. World Vegan Day. Available: https://www.drgarthdavis.com/blog/world-vegan-day [Accessed 6 January 2022].
