Aside from whole grains’ satiety benefits –– helping you feel fuller for longer –– grains like quinoa and oats provide a host of health benefits. Studies have found that diets rich in whole grains have been linked to lower risks of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.

What Are the Healthiest Carbs?

Whole grains are healthy carbs to reach for, the keyword being “whole,” meaning minimally processed. How do you know which foods are high in whole grains? When you’re reading food labels, make sure the first ingredient says whole wheat or whole grain, advises Bonnie Taub-Dix, RD author of Read It Before You Eat It.

“If you see ‘wheat’ as the first ingredient, that doesn’t mean the same thing,” she says. “Since the wheat could be white, it is processed, which strips it of nutrients. Unless it says the word ‘whole’ it doesn’t mean whole wheat or whole grain.”

The Health Benefits of Whole Grains

Whole grains are also high in fiber which helps us meet our daily fiber needs. Look for labels that show 4 or more grams of fiber per serving. Whole grains are also a good source of B vitamins, antioxidants, and minerals, says Taub-Dix.

“A lot of people try to skip grains to lose weight, but that’s not a wise idea. They help you feel full, and satisfied, and are an important part of your diet if you choose the right portions and healthy whole grains,” she says The U.S. Federal Drug Administration (FDA) recommends getting 25 grams of fiber daily on a 2,000-calorie diet.

Here are the best sources of whole grains to incorporate into your plant-based diet and how to eat them:

The Healthiest Whole Grain Foods to Eat

Whole Grain Pasta

Swap your regular white pasta for a whole-grain variety to get more fiber and nutrients per serving. The whole-grain pasta may have more texture and a bit of a “bite” to it that could take some getting used to but it’s a solid source of whole grains. Ease your family into it by swapping whole-grain noodles in vegetable lasagna, macaroni, and cheese dishes, and in pesto pasta. Chances are they may never notice the difference!

Whole Grain Rice

Look for brown rice or wild rice as both have more fiber than white rice, says Taub-Dix. Enjoy this as a side or add it to an egg or bean burrito for a Mexican-style dish. We love it as a base for a veggie stir-fry, too!

Oatmeal

If you were following a somewhat healthy diet before going plant-based, you probably ate some of these whole grains before, and oatmeal was likely at the top of that list. This warm breakfast item can be enjoyed so many ways with a variety of toppings and add-ins to make it taste fresh and different every day. “I like to make a giant pot of oatmeal early in the week,” says Taub-Dix.

“Then throughout the week I take some out of the refrigerator container, put it in a bowl, add my almond butter, fruit, or whatever else, and heat it up in the microwave. This way, I don’t have to cook breakfast every day.” In fact, that same method of cooking a big batch and using it all week can be applied to all of these grains, saving you time and energy during the slog of Monday through Friday.

Whole Wheat Bread

This swap might be one of the easiest to make in your diet if you aren’t noshing the whole grain version already. Top whole-grain bread with nut butter and fruit slices for a wholesome breakfast, lunch, or snack.

Start the day with a whole-grain English muffin, or add your favorite vegetables and plant-based proteins to a wrap for lunch or dinner. You’ll be on your way to hitting your daily fiber quota in one meal flat. Just remember to look at the label before you buy to make sure you’re buying a true whole-grain product and not a wheat imposter, which won’t have the same benefits.

Ancient Grains

“Ancient grains sounds like a cool term and seems like something new, but they really are the grains our ancestors ate, and they’re really healthy for us,” says Taub-Dix. Grains like farro, amaranth, sorghum, and freekeh all fall into this category. The Whole Grains Council website can provide a guide on how to cook and serve each of these, as well as more information about ancient grains’ many health benefits.

Quinoa

A lot of people mistakenly call quinoa a grain, says Taub-Dix. “But it’s a seed derived from the mustard family and is sort of like a seed in grain’s clothing,” she says. Even though it’s not a whole grain, it’s still a gluten-free, healthy food that’s a good source of plant protein and fiber. Add it to your plant-based diet and enjoy it for any meal as a base for a quinoa bowl, a side dish, on top of a salad, or even in a soup.

Bottom Line: Whole Grains Are a Healthy Source of Complex Carbs

You know that not all carbs are considered equal, and white bread acts to spike blood sugar, while whole grains and other complex carbs can help you get more fiber and feel full longer, without sending blood sugar soaring. Eat whole grains daily on a heart-healthy diet.

For more expert advice, visit The Beet’s Health & Nutrition articles. 

The post The Complete Guide to Whole Grains That Are Healthier Than Simple Carbs appeared first on The Beet.

Studies have found that eating plant-based, defined as a diet rich in vegetables, fruit, legumes, whole grains, nuts, seeds and avoiding meat, dairy, poultry and fish, protects you by lowering your risk of all the major illnesses that can be killers, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer (including breast and prostate cancer), as well as lower your risk of ever suffering from a stroke, or  experiencing severe depression, Alzheimer’s or dying a premature death from any cause.

Plant-based eating is also an effective lifestyle approach to losing weight, including losing stubborn belly fat and maintaining a sustainable, healthy body weight, since when you focus on eating more whole foods such as vegetables, fruit, whole grains (in their least processed form) and legumes, nuts and seeds, and you give up meat, dairy and added sugar or processed flour, you will be eating more fiber, which leaves you feeling fuller for longer.

Whole plant foods contain fewer calories than foods that don’t contain fiber (such as meat and dairy products). High fiber foods also change your gut microbiome for the better, helping promote the growth of so-called good gut bacteria, which can help bolster your mood, as well as ramp up your immunity and boost your brain power, allowing you to focus and have all day energy.

Eating Plant-Based Protects You From All Causes of Mortality

In a review study published in The Journal of the American Heart Association, people who ate a high-fiber, whole food plant-based diet not only were 32 percent less likely to die of heart disease but were 25 percent less likely to die of “all causes of mortality” than the general population of middle-aged adults. In other words, everyone can benefit from eating more plant-based foods, not just those who already have heart disease or diabetes.

If you think you’re eating healthy, the next question to ask yourself is this: “Is my diet the healthiest it could be?” If you aren’t eating at least five servings of fruits and vegetables a day (and 90 percent of Americans currently do not meet this USDA recommendation) while avoiding saturated fat that is in meat and dairy and scientifically tied to increased risk of heart disease, then the answer is likely: You could be doing better, and one way is to go mostly plant-based in order to achieve your healthiest you.

Plant-Based Diets Lower Your Risk of Every Major Disease

Studies tell us that both eating more plant-based foods and consuming fewer animal products will significantly lower our risk of all main causes of illness and death, including these:

• Heart Disease
• Type 2 diabetes
• Certain Cancers
• Alzheimer’s
• High Blood pressure
• Depression
• Infection

Plus you will lose weight and keep it off

The benefits of eating healthy plant-based include natural weight loss, because a whole food plant-based diet does not just mean avoiding meat and dairy. You will also be skipping highly processed foods such as chips or crackers, cookies or donuts, and avoiding refined flour used to make foods such as pasta and bread, as well as staying away from processed white rice and carb-filled cereal, or any packaged foods with added sugar. By cutting out highly processed food and refined flour, you will achieve a healthy weight and lose fat naturally.

Eat Mostly Plant-Based to Stay Healthy

There are well over 50 studies that have been published in the past several years that support the science behind plant-based diets for health and wellbeing. The best news: You don’t have to go fully plant-based to get the benefits. Even 90 percent plant-based is enough to switch over the balance in your gut microbiome to become more diverse, healthier, and lower your risk of disease by reducing chronic inflammation (associated with many lifestyle diseases).

Switching from a meal centered around red meat, pork or chicken to one that is focused on legumes, whole grains, fruit and vegetables is one important mind-set shift. Once you do that, the health benefits become easy to achieve.

Where Do You Get Your Protein on a Plant-Based Diet.

Whether you go vegetarian, vegan or plant-based you will be able to get enough protein, calcium, iron, vitamin B12 and other important nutrients on a plant-based diet. In fact there are more sources of protein than you might think possible, all in the produce aisle.

One fascinating misconception: You don’t need as much protein as you may be eating, and extra protein, just like any excess calories, can not be shoved into muscles or a liver already topped off, so it gets stored as fat. How much protein do you really need? For men it ranges from 55 to 75 grams a day and for women the amount is 45 to 60, both ranges depending on your age, size and fitness training schedule.

To figure out how much protein you personally need, follow this formula, The Recommended Dietary Allowance for protein is .8 grams per kilogram (g/kg) of body weight. Some experts, recommend slightly higher amounts for plant-based eaters who workout daily, so figure closer to 9. go 1 g/kg of body weight. And fitness enthusiasts may need even more, closer to 1.2 to 1.4 g/kg of body weight, and you need more as you age and lose muscle mass naturally.

Read More: How Much Protein Do You Really Need? The Answer May Surprise You 

Here are just a handful of research and expert sources that back up the research and provide extra evidence that a plant-based diet is even healthier for you than the Mediterranean diet, which while focused on vegetables, fruit, whole grains, nuts, seeds and some fish, still allows dairy and there are many ways in which going plant-based is just a simpler path to health.

1. Go Plant-Based to to Avoid Heart Disease, According to a Cardiologist

Dr. Andrew Freeman, an associate professor in the Division of Cardiology and Department of Medicine at National Jewish Medical Center in Denver and an advisor to The Beet, is also known as the Vegan Cardiologist. He routinely advises his healthy patients to go plant-based, as do many other cardiologists.

“Eventually, even someone who is active, fit and healthy appearing, if they are not eating right, they have a heart event,” Freeman says, when asked how can a fit, active and asymptomatic person be convinced to change their diet.

“The reason that people who are healthy, active, and fit don’t eat this way is they believe they are living healthy. Eventually, they have a heart attack, and they end up in my office,” and that’s when he gets their attention.

It makes sense that we may not know what lies ahead, he explains. Today, 48 percent of Americans have diagnosed heart disease,  according to an American Heart Association Study, and according to Dr. Freeman, many more Americans are walking around who think they are healthy or have no symptoms before their something like heart disease arises, first showing up on a health test or light-headedness, or other sign that something is not right.

Freeman has seen a seemingly fit patient, who hikes 14,000-foot peaks, or mountain bikes up mountains at altitude in Colorado and then has mysterious chest pains, or sees stars, but he or she is still unaware they have any trace of heart disease. “They don’t think they are the profile of a heart patient, since they are neither overweight nor sedentary,” he says. ”If you exercise but are not eating healthy, you will end up in a doctor’s office eventually. You have to be active and eat healthy to avoid heart disease. If you do one or the other, heart disease is fairly inevitable.”

Plant-Based Diets Help Prevent Heart Disease

You can lower your heart disease risk by 80 percent, just by living healthy, Freeman says. Genes are like light switches: You can turn them on or off depending on your choices.  “Healthy lifestyle choices may reduce the risk of myocardial infarction (a heart attack) by more than 80 percent, with nutrition playing a key role” according to a recent study.

If you want to go vegetarian, as opposed to giving up dairy, that reduces cardiovascular disease mortality and the risk of coronary heart disease by 40 percent, this study found.

A Plant-Based Diet Can Even Reverse Heart Disease

Plant-based diets are the only dietary pattern to have shown to reverse symptoms of heart disease in patients. Blocked arteries became unblocked, either partially or fully, in as many as 91 percent of patients who try it, Freeman says. “Doctors often see patients who are surgical candidates who try to eat plant-based in advance of the surgery and then find that they have reversed their blockage through diet alone.” If you have heart disease in your family, or an elevated risk factor such as high cholesterol, he recommends avoiding meat and dairy and going as plant-based as possible.

2. A Whole Food, Plant-Based Diet Helps Prevent Diabetes

In a recent review study of over 10,000 people to see which types of diets were most likely to be associated with type 2 diabetes, and the researchers, from the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, concluded that eating a healthy plant-based diet full of fruits, vegetables, legumes, and nuts – and drinking coffee, helped lower the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

The data divided people into three groups, those who followed a healthy plant-based diet, those who allowed themselves an unhealthy plant-based diet (with processed foods) and omnivores who identified as meat eaters. The researchers concluded that by avoiding processed foods full of refined carbs and added sugar, and eating a diet high in legumes, vegetables, and whole plant-based foods, and drinking coffee daily, it is possible to prevent diabetes in patients at risk. The study was published in the scientific journal Diabetologia.

“Our findings support the beneficial role of healthy plant-based diets in diabetes prevention and provide new insights for future investigation,” the study authors concluded.
Read More: Plant-Based Eating Can Lower Type 2 Diabetes Risk, Study Shows

3. Ditching Dairy Reduces Risk of Breast and Prostate Cancer

In recent studies, dairy has been linked to higher risk of breast cancer and prostate cancer. The study found that drinking even one serving of milk a day increases risk of breast cancer in women up by 50 percent. The more dairy you drink, the higher the risk.

The study found that consuming as little as one-quarter to one-third cup of dairy milk per day was associated with an increased risk of breast cancer of 30 percent,” lead researcher Gary E. Fraser, PhD, of Loma Linda University explained. “By drinking up to one cup per day, the associated risk went up to 50 percent, and for those drinking two to three cups per day, the risk increased further to 70 to 80 percent.”

Read More: Drinking Milk Increases Risk for Breast Cancer, a New Study Shows 

Another study looked at men and the link between dairy and prostate cancer and found a significant link between drinking milk or consuming dairy, and increased risk of prostate cancer. Men who consumed dairy on a regular basis were found to have a 60 percent increased risk of developing prostate cancer as compared to men who steered clear of dairy, or consumed only a minimal amount (a teaspoon or less per day).

Read More: Study: Drinking Milk Increases Prostate Cancer Risk by 60 Percent 

4. Lower Your Risk of Alzheimer’s on a Mostly Plant-Based Diet

In a study of 70 participants between the ages of 30 and 60 who consumed more plant-based foods (defined as a Mediterranean-style diet) showed fewer Alzheimer’s disease-related biomarker changes on their brain scans when compared to those who did not follow the diet as closely. So if you want to avoid Alzheimer’s or dementia, remember to eat more plants!

You can’t change your genes, but you can change how your body and brain express those genes, which is a field of study called epigenetics. Think of genes you’re born with as a series of light switch and the food you eat as your chance to turn the switch for heart disease on or off. The research shows we can do this by getting good sleep, exercising for at least 30 minutes (an hour is better) daily, reducing our stress by doing things that bring us joy and eating a mostly plant-based diet of whole foods. We’ll see you at the gym, and the produce section. And the movies.

5. Risk of High Blood Pressure and Stroke Connected to Red Meat

Meat eaters: Don’t order it well-done, or better yet don’t order it at all. A follow-up study of 32,925 women from the NHS and 53,852 women from the Nurses’ Health Study II (NHSII) and 17,104 men from the Health Professionals Study found that eating well-done meat and hypertension were linked. 

Open flame and/or high-temperature cooking and high “doneness” level for both red and white meat is associated with an increased risk of hypertension by 15% or more. (This was true of fish as well.) The results were consistent, regardless of the amount of meat consumption.

So if you still eat meat, don’t overcook it or order it well done, since you’re adding extra harmful carcinogens, and increasing your risk of hypertension, known as the “silent killer.” Meanwhile, another study links cooked meat and cancer risks. Better yet, order the veggie burger, the bean burger, or try a cauliflower steak.

Research Shows a Plant-Forward Diet Reduces Stroke

In a review study of 306,473 men and women aged 40 to 73 years recruited between 2006 and 2010 and followed for nearly seven years, those with an unfavorable lifestyle were 66% more likely to have a stroke independent of genetic risk.

In the lowest-risk category for strokes were those who followed a healthy lifestyle (defined as not smoking, eating a healthy diet high in fruit, vegetables, and low in processed meats and red meats), with a body mass index of less than 30 and who exercised two or more times a week. If you have strokes in your family, go plant-based.

6. For Healthy Weight Loss Plant-Based Beats Out Keto Diets

In a recent study, people who ate more plant-based, and loaded up on legumes, lost more body fat than those who didn’t eat a high-fiber diet. A new study found that by increasing consumption of plant-based whole foods, especially legumes, while decreasing consumption of meat, fish, poultry and oil, leads to significant weight loss and a decrease in body fat.

Read More: Study: Eat Legumes to Promote Weight Loss, Body Fat Reduction

In other studies, plant-based diets were more sustainable and effective in the long run than short-term low-carb diets such as the keto diet. Keto diets became popular a few years ago, because for a brief time cutting carbs works to achieve fast weight loss. But these diets are impossible to sustain, and they are terrible for long-term heart health since ketones, released when the body burns fat, have caused scarring in heart tissue in the lab. The minute a dieter abandons the keto diet they end up gaining back more weight than they lost to begin with.

Studies show that eating a whole food plant-based diet is more effective than even a keto diet for losing weight and keeping it off

Read More: Exactly What to Eat for to Lose Weight on a Plant-Based Diet

Plant-Based Diets Can Help You Lose Weight and Keep it Off

According to the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine. A plant-based approach makes it easier to lose weight and keep it off because it is full of fiber, which helps fill you up, without adding extra calories. Aim for 40 grams of fiber a day, PCRM says, which is easy to do when you move vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and beans to the center of your plate.

7. Plant-Based Diets Strengthen Immune System, Help Fight Infections

Studies have looked at the connection between immune function and plant diets. While it might seem intuitive that any diet that reduces processed foods, added sugar, and most saturated fats would offer an advantage for immunity, the science became clear recently.

Plant-based diets lower chronic inflammation. Researchers in Italy studied fecal samples of 155 healthy volunteers divided by diet into omnivore, vegetarian and vegan. The stool samples were analyzed for their anti-inflammatory capacity in a model of mouse cells and no significant differences were reported.

Plant-Based Diets Boost Gut Health Which Promotes Immunity

An international team of scientists studied the impact of 3 months of a vegetarian diet on immune health in volunteers that were omnivores. The diet change did result in changes in the diversity of the bacteria in stool samples including the appearance of bacteria producing IgA, an immunoglobulin felt to protect the GI system. The balance  of pro vs anti-inflammatory factors measured favored the plant-strong diet.

Plant-based diets improve white blood cell production. Australian researchers performed a review of the literature regarding vegetarian diets and inflammatory and immune health. The reported that inflammation markers like CRP were lower in vegetarian-based dietary patterns along with white blood counts and fibrinogen levels (an inflammatory and clotting marker). They called for more studies to further evaluate these findings.

Read More: Want Optimal Immunity? Eating a Vegan Diet May Be the Answer

8.  A Fiber-Rich Diet Leads to Less Depression

In a study of 16,807 adults ages 20 years or older, those who ate 21 grams of fiber per day from fruits and vegetables were 40 percent less likely to exhibit depressive symptoms, compared with those who consumed less fiber.

So if you’re having a tough week or feeling low for any reason, add more plants to your plate, choose fruit for snacks, and stay away from boxed cookies, bagged chips and anything that if left on the shelf would stay fresh longer than a loaf of fresh-baked bread. The best food for your mood: Fruits and veggies, nuts, grains and seeds.

Diets High In Processed Meat Linked to Higher Rate of Depression

In a meta-analysis of 41 studies on diet and depression, researchers found a direct correlation between mood and food:

• Eating high amounts of processed meats and trans fats found in junk foods increased incidence rates for clinical depression.
• Eating healthy foods such as vegetables, nuts, and fruits helped regulate emotions in patients experiencing depression, among other protective effects.
• The benefit of a healthy diet results in a 25% reduction of depression, and a lower dietary inflammatory index, which benefits your mind and body.

9. For Overall Health and Wellbeing, the Mediterranean Diet is Good…

In a review of 25,994 women over 12 years from the Women’s Health Study, researchers measured 40 biomarkers and found: Those who most closely followed the Mediterranean diet had up to 28% less cardiovascular disease. Remember that this is a mostly plant-based diet. At the least, follow the Mediterranean diet of whole plants and vegetables, grains, seeds, nuts, olive oil, and fish. Want to do even better? See The Portfolio Diet, below.

But a Plant-Based Diet is Better

Go nuts on nuts. The Portfolio Diet is a plant-based approach that includes daily consumption of at least 45 grams of nuts, at least 50 grams of plant protein like tofu and beans, and at least 20 grams of viscous fiber (veggies) and 2 grams of plant sterols. For nut lovers, this is very good news.

The Portfolio Diet was developed for patients needing to lower cholesterol and it worked. The Portfolio Diet was shown to lower cholesterol as effectively as statin use. Portfolio improved blood pressure and glucose metabolism, decreasing inflammation and reducing the 10-year risk of heart disease by 13 percent, according to a review of controlled trials by doctors in Toronto.

10. You Will You See Healthy Body Results Fast When You Go Plant Based

It only takes four weeks (one month!) to change your body’s heart-healthy markers! One month is enough to see significant drops in measurable health indicators like cholesterol, blood pressure and lipids in your blood. In a study of 31 participants following a low-fat whole-food plant-based diet, in just four weeks:

• Significant reductions were observed for high blood pressure
• A drop in serum lipids, often a precursor to plaque and blockage
• A reduction in total medication usage and some took no meds at all

Other cardiovascular risk factors improved: Weight loss, smaller waist circumference, lower resting heart rate, and all blood markers for heart disease.

Change Your Gut Health and Improve Your Mood In Just 2 Weeks

Gut bacteria was measured in a study of 248 participants followed over a two-week short-term dietary intervention and in just 14 days on a high-veggie plant-based diet, the body’s microbiome changed to be healthier, more diverse, and produce the “good bacteria” that have anti-inflammatory effects on the body.

Those who consumed more fruits, vegetables, and grains improved gut bacterial diversity when compared to those who did not increase these foods. Higher-fiber diets increase bacteria associated with anti-inflammatory compounds linked to improved glucose tolerance and metabolism.

That means in just two weeks of plant-based eating, your gut health changes to produce bacteria that fight inflammation, so you feel less bloated in the short-term,  and long-term your gut bacteria can contribute to a reduction in your lifetime risk of heart disease.

Bottom Line: Going Plant-Based Is One of the Best Things to Do for Your Health

Whether you have heart disease in your family or are worried about breast cancer or diabetes, going plant-based lowers your risk of all major lifestyle diseases significantly. The best way to start? Eliminate meat and dairy and replace it with healthy whole grains, vegetables, fruit, legumes, nuts and seeds. You will feel the difference in your energy in just a few weeks.

The post Scientifically Proven Benefits of a Plant-Based Diet. It Lowers Cancer Risk appeared first on The Beet.

When you take on a new challenge or want to create a healthy habit, your personality may be more matched to leaning into change, rather than jumping in all at once. If that’s the case, then think of the 21 Day Plant-Based Challenge as your on-ramp to going plant-based, and start by taking small steps to the goal of eating mostly plants. Some people cut out food groups, others practice being vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds and grains before dinner. Here are some strategies that can work when you try to make the change to mostly plants.

All your positive steps add up. Eating a diet that’s 75 percent plant-based is better than 50 percent. The closer you get to 95 percent the better for your health, according to studies. Considering most Americans don’t get the recommended 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, if you start just by making sure you are hitting that bar, you’re ahead of the game.

Studies show that a “mostly” plant-based diet is substantially healthier for you, lowering your risk of all forms of heart disease, such as heart attack and stroke, as well as diabetes. People who ate the most plant-based foods overall had a 32% lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease and 25% lower risk of dying from any cause compared to those who ate the least amount of plant-based foods. Essentially, more plants food on your plate leads to better health. How you do it is up to you. We’re here to help make it easier, more delicious and satisfying. Because once you start to feel the benefits, we suspect you’ll want to keep going — until you reach the plant-based summit.

Starting Small to Built Toward Success

When you contemplate: “How do you want to try to go plant-based?” know this: Everyone is different. I met a woman who explained that — inspired by her sister who had done it suddenly and was feeling fantastic — she herself started gradually. “The first week, I did Meatless Monday, and that went well. The second week I added Tuesday and then the third week, Wednesday, and so on, until by week seven, I was eating totally plant-based the entire seven days.” I was impressed, since I had never heard of this approach before, yet it made sense. In just seven weeks she had transformed her way of eating to a healthy plant-based diet and didn’t miss meat and dairy. And, she reported, she was also feeling fantastic!

The other way we know is to try to add in one new plant-based meal a day for the first week, add in a second meal every day the second week and by week three, all three meals are plant-based — theoretically. So your first week is committed to plant-based breakfasts (oatmeal or avocado toast are the crowd-pleasers) and the second week you add in lunches (try wholesome filling salads and hearty soups, or bean chili and or a vegetable-based wrap). Then, by week three, you commit to plant-based dinners. This is how Forks Over Knives is guiding its users on their Fresh Start Program.

Gradual Changes Work for Deliberate Types

The third way to go, and perhaps the most popular onramp, is gradual. You start by giving up meat, then poultry, then fish, then dairy. Or, you just stick to vegetables and fish for a while, until you realize you don’t need all that fish. It even may gross you out and you break the habit of fish and just seek out plant-based proteins.

Call it vegetarian-to-pescatarian-to-ovo-to vegan transformation. Without realizing it, this is what I did. I basically left off animal protein and became more plant-focused over the course of a few years. My tastebuds changed over time and before I knew it, I didn’t want to eat meat or chicken, but still enjoyed the occasional cheese and eggs and fish. Then one day I decided to see if I could go fully plant-based, and enjoy it. I went cold-turkey, or should we call it cold-veggie. And it stuck.

What’s Your Secret to Success?

For most people, success begets success. Tell yourself you are going to replace a few food groups at a time — meat, poultry, and cow’s milk would be my suggestions — and once you have figured out that you can be very happy with the vegetables and grains, seeds, nuts, fruit, and meat substitutes, you can feel you have succeeded in going mostly plant-based. Then jettison the few last remaining animal products that you have been keeping (eggs or cheese) and see if you feel even better.

When I looked up The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg, a book that has been a bestseller and that my friends have used to break bad habits, I found a useful video on the way habits work. Watching it, Duhigg explains that all habits are triggered by a certain behavior or event, called a “cue” which in his case the act of eating a chocolate chip cookie everyday art 3:30 p.m. He realizes that his “routine” was to go to the cafeteria, buy the cookie and then his “reward” was the social interaction with his colleagues — chatting and catching up while eating the cookie. He eventually was able to break the habit by substituting that reward with another one — a chat without the cookie, or even a walk around the block.

Applying this thinking to how to break the habit of eating cheese, meat, or animal protein, The Beet is offering 35 recipes for substituting plant-based delicious meals: Breakfasts, Lunches, Snacks, Dinners and Desserts, that make it easy to break the habit of eating animal product and switch over to healthier plant-based foods. So if your habit is to eat delicious pasta or pizza, or any other favorite cheesy food, check out our recipes and the swaps that will satisfy your reward system. Then sign up to take the 21 Day Plant-Based Challenge, which is everything you need to change your approach to food, one day at a time — or whichever way you choose.

Have a thought on how to best go Plant-Based? Share your opinions in the comments below or on The Beet’s Facebook page, here. 

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The post What’s the Best Way to Go Plant-Based? Ease Into It? Or All at Once? appeared first on The Beet.

The heart of the conflict over vitamin B supplements lies with vitamin B12, also known as cobalamin. You can get all seven of the other B vitamins from a well-planned vegan diet, one that’s rich in dark green leafy vegetables, beans, whole grains, nuts, and seeds. The only way to get vitamin B12 from your diet, however, is by eating animal foods or by eating plant foods that have been fortified with vitamin B12.

Confusing the issue are persistent myths claiming that plant foods such as spirulina, natto, nutritional yeast, and nori and other seaweeds contain vitamin B12. They do, but in the form of pseudovitamin-B12, a form that’s not biologically active in humans. The only forms of vitamin B12 that are bioavailable (your body can use them) are methylcobalamin and adenosylcobalamin.

Another persistent myth about vitamin B12 is that your gut bacteria make it, so you don’t need any from other sources. The problem here is that the bacteria that make vitamin B12 are in your colon, but the absorption points for the vitamin are upstream, in your small intestine. And you don’t get any vitamin B12 from the soil bacteria that cling to unwashed fruits and vegetables.

The amount of vitamin B12 you need each day is very small—it’s measured in micrograms, or millionths of a gram. The RDA for men and women aged 14 years and older is 2.4 micrograms (mcg) a day. For pregnant women, who need more to help prevent neural tube defects in the fetus, the RDA is 2.6 mcg. For women who are breastfeeding, the RDA is 2.8 mcg. That’s because breast milk is very low in vitamin B12, but your baby needs enough of it from you for normal neurological development.

When you don’t get the vitamin B12 you need, you risk the serious health consequences of deficiency. These include pernicious anemia, numbness and tingling in the hands and feet, balance problems, fatigue, and cognitive impairment.

According to Jackie Arnett Elnahar, RD, founder of TelaDietitian (now part of TelaDoc Health), “As a vegan you have to proactively add vitamin B12 to your diet. You can eat fortified foods that have added vitamin B12, or you can take a dietary supplement. But even when you eat fortified foods, the amount per serving varies, so you can’t be sure of getting enough B12 .”

Plant foods that are commonly fortified with B12 and other B vitamins include nondairy milk, most packaged breakfast cereals, some meat substitutes, and some nutritional yeast. (Nooch has all the other B vitamins, but it has B12 only if it’s added for fortification.) Vitamin B12 is also found in energy bars and drinks, usually in amounts many times the RDA. If you don’t consume these foods on a regular basis, you probably won’t get adequate vitamin B12 from them. And if you eat them rarely or not at all, you’ll have to find your vitamin B12 somewhere else.

That leaves supplements as your best source. To some, taking a supplement to get enough of the B vitamins is equivalent to saying that a vegan diet is unhealthy. A more realistic perspective is that taking a supplement is good insurance for your health. And as Jackie Elnahar points out, “If you’re a woman of childbearing age, you really need to be certain you’re getting enough of all the B vitamins, but especially folate and vitamin B12. If you get pregnant, the growing fetus needs them to develop properly, especially in the early weeks, when you might not even know yet that you’re pregnant.” She also stresses that older adults can become deficient in B vitamins even when they eat well. With age, the ability to absorb all the B vitamins from food naturally diminishes. For older adults, especially menopausal women, taking a supplement is a good way to keep B vitamin deficiency from creeping up on you.

What type of supplement and how much? Supplements containing all eight B vitamins usually come as B-50 or B-100 formulas. The B-50 contains 50 percent of the RDA for each vitamin; the B-100 contains 100 percent. If you want to supplement only vitamin B12, look for a product that contains either cyanocobalamin or methylcobalamin. You could start another brawl by claiming that natural methylcobalamin is better than synthetic cyanocobalamin, but there’s not a lot of research to show that either form is superior. Choose a product from a reputable manufacturer that contains 1,000 mcg per dose (you’ll absorb far less than that). If you have trouble absorbing vitamin B12, choose sublingual lozenges that dissolve in the mouth.

The post Do You Really Need to Take Vitamin B12 When You Go Plant-Based or Vegan? appeared first on The Beet.

At the same time, we’re trying so darn hard to keep up with the image of the fit and healthy woman with stress under control, hair in place and glowing skin — basically the view of female health that advertisers sell as the goal. This means reading labels, analyzing our food choices, and doing the best we can to avoid the pitfalls of fast or convenient food laden with chemicals, preservatives, hormones, and antibiotics. Companies entice us with labels such as “natural,” “organic” or non-GMO and yes, even vegan.

While it’s true that there are numerous health benefits to transitioning to a plant-based diet (not to mention the benefits to our earth and environment), remember, a vegan Oreo isn’t any healthier for you than a non-vegan Oreo! In fact, it’s quite easy to be an unhealthy vegan.
One way to avoid the downside of any specific dietary choice, vegan, plant-leaning or vegetarian, is to take the time to prepare your own meals. A home-cooked meal is often the last thing on our minds after a hectic or stressful workday, and may even conjure up soulless supermarkets and an evening that ends with dishes piled up in the sink, both of which can take us away from meaningful things like reading our kids to sleep or finishing off our emails.

However, what if we thought of cooking as a form of self-care? Instead of another task to check off our to-do list, what if cooking became a devotional practice; a way of honoring our bodies and nourishing our souls? Could this change our relationship with what we put in your mouths? While it may take a bit more time to shop for fresh produce (though now you can order groceries from Instacart or Amazon) the truth is that preparing our own meals and snacks, is as worthwhile as getting to yoga class. I can’t think of time better spent.

Carefully choosing and preparing our food with love is a way to honor the divine piece of magic that is our body. Often times I will chant or sing some good old country tunes – depending on my mood – as I chop vegetables. Sundays are my days to prep for the week. I prepare spices, slice vegetables and make sure I have some staples on hand, such as vegetable stock, healthy oils (coconut and olive oils are two preferred vegan options), and good grains. I always keep a ball glass jar full of basmati rice and split mung beans for kitchari so, at the very least, I can whip up a healthy, nutritious meal. Sweet potatoes and kelp noodles are also a staple in my kitchen.

Remember, a home-cooked meal does not have to mean hours in the kitchen. Roasting vegetables and tossing them with some grains and a drizzle of olive oil and avocado is a simple dish that will satisfy your taste buds and your belly. You can save some veggies and toss them into a salad for lunch the next day. Soups and stews are wonderful to prepare on the weekend and freeze for easy meals later in the week or later in the month! The options are endless.

Taking time to pick and prepare our own food helps us cultivate a deeper connection not only with our own bodies but also with our very source of sustenance –- Mother Earth. In particular, a plant-based diet helps us gather the energy of the sun that has been harbored all season in vegetables, fruits, grains, and legumes. Mama Earth gives us root vegetables in fall and winter to help keep us warm and grounded, preparing us for the long cold days ahead. And she offers up her vibrant, cleansing foods as we enter spring to help us detoxify and lighten our loads as we transition to warmer days. It may even lead to weight loss if that’s a goal since when you eat what you cook, you know exactly what goes into your meal and you can avoid any unwanted excess oils, fats, calories or sugars.

I will always argue that how you eat is just as important as what you eat. Is food something you truly take pleasure in? Or do you scarf it down without awareness of how the energy in food can shift your own energy? Do you take in your food with gratitude or is it just a mindless toss of calories into the mouth? How often do you eat in the company of others enjoying companionship and fulfilling conversation? Or is eating a lonely experience for you? Take some time to inquire about your own relationship with food and its preparation. Ideally, your food is nourishing you in all ways – body, mind, and soul.

The post The Easiest Way to Be Healthy: Cooking Vegan Food for Yourself. appeared first on The Beet.

It’s tempting, at the start of the year, to tell yourself you will get it all done: Lose weight, start saving money, quit drinking, go plant-based, and get to the gym every day. That’s virtuous and to be commended. But it may be slightly unrealistic.

We asked Victoria Barrios, a certified Lifestyle Transformation Coach, to help us understand what it was that made her clients successful, and what she coaches people to do, when they set off on a new life goal. Barrios shares how she coaches people to make lasting change, one step at a time. This is designed to help anyone wanting to go plant-based and change their approach to eating, for her tricks to succeed.

How do you help people make lasting changes in their lives?

Before setting any goals, I tell my clients to lay out their vision first and work backward from there. Why? You may have several goals, but only one of them is actually achievable now.

You might have four goals but only one of them is truly important to you.

The more goals you have, the easier it will be to get overwhelmed, which actually keeps you from taking any action or succeeding at the most important goal. It’s tempting to try to transform everything all at once and emerge as a whole new you. But more likely you will end up giving up on all of them and end up right back where you started.
Instead of listing out a bunch of goals and trying to tackle them all at once, start with your vision. Your vision is what gives you clarity and direction; without it, you won’t know if you’re on track for what you truly want in life, and your goals (or wishes) could end up taking you down the wrong path. So, how do you map out your vision? You need to get crystal clear on two things first:

Know Your “What” and your “Why!”
Your “what” should consist of exactly what it is that you want for your life right now and for as far in the future as you would like to allow yourself to visualize.
Your “why” is the reason behind your “what.” If you don’t know why you’re doing something, then it isn’t personal, and you might never truly understand what you’re working towards.
For example, part of my vision is to help others understand who they are and what they’re meant to do on this Earth so that they can begin to transform their lives. Why? Once I discovered for what I was truly meant, I began to see massive transformation in my own life.

Now it’s Your Turn to State Your Vision for Your Life

Write down that vision and hang it where you can see it every single day so that you won’t get sidetracked. Once you’ve got your vision laid out, your goals will become easier to identify.

Your vision could be a short paragraph long or just a sentence. Try something internal, as opposed to just physical. “I want to be my healthiest version of myself, and be kind to myself and others.” Try your version of that, and keep it concise.  Next comes the harder part:

It’s time to pick one goal and make it the easiest or simplest one to achieve.

Why? Once you accomplish a simple goal, it builds trust with yourself and momentum–which means you’ll be able to achieve more challenging and long-term goals in the future.
After you’ve decided on your one key goal, write it down and stick it next to your vision. Make sure you give yourself a realistic deadline for completing the goal. If you’re not sure how much time you’ll need, give yourself extra time, but follow through!
Finally, tell someone about the goal. We all need accountability, and it’s much easier to reach our goals if we know someone is going to keep reminding us about them.
Are you ready for the most important part?

Don’t make it your accountability partner’s job to get you to finish the goal. Ultimately, it’s your life! You are the author of how it goes. Write your story, one paragraph or day at a time.

Let us know what your goal is and share it on The Beet’s Facebook page or the comments below. We will do the same and help each other achieve our key goals in the months ahead.

The post How to Make Your Resolution Stick: Take it One Goal at a Time appeared first on The Beet.

Sitting down with Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr. for an hour is like listening to your favorite college professor on a topic you’re fascinated by, however, instead of teaching you economics or social studies or history or biology, he teaches us how to live healthier lives, including having healthier sex lives, through the food choices we make.

Dr. Esselstyn, now 86 and sharp as ever, was one of the first doctors to insist that his patients adopt a plant-based diet for heart health, and he wants people to know how to live a long and healthy, active, vibrant life. Want a better sex life, healthier, younger organs and to reverse heart disease symptoms? All we have to do is eat a plant-based diet, Esselstyn says.  He teaches seminars on how to do it, which you can attend near Cleveland, where he was a revered surgeon at the famed Cleveland Clinic, for 50 years or so, or you can read this.

Caldwell Esselstyn was a surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic and treating breast cancer patients when he realized that he was doing nothing to help the future patients, those who were unsuspecting of their condition or who were getting sick even as he tried to save those who arrived at his surgical offices. He suspected that one of the main reasons people got sick was related to a lifelong diet of animal fat and protein. His studies of women in societies where there was very little breast cancer showed that their mostly plant-based diet played a role in how seldom women would get breast cancer in those cultures, and he decided to switch his focus from cancer to heart disease when he also began to understand that eating the typical American diet was making half of the population show symptoms of cardiovascular disease.

This led to a practice of helping his patients change their diet. What happened next was something short of a miracle. Heart disease symptoms were held in check and even reversed, among the “compliant” patients who managed to stay on the diet, and he recalls his phone ringing and a patient telling him “Something’s come up!” and sharing with the doctor that during the weeks of eating plant-based his sex life had restored to his youthful prowess.

Here, Esselstyn, one of the two major doctors in the documentary Forks Over Knives, along with T. Colin Campbell, tells The Beet what he thinks of our current obsession with fake meat, the best way to eat to live a healthy life –and stay active and strong well into our 80’s 90’s and beyond. What I learned here will change the way I will eat forever. No more cheating with cheese. Pull up a chair and listen up, as the good doctor gives a lesson in living healthy.

Q: When did you go plant-based? And why? What prompted your decision?

A. Back in 1984. At that point, I had two responsibilities as a surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic. One I was head of the Breast Cancer Taskforce and two, head of thyroid surgery. I was increasingly disillusioned that for however many women I was treating who needed surgery, I was doing nothing for the unsuspecting next victim. So I started to do research and found that breast cancer was very low elsewhere, like  30 to 40 percent lower in Kenya and also much lower in Japan. But as soon as those Japanese women migrated to the United States, by the second and third generations, their risk was as high as their American counterparts.

At this point, I realized that there might be more bang for the buck if I could look at cardiovascular disease. It became increasingly apparent that there were multiple cultures where cardiovascular disease was non-existent — Papua New Guinea and Japan and the northern Mexican highlands. Most of those cultures eat largely plant-based and without oil. So if you could get people to eat to save their heart, they could also avoid cancers like breast cancer, colon, pancreatic and others.

I thought I had to do a study. I knew people were unlikely to make this transition without some science.  We began running the study with 18 patients and had about a 90 percent adherence in terms of patients with cardiovascular disease. (Now our most recent paper of 200 patients that we published in 2014 had an 89 percent adherence to our program.)

I went to the chairman of the Dept of Cardiology and see if they would send me 24 patients who were seriously ill who had failed their first or second bypass and angioplasty and they were too sick for these procedures. They had been told by their cardiologists they would not live out the year. And my fear with this group was how could I get them to make this significant change, which was obviously extreme since we are asking them to stop eating foods that are going to injure the lining of their arteries. I saw them every two weeks to draw their blood and their cholesterol and go over every morsel they ate. And then I stretched it out to every month. And then at the end of ten years to stretch it out to quarterly. And at 12 years, we wrote it up and published it. In 12 years of follow up on these patients what we found was quite exciting: Of the original 24, there were six that within the first six or eight weeks I knew they didn’t get it and I released them from the study to go back to their cardiologists. They became my quasi-control group, and those who dropped out, two of them died and the other four had to have further bypass surgeries. The other 18 who stayed with us — we wanted to know in the eight years before they had come into our study, how many events of worsening coronary disease had they had? It turned out they had 49 events in the prior years. Once those 18 years came into our study, over the next 12 years 17 of them had no further cardiac events. One little sheep wandered from the flock and enjoyed glazed donuts and such, and he had to have another heart procedure. But then he was back. We got him back. No surprise.

Q. How can you convince healthy, as-of-yet asymptomatic people to eat plant-based before they end up in your office with a heart attack or signs of disease?

I am on the Nutrition Committee of the American College of Cardiology. First we are trying to educate cardiologists as to the causation of the disease they are being asked to treat.

It all comes down to education. You must share with them what happens in their body when they eat meat. They have to be educated. We know that when we do autopsies of GIs who died in Korea — the average age of 20 years old. About 80 percent of them see gross heart disease and you could see it with the naked eye. That study was repeated among young women and men who died of accidents and suicides, more recently, and when they look at coronary arteries, it’s in all these people. It’s ubiquitous. When you go to high school, you get a diploma but you don’t learn to eat. If you are over the age of 17 you already have heart disease. You can decide whether you want to eat this way, but basically, if you don’t cut out animal fat, you have a choice: You can have a heart attack or a stroke. Or both.

People don’t eat plant-based, it’s because they have never had a chance to sit down and understand how this disease behaves. The absolute key for people to understand is we all the experts are in agreement. Here’s how cardiovascular disease works: The lifejacket of our health is the lining of the artery, the endothelium, which makes a magic gas, nitric oxide, that is the savior of all our bloodstream flowing smoothly. It keeps things from getting sticky. When you climb stairs or workout, the arteries dilate. Nitrate Oxide protects the wall of the artery from becoming thick and stiff and keeps blood flowing properly.

A safe amount of nitrate oxide protects us from cardiac disease. Everyone — if they have CVD — the preceding decades they have so damaged their cells that it keeps them from creating nitric oxide. So they get plaque and hardening of the arteries. However, the good news is this — it’s not a malignancy. It’s a foodborne illness. If you can get patients to understand that every time these [animal product] foods pass their lips they are further injuring their endothelial cells. So if you stop injuring those cells further you not only stop the injury but you can reverse it.

With heart patients, I explain to them that they need to get off all animal products and dairy, and all oil. That includes olive oil, coconut oil, palm oil, oil in crackers, oil in salad dressing. Plus anything with a mother or a face: Meat, pork, chicken, turkey, and fish. It includes dairy, cheese, yogurt, eggs, and sugary foods: cookies, cakes, donuts, pies, or an excessive amount of maple sugar and honey.

That’s the lineup. How do you get patients to make this type of transition? First thing is to show patients respect and the only way to show respect is go give them my time.

Once a month I conduct a seminar for six hours at the Clinic with their spouse or companion. If you think you can get anywhere without their spouses you’re wrong. 
You teach them that they have created their disease. And you need to empower them to see how they can be the locus of control to halt and reverse this disease. They get all the slides, notebooks and information they need to make the change when they get home, including 240 recipes and a DVD of the entire seminar — so if they go home and get rusty they can flip this on and get up to speed.

Then we have them hear from two or three local participants who share their story of transformation and transitioning to a plant-based diet, and how it saved their lives, and those in attendance think: if he or she can do it then I can do this too. It works.

Q. What is the key function that going plant-based does to your body? And how do you explain this to non-science types?

A. They need to understand nitric oxide. Or both the endothelium and nitric oxide. These two terms need to be understood. They need to understand that if you put your hand above your head like shielding from the sun, we can see that 8-year-olds have this much nitric oxide and then in 20s, it’s this much — and I put my hand at my neck level — and it keeps going down throughout our lives. If you die and we do an autopsy it’s down to here, and I point to well below my waist, around your knees. You have heart disease by then, but not so much that you would show up with symptoms yet. Then in your 40s, you don’t have enough nitric oxide to protect you. So if you continue to destroy endothelial cells, it will end up destroying you.

I explain to them: All the mystery is gone as to why you have this disease. They destroyed their endothelial cells and are not be able to make nitric oxide. If we could open up their arteries and look inside, it’s a cauldron of oxidation. They need antioxidants. Not from pills but from food. From food that is high in oxidated Value

Q. Okay now that we understand the method that greens help your body stay healthiest, let’s talk about sex. Erectile dysfunction is a major topic among men of a certain age (and the ads on NFL TV broadcasts). How does food play a role?

A. When men eat a plant-based diet of heart-healthy greens, grains, and fiber-filled foods, It’s so powerful and so inexpensive, and it opens up their circulation. ED is the first sign of heart disease, often, since the exact same system works on that body part as all the other blood vessels in the body. So when that stops working, it may be because the person doesn’t have a healthy cardiovascular picture in general. It’s hard for any cardiologist who is used to prescribing expensive drugs to instead tell their patients to just completely change their diet. But these plant-based foods can be as powerful as expensive drugs.

It’s profound how exciting it can be for men. I often get a phone call to alert me that they have had a major development in their health.  “Dr. Esselstyn,” they will call me out of the blue, like 11 months after nutrition counseling, and he says, “I thought I should give you a phone call to say, recently something has come up!” I’m not surprised. In the movie, The Game Changers, young athletes find that a single evening meal at dinner had an impact on how many erections they had throughout the night, and how strong those were. “One dinner made the difference for them because they were young, healthy athletes. For those with unhealthy arteries, it takes a little longer,” Esselstyn explains. But if the patient is consistent the plant-based diet works wonders.

Q. What exactly would you tell men to eat to improve their sex lives?

A. For breakfast: Oatmeal and blueberries. That’s a good start. But you need to chew green leafy vegetables, six times a day for best results. Chew these leafy veggies after they have been boiled in water for 5 or 6 minutes, and drizzled with Balsamic vinegar, which has been shown to replace the endothelial cells and create nitric oxide. So you take leafy greens at breakfast, as a mid-morning snack, then lunch, then after lunch mid-afternoon, then again at dinner and after dinner. Kale and swiss chard and these greens can restore the capacity of your bone marrow to restore your Endothelial progenitor cells.

By chewing the greens, it allows the bacteria of the plants to mix with the bacteria of the mouth to help create even more nitric oxide. All-day long by chewing these greens, you are restoring to your body that can reverse the disease. 

The greens you need to chew on every few hours should be dark, green leafy vegetables, including: Kale, Swiss Chard, Spinach, Arugula, Beet Greens, Bok Choy, Collard Greens, Mustard Greens, Asparagus, Brussel Sprouts and Chard.

These can be as powerful as expensive drugs. 

Q. Break up the fight: Which is better for you: Keto plan or plant-based eating?

A. The thing you have to go again is to look at the science. I am totally unaware of patients seriously ill with cardiovascular disease, where the ketogenic diet has halted disease. Plant-based does.

The Keto diet has meat in it. The research from Stanley Hazen from Cleveland Clinic from persons who are omnivores who are eating various products: beef, pork, chicken, turkey and those foods contain lecithin and carnitine. When an omnivore eats lecithin and carnitine, they have within their micro-biome bacteria that reduces these to the molecule called TMA  in the gut — which in turn gets reduced to trimethylamine oxide or TMAO, by the liver. And that has been shown to injure the body’s blood vessels. So every time you eat meat you injure your blood vessels. Then Dr. Hazen took someone who is totally plant-based and gave them meat and they did not create any TMAO because they do not have the bacteria in their gut to convert it into TMA or TMAO, it’s gone after about three weeks, but if they continue they do start to eat pork, chicken, meat or fish, they make that bacteria and then they do start to injure their blood vessels again. So once you’re off it, a trace amount won’t hurt you. But if you go back to eating meat the gut microbiome changes again and you go back to hurting yourself.

This isn’t just the science of a handful of leading doctors here or across the country. The World Health Organization — which represents cultures throughout the world — published a report saying red meat has the same level of carcinogen as smoking cigarettes.

If you don’t believe it, just look at the Harvard Nurses study and the incidents of death is up 12 percent over time, for those who ate red meat and 20 percent over the same period, for those eating hot dogs and ham and bacon.

Q. But this is super strict. You tell your patients no oil, no nuts, and only greens and gruits and grains? I thought almonds and certain nuts were beneficial.

A. I only tell the strictest version to those who are already sick. We say “No oil or nuts” for those patients with heart disease — I do not tell patients who don’t have heart diseases they have to give up oil and nuts. But I struggle with this. When I lecture before an audience there are those with diagnosed CVD and those who don’t, who don’t have symptoms. So the people in the audience who are well also have heart disease, they just don’t know it yet.

Q. What about all those alternative meats? Here at The Beet we say they are a helpful gateway food, a conversation starter to show people they can live very happily without beef.

A. The healthiest food is whole food, plant food.  Processed foods are awful. Alternative meats are terrible for you. If you compare alternative meats and what it does for your health versus real meats, it’s a question of asking the patient whether you want to be shot or hung. These all have saturated fat, a lot of sodium and Impossible has heme iron, which is not good for you. And there are no long-term studies whatsoever on the effects of eating this.

Q. Okay you convinced me to skip the Impossible Whopper next time I drive out of town on Long Island, even though I think it’s delicious. So what do you eat in a day?

A. I don’t cook.

Breakfast: I have oats. I eat them as dry cereal. I put them in the bowl, add some raisins, maybe a banana, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries. Add oat milk. It’s a caloric feast. Cooking them is fine but you don’t need to. Whenever I am on the road I can’t rolled oats I can oatmeal. When you’re on the road and you’ve got oatmeal you don’t even need the almond milk — the water is enough to wet them down. Add the bananas and berries and raisins

Lunch: That depends on the season. In the summer ann always wants to make open sandwiches. Toasted. Hummus, things like kale, scallions, some sort of slice of apple or a slice of cucumber, and sprinkles of Mrs. Dash, which is a mix of various herbs, spices and seasoning.

Snack: I usually like to grab a whole wheat bagel and I’m crazy about hummus. I heat or toast the bagel and I love gobs of hummus. Never eat hummus with oil. Make sure not made with oil. Whole Foods one contains no oil. Or make your own.

Dinner: My favorite meal is beans and rice and on top of that I’ll add some peas, corn, cut up scallions, other greens, chestnuts and mango it’s an absolute feast. And on the  edge of it Kale. Of course.

Treat or Sweet: Jane my daughter makes me a scone, it’s dairy-free, with a little maple syrup in there somewhere.

Q. How long are you going to keep at it, treating patients and making videos, books and holding seminars?

A. It’s a lot of fun to wake up every day with a little excitement. I am more excited than ever to keep going because of the profound changes we are seeing in how to treat patients. There is so much going on in this area now. My whole family is in it!

The post What to Eat for Better Sex. Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn on How to Eat Now appeared first on The Beet.

While such news can certainly overwhelm you, know that you are not helpless in this crisis, and it is not entirely hopeless when it comes to reducing our footprint. Each of us can cut our food-related environmental impact in half, just by making this the year to commit to eating a more plant-based diet.

After fossil fuels, animal agriculture is the second-largest contributor of carbon and methane emissions, and industrial farming is a leading cause of deforestation, water, and air pollution and accounts for biodiversity loss. If we continue with business as usual, by 2050, the emissions associated with the world’s food system will be 51 percent higher than they are today. But there is hope, or at least mitigating ways that we can each dial back further damage to our planet Consider:

If a single person moves from a high-meat diet to a vegan one, he or she could reduce his or her annual carbon footprint by 1,560kg CO2e. That’s the same amount of carbon produced by driving 13,985 miles, or halfway around the planet. Do it as a couple and you save enough to drive ALL the way around the globe.

If all 320 million Americans replaced beef with plant-based alternatives, it would cut emissions by 278 million metric tons CO2e—an impact equal to removing over 200 cars from the roads for one year, or NOT driving the 2,492,258 miles it would take to circle the world 100 times.

If every person on earth adopted a vegan diet, the GHGs associated with the world’s food system would fall by more than half by 2050, making vegan the only diet capable of putting the planet on track to meet the international goal of limiting warming to two degrees Celsius by then.

So, are you ready to do your part? The Beet will be kicking off its 21-Day Plant-Based Challenge the first week of January. You pick the day you want to start, and we’ll supply the expert advice, shopping tips, restaurant recommendations, delicious recipes, and a whole community of supporters. Check back here in the days ahead for more information on how to get started.

Change your diet, save the world. It’s that simple.

The post When You Go Plant-Based, Here’s How Much it Lowers Your Carbon Footprint appeared first on The Beet.

Still, need more evidence that shifting to a mostly plant-based diet is best for your health? Below, experts weigh in on some of the most convincing studies to either prevent, reverse or slow the progression of seven health woes.

1. Your goal:  Slim down

The study:  Comparing a vegetarian vs. conventional low-calory diabetic diet on the distribution of thigh fat, according to a randomized study of subjects with type 2 diabetes, published in The Journal of the American College of Nutrition (in2017).

What the study found:  Among adults with type 2 diabetes, half adopted a nearly vegan diet (they were allowed to eat one low-fat yogurt a day, although not  everybody ate this) while the other half of the study participants followed a conventional diabetes diet, which restricts portion size and limits carbs, thus requiring people to eat more animal products. Researchers measured changes at baseline, three months and six months, and by the end, although each group ate the same amount of calories, the nearly-vegan group lost almost twice as much weight – 13.67 pounds to be exact – versus the other group, who lost an average of 7.05 pounds. The plant-based eaters also lost more fat stored in the muscles.

The take-home:  When you eat mostly plants, you’ll increase your intake of fiber, especially if you’ve been following the standard American diet (which is extremely low in fiber). Simply put, high-fiber diets promote weight loss. Fiber also changes your gut microbiome, and the gut bacteria that feed on fiber have many metabolic benefits, weight loss included, says Hana Kahleova, M.D., Ph.D., study co-author and director of clinical research for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM).

2. Your goal: Lower your risk of heart disease and early death

The study:  A recent study of adults 40 and over reviewed the impact of a diet that emphasizes vegetables, fruits, nuts, whole grains, and minimizes the intake of trans fats, red meat and processed red meats, refined carbohydrates, and sweetened beverages is best. 2019 ACC/AHA Guidelines on the Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease (Circulation, 2019)

What the study found:  Heart disease remains the top killer of men and women, but after four decades of decline, heart disease deaths rose again in 2015, a trend attributed to the obesity epidemic. Diet is certainly a driver of the rise in cardiovascular disease, as unhealthy eating has been linked with unhealthy hearts.

Dr. Kim Alan Williams, Chief of the Division of Cardiology at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago puts it this way: “Multiple studies have focused on the association of heart disease and mortality with dietary patterns –- specifically sugar, low-calorie sweeteners, high-carbohydrate diets, low-carbohydrate diets, refined grains, trans fat, saturated fat, sodium, red meat, and processed meat,” and found that the more plant-based you eat, the better.

The take-home:  Replacing animal protein with plants can help decrease your risk not only of heart disease but also early death of all causes. In one of the studies noted in this review, eating meat was associated with a 61 percent increase in mortality rate, versus if you replaced meat with nuts and seeds you lower your mortality rate by 40 percent.

In another study, comparing a diet of plant-based protein, to protein from animal sources found this: those who ate poultry and fish had a six percent higher mortality rate than those who ate plant-protein, and this jumped to 8 percent higher mortality risk if they included dairy, and a 12 percent higher mortality risk if they ate unprocessed meat, and 19 percent higher mortality risk if they ate eggs. But the highest mortality risk was found among those who ate processed and red meat, of 34 percent elevated risk.

On the flip side, those who ate more plant protein fared better:  For every three percent of energy replacement of animal protein with plant protein, there was a 10 percent reduction in the mortality rate.

Bottom line: The more you lean into a plant-based diet, the better.

3. Your goal:  Optimize heart health

The study:  Healthful and Unhealthful Plant-Based Diets and the Risk of Coronary Heart Disease in U.S. Adults (Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 2017)

What the study found:  Not only does this study support that plant-based diets are healthy and decrease rates of coronary artery events, it also reveals that there’s a range of plant-based diets, some healthier than others. It’s easy to eat junk food that’s devoid of animal product and call yourself vegan or plant-based. The best choices are whole-foods that are minimally processed, cooking with less oil, and avoiding added sugars and fats.

“Plant-based diets that are ‘healthful’ decrease event rates, but unhealthful plant-based diets have no benefit and can even increase risk,” says Dr. Monica Aggarwal, M.D., F.A.C.C., Director of Integrative Cardiology at the University of Florida, Gainesville.

The take-home:  Understand the difference between healthful and unhealthful plant-based diets and opt for the whole foods. Unhealthful plant-based diets include refined carbohydrates and simple sugars like cookies, French fries, potato chips, non-dairy ice creams and sugary sodas. Meanwhile, a healthful plant-based diet focuses on fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans and lentils, nuts and seeds, and spices.

4. Your goal:  Stave off breast cancer

The study: Low-fat dietary pattern and long-term breast cancer incidence and mortality: The Women’s Health Initiative randomized clinical trial (American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting, 2019)

What the study found:  The research supports a strong link between diet and breast cancer. However, this study connected diet and cancer occurrence among nearly 50,000 postmenopausal women, who were followed for over two decades. Those who ate a lower-fat diet and concentrated their diet on more fruits, vegetables, and grains had a 21 percent lower chance of breast cancer over the decades. Three things make this particularly significant, says Dr. William Li, physician, scientist and best-selling author of Eat to Beat Disease: The length of the study, the fact that patients were enrolled from 40 different medical centers throughout the United States, and the fact that minorities were included in the cohort.

The take-home:  Add more fruits, vegetables and grains (choose whole grains over refined carbs) to your diet. “Plant-based foods contain natural chemicals that are bioactive that can help starve cancerous tumors, kill cancer stem cells and protect your DNA from damage,” Li says. “Fiber, which is found only in plants, will also improve your gut microbiome, boosting your immune system’s ability to find and destroy cancer cells.” At the same time, lower the overall fat in your diet.

In addition to swapping saturated fats for polyunsaturated fats found in healthy plant oils like olive oil, reduce the amount of red meat you eat, another source of unhealthy fat. Red meat has also been shown to change your gut microbiome in ways that promote inflammation, which is associated with fueling cancer development, he adds.

5. Your goal:  Decrease symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis

The study:  Nutrition Interventions in Rheumatoid Arthritis: The Potential Use of Plant-Based Diets. A Review (Frontiers in Nutrition, 2019)

What the study found:  A surprising one percent of the world’s population suffers from this debilitating autoimmune disorder. While drugs have been the primary line of defense against RA, this study, one of the first of its kind, suggests that a simple swap to a whole-food, plant-based diet can not only help symptoms like pain and swelling improve but showed in some cases the symptoms disappear. “Animal foods promote inflammation, so when you remove the animal foods, you reduce the inflammation in as a little as two to three weeks,” says study co-author and researcher Hana Kahleova.

The take-home:  Eating mostly plants is the way to go. The one caveat? “There are some foods in the plant kingdom that can still trigger inflammation in some individuals,” Kahleova says. If you’re struggling after switching to a plant-only diet, you may need to go through an elimination diet, excluding other potential triggers like beans, citrus fruit, onions, soy, and nuts.

6. Your goal: Get elevated cholesterol in check

The study:  Examine the association between plant-based diets and elevated levels of plasma lipids (Nutrition Reviews, 2017)

What the study found: Researchers from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine compared vegetarian and vegan diets with omnivorous diets to determine which might lead to better (lower) cholesterol levels. So which one won? Although the vegetarian diet did lower total cholesterol, and even LDL (aka bad) cholesterol, a whole-food plant-based vegan diet had the most benefit on LDL, and the measure of lipid levels in the blood.

The take-home:  If you have elevated LDL, which can be a precursor to heart disease and clogged arteries (which may also lead to stroke and other causes of early death) choose a more plant-based diet. Researchers say that switching to a plant-based diet can help you lose weight and when you cut your saturated fat intake you will likely see cholesterol go down.

7. Your goal: Fight or prevent diabetes

The study:  The connection between vegetarian diets and the risk of diabetes (Current Diabetes Reports, 2018)

What the study found:  This review of studies concluded that “a vegetarian diet characterized by whole plant foods has the most benefits for diabetes prevention and management.”

Of note? In one study the researches highlighted, vegans had the lowest rates of diabetes versus Lacto-Ovo vegetarians, pescatarians, semi-vegetarians, and non-vegetarians. Vegan diets also showed the most benefits in reducing blood sugar levels — called fasting plasma glucose levels — in people with diabetes and other complications like heart disease.

The take-home:  Most people think diabetes is all about carbohydrates and sugar, but that’s not the full picture. The real culprit when trying to lower diabetes appears to be fat, according to this new research. “When you eat a high-fat diet, you tend to store fat in the body, which gets into the cells,” says Pam Popper, Ph.D., N.D., President of Wellness Forum Health in Columbus, Ohio. As a result, that fat blocks your body’s insulin signaling response. Think of insulin as a key that lets blood sugar or glucose enter your cells. When too much fat is present in the blood, insulin can’t do its job, so that glucose builds up in your blood, causing blood sugar levels to increase and making you insulin-resistant.

Yet when you switch to a healthy plant-based diet (think whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes and not a lot of oils) that’s naturally low in fat, “the weight falls off your body, and the fat pours out of your cells in a short time, allowing you to become insulin sensitive,” so you lose weight, Popper adds.

Whatever your health woes or goals, these studies all suggest that the best way to lower inflammation and lose weight for the long term is a whole-food plant-based diet, low in oils and minimally processed foods. The Beet welcomes your tips, comments and helpful hacks for how to “just add plants” to your plate to be your healthiest and eat delicious food, too.

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