From the movie dept.
[This post is adapted from an earlier on on StarlingAveVegan]
2018 is indeed going to be a banner year for vegan, and/or plant-based (#WFPB) movies and documentaries. I can no longer keep up with the list of links alongside my blog StarlingAveVegan.blogspot.com. It is growing too fast.
Doug Schmidt, Josh LaJaunie
Recently, there was an ABC News story on Doug Schmidt, a Rochester school teacher who went all-out plant-based, and turned his life around and is inspiring a whole Facebook support group. Megyn Kelly also did a piece on Josh LaJaunie. These reports were great, but clearly the interview by Megyn Kelly did not dig any deeper, into the most important aspect, namely that this is a nutritional paradigm and a true paradigm shift, not just another diet.
The bottom line is that the profound shift in nutritional science that underlies the Whole Foods Plant-Based diet (without added Sugar, Oil, or Salt), is the sine qua non of this lifestyle, which is not a diet, but a whole new nutritional paradigm, in which nutritional abundance is the norm, making all supplement (except for some B12), and most medications superfluous. No more counting calories, you can not help but end up with your homeostatic weight. No more effort, no more “dieting,” just enjoy the rich variety of new foods.
All of this is why it is so important that we teach children in school, as is now happening in LA County, in Midland TX, and in Brooklyn, NY, and now apparently in Rochester too. Check out the Coalition for Healthy School Food and PlantPure, and the Healthy School Food Summit.
Last, but not least, there is a new European documentary, What You Eat Matters. It is just part of a minor avalanche of new documentaries that will see the light in 2018, including The Big Change, the Code Blue Documentary, Eating our way to extinction, The Game Changers, and Dominion.
#WFPB is a Nutritional paradigm, not a diet
T. Colin Campbell recently published a list of six important publications of his, which also lend credence to the notion that the time has come. These articles show clearly that what is going on is a total re-framing of nutritional science along purely evidence-based lines, for the first time ever. What came before was essentially myth and fiction, including all the versions of the food pyramid, which is now called “My Plate.”
The endless parade of contradictory diet advice is evidently the simple result of the fact that there was never a cohesive framework previously, as “diets” generally simply tinker with the relative amounts and styles of food within the overall paradigm that prioritized protein, and in particular was stuck in the notion that animal protein was “more efficient” and therefore better. Instead, it turns out that the vaunted efficiency of animal protein, in terms of the ease of absorption by the body, is a liability and not an asset: animal protein causes cancer, plant protein does not.
Taken together, these six articles by Campbell are a material contribution to the dialog about nutrition and healthcare, and provide a solid foundation for the only feasible change of our healthcare system, where we need to go back to the Hippocratic notion of “Let food be thy medicine.”
Practical, practical, practical
For myself, my new year’s resolution f0r 2018 started by taking the Course for the Plant-Based Nutrition Certificate from the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutritional Studies. The course covers all the research, but it ends up with the practical application. In the links along side this blog, you will find a ton of practical resources, and most of them are free, but the avalanche of sound plant-based recipes is almost overwhelming. I have had more fun with food preparation since I started eating this way, and I have been an enthusiastic cook for all of my life.
Some of the best practical resource are:
- Engine2: Does it fit the diet?
- Engine2 Meal Planner
- PCRM 21-day kickstarter
- Forks over Knives recipes
- Nutrition Studies recipes
- 4Leaf Program
And always keep the fundamental definition in mind:
- Whole Foods
- Plant-Based
- without added SOS (Sugar, Oil, or Salt)
These simple three points are elaborated further on the Diet Guide at NutritionStudies.
In our own community we are currently doing a monthly cooking/dining event at St. Helena’s parish in the school cafeteria. We are starting to have two success stories of our own, with one person losing over 80 lbs in 6/7 months (sofar) and another losing 55 lbs in four months, and she recently reported that her blood work was perfect after just four months on the Whole Foods Plant-Based diet. My personal experience was similar, as I have reported here before: I celebrated my 65th at my homeostatic weight (back to when I was 20) and free of any and all medications.