The Vegan Starter Kit

CHAPTER 1

The Best Decision I Ever Made

THERE ARE ENORMOUS HEALTH ADVANTAGES TO GOING VEGAN. For starters, it makes it easy to lose weight without cutting calories or going hungry. Whether you would like to lose twenty pounds or two hundred, this is the easiest way to drop that weight and to keep it off for good. Plant-based eating brings many other welcome changes, too!

Heart disease reverses. In 1990, Dean Ornish, MD, of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute and the University of California, San Francisco, showed that a vegetarian diet, along with other lifestyle changes, reversed heart disease in 82 percent of research subjects in one year, without medications or surgery.

Cholesterol levels improve. A vegan diet is the most powerful eating plan for cutting cholesterol. Unlike a Mediterranean diet, a low-carbohydrate diet, or any other diet approach, a vegan diet eliminates all the cholesterol and animal fat from foods, and it includes specific cholesterol-lowering nutrients. More on this in Chapter 4.

High blood pressure improves. A detailed review published by the American Medical Association showed that plant-based eating effectively reduces blood pressure, both because it avoids the blood-pressure-raising effect of animal products and because it takes advantage of special blood-pressure-lowering nutrients found in plants.

Diabetes gets better and sometimes goes away altogether. In 2003, the National Institutes of Health funded our research team at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine to do a head-to-head test of a low-fat vegan diet versus a conventional “diabetes diet” that relied on cutting calories and limiting carbohydrates for people with type 2 diabetes. Every week, the research participants came to our office to learn about healthful foods, to sit in on cooking demonstrations, and to discuss their successes and challenges. And as the weeks went by, remarkable things happened. Weight loss began immediately and effortlessly. Without counting calories or limiting portions, our participants started to trim away pounds. Blood sugars that had been stuck in the danger zone began to fall, as did cholesterol levels and blood pressure. And many participants were able to reduce their medicines or stop them completely. Compared with a conventional “diabetes diet,” the vegan diet turned out to be three times more powerful at controlling blood sugar and even improved long-standing problems, such as painful diabetic nerve symptoms.

Painful conditions, such as arthritis, migraines, and menstrual cramps, often diminish or simply go away. The menu adjustment you are making removes animal-derived products that can inflame joints and trigger migraines, and also brings hormones into a healthier balance.

Cancer risk falls, and people previously diagnosed with cancer are better able to keep their cancer at bay. This appears to be especially true of digestive cancers, such as colorectal cancer, and hormonal cancers, such as breast and prostate cancer. Overall, people following plant-based diets cut their cancer risk as much as 40 percent.

Alzheimer’s disease is less likely to strike, according to the best evidence we have. The disease is much more common among people eating more saturated fat—that is, the “bad” fat found in dairy products and meat—while people following plant-based diets appear to be better able to preserve their memory and cognitive abilities as the years go by.

As these conditions improve, you may find that you need less medication or none at all. Less medicine means fewer side effects and less expense. And it means you are getting at the cause of these problems, not just treating them with a pharmaceutical Band-Aid.

For people trying to knock off some weight, or who have been in and out of doctors’ offices and are taking a seemingly endless list of medicines, or who just want to start down a better path, a menu change is welcome relief. It gives you power you didn’t know you could have.

Everyone’s Talking About It

When Bill Clinton, Ellen DeGeneres, and a steady stream of other celebrities began to embrace vegan or nearly vegan diets, it was clear that plant-based eating had reached prime time. The US government officially recognized the health value of vegan diets in the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, as did the American Medical Association, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, and countless health experts. The United Nations weighed in on the power of plant-based eating for the environment. People concerned about animals, of course, have been going vegan for many years.

The latest wave is in the world of sports. Elite runners, including Carl Lewis, Scott Jurek, Brendan Brazier, Rich Roll, and Fiona Oakes, started the trend, using vegan diets to boost blood flow and oxygenation of their muscles for better endurance and to take advantage of a vegan diet’s anti-inflammatory effect to speed their post-workout recovery. When tennis star Venus Williams was diagnosed with Sjögren’s syndrome, an autoimmune condition, a vegan diet helped her defeat the condition and get back into winning form. Her sister Serena followed her dietary lead. Basketball and football players are using the power of plants to replace flab with muscle, boost their performance, and extend their careers. In 2017, racing champion Lewis Hamilton went vegan before winning his fourth Formula One World Drivers’ Championship, saying he felt “the best I have ever felt in my life, in my thirty-two years.” Olympic snowboarding medalist Hannah Teter said that a plant-based diet brought her performance to “a whole other level.” Tia Blanco won the Open Women’s World Surfing Championship two years in a row after ditching meat and dairy.

And It Gets Better

A vegan diet is great, not just for health, but also for animals. Currently, Americans eat about a million animals every hour, and their lives on the way to slaughter are enough to make anyone wince. A vegan diet is a big vote for compassion.

It is also a vote for the environment. There are currently nearly 100 million cattle in the United States alone, and each one is as big as a sofa. They are continually belching methane—a potent greenhouse gas—into the atmosphere. And fattening them up—along with pigs and chickens—requires an enormous amount of feed grain, which means huge quantities of water, fertilizer, and pesticides that despoil our rivers and streams. A plant-based diet means much less impact on the environment.

It is also great for your loved ones. One of the kindest things you can do is to help them improve their eating habits; you may even save their lives. If you have children, a vegan diet will protect their health, teach them important values, and preserve the Earth they will one day inherit. And when you follow a healthful diet yourself, you are helping to ensure that you will be there for them when they need you.

Okay, but how about taste? You’ll soon discover that your new array of healthful foods turns out to be the best you’ve ever had. When I was growing up in Fargo, North Dakota, our eating habits were nothing to brag about. Our daily fare was roast beef, potatoes, and an obligatory vegetable. Sometimes a chicken leg might end up on the plate, and a salad might raise its head now and again. But I never heard anyone say they just adored Fargo-style cuisine. “Wow, let’s launch a restaurant of all the Fargo favorites!” It was food; that was all.

After moving to Washington, DC, I had the chance to discover the culinary treasures of other lands, many of them drawing their ingredients from healthful plant-based staples. Italian restaurants featured piping-hot bowls of minestrone or lentil soup, followed by angel hair pasta topped with arrabbiata sauce with garlic-roasted asparagus or sautéed spinach on the side. Mexican restaurants served spicy bean burritos, veggie fajitas, and fresh guacamole. Japanese restaurants offered miso soup, exotic salads, and vegan sushi rolls made of cucumber and avocado. Szechuan and Hunan restaurants cooked up every possible dish made from vegetables, tofu, and rice, all delicately spiced. Other restaurants were inspired by the traditions of France, Spain, India, Greece, Cuba, Lebanon, Vietnam, Thailand, Ethiopia, and many other lands. All of them are able to turn simple vegetables, fruits, beans, and grains into delicacies. In comparison to these delights, my North Dakota beef and potatoes seemed a bit pedestrian.

So, going vegan really is the best decision you could ever make. For your heart, your waistline, your overall health, the animals, the Earth, and your loved ones. It is just what the doctor ordered. So jump in and see what the power of healthy eating can do for you.