15
Advice from Ann Crile Esselstyn
AT FIRST, the changes you are about to make may seem overwhelming. After all, you will have to abandon the eating habits of a lifetime, and you almost surely will have to say good-bye to some beloved foods. But as we have learned from long experience, a positive attitude creates miracles. Tastes change as you eliminate the fats. Before you know it, healthy foods will be not what you ought to but what you want to eat.
As time goes by, salads with oily dressing and pizzas thick with cheese just don’t seem appealing anymore. A handful of grapes or of sweet grape tomatoes becomes just as much of a treat as a cookie once was. Pizza without cheese or whole-grain bread topped with fresh, sliced peaches may well become among your very favorite things to eat.
As my husband already has stressed, it is attention to details that makes this program so powerful. But some general principles underlie the details, and it is important to understand them. Put simply, the totally plant-based diet contains:
 
If you have heart disease—or if you never want to develop it—it is critical to grasp these absolute rules:
The rules
  1. Do not eat meat.
  2. Do not eat chicken, even white meat.
  3. Do not eat fish.
  4. Do not eat any dairy products. That means no skim milk, no nonfat yogurt, no sherbet, and no cheese at all.
  5. Do not eat eggs. That includes egg whites and even egg substitutes that contain egg whites.
  6. Do not use any oil at all. Not even virgin olive oil or canola oil.
  7. Use only whole-grain products. That means no white flour products. Be sure the list of ingredients uses a phrase like “whole wheat” or “whole grain.” Avoid semolina and wheat flour, which are actually white. Use brown rice.
  8. Do not drink fruit juice. (It is fine to eat fruit, or to use small amounts of fruit juice in recipes or to flavor beverages.)
  9. Do not eat any nuts (although if you have no heart disease, you can occasionally have walnuts).
  10. Do not eat avocados. That includes guacamole!
  11. Do not eat coconut.
  12. Eat soy products cautiously. Many are highly processed and high in fat. Use “light” tofu. Avoid soy cheese, which almost always contains oil and casein.
  13. Read The China Study, by T. Colin Campbell with Thomas M. Campbell II (BenBella Books).
 
Keeping these rules in mind, the rest of the world of vegetables, legumes, and fruits is yours to enjoy, and it’s a very rich world, as you will learn.
A few words about salt: we do not use it. And we do not include it in our recipes, since most of my husband’s patients have cardiovascular disease and hypertension, and salt may cause further injury. We have found that most patients readily adjust to the natural flavor of a plant-based diet without salt.
If you miss salt, try vinegar, lemon, pepper, Mrs. Dash (in a variety of blends), Tabasco, or other hot sauces. If you still miss salt, try adding a little Bragg Liquid Aminos (available in health food stores), South River Sweet White Miso, or low-sodium tamari. Try to limit sodium consumption to less than 2,000 mg a day. Your choices are easier when you know the salt content of various seasonings. Some useful comparisons:
 
It is helpful to keep breakfast and lunch simple—and nearly the same every day. Specific recipes follow in the chapters ahead, but there are lots of useful ways to think about putting them together. For example, great basics for breakfast include cereals such as old-fashioned rolled oats, a brand of shredded wheat with no added sugar, or a product such as Grainfield’s raisin bran. You can top the cereal with Grape-Nuts for crunch. You might also add raisins, a banana, or other fruit. A bit of apple juice, cider, or fresh orange or grapefruit juice (include the fruit sections) is delicious in place of milk. But you can also eat your cereal with oat milk, almond milk, or nonfat soy milk. And cereals are far from the only breakfast option. Pancakes made from whole-wheat flour (containing no eggs and no oil) are really good! Toasted whole-grain bread topped with summer-ripe, fresh peaches heads my own list of outrageously delicious breakfasts. You should also try sliced bananas, ripe mangos, strawberries, or other favorite fruits on toast. Think outside the box. Why not breakfast on lentil or pea soup or—my personal favorite—leftover salad?
Start as many meals as possible with salads. They’re healthy and filling, and satisfying in a wonderful way. Add all the vegetables you can. Salad dressing can be a bit difficult at first, now that you are eating no oils at all. It is important to find one that you like, so spend some time experimenting. We have come to like salads dressed simply with a combination of balsamic vinegar and hummus that does not contain tahini (which is high in fat). We’ve found two good commercial varieties of fat-free hummus—one from Sahara Cuisine and the other by Oasis Mediterranean Cuisine (see Appendix I)—or you can make your own, using chickpeas, lemon, and garlic. Mixed with a bit of lemon or lime juice or vinegar and a little mustard, it makes a marvelous dressing.
Try to keep lunch simple: salad, soup, and bread or sandwiches. For the last, think creatively. Food for Life makes a widely available no-fat wrap (under the brand name Ezekiel 4:9), and you can spread it with no-fat hummus. Fill the hummus-spread wrap with any combination of ingredients that appeals to you: chopped cilantro, green onions, shredded carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, thawed frozen corn, beans, rice, cooked broccoli, mushrooms, spinach, or lettuce. Roll it up into a sausage-like shape, cut it in half, put it on a baking sheet and bake at 450 degrees for about ten minutes, until the wrap is crisp. Fabulous!
At dinner, we highly recommend another healthy salad and a variety of fresh vegetables when they are in season. But there are many other options. Portobello mushrooms baked in the oven or on the grill with any barbecue sauce or low-sodium tamari and a little balsamic vinegar are wonderful and look like a piece of meat. They are great as “burgers,” too, on whole-wheat bread or in buns made by Ezekiel.
Our own first and favorite dinner recipe is black beans and rice. We use it for guests, since it is beautiful to look at and almost everyone likes it. The ingredients: black beans from a can, brown rice, chopped tomatoes and their juice, chopped onion, frozen corn thawed in hot water, chopped red, yellow, or green peppers, grated carrots, water chestnuts, chopped cilantro and arugula, low-sodium tamari, and salsa. Cook the rice. Heat the beans. Put all the chopped veggies into individual dishes. Spoon rice onto your plate, pile it high with your selection of ingredients, and top with tamari and/or salsa. Store any leftovers in a bowl and use them for salad the next day, adding balsamic vinegar. Heaven!
Sometimes, the simplest foods taste the best. You can bake Vidalia onions, covered, on low heat. The longer they bake, the sweeter they become. Eat them plain or on rice or baked potatoes. Sweet potatoes and yams are delicious and filling and incredibly easy. All you have to do is remember to put them in the oven early enough, since they take at least an hour to bake. Another meal that’s delicious, simple, and fast—even pretty—is whole-wheat couscous with Muir Glen’s portobello mushroom pasta sauce and frozen peas. Add the couscous to boiling water and watch while it transforms itself in seconds! Heat the pasta sauce and pour it over the couscous. Thaw the peas under running water and spoon them decoratively around the sauced couscous. Instant dinner!
Much of the food you eat on this nutrition plan will be fresh vegetables and fruits, legumes, and whole grains. But there are also packaged products that can add flavor and variety to your cuisine (see Appendices I and II for suggestions and resources). Many of them are safe and delicious. However, closely examine the labels. More specifically: Read the ingredients.
If you see any of the following words or phrases on a label—glycerin, hydrogenated, partially hydrogenated, mono or diglycerides—avoid the product. These are all sneaky forms of fat. Snackwell’s devil’s food “fat-free” cookies list 0 grams of fat on the nutritional chart required on all packages. But if you read the ingredients, you notice that glycerin is listed fifth among them. Similarly, Kraft’s zesty Italian fat-free dressing and Wishbone’s fat-free ranch both list soybean oil and dairy products among their ingredients. But because the portion sizes are small, these products can still be called “fat-free,” under the government’s standard (less than 0.5% fat per serving). Read the ingredients.
A company called Edward & Sons makes fat-free brown rice snaps in a variety of flavors (onion garlic, tamari sesame, and unsalted) with no oil. But beware! The same company makes toasted onion and vegetable rice snaps with safflower oil added. Read the ingredients.
Even if you think you are familiar with a product, be careful not to get complacent. Grape-Nuts, for instance, are free of oil. So Grape-Nuts flakes probably are as well, right? Wrong! They contain vegetable oil. Avoid them. Guiltless Gourmet makes baked unsalted yellow corn chips that have no oil. But all the rest of the Guiltless Gourmet baked chips have safflower oil added. Read the ingredients.
When it comes to grains, you should eat only whole-grain products. There are many familiar whole grains: whole wheat, bulgur wheat, whole oats, whole rye, barley, buckwheat, whole corn, wild rice, brown rice. There are also less well-known choices: kamut, quinoa, amaranth, millet, spelt, teff, triticale, grano, faro. But it is often difficult to figure out which grains are whole and which are not. Color is not a clue; whole oats are light in color, for instance, and refined flours can be darkened with molasses.
Here, again, examine labels closely. Look for “100 percent whole.” Products described as multigrain, cracked wheat, seven-grain, stone-ground, 100 percent wheat, enriched flour, or degerminated cornmeal are not whole grain. Pumpernickel is made with rye and wheat flours, but is seldom whole grain.
It can also be a challenge to find whole-grain bread that contains no oil or high fructose corn syrup. Great Harvest Bakery makes a number of breads that are perfect, and many grocery store rye breads have no oil. Ezekiel 4:9 sprouted grain breads are in the frozen foods section of most health food stores and an increasing number of regular supermarkets, and they come in many forms—from sliced loaves (especially good toasted), to tortillas and delicious hamburger or hot dog buns. Read the ingredients.
 
 
There are three cooking implements that we have found indispensable. One is a rice cooker. You put in rice and water and simply walk away; the rice cooks on its own, worry-free, and you can even start it early. The second is a microplane, which you can find at any good kitchen store. It makes the work of zesting fruit not only easy but fun. (And here’s a tip on zesting: use organic oranges, limes, and lemons.) The third is a citrus reamer, which gets juice out of the driest lemons and limes. The wood ones are my favorite.
Finally, a few words about how much you should eat.
If you are eating a plant-based, no-oil, whole-grain diet filled with leafy greens and all the colorful vegetables, you don’t need to worry about weight. No calculations or calorie counting will be necessary. Almost everyone loses weight with the diet change. However, if you let whole grains, starchy vegetables, and desserts dominate, weight can begin to creep back. If that happens, simply cut back on grains and starches, increase your consumption of leafy greens and colorful vegetables, and cut out desserts.
And remember, exercise does count. The more you can do, the better. For the years I taught, I managed to run (often in the dark in the winter) and to lift weights (usually before school). Now I luxuriate in having time for yoga classes, running or cross-country skiing, and some weight lifting. Essy swims a mile a day, lifts weights, and bikes three times a week. Walking, taking stairs—just moving will make a difference. It benefits the immune system, helps protect against strokes and heart attacks, osteoporosis, and dementia, inhibits cancer growth, and, of course, keeps weight down.
The basic message is simple—and welcome to so many who have battled weight all their lives: when you eat a plant-based, no-oil, whole-grain diet your body will find its own ideal weight. You will never have a weight problem.
Let your appetite be your guide!