Congratulations! If following this program has led you to this page, that means you’ve reached your final week!
By now, you might be getting comfortable with this new way of eating. Or perhaps there are still some things you are sorting out. Or you might be feeling that you have only just gotten started, and you’re a bit nervous that we’re already nearing the end!
Whatever you’re feeling, there is still much, much more ahead. For most people, the third week is when everything starts to come together. The bathroom scale really becomes your friend. Your energy is better than ever. Health problems are fading away. And you suddenly find that your tastes have begun to change as old and unhealthful habits fade away.
What is it that causes the aging of our skin—or the aging of other parts of the body? Is there something we can do to slow down the aging process?
It turns out that the aging process has very little to do with time. It is caused by the persistent attack, day by day, of free radicals, those mischievous molecules we briefly touched on in chapter 5. Just as pollution in the air gradually damages stone buildings, these destructive molecules take their toll on our bodies. Fortunately, we have built-in defenses, and foods can strengthen them.
Every minute of every day, you breathe in oxygen. It passes through your lungs, into your bloodstream, and ultimately to every cell in your body. Oxygen is life giving. But it is also very unstable. As oxygen molecules course through your bloodstream and in and out of your cells, it is easy for them to become altered or damaged. This altered form of oxygen is called a free radical. And unlike normal oxygen, which is life giving, free radicals are like sharks, attacking anything in their path.
Free radicals attack the cell membranes that surround your cells, causing skin wrinkling, for example. They can even damage the DNA deep inside the cell’s nucleus, sparking the changes that lead to cancer.
Our bodies have shields against free radicals. Beta-carotene, for example, is the orange pigment in a carrot. But it is much more than an attractive color. As you eat a carrot, these protective molecules pass into your cell membranes. If a free radical attacks, it damages your beta-carotene shield instead of your cell membrane.
Slice open a bright orange yam. The same beta-carotene color is there, too. Ditto for butternut squash and cantaloupe. Some foods also have hidden beta-carotene. Did you ever neglect a stalk of broccoli until it was too late to eat it? Did you notice that it starts to reveal an orange color as the green starts to fade? That’s beta-carotene that was hidden by the chlorophyll. Just as green leaves turn orange in autumn, many vegetables show their other pigments when their chlorophyll is gone.
Am I suggesting that green and orange foods can fight free radicals—and even fight the aging process to a degree? Yes, that’s exactly what I am saying. But there is much more to it than that. Your biological defense system has many other parts. They are not perfect, but it is important to put them to work.
Vitamin E parks in your cell membranes, just as beta-carotene does. You’ll find it in soybeans and other common beans (pinto beans, chickpeas), sunflower seeds, almonds and other nuts, and many other foods.
Selenium is a mineral that works with vitamin E. Selenium is found in a great many foods, including oats, rice, wheat, corn, soybeans, walnuts, and plenty of others.
Vitamin C plays a special role. While beta-carotene, vitamin E, and selenium shield your cell membranes, vitamin C patrols the watery parts of your body between the cells, looking for free radicals and knocking them out.
Beta-carotene, vitamin E, and vitamin C are called antioxidants; they fight free radicals. And they have a great many allies. Take a tomato, for example. That bright red color is lycopene, a cousin of beta-carotene. You’ll also see lycopene in watermelon and pink grapefruit. It turns out that there are hundreds of similar compounds in other fruits and vegetables.
And that is actually the key fact. Some people take a beta-carotene or lycopene pill, hoping to build their antioxidant defenses. But what they are missing is that there are actually hundreds of antioxidants packed naturally in fruits, vegetables, and their botanical cousins. If you take just one or two of them in pill form, not only are you missing all the other parts of your antioxidant army; you are creating a nutritional imbalance.
When you shop for groceries, start at the produce aisle, and notice the bright colors, signaling the presence of antioxidants. If an abundance of vegetables and fruits, along with beans and whole grains, make their way into your shopping cart, you will get the protection you need.
Here is what to look for:
Orange, Yellow, and Green Vegetables. Carrots, yams, squash, broccoli, kale, and many others bring you beta-carotene and its carotenoid cousins, as well as vitamin C.
Fruits. Oranges, papayas, strawberries, and mangoes bring you vitamin C. Tomatoes, watermelon, and pink grapefruit bring you lycopene.
Beans, Nuts, and Seeds. Vitamin E is found in many legumes (that is, the bean group). So those chickpeas you’re putting on your salad don’t just bring you protein, minerals, and a hearty texture; they also add some vitamin E. Nuts and seeds have vitamin E, too. But go easy. Because nuts and seeds tend to pack in fat, an ounce per day is more than enough, and you’re better off using them in sauces and toppings, rather than eating them as a snack, where things can easily get out of hand.
Just as some foods are your allies in the battle against free radicals, others work against you. Certain foods actually encourage the production of free radicals:
Iron. If you were to leave a wet cast-iron pan in your sink for a day or two, what would happen? It would rust—that is, it oxidizes. A similar process happens to the iron inside your body: Iron encourages the production of free radicals, as we saw in chapter 5.
You do need a small amount of iron in your diet. Your red blood cells use it to make the hemoglobin that transports oxygen from place to place. And you can get the iron you need from green vegetables and beans. Where people run into trouble is with meat or iron supplements; they often end up getting too much iron, setting themselves up for free radical attacks. You already want to avoid meat, of course, because of its fat and cholesterol. Iron supplements should only be used if your health care provider has specifically recommended them.
Alcohol encourages the production of free radicals. It also depletes your body of antioxidants, which may account for why people with alcohol problems sometimes look older than their years. If you drink, it is a good idea to keep it modest and intermittent, rather than daily.
Oils encourage the production of free radicals, too. Fish oils, for example, are highly unstable, and encourage the formation of free radicals as they degrade. You can get the healthful omega-3 fats your body needs as a natural part of fruits, vegetables, and beans. There are also natural omega-3s in walnuts, soy products, and flaxseeds.
Just as aromas attract us to foods, colors can, too. Brenda Davis, RD, says, “When you plan a meal, think in every color of the rainbow.” Brenda is a dietitian and author who has been influential in nutrition policies in the United States and Canada. She points out that those colors are not there just for fun:
The amazing color pigments in plants are phytochemicals that are there to protect the plant. Fortunately, when you eat them, they help to protect you, too. Many are powerful antioxidants; some fight cancer, others help to protect against diabetes, high blood pressure, or heart disease.
If your plate is mostly brown and white, it’s time to color it up. Each color offers unique protection. Aim for at least three green (e.g. broccoli, leafy greens, asparagus, peas, honeydew), one red (e.g. red pepper, cherries, red apples, tomatoes, watermelon), one purple or blue (e.g. purple grapes, eggplant, purple cabbage, blueberries, blackberries), one orange-yellow (e.g. carrots, squash, yams, mango, pineapple) and one white fruit or vegetable each day (e.g. onion, garlic, cauliflower, bananas, mushrooms).
So you’re looking at that beautiful mango, tasty and full of beta-carotene, wondering how to slice it open. Don’t spend all day trying to carve it. The trick is to turn it inside out.
Just slice it in half and remove the pit. Set the mango on your cutting board and, with your knife tip, cut a grid into the flesh, like a big tic-tac-toe design. Then just pop it inside out and little cubes of mango will jump up, ready for you to cut them off.
Speaking of cutting things up, let me share a tip for garlic. When you slice garlic, does it cake up on the knife and on your fingers? Here’s the answer: Just dribble a few drops of water onto the garlic clove before you slice it (or dip your fingers in water), and it will be much easier. For extra credit, add a bit of salt. Salt “digests” the garlic as you cut it, and if you mince it very fine, it turns into a very handy garlic paste. Try it. You’ll see.
To feel your best, you’ll want to get rid of everyday aches and pains. So today, we will look at how foods can help. It is surprising to imagine that foods could cure joint pains or headaches. But they can. Today we’ll look at foods that help and hurt.
But first, let’s see how you are doing. How is your weight? Is it going in the right direction? Are you feeling comfortable with the foods you’re eating, and are they giving you the rewards you are looking for? If so, you are right on schedule. If you are having any troubles, it’s always good to review our basic guidelines, and make sure you’re not missing anything.
Okay, on to today’s topic.
We all have aches and pains from time to time. That’s normal, of course. But if pain is ongoing or recurrent, you should know how foods fit in. As a physician, I was surprised to learn that foods play a key role in back pain, joint pain, and headaches. I also discovered, quite accidentally, that diet changes can alleviate menstrual cramps.
Because these problems are so common, I wanted to share this information with you. As you will see, the dietary prescription for each of these resonates strongly with the Kickstart program you are already familiar with. But there are some important extra steps you can take, as we will see. For many people, simple diet changes lead to amazing relief.
But first, one important note: See your doctor. This is important. Many types of pain reflect serious underlying conditions. It is essential to have a thorough evaluation of your pain and to understand the appropriate treatments. It is a serious mistake to simply make diet adjustments without knowing what sort of condition you are dealing with.
Joint Pains. If you have rheumatoid arthritis, a diet change could help you, and perhaps even eliminate your pain entirely. In research studies, many people who eliminate certain trigger foods find that their pain improves or goes away. The reason, presumably, is that certain foods spark inflammation in the tissues lining the joints. When those foods are gone, so is the inflammation.
Not everyone has an identifiable diet trigger. In research studies, about half of people with typical rheumatoid arthritis improve with a diet adjustment. Here are the most common triggers for joint pain:
Common Triggers for Joint Pain
| Dairy products | Potatoes |
| Corn | Tomatoes |
| Meats | Nuts |
| Wheat, rye, oats | Coffee |
| Eggs | Sugar |
| Citrus fruits |
Typically, it is just one or two of these foods that causes the problem. The question, of course, is which one? Here’s how to find out:
Start with the basic Kickstart diet. We’ve already eliminated dairy products, meats, and eggs, which are three of the top triggers. If your joint pains are starting to improve, you may have already solved your problem. If you need more help, I suggest you eliminate all the triggers listed above for about one month. If your joint pains improve or disappear, the next step is to reintroduce each trigger food, one at a time, starting at the bottom of the list. As you do so, have a generous amount of each one for about two days before introducing the next item. So you would have sugary foods for two days. If no symptoms recur, go on and have coffee for two days, then nuts, and so on. Skip any foods that you do not wish to include in your routine. If a food causes symptoms, omit it for several weeks before trying it again.
Migraines. If you have headaches, and your doctor has diagnosed migraines, you might see what a diet change can do for you. Many people with migraines are able to reduce or eliminate their headaches using exactly the same technique described earlier for joint pains. The main difference is in the list of common triggers.
Here are the most common triggers for migraines:
Common Triggers for Migraines
| Dairy products | Nuts |
| Chocolate | Tomatoes |
| Eggs | Onions |
| Citrus fruits | Corn |
| Meat | Apples |
| Wheat | Bananas |
Back Pain. As we saw in chapter 4, back pain may be related to food, too. Surprising, isn’t it? The problem, it appears, is poor circulation. Just as a meaty diet and smoking can constrict the arteries to the heart, they do the same thing to the arteries to the spine, particularly the lower back. When that happens, the leathery disks that act like cushions between the vertebrae start to become fragile. A fragile disk can break open, like a pillow that loses its stuffing. The soft core of the disk then squeezes out and can pinch a nerve, causing pain that extends all the way down your leg.
The menu changes that are part of the Kickstart program are ideal not only for reopening arteries, but also for trimming away excess weight that can aggravate back pain. If you suffer from chronic back pain, I would encourage you to stick with this program and see how things go.
Menstrual Cramps. Several years ago, a young woman called my office in misery. She could barely get out of bed. The problem was severe menstrual pain. Most young women experience cramps to some degree, but for about one in ten, they are really off the scale. For a day or two every month, life can be pretty tough, and that is what she was going through. She asked for painkillers so she could function.
I agreed to give her a prescription for painkillers to ease her immediate symptoms. But as she was talking, I got to thinking. We know that foods can influence sex hormones. After all, cancer researchers noticed long ago that women on mainly plant-based diets had lower—that is, healthier—levels of estrogens in their blood and much less risk of breast cancer, compared with women eating meaty diets. Maybe a plant-based diet would also reduce the risk of other hormonal problems. Problems like menstrual cramps.
So I suggested an experiment. I asked if, over the next month, she would eliminate animal products and oily foods and emphasize whole grains, vegetables, fruits, and beans. She agreed to give it a try. And to her amazement, when her period arrived the following month, she had virtually no pain at all. Her period just sneaked up on her with no problems.
I then decided to test this approach in a larger group of women. We found that, indeed, it reduces the intensity and duration of menstrual pain, sometimes knocking it out altogether. We published our findings in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.1
If you have bothersome cramps, try it out for yourself. The key is to keep it vegan throughout the month, keep oils to an absolute minimum, and emphasize natural high-fiber foods. That means plenty of vegetables, fruits, beans, and whole grains. The fiber in these foods helps your body eliminate excess estrogens. When your next period arrives, see how you feel.
Whether you suffer from joint pains, headaches, back pain, or cramps, foods may be a big part of the solution.
I recently spoke at a nutrition conference in Monterey, California, invited by Dana Armstrong, a registered dietitian. I asked Dana what had led to her interest in a plant-based diet. She told me that she had started to experience neck pain a couple of years earlier. At first, she thought she might need a new pillow. But then the pain began to spread throughout her body. It became clear that this was not ordinary stiffness. She soon had a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis, and her form was especially severe. One morning, after having had a long drive the day before, she could not even get out of bed. She was only forty-nine years old. She started taking steroids and other powerful drugs, but was still in pain.
Although most physicians treat joint pain with medications, research has shown that foods play a role, as you now know. A 2002 study showed that a very low-fat vegan diet can have a dramatic effect on even severe rheumatoid arthritis, and several other studies have shown similar results. Needless to say, vegan diets omit some of the particularly common triggers.
Dana learned about how nutrition could help, and threw out the animal products. Almost immediately, her symptoms started to improve. Before long, she had not only recovered from arthritis but also lost forty pounds and found that her acne cleared up! “I also sleep very well now,” Dana says. “Apparently I didn’t need a new pillow!”
Many people have never heard of the power of diet changes. But those who have had a chance to try this approach often report stunning success.
If you sprinkle some flaxseeds on your salad or serve yourself a bowl of edamame (soybeans steamed in the pod), you’re thinking about taste. But what you might not know is that these foods contain traces of a natural anti-inflammatory compound called ALA, or alpha-linolenic acid. It is an essential omega-3 fatty acid—that is, a “good” fat that your body actually needs—and it helps combat the inflammation of arthritis. There are traces of it in many vegetables, fruits, and beans, and you’ll find an abundance of it in flaxseeds and soy products.
As you know, a key part of the Kickstart program is to get away from the oily foods that are such a big part of many people’s diets. I think of ALA not as a food, but as a natural medicine. In fact, health food stores sell it that way—not just as flaxseeds, but as bottles of flax oil.
There are also other, less common, oils that have shown value against arthritis pain. Borage, black currant, and evening primrose oil contain GLA, or gamma-linolenic acid. These are not cooking oils. They are on the supplement shelves at health food stores.
If you are thinking of using these oils against arthritis, let me encourage you to start with a menu change first. You’ll want to see if you can identify a food trigger, following the guidelines on here. Then, if you’d like to add modest amounts of healthful oils, here is a typical regimen. You take each of the following every day with your evening meal:
Today, let’s talk about sleep. For two reasons:
First, one of the benefits of a healthy diet is that you sleep better.
Second, one of the benefits of sleeping better is that it helps you stick to a healthy diet. The fact is, if you are sleep-deprived, you’ll eat almost anything just to get through the day. But if you are well rested, it is easier to say no to temptation.
Do you remember when you were little? Chances are, you ran around during the day, then when bedtime came, you collapsed into sleep. Next morning, you woke up filled with energy. You didn’t need coffee or an energy drink. You were energetic naturally.
As we get older, things change. Increasing responsibilities and some not-so-healthy habits start to get in the way of a good night’s sleep. And that can cause problems you’re not expecting.
First of all, you might have trouble with your weight. Surprising, isn’t it? In the 1980s, US government researchers surveyed a large group of Americans about their sleep patterns as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. It turned out that those who slept only five hours a night were 60 percent more likely to be obese, compared with people who got seven to nine hours. People who slept only two to four hours per night were more than twice as likely to be obese. Other researchers found exactly the same thing. People who don’t sleep much have trouble managing their weight.
How can this be? Well, one reason is obvious: You can’t eat when you’re unconscious. But there is actually more to it. As you sleep, your brain produces leptin, the appetite-control hormone. Sleep also strengthens your emotional equilibrium and brings back your energy for physical activity. If you are sleep-deprived, you will have poor appetite control, higher stress levels, more impulsivity, and no energy to exercise. You are set up for eating junk food of all kinds.
It will not surprise you that chronically sleep-deprived people are more likely to develop diabetes and high blood pressure.
So let’s see what we can do to get our z’s back. If you’ve lost track of how to get a good night’s sleep, here are some simple tips:
Increase Physical Activity. The more physically active you are during the day, the better you’ll sleep at night. The fact is, sleep rests your body and your mind. So if you have been vigorously active during the day, your body demands sleep. If you have been sedentary, a few push-ups or similar muscle-stressing exercises—whatever you can do within the limits of safety—before bed can help.
Avoid Caffeine. You know that caffeine is a stimulant. What you might not know is that as much as one-quarter of the caffeine in your morning coffee is still circulating in your bloodstream twelve hours later. Different people eliminate caffeine differently, so pay attention to how it affects you. You may do well to break a caffeine habit altogether.
Avoid Alcohol. A mixed drink or glass of wine lulls you to sleep. But soon, alcohol transforms into related chemicals, called aldehydes, which are stimulants. At four thirty in the morning, they will wake you up, and all the problems of the previous day will descend.
Stretch and Yawn. Before you lie down to sleep, do what you did as a child: Make a big stretch and yawn. These routines get your body ready to sleep, and you’ll notice that stressed-out people tend not to do them. So even though it sounds a bit silly, go through the same motions: Stretch and make a big yawn, even if you have to fake it. Do it four times. Eventually, a genuine yawn will follow, and you’ll find your body starting to relax into sleep.
When you wake up tomorrow, you’ll be better rested and ready to take on the new day and new challenges.
Let me share a tip from Bob Harper, the charismatic fitness trainer from The Biggest Loser. You may have already discovered that you are not just getting healthier physically. A menu change also affects how you feel about yourself and about the world around you. And things work in the other direction, too: A good attitude toward health can help your physical transformation.
Bob starts a nutritional makeover from the inside out—that is, he starts by building the right attitude. “When you pay attention to what you eat, it becomes easier to understand your relationship with food and how it affects your day-to-day life,” he says. “When you really start to respect your body, your body starts taking care of you.”
Okay, but if we’re dissecting everything we eat, and trying to squeeze exercise into an already busy schedule, will we end up getting so stressed out that we’ll just defeat our purpose? The answer is no, as Bob points out: “Health, happiness, and peace can be achieved simultaneously—and are really at the root of learning how to take care of ourselves.”
Beans, lentils, tofu, and other high-protein foods can be very nutritious. But if you are not sleeping well, try shifting these foods to earlier in the day. These and other high-protein foods block your brain’s ability to produce serotonin, the neurotransmitter that helps you sleep.
On the other hand, if you are trying to sleep, starchy foods—like bread, potatoes, and pasta—are just what you need. They cause your brain to produce more serotonin. With high-protein foods early in the day and starchier foods (rice, pasta, and so on) in the evening, you’ll be alert when you want to be, and can unwind as night approaches.
By the way, the idea that turkey is good for sleep is a myth. Years ago, health writers said that turkey contains the amino acid tryptophan, which is converted to serotonin in the brain. Well, turkey does contain tryptophan. But it contains many other amino acids along with it, and all of them compete with tryptophan to get into the brain. So turkey eaters actually get less serotonin, not more. The reason people feel sluggish after their Thanksgiving dinner has more to do with the greasy meal, not any serotonin effect from turkey.
By now, you’ve got the basics down. Hopefully, you have found plenty of meals you enjoy and they are beginning to work their magic for you. Today, I’d like to ramp it up just a notch. There are a million ways to add something a little special to food and its place in our lives. Let me share some of my favorites:
Special Toppings. There is almost nothing as healthful as green leafy vegetables, like broccoli, kale, and spinach. But if their nutritional power is not quite enough to seduce your taste buds, try a special topping.
Apple cider vinegar, for example. It is unassuming on its own, but sprinkle it on greens, and an amazing alchemy turns them instantly sweet and flavorful. Seasoned rice vinegar does the same thing with an Asian twist. Bragg Liquid Aminos is the topping for steamed kale, and it works great on Brussels sprouts, broccoli, and other greens, too. Or dust your veggies with nutritional yeast for a mild cheesy taste without cheese’s fat or cholesterol.
Perfect Pizza. A couple of simple tricks can make pizza truly spectacular. Yes, you want to skip the cheese and make up for it with extra tomato sauce. But let’s make it special. Sauté some onions (see the technique in appendix 2). As they caramelize, they become the perfect topping. Do the same with mushrooms and spinach, then sprinkle on nutritional yeast for a cheesy flavor. If you’d like a little zip, add a few jalapeño slices, and you are headed for pizza nirvana.
The Cool Cookout. Grilling isn’t just for meaty tastes anymore. Anyone can chip in. Corn on the cob, asparagus, portobellos, and veggie kebabs are all great, not to mention veggie burgers and veggie hot dogs.
Turbocharge Your Salad. Turn a simple salad into a delicious main dish by adding flavored tofu, beans, nuts or seeds, and fruit (sliced strawberries, cubed mangoes, chopped apples, or dried cherries, for example).
New Foods. A few years ago, I had the chance to visit Corsica, a Mediterranean island that has been part of France for the past two centuries. The countryside is rugged, and the coastal towns and beaches are spectacular. But what really got my attention was the blette—a green leafy vegetable that appears on menus and turns up in soups all over Corsica. It looked a bit like spinach, but sturdier and very tasty. Unfortunately, I could not for the life of me figure out what it was or how I might find it at the Safeway back home. So I measured it, photographed it—everything short of a biopsy.
After arriving home, I happened to notice that Swiss chard bears a suspiciously strong resemblance to a blette. And, of course, that’s just what it is. I had never tasted chard back home, but I was now in love with it.
The lesson I learned is that venturing into the uncharted regions of the produce aisle can be an adventure. Not only are there blettes (chard to you), there are a zillion other fruits and vegetables to try.
Juicing for Variety. In the early 1990s, a Juiceman juicer arrived in my mail, unsolicited. Apparently, the company wanted me to test out its product, which was being sold on television.
I had tasted carrot juice once or twice, but it really didn’t do it for me. Before giving the juicer away, though, I decided to give it another try. I bought some carrots and a couple of apples and stuffed them in. And to my surprise, it turned out to be very tasty. I tried it again and before long, I became a kid with a chemistry set, whipping up all kinds of juice combinations from carrots, apples, celery, spinach, beets, oranges, and everything else. It was fun, healthy, and really delicious. And I found that organic baby-cut carrots meant I didn’t even need to spend time washing and peeling.
Now, the dietitians I work with at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine remind me that the process of juicing discards much of the fiber from a vegetable, and so I should really be eating the whole thing. And of course, they’re right. But as a special treat, a glass of carrot juice beats the socks off a doughnut, and it’s a great way to add variety to your menu. It also makes a fun party for your family or friends. Especially for anyone who is a bit reluctant to take advantage of vegetables, juicing is a handy trick.
Cereal That Tastes Homemade. I learned this one, and the next, from Brenda Davis, RD: If you’d like to ramp up your morning cereal, you can replace processed boxed cereals with homemade muesli. Just mix old-fashioned rolled oats with fruits, nuts, and seeds and soak it overnight in nondairy milk and/or nondairy yogurt.
Delicious Desserts. You can make your own frozen dessert with frozen bananas, along with other frozen fruits such as mangoes or berries. Add them to a blender, along with just enough nondairy milk so it will blend.
Or try blending frozen bananas with a touch of maple syrup, pecans or walnuts, and vanilla. Out of this world!
Exploring New Cuisines. Growing up in Fargo, our idea of dining out was dinner at The Bowler after playing a couple of lanes. We didn’t know much about Italian food or Chinese food, let alone Thai or sushi. The closest we got to ethnic cuisine was lefse, a flat Norwegian potato bread that appeared on North Dakota tables every Christmas, which we smeared with butter and sugar.
When I started to rethink my diet, I first discovered Italian plum tomatoes and fresh basil, which were delicious on angelhair pasta. And then I discovered that Chinese menus had a special section beyond beef, pork, chicken, and fish—a huge list of vegetable main dishes I had never heard of. And that led me to Hunan and Szechuan dishes. Eventually, I stumbled into Japanese food, with wonderful soups, salads, and vegetable sushi. Mexican, Salvadoran, Thai, Vietnamese—there were so many to explore. I felt like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, whose world turned from black-and-white to color when her house plunked down in the Land of Oz. For me, a vegan diet did not mean restrictions. Just the opposite: It meant that the world of culinary delights was opening up.
So if you need a short vacation from the usual, why not try a new cuisine? If you are near any major North American city, you’ll find endless possibilities that let you take a culinary trip to East Asia, India, South America, or Africa. In Washington, DC, Ethiopian cuisine is all the rage (and the flat injera bread is surprisingly similar to lefse!).
If your restaurant choices are limited, you can still travel the world through the recipes in this book and in the array of international cookbooks you’ll find online and in bookstores.
Asian Grocery Stores. If you have never been to an Asian grocery store, you are in for a treat. The range of new and exotic vegetables and fruits is stunning, and there are endless packaged foods to try as well. Of course, Asian groceries favor many different traditions—Indian, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, and many others, depending on where you go. But you will soon find that you are opening many new doors, and the range of new tastes is practically endless.
Start with the vegetables. You’ll find a huge array of greens, all of them worth trying. Look at the exotic mushrooms, interesting fruits, and wonderful seasonings.
A great many people have given a gift of good health to themselves and their families. The great physicist Albert Einstein was one of them. In a letter dated December 27, 1930, he wrote, “It is my view that a vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.” It took him a while to get there himself. But on March 30, 1954, he wrote, “So I am living without fats, without meat, without fish, but am feeling quite well this way. It always seems to me that man was not born to be a carnivore.”
Okay, so we’ve got lots of interesting new fruits and vegetables on our kitchen counter. And we have a take-home bag from our dinner out. Let me share a quick tip about freezing foods:
Some foods freeze very well, and others don’t. Here’s why: Freezing creates ice crystals that burst the cellular structure of your ingredients, making them soft. So you’ve cut up your salad, fruits, or uncooked vegetables—maybe some zucchini, asparagus, or plantains. If you were to pop them in the freezer, they would come out soft and even mushy.
But if foods are already soft or are liquid, like soups and stews, that’s okay. Into the freezer they go. And foods that contain very little water, like nuts and seeds, tend to freeze very well. But if your meal needs a crunchy or firm texture, don’t freeze it.
When we change our diets to improve our health, some of us stick with it really well. But others need a bit of help. The fact is, people who develop motivations beyond their personal health often find it much easier to stay on the straight and narrow. Take committed environmentalists, for example. Knowing how the livestock industry affects the planet, they wouldn’t think of eating meat, and knowing what pesticides can do to the waterways, they always favor organic produce. They have the weight of the world on their shoulders.
If you have young people in your home, you know that they are not even remotely concerned about atherosclerosis, diabetes, or prostate cancer. A teenage boy does not have a prostate, so far as he knows, and will not become aware of it for quite some time. But many young people care passionately about the environment or about animals. So if you are encouraging them to jump with you into a healthier way of eating, let me share some facts that might be meaningful to them.
Before I do, I have to confess that, when I moved from the Midwest to Washington, DC, to go to medical school, I did not have a thought in my head about any of these things. I was training to become a doctor, hopefully a very good one, and that was it. I cared about the environment in a generic sort of way and I believed in kindness toward animals. But that did not keep them off the menu. I hunted with my father and brothers and knew a bit about the cattle business. As time has gone on, I have come to learn a bit more, and this chapter will share some of these basics.
When I was growing up in North Dakota, cornfields were a common sight. Corn grows as far as the eye can see. But essentially none of it is going to be eaten by a human being. It is feed for cattle, hogs, and chickens.
Now, a stalk of corn looks innocent enough. But each cornstalk in those fields is like a domino—one knocks down the next, and the next, and so on. I don’t mean that the cornstalks actually fall. What I mean to say is that, when they are used for animal feed, they set in motion a series of events that add up to a real catastrophe. Let me explain:
First of all, it takes about a million gallons of water to grow an acre of corn. Irrigation uses far more water than watering our lawns, washing our cars, brushing our teeth, cooking, or any other routine human activity.
As that water trickles into rivers and streams, it carries fertilizer along with it—fertilizer that the farmers had applied to their fields. That fertilizer makes algae overgrow in the waterways. And as algae decomposes, it uses up oxygen in the water—oxygen that fish need to live. The fish die, along with all other life-forms in what is known as a dead zone—an area where aquatic life simply cannot survive.
This may sound like no more than a theoretical problem. But the Mississippi River collects water—and fertilizer—from a huge section of North America, depositing it in the Gulf of Mexico. And long before British Petroleum fouled the Gulf of Mexico with oil, there was already an eight-thousand-square-mile dead zone below Louisiana and Texas, all thanks to American agriculture.
Here is what matters: It takes about three pounds of feed to produce a pound of poultry meat. It takes even more—seven to thirteen pounds of feed—to produce a pound of beef. If people actually ate plants, instead of feeding them to animals, the amount of land we would need to feed ourselves would be minuscule compared with what we are using today. Our need for irrigation and fertilizers would be reduced, too. Our waterways would be spared.
These observations are certainly not news. In 1971, Frances Moore Lappé made exactly this argument in a book called Diet for a Small Planet. That year, 1971, was also the year I graduated from high school. My light blue pants had grease stains that came from the McDonald’s on University Drive in Fargo, where I cooked french fries, made milk shakes, and worked the cash register. The hamburger chain proclaimed “You Deserve a Break Today,” and I was entirely unaware that the Earth needed a break, too.
In case I haven’t depressed you entirely, let me share a couple of other facts. First, cows are big. Each one is as big as a sofa, and the combined mass of the hundred million or so beef and dairy cattle on US farms easily outweighs that of the entire human population. Every last one of them is busily belching methane into the air—methane that is produced as the feed in their stomachs ferments. Methane is a greenhouse gas—a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. At any given time, the result is an enormous invisible methane cloud.
What about fish, you might ask. Are they any better, environmentally? Well, to meet the world’s demand, fishermen do not wait for fish to jump into their boats. They pull them in with nets that trap the target fish and any others nearby—dolphins along with tuna, for example. Bottom trawling is a method that drags a huge net across the ocean floor, catching any and all species that can be scooped into the net and destroying coral and everything else in its path.
Here’s the good news: Switching to a plant-based diet reduces your carbon footprint to the size of a baby bootie. Now, you could argue that the raising of crops can be harmful to the environment, too, and you would be right. Produce demands irrigation and fertilizer, and farmers who are not using organic techniques apply pesticides and other chemicals. The difference is one of scale. Growing grains simply to feed them to animals is enormously inefficient, requiring huge amounts of resources and outstripping the Earth’s ability to recover.
For stand-up comic and television star Sarah Silverman, it was a very personal experience that changed her menu forever, and she shared it with others in her recent memoir, The Bedwetter:
We lived on a farm, but it wasn’t operational like our neighbors’ farms, which produced stuff; we bought our meat and vegetables from them. When I was six years old, my dad took me there to see the turkeys. The farmer, Vic, told me to look at all the birds carefully and choose one that I liked. I saw a cute one with a silly walk and said, “Him!!” Before my pointing finger dropped back down to my side, Vic had grabbed the bird by the neck and slit his throat. Blood sprayed as the turkey’s wings flapped back and forth in a futile attempt to unkill itself. Without realizing it, I had sentenced that turkey to death, and while maybe this sort of thing gave fat British monarchs a rush, to me it was horrifying. And though I’m probably projecting, I don’t think it was in the turkey’s top-five favorite moments, either.
In hindsight, I’m sure my dad feels bad about our little excursion, but I see it as a gift. My father might not have realized or intended it, but that day he gave me the knowledge to make an informed decision for myself at a very early age: I would never eat turkey again. And once I figured out the connection between Happy Meals and cows, I would never eat beef again, either. Or any other meat.
Strange to think that your breakfast could save the Earth, prevent animal misery, or save human lives, isn’t it? But it may well be just the way to do your part. Your coronary arteries don’t care why you change your diet. But when you do, they breathe a sigh of relief.
A vegan diet is kind to the Earth. And if you’d like to be especially kind, you might check out your local farmers’ markets. You’ll get the freshest produce, often picked just that morning.
Let me encourage you, too, to get involved with Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA. It is like magic: You just sign up, and a weekly box of vegetables and fruit is delivered for you, all local and fresh. You’ll find more information at www.localharvest.org.
Yesterday we looked at extra motivators that can help us stay on track. Today we’ll look at one more. In fact, for many people it is the strongest motivator of all. Our food choices may be able to protect our loved ones.
Kids today face all manner of challenges. More than a third of US children are overweight. One in five has an abnormal cholesterol level. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predict that one in three children born since the year 2000 will develop diabetes at some point in his or her life.
These problems are not just physical. When children are out of shape, they take a beating emotionally, too. And it doesn’t get better in adulthood as weight problems worsen and physical limitations become more and more serious.
The second kindest thing parents can do for their children is to show them how to follow a diet based on healthful vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and beans, throwing out the animal products and greasy foods. It is hands-down the healthiest diet for children of any age.
For starters, a plant-based diet helps prevent obesity. A study of 1,765 children and adolescents in Southern California showed that vegetarian children were slightly leaner than their meat-eating friends, and were about an inch taller. So far, so good. But their real advantage arrives as the years go by. Not only are children raised on plant-based diets more likely to stay slim, but they are also much less likely to develop heart disease, diabetes, and certain cancers than their nonvegetarian counterparts.
Don’t think for a minute that children will shy away from healthful foods. My research team did a test in schools in South Florida. Broward County is the sixth largest school district in the United States, and demographically very diverse. One day, we gave schoolchildren a chance to taste bite-size samples of veggie burgers. The kids loved them. And the next day, veggie burgers were served in the lunch line. And they outsold the other offerings two to one! Later, we tried veggie chili, and beans and rice, and they were hugely successful, too. Today Broward County includes healthful vegan options on its regular school menu, giving children a huge advantage.
So what is the kindest thing parents can do? Follow a healthful diet themselves. When children have a solid example to follow, they are more likely to take it to heart.
While we are thinking about the next generation, let’s not forget the present one. Our girlfriends, boyfriends, wives, and husbands need help, just like children do. Some of our loved ones are eager to jump into health; others need some coaxing. And a few will hold their breath till they turn blue rather than eat a vegetable. But when we bring home healthy foods and cook them up, we’re doing everyone a favor. Just as the previous generation finally accepted the fact that cigarette smoking really had to go, the current one is wrestling with food in exactly the same way. And the health vote is slowly winning the day.
Benjamin Spock was one of the most influential doctors who ever lived. As a pediatrician who was also trained in psychoanalysis, he advocated for better parenting methods to help children to grow into healthy, well-adjusted adults.
When it came to nutrition, Dr. Spock encouraged a balanced diet of meat, dairy products, vegetables, and fruits. That is, until his own health began to fail. He changed his diet, throwing out meat, dairy products, eggs, and junk food, and rapidly recovered his health and strength. Then, in an updated edition of his best-selling book Baby and Child Care, Dr. Spock humbly pointed out that his dietary advice in previous editions had been shortsighted. Meat, dairy products, and eggs were not health foods. And children who were raised as vegetarians, he realized, would get real advantages that he had not appreciated.
In 1992, Dr. Spock and I held a press conference in Boston to alert parents to new research showing that dairy products could be linked to type 1 diabetes. The problem, it seemed, was that dairy proteins trigger the production of antibodies that can destroy the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas. Children were better off being breast-fed, and there was actually no need for cow’s-milk products at any point in life.
At the press conference, Dr. Spock’s wife, Mary Morgan, stepped up to the microphone to share a story about Ben. She told how Ben occasionally went out to buy very expensive cheese, which he prized. Looking in the refrigerator later, he would ask Mary, “What happened to the cheese I bought?” to which Mary would reply, “I threw it out, Ben. I love you too much to let you have anything that’s not good for you.” And Ben—a wise and kind man, if ever there was one—lived to be ninety-four.
Most children are shy about new foods. They are reluctant to try a new vegetable, and they don’t want foods to touch each other on the plate. So how can you introduce children to healthier fare?
First, avoid arm-wrestling with children about vegetables. They may balk at asparagus and broccoli; don’t force the issue. Just serve carrots, corn, peas, green beans, and whatever other healthy foods they like. The rest will come when they are older.
Second, let them make choices. The key is to be sure that every choice is okay with you. So they can choose to have their sandwiches cut in squares or triangles, to have their dressing on the salad or on the side, and so on. You will want to make sure that any choice they make is a healthful one.
Congratulations! It’s graduation day! I hope you’ve enjoyed the Kickstart experience and that you’ve learned a lot about food and health that you can carry with you for life. And I hope you’ll be able to share what you’ve learned with others.
So what’s ahead? Having helped a great many people sort out their diets, I have noticed that, at this stage, the road forks into three possible paths.
1. The best way, obviously, is to keep going. You’ve gained momentum, you’re trimming away weight, and you’ve left some not-so-healthy habits behind. Now you can see how far this approach will take you. You can maximize your gains and avoid backsliding into the food habits that caused your problems.
Many people are surprised as they decide to do just that. They had intended just to try it out, hopefully lose a few pounds, and then go back to their previous way of eating. But suddenly, about halfway through the Kickstart, food starts making sense. They see what has gotten them into trouble, and have found a much healthier path ahead. It is a bit like opening a new book or turning on a television program, intending to just see what it’s about, and becoming enraptured.
One participant told me, “Having lost all this weight and feeling really great, I don’t ever want to go back. I finally have power in my hands, and I’m not giving it up.”
Three weeks is more than enough time to get started with a healthy diet and for your benefits to begin. But if you have a substantial amount of weight to lose or if you’ve been dealing with serious health issues, it will take more time for the results to fully come in. Through the Kickstart, you’ve succeeded in making a down payment on a whole new body. And now is the time to let that investment pay off for you.
You have shaken off your past. Imagine your future, reaching your goal weight and staying there, feeling really energetic and healthy. Imagine how you will feel and how you can look on your next birthday or on your next vacation.
A Kickstart participant who decided to continue after three weeks let me know how she was doing at the two-month mark:
“When I started, I was at 185. Today, I weigh 169.5 and am walking into a gym to join. This has been the easiest lifestyle change I have ever made. Life is full of tasty foods, my body feels better, and I’m headed home to my normal body weight of 132.”
Another Kickstart participant from Arizona shared her experience after deciding to keep going once the program finished:
“In the first 4 months, I lost 37 lbs! I was amazed at how easy it was because I was not dieting and was eating full meals. Now my husband has joined the 21 days and in just 7 days lost 4.6 lbs. I’m proud of him and hopeful that he will lose a good enough amount that after the 21 days he will want to stick to it, because he looks and feels better. He is getting lots of support from friends and family and we are tracking it all.”
Another Kickstart participant told us of her experience, having made the change and resolving to stick with it. A year later, she wrote: “I started a year ago, weighing 223. Today I weighed in at 146. Yay! I have 14 more pounds until I reach a healthy BMI.” That’s a drop of more than seventy-five pounds. Imagine how she feels, and what others are saying to her when they see her success.
And even now, as you plan to reach new goals, there is no need for a long-term commitment. There is no need to decide now what you will eat in the distant future. Instead, simply decide to continue a healthy diet for another week, three weeks, month, or whatever time frame works best for you. Step by step, you’re getting to exactly where you want to be.
2. Some people go back to their old ways of eating. This invariably leads to return of any lost weight. But at least they know what a healthy diet is, and can come back to it in the future.
3. A common, but risky, path is to decide to continue, but in a modified program. The idea is to keep meat out of the diet, for example, but to bring back cheese. Or maybe do it vegan until dinnertime, or something similar.
This sort of compromise is tempting to many people, especially if you have had a love-hate relationship with one food or another. The problem, of course, is that foods are stronger than we are. A joyful reunion with a little cheese or other “favorite” nearly always has the unintended consequence of making your progress grind to a halt. Smokers who finally managed to quit come to recognize that they are better off not tempting fate; the same is even more true with foods, since food temptations are absolutely everywhere—much more than cigarettes.
The voice that is pushing you to bring back this or that unhealthy food is not actually your voice. That is the little Devil on your shoulder who is trying to lure you back. He is there when we try to break any sort of habit—smoking, drinking, all kinds of food habits, you name it. And he repeats the same lines every time: A little bit won’t matter, you can handle it, et cetera, et cetera. There is something to be said for just ignoring that little Devil’s entreaties. Sticking with your healthy routine will continue to pay you huge dividends. As time goes on, it will absolutely feel like second nature. And eventually, that little Devil might turn vegan himself. Who knows?
We developed this program very carefully, aiming to bring you the best of health and the greatest power over temptations and addictive behavior. So my suggestion is to keep taking advantage of it, but continuing a simple short-term focus that keeps you in the driver’s seat.
In our first week, we discussed the changes to expect, but let me give you a quick recap:
Weight Loss. If you have a lot of weight to lose, let it come off gradually. I encourage people to aim for about a pound per week. A little faster or slower is fine. But do not try to starve it off by skipping meals and do not avoid carbohydrates; both of these steps are recipes for long-term weight gain. Some people are surprised that I suggest such gradual weight loss. But if you think of it, a pound a week is fifty-two pounds per year. And if it’s a one-way street, you’ll reach your goal and stay there.
By the way, in case you were wondering whether weight loss might continue until you just disappear, let me reassure you. Your new way of eating will help your weight descend toward your ideal weight, and as you arrive there, your weight loss will naturally plateau. Then, as long as you stick with healthful foods, they will help you stay in a healthy weight range. There is no need for one diet to lose the weight and a different one for maintenance.
Cholesterol. Your cholesterol has probably already fallen significantly over the last three weeks. But give yourself two to three months before testing your cholesterol (unless your health care provider wants to check it earlier). It takes about that long for the full effect of the diet change to manifest.
Blood Pressure. Three weeks is more than enough time to see changes. However, if you are working on a significant weight issue, your blood pressure will probably keep improving for as long as the weight loss continues.
Blood Sugar. If you have diabetes, your blood sugar can start improving within the first few days of your diet change. It should keep getting better week by week. And with continued weight loss, you will very likely continue to see improvements.
Aches and Pains. If you have rheumatoid arthritis or migraines, and if dairy products, eggs, or meat happen to be your trigger foods, relief should come in a matter of weeks of a diet change. However, even very small amounts of these foods can cause the problem to recur, so you will want to read food labels carefully. If you are dealing with menstrual cramps, relief should occur during the first menstrual cycle for which you’ve followed the diet the entire month (from one period to the next). However, for some people, it takes a few months to see the full effect.
If you have diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or any other health problem, be sure to track your progress with your doctor or other health care provider. Do not do what one of our research participants once did: He figured that his new diet should cure his diabetes and cholesterol problem, so he threw his medications away and relied on the diet alone. What he did not realize is that things take time. Even with the best diet, these problems are not cured overnight, and you may well need some medication into the future. So have that discussion with your health care provider, and keep him or her in the game with you.
One of the advantages of working with your health care provider is that he or she may be seeing the results of a healthy diet for the very first time. Many are stunned at the weight loss and health improvements that can occur, and they very often become strong advocates for good nutrition.
I recently gave a talk at the American Library Association convention. Just before I spoke, I happened to meet a man named John, who lived near Chicago. He was running a booth next to the stage, demonstrating photocopy equipment for libraries. He said that he had diabetes and a long-standing weight problem, and that he had learned about our approach about two months earlier. He decided to try it. And in two months’ time he had lost twenty-eight pounds. He was amazed. His hemoglobin A1c (a diabetes indicator that is supposed to be below 7, and normally drops about a point with medications) had fallen from 8.5 to 6.4 in this same time period. His doctor felt this was all beyond the realm of possibility and scheduled a special follow-up session to see what is happening to him.
A month later, he sent me an update. His weight loss was now thirty-seven pounds, his hemoglobin A1c had fallen even farther—to 6.1—and his snoring had disappeared.
Don’t get me wrong. His first three weeks were great. But things kept getting better and better. Every week brought him new success and helped him achieve things he had not thought possible.
Throughout this book, we’ve heard from a great many doctors and researchers, and now that we’re at the end of your 21-day adventure, I’d like you to be able to take them with you. Most are members of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, and you can join us. Whether you are a physician or a person who would like to support good medicine and ethical research, we have many programs to help you stay informed, pumped up, and on track.
At our website, www.pcrm.org, we have a huge range of resources for you, including books, DVDs, and a chance to keep in touch with others who are on the same path. We’ll let you know about the latest scientific breakthroughs and will keep you posted about upcoming events.
In turn, I’ll ask you to let us know how you are doing and, especially, to share what you’ve learned with others. So many people are looking for answers. I will be very grateful to you for helping us spread the word.