I was 51 years old
and I just wasn't feeling young anymore.
Both my parents had health problems in their early 60s
and both developed adult-onset diabetes.
My mother suffered from heart disease
and obesity as well in her 60s.
I chalked it up to getting old,
a simple fact of my genetic fate.
After years of intense research and schooling,
I came to the conclusion
that the American diet was killing me.
Can we take control of our health?
Well, I'm here to tell you that I took
control of my lab results and health.
This is my journey into attaining
a healthy and disease-free life.
Join me while I talk with experts, discuss the science,
identify what foods are good and what foods are bad,
and create delicious, fast whole plant-based meals
in our kitchens.
So, what is the whole plant-based movement,
and why is it making such a big impact on people's health?
It's time to get on a plane and ask the experts.
- And once you can get patients to understand
that they themselves created this disease
by the foods that they were eating
that destroyed the capacity of their endothelial cells
to make nitric oxide, they are literally almost elated.
I mean, I've seen patients almost with tears in their eyes
suddenly realizing that we are empowering them
as the locus of control
to halt and begin to reverse this disease.
- Well, this requires an encyclopedia
answer, but yeah, I mean what we see, basically,
and have for some time,
is that the higher the consumption of meat
in different countries,
we see a positive relationship
with the risk of cancer, heart disease, for example.
That's a crude of way of kind of observation.
- According to the Global Burden of Disease study,
the largest study of risk factors
for human disease in history
funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
the number one cause of death in the United States
is our diet.
Number one cause of disability in our county is diet.
- Historically, cultures that have consumed
more animal products and more meat
have more chronic disease,
particularly what we call diseases of affluence.
Those are kind of the diseases
that are more common in rich countries.
These are breast cancer, prostate cancer,
heart disease, diabetes, weight problems.
- First off, I need to make a qualifying comment.
I don't use the word vegetarian and vegan, really,
to describe what I'm talking about.
I use the whole food plant-based diets.
So, what is the difference
between vegan and whole plant-based?
- What are the foods that every time they pass your lips,
you injure the endothelial cells?
They are any drop of oil, olive oil, corn oil,
soy bean oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, coconut oil,
palm oil, oil in a cracker, oil in a piece of bread,
oil in a salad dressing.
Oil injures endothelial cells,
as does anything with a mother or a face,
meat, fish, chicken, fowl, turkey, eggs.
And anything that is dairy,
milk, cream, butter, cheese, ice cream, yogurt.
And any excesses of sugary drinks,
excesses of cakes, pies, cookies,
agave, maple syrup, molasses, honey.
And I don't like coffee with caffeine.
- Things like too much salt, too much sodium,
and also, too much processed meats.
We're talkin' bacon, ham, hot dogs, lunch meat,
turkey slices, that kinda thing,
known to be a class one or category one,
group one carcinogen by the IARC,
the official body of the World Health Organization
that determines what is and is not cancer-causing.
We are as sure that processed meat
causes cancer in human beings
in we are that plutonium causes cancer in human beings
and asbestos and cigarette smoke,
so we're like, you know,
puttin' a carton of milk on peoples' and kids' lunch trays,
carton of cigarettes.
I mean, it's outrageous that we continue
to feed these kinda products to children,
to anyone when we know they cause cancer.
- Vegetarians, about 90% of the vegetarians
are still using dairy,
and that really is a serious compromise
of the change that they would hope to be making
because dairy is nothing more than,
in many ways, we say liquid meat.
It has a lot of protein, animal protein, for example.
So, when we look at vegetarians in general,
we gotta keep in mind that most of them by far
haven't really improved their diet that much.
- Really?
- Yeah, because they're still using the dairy
and oftentimes, they use some fish, as you just said,
maybe eggs-
And oils.
- That's right, and so, in fact,
we've got some really good data now
to show that the, as I see, the nutrient composition
of a vegetarian diet is really
almost not different from the meat-eating diet.
- Really? - Yeah.
- You would think it would be a little bit better.
- Well, it is a shade better in some vegetarians-
- Shade better. - But not that much,
and the effect of any food on disease outcome
is best estimated by the kind of nutrients
that are present in the food,
and so when you compare,
and the biggest study I know of that does this
just came out in 2016,
was the largest number of vegetarians and vegans
compared to the meat eaters,
it turns out the fat content of the vegetarian diet,
in terms of percent of calories,
the fat content of vegetarian diets
and vegan diets and meat-eating diets, it's the same.
It's all just about 30% fat.
- You said vegan, did you say-
- Yes, I said vegan too.
Vegetarians, vegans which don't use dairy,
even for vegans, the average fat content
is just exactly even for all three diets.
- Why would the vegan one be-
- Because the vegans, what they do
is they turn around and dump a lot of added oil.
- The olive oil, Mediterranean-
- No, I said added oil.
By that, I mean they're using fried foods,
you know, there's often using oils from corn oil
or some of the other kinds of oils,
plus olive oil maybe, obviously in some cases.
- The more meat, the more of those types of diseases,
and when you actually look at then animal experiments,
you see that sometime you can see animal protein,
for example, which is a key part of meat,
can actually progress heart disease,
atherosclerosis the buildup of plaque in the artery.
You know, there are other components of meat,
other than the protein, you know, saturated fat,
that's been linked to heart disease,
so we know that more meat
tends to come with more Western disease.
- I think we like people to have whole grains, W-H-O-L-E,
whole grains for their cereal, bread, and pasta.
If the patients have anything that's overweight,
I would rather they omitted flour,
so the pasta, the bread, the rolls, the bagels, right?
Because once you take a grain and you enrich it into flour,
you got something a little bit closer to sugar.
So, if they have a weight issue,
we'd like 'em to hold off on the flour.
And we want 'em to have
all those 101 different types of legumes,
beans, metals, white potatoes,
especially sweet potatoes, very nutrient-dense,
and all the wonderful red, yellow,
and green leafy vegetables and some fruit.
Let's see if we can put this
into a different perspective
in terms of grading the food that we eat.
Fried animal products, now that would be stuff
like fast food, you know, burgers,
french fries, hot dogs, et cetera.
These foods should be given the grade of an F.
The next is animal products,
and these would be chicken, beef, pork,
turkey, lamb, eggs, and all of the dairy.
We would still have to give this a grade of an F.
And then there's processed junk.
That would be chips, cookies,
cakes, ice cream, candy, chocolates.
We would give that a grade of D.
The next would be oils, sodas, and coffee,
and that would be olive oil, canola oil, palm, peanut, flax,
vegetable, coconut, and all your sodas that are sweetened.
We would also give this a grade of D.
And then there is plant-based junk,
soy dogs, soy powder, trail bars, veggie burgers,
soy rice ice cream, veggie cheese,
and we would give this a C minus.
And then there's plant-based processed.
What do they mean by processed?
They mean refined grains, white bread, oat milk, soy milk,
rice milk, sorbet, no-oil sauces and dressings,
and we would give this the grade of B.
And then, last but not least, whole plant foods,
and those are grains, rice, quinoa, oats, wheat, berries,
barley, root vegetables, all your grains,
your kale, your collards, your chards, your legumes,
you know, all your beans,
and we would give this an A plus.
So, what do they mean by whole plant-based food?
In front of me, I have apple juice,
applesauce, and an apple.
Apple juice is mostly sugar and very processed.
When consumed, our body is forced to deal
with this surge of sugar in an almost-state of shock.
To put it simply, it's hard on our system.
Applesauce is slightly better
in terms of the sugar rush into our body.
Now, there is some fiber,
but most of that fiber has been processed
and has very little benefit.
Then there is the apple in its whole form.
When consumed, out teeth benefit front the skin
in terms of cleaning.
The time it takes for us to chew and swallow the apple
gives ample time for our body to prepare and break down
over a longer period of time.
The sugar is released slowly as well,
and our body has time to absorb all the nutrients
much more efficiently.
This is also a great example
of what they mean by processing foods.
- Actually, you've picked on,
I used that specific example with the apple sometimes
to make a point about what we're talkin' about namely,
and this is some research
that a friend of mine did here at Cornell,
these numbers I'm going to tell you about.
If you, and this was done, if you use it,
take 100 grams of an apple and you analyze it,
you find out there are 5.9 milligrams
of vitamin C in that 100 grams.
- Okay.
- So milligrams, there's only 1/1,000 of a gram, you see.
So, you got this 100 grams,
you see there's 5.9 milligrams of-
- Vitamin C.
- Vitamin C in it, chemically speakin'.
That, in turn, gives so much biological activity.
If you take the vitamin C out and you put it in a pill
and then you see how much activity there is, right?
Right.
- On the other hand, if you just take the apple,
that 100 grams and eat it with all that vitamin C in it
and you test it again for a vitamin C activity,
it's not 5.9 milligrams, it's 1,500.
1,500, that's a huge increase
over what you thought was there.
Wow.
- And so, when you take the nutrient out,
you put it in a pill, it's just really quite misleading
to even know how much is really there because in the apple,
there's two things that make the vitamin C activity
so much higher in a case like this.
One is that there probably are other compounds in there
acting like vitamin C contributing to this effect.
The second thing is that the vitamin C in there,
the 5.9 milligrams in there-
Yeah.
- Is behaving in a much more efficient way
in the presence of all the other stuff.
So, there's a huge discordance
between the actual number of the content
of some particular nutrient in there when tested alone
compared to what it is when you eat the whole food.
An obvious question would be,
how much does your family history play in all this?
- Yeah so, let's take breast cancer, for example.
Breast cancer is something
that's widely known to be affected by genes.
In particular, there's a genetic variation BRCA genes
that increase risk of breast cancer dramatically,
and there's kind of an aura in cancer in general
that it's chance or genes plus chance,
and then breast cancer in particular,
I think people have this sense that it's all genes.
So, let's talk about that.
In the U.S., women have about a one in eight chance
of getting breast cancer in their life.
So, one out of every eight women will get breast cancer.
You know, back in China, and people kinda think,
oh that's a human thing, that's just sort of natural aging.
Back in China, in the mid-1970s
when they surveyed the mortality
in a very comprehensive way, comprehensive study,
they found that breast cancer,
they had about 80% less breast cancer
than we do here in the U.S.
So, there's massive variation between different populations
in the rates of breast cancer,
and then you start looking at when people move
from this location to another,
you know, to the U.S., for example,
rates of some of these diseases begin to go up.
They go up and they start, their risk becomes similar
to the country to which people move to.
And so, clearly there's something environmental,
and you can go through that exercise with cancers,
you can go through that exercise with heart disease,
you know, our biggies, our big killers,
and you recognize that not many, genes effect a lot of us.
They give us a slightly higher risk
for this or that disease, diseases start with genes,
but environment has a more major role
than most people realize,
and very few diseases are actually caused purely by genes.
- The foods that the family's been eating
over the generation causes,
it needs that one family member to break off
to get better nutrition to actually see
that it wasn't necessarily hereditary,
it was just the food patterns
that we were eating generation to generation.
- But it's not the question
we have or don't have those genes really.
It's the ability of the body
to control the expression of these genes.
What that means is we have all or DNA right there,
that's genes, and some will be selected out of that bunch
to produce a good effect.
When I say genes being expressed,
I'm talking about the DNA
being converted into products that are protein in nature.
The proteins are enzymes.
They, in turn, control the reactions that's going on.
So, it's the expression of the genes that matter.
Bad genes, they can remain latent, they don't do anything
unless we are eating the wrong food, for example,
that cause them to come up like weeds.
That, incidentally, in a fairly simply way,
was some of my own personal analysis
when I was getting involved in research.
My dad, a farmer, always been outside,
otherwise quite good, wasn't eating the right food,
but he had a heart attack when he was 62.
- I mean, bad diets travel in families.
I mean, that's what people, I mean,
they get the recipes from their grandma
in addition to their genes.
Genes can load the gun, but environment pulls the trigger,
meaning no matter what kinda bad cards we've been dealt,
kinda bad genetic curse,
we can kinda reshuffle the deck with diet,
and we know that from migration studies, for example.
So, if you look at prostate cancer,
breast cancer rates in Japan, for example,
some of the lowest in the world,
and then you look at first-generation immigrants
that come to Hawaii, then when they come to California,
and you can see that when a Japanese man moves to California
and starts eating and living like a Californian,
their prostate cancer rate skyrocket,
and the same thing, if you actually move to Japan,
start eating and living like the Japanese,
your prostate cancer rates drop like a rock.
- Like, let's say, for example, cancer.
- Yeah, cancer.
- There could be a cancer laying dormant.
- Exactly.
- If we eat all the wrong foods,
we fertilize 'em and enrich 'em and let it grow.
Right.
- If we eat the right foods-
- That keeps 'em under control.
So, we can have these nasty genes, if you will,
that otherwise might be nasty.
If you just eat the right thing,
and that's the same principle for other diseases as well.
- So, it would be, it would be okay for me to say
that genes doesn't play as big a role as we think-
- No, they don't.
It's more of the nutrition.
- Exactly.
That causes these things.
- Exactly.
- The lack of nutrition.
- It has to be the right kind of nutrition
'cause the right kind of nutrition upregulates, we say,
that is Carl's expression, they upregulate the good genes
and controls, or downregulate, if you will, the bad genes.
That's what good nutrition does.
And that whole question incidentally,
this question is a really important consideration
for the public to know because a lotta people,
they, oh, I'm gonna get cancer or not get cancer
because of my genes.
No, well, here's the,
might be sort of the scientific explanation
for genes versus nutrition, if you will.
I mean, all biological events
essentially have a genetic root.
In other words, we have, in all of our cells,
except for red blood cells, we have, in all of our cells,
we have a nucleus in the cell
and in the nucleus is where the genes are,
and so, all of us have this genetic template,
20 some thousand genes that can work wonders
and combinations and stuff to great a response.
Everything starts with genes
because the genes that produce proteins
that are usually enzymes that, in turn then,
actually control the reactions that subsequently occur,
the metabolism, nutrients, for example.
So, we all have the same,
we're workin' from the same DNA base sorting complex
and cancer comes from those too,
so cancer will come from a cluster of genes
that have been corrupted, in a sense, or damaged, mutated.
So, everything starts from genes, and so the thought is,
if we can just understand
which genes we have and which ones we don't
that we'll be able to predict future disease.
No, it's helpful maybe in some cases,
but that's not the answer.
- I realized that I had a problem.
I hated the taste of vegetables.
Could we change our taste buds?
I was a Western diet person, and I was like, yeah,
I can handle broccoli.
Kale, are you kidding?
Every time I put it in my mouth, I was like, wow.
So, what I did was I juiced
to give my taste buds time to recalibrate and it worked.
Is there any advice that you give to your patients
that says, in time, repetition,
you will start to acquire a taste for something you despise?
Is that?
- Yeah, I don't know that there is a shortcut around it.
I mean, there's not a hard and fast shortcut
around that process, which is unfortunate
'cause that's a huge barrier to people changing their diet,
but you just have to trust the process
that you will end up in a better place
in terms of your tastes.
Kids, for example, we all know that you can
give a little kid repeated exposures to certain foods,
and at some point, the kid is gonna start to like it more.
I mean, like everybody says that.
The same is true with an adult.
You know, the same is true with an adult.
So, it's just a matter of stickin' to it
and keep trying new recipes
that have those food that you want to start liking.
You will find some recipes, you know, I tell people,
at the beginning, as you're trying to taste,
trying to change your tastes,
you don't need to find a home-run recipe that you love.
Find something that's acceptable, okay?
The bar is low, find something that is acceptable
that you can eat again without hating it,
and just try to find a few dishes like that
and keep getting some exposure,
keep giving yourself these tastes,
and eventually, your tastes will change.
They absolutely will change.
- And on the flip side, the next question was,
how long does it take before the cheeseburger
isn't hittin' us on the head every Tuesday night.
- So, that's individual, you know,
there's a lotta individual variability.
In terms of losing our taste for cheeseburgers
and that type of thing, it depends on how strict you are
and how much you change your diet.
So, research shows that in terms of fat tastes,
for example, fat preference, or salt preference,
I mean, that can take a small number of months,
two to three months or so,
but the more that you indulge during that process,
so if you wanna lose your taste for cheeseburgers,
but you have a little bit of cheeseburger taste
a couple times a week, even though you're eating far fewer,
the frequency with which you indulge the foods,
the more it hampers your taste adaptation.
- It's a little bit like-
- So, you kinda have to be strict.
It's kinda like smoking, you know?
You gotta be strict for a while.
- When I first started doin' this change,
I'll be honest, I did not like vegetables.
I remember, I ordered a kale salad,
like the first day I started, and I couldn't do it.
It was terrible.
So, I figured how in the world am I gonna start,
so I juiced so I could start to adjust my taste buds,
and it worked.
So, I had to adjust my taste buds.
Any advice on how long it takes for us
to start to acquire?
- Yeah, I think everybody's different,
but it probably, in some patient, it may be a week or two,
in others, it may be eight or 10 weeks.
The key to having somebody who is transitioning
into vegetables at a significant amount
would be to find some delicious sauce.
When you anoint these raw vegetables
with just the right texture of sauce,
I mean, it can be that terrific, yeah.
- I hated kale, like there's somethin' about it.
I couldn't stand it.
Now, I love it.
I mean, I'm putting it
on my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
- Ha!
- I mean, I just-
- PB and K.
- What, it's a thing?
- Well no, now it is.
- Well, there's a little bit, you know,
just that little bit of sweetness
and it's like it's perfect.
- That's great.
- But anyway, 'cause what I noticed was,
I just had to continue to eat it every single day
for a period of time,
and then all of a sudden, I started like carrots.
I started liking the taste of broccoli.
I started liking the, is there
some kind of thing? - Oh yeah,
your palate changes- - How long did
it take? - Absolutely.
Yeah, it's amazing.
Much of the seminal work originally
was done on low-salt diets.
So, you take people and you give 'em bowl of soup
and have 'em salt it to taste,
so whatever, how much the salt,
don't even measure how much salt they added.
And then you put people on a low-salt diet,
and when you do, first few days
are gonna taste like cardboard, right?
'Cause our palate has been so hijacked
by the processed food industry to get these hyper salty,
hyper sweet, hyper oily, hyper fatty foods into our diet,
but then you give 'em few weeks,
and you give 'em that same bowl of soup
with the amount of salt they added before that they liked
and it's too salty.
They actually prefer less salt in their soup.
And same thing happens
when people switch whole milk to skim milk.
Sugar, it's even quicker.
We have data that seven days,
seven days cutting down industrial sugars,
you know, table sugar, high fructose corn syrup,
you can kinda reawaken your taste buds.
I mean, you know the ripest peach in the world's
gonna taste sour after eating a bowl of Froot Loops
'cause we just so dulled our taste buds, right?
So, people come see me eating
like a sweet potato with a little cinnamon on top.
They're like, aw, I could never eat that,
but they don't, and so they think
I'm living some aesthetic monk lifestyle or something,
maybe you can do it, but no, but they don't realize,
no, no, no, it actually tastes good to me.
I mean, it really tastes good to me.
Then you get the best of both worlds.
Wait a second, it tastes good and you get to live longer?
I mean, that's what plant-based eating is all about.
- All right, now I think is a good time
for us to get into the kitchen and start cooking.
Well, maybe not with eggs, of course, but um,
let's get started on some recipes that I've been working on,
and then we'll come back to the experts as we go along.
Today, I'm gonna be making a crispy tofu vegetable
with a peanut sauce.
I'm gonna be makin' it with some broccoli,
some bell pepper, little bit of green onions,
some cilantro, some extra firm tofu,
but the first thing I need to do
is to get started on my rice
because it always takes some time.
I'm gonna be using some brown rice today,
so I've got one cup of brown rice,
and then I've got two cups of water.
We'll give that a little bit of a stir.
Okay.
And we'll go ahead and get this goin',
probably be about 45 minutes.
Okay, so I've cut up the broccoli and the red peppers.
I'm gonna go ahead
and arrange it on my baking rack once again.
Okay, so I've been replacing the paper towel all along
just to kinda dry out some of this tofu,
but I'm gonna go ahead and cut it up right now.
So, I like to cut it up into bite-sized pieces.
Okay, so we'll go ahead and put the tofu in this bowl.
All right, so I gotta a couple tablespoons of tamari sauce.
I'm gonna go ahead and just drizzle this over
the tofu, and then just kinda work 'em in.
Try not to break 'em too much.
Then I've got about four tablespoons of cornstarch.
Go ahead and put that in there.
And then, we're just gonna kinda,
just kinda lightly coat 'em
and start arranging 'em on my backing rack.
Okay, I'll add a little bit more.
I've got another couple table spoons of cornstarch
and just keep goin'.
So, I've coated my tofu with a little bit of cornstarch
and as you can see,
the white is now absorbed into the tamari.
So, I've preheated my oven at 400 degrees,
so I'm gonna go ahead
and put it in there for about 25 minutes.
Okay, so the veggies and the tofu are in the oven.
I'm gonna go ahead and cut up some of the garnish.
So, this is my cilantro.
That should be about good.
I'm gonna go ahead and put this in a bowl.
And then some green onions.
I'm gonna use the other half
of the green onions for another meal.
Okay, so now it's time to make my peanut sauce,
and it's really quite simple.
I've got three tablespoons of reduced peanut butter,
couple tablespoons of tamari,
but you can also use soy, whatever,
one tablespoon of rice vinegar,
1/2 a teaspoon of garlic powder,
and one cup of vegetable broth.
So, let's go ahead and mix these all together.
1/2 a teaspoon of garlic powder,
one table spoon of rice vinegar, two tablespoons of tamari,
and then, of course, the peanut butter.
You have to be a little patient.
You just gotta break down that peanut butter,
but eventually, it starts to turn into a nice peanut sauce.
Okay, so I've got it partially mixed up a little bit.
We'll go ahead and transfer it into a saucepan.
And we'll put this on low.
Let's just keep warmin' it up and stirring it.
Okay, so the peanut butter is starting to break down,
so I'm just gonna go ahead
and keep stirrin' it with the heat.
Yeah, this is comin' along real nice.
Now, if you're short on time,
you can always use 1/2 a cup of broth
instead of a full cup,
but I like to use a little bit of that heat
and just reduce it down.
It just has a nice rich taste to it.
All right, so I've just taken my veggies
and my tofu out of the oven, and it looks nice.
We got a little bit of the crispness on the tofu.
So, let's go ahead and put some on my plate here.
Get some broccoli on there.
Mm.
And then some of these roasted bell peppers.
And of course, we'll get some peanut sauce in there.
Little bit of garnish on there, mm.
Can't wait to check this out.
Let's get a little bit of the pepper.
Mm.
Get some rice in there.
Mm!
That is so good.
It's got a little bit of crunch, mm.
So good.
- My friend who was a medical advisor
to this organization at the time
and advisor to the president of the Philippines, actually,
we were playing golf one day,
and he told me, he said that he and some of his colleagues
had been operating on children with liver cancer,
children aged four and under.
And I thought immediately, this is crazy.
I mean, I was already getting into the cancer field too,
mostly from the, NIH side to some extent, or MIT side,
and so I was setting up a laboratory
to deal with a chemical that was found in peanuts and corn
that gave rise to liver cancer.
- Colin later told me that peanuts and corn
are not dangerous for us to eat.
These children in the Philippines
were eating rotten peanuts and corn
that had actually developed a fungi known as aflatoxin,
but here in the States, the FDA tests these foods.
But if you wanna learn more about aflatoxins,
you can go to cancer. gov.
- So, I was setting up the laboratory,
trying to figure out, how does this chemical cause cancer,
to cause liver cancer, and then this friend is telling me
they're operating on some children with liver cancer.
I said to myself, this doesn't make sense.
And so, I kind of dismissed it
until I then found a experimental paper
that when the literature just came out
on experimental animals from India,
they were showing that when animals
are fed aflatoxin to start the cancer,
but then fed two different levels of protein
to see what effect a protein might have on that,
their idea was if they gave 'em more protein,
they would be less likely to get the cancer.
And they got exactly the reverse.
That is, the animals given more protein got more cancer,
and it was striking, it was amazing.
And then that little experiment, in that little experiment,
100% of the animals given higher levels of protein,
but come back, both animals
exposed to the same level of carcinogen.
So, this is really odd.
Both of 'em gettin' the carcinogen,
both gonna get liver cancer,
but the ones that get the higher levels of protein,
they got the cancer.
The lower protein, no cancer.
It was at like 100 and nothing, 100%, 0%.
So, seein' that and then thinkin' about
what my friend told me on the golf course, of all things,
that these children, I'm thinkin',
and then I'm wearin' two hats in the Philippines.
One is to organize this laboratory
to analyze for that chemical carcinogen, right?
- Right.
- And the other, my other position
was workin' with my senior colleague
overseeing the whole program
and making sure the kids got more protein.
- Ironic.
- I mean, it's, yeah.
So, it was staring me in the face.
More protein gives more cancer, this is crazy.
Let me tell you something else, Craig,
before we get to that 'cause that's another whole story.
That's why I came to eventually ask him the same question.
So, we found that high protein turns on the cancer,
low protein doesn't.
Then we did another study
to see, fairly early on, what happens,
the cancer's starting to grow, right, like this
on a high protein diet,
what happens if we switch the diet to low protein?
We turned it off.
We put the high protein back in again, turns it on.
That was probably the most significant thing of all,
that we could turn and turn off cancer
by simply changing the level of nutrient intake.
- So, you're lookin' at the cells, grow.
Yeah.
- Turning into possible, or tumors, or whatever.
Then you switch the diet.
Right.
- And you can see it stay the same or reduce?
- That's right, it either was progressing, still growing
in the presence of high protein
or in the presence of low protein, no, it cut it off.
It reversed it.
No question about that.
- When we're speaking of proteins,
we're talking about animal protein?
- Yes, but in that case, I wasn't distinguishing
between animal and plant all that much.
- You just assumed-
I was just usin' a protein.
- Yeah, it was just protein.
- Yeah, and it was a protein that was on the market
that we could get.
That's what I did
and I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to that.
I just got the protein.
- Okay.
- But it turned out the protein we were usin' was casein,
the main protein in cow's milk.
- So in 1968, Colin sets up a lab in the Philippines
to find out why the aflatoxin
causes cancer in these children,
but inadvertently finds out
that it wasn't actually the aflatoxin,
but the animal protein found in milk
that actually turned the cancer on.
Without the casein, the aflatoxin that causes cancer
would have stayed dormant.
So, you're using the protein that's derived from cow's milk.
That's right.
- It's not an additive, it's just a thing-
- No, this is part of the milk.
- It's just part of-
- In fact, it's considered
to be the valuable part of the milk.
- So, it's the protein, it's not the fat.
That's right.
- So, if it's skim, whole milk, it's the casein.
- That's right.
- Casein?
- Casein, yeah.
- Casein.
- It represents, technically,
87% of the total protein in cow's milk,
there's some other proteins,
but in any case, casein is the big one.
- Give us a basic idea of what was the study that you?
- Well, I think I should give you a little background
because it's a little unusual for a general surgeon-
Yeah, exactly.
- To be somebody who gets passionate about nutrition.
When things started for me was the late 1970s, early '80s
when I was chairman of breast cancer task force
at the Cleveland Clinic.
I became increasingly disillusioned with the fact
that for no matter how many women
I was doing breast surgery,
I was doing absolutely nothing
for the next unsuspecting victim.
So, this led me to do a bit of global research,
and it was really quite striking
to see that there were cultures where breast cancer rates
were 30 and 40 times less frequent
than the United States, like Kenya.
And breast cancer was very infrequently seen
in rural Japan in the 1950s,
but when the Japanese women
would migrate to the United States,
for the second and third generation,
still pure Japanese-American,
they now had the same rate of breast cancer
as their Caucasian counterpart.
Now even more compelling, perhaps,
was cancer of the prostate.
In the entire nation of Japan in 1958,
how many autopsy-proven deaths were there
from cancer of the prostate?
18 in the entire nation.
Perhaps the most mind-boggling
public health figure I've ever heard,
but by 1978, 20 years later, they were up to 137,
which still pales in comparison to the 28,000
who will die from cancer of the prostate
in this country this year.
Well, around this time, recognizing in this global review
that there were so many cultures
where cardiovascular disease was virtually nonexistent,
these were cultures that were thriving
on whole food plant-based nutrition,
it seemed to me that there might be more bang for the buck
if I looked at cardiovascular disease
because if we could get people to start eating
to save their heart, they would also markedly diminish
or save themselves from the common Western cancers
of breast, prostate, colon, and perhaps, pancreatic.
So, that was the background, and after,
my wife and I did this ourselves for a year.
We started in April of '84.
And then in August of 1985,
I went to our department of cardiology
and asked if I could have about 24 patients
who had significant cardiovascular disease,
and I wanted to try to see
if they would respond to whole food plant-based nutrition
because of this information
that I learned in this global review.
And now, I was not a trained psychologist,
and my greatest concern
would be the lack of patient compliance.
I was interesting in trying, therefore,
the same mantra that I use for my breast cancer patients,
and this was something I had learned many years ago
from a wonderful West Coast surgeon
by the name of Bert Dunphy,
and Bert used to say that patients with cancer
are not afraid to die.
Patients with cancer are not afraid to suffer.
But patients with cancer are afraid
of being abandoned by their-
Physician.
- By their physician or by their family.
- Yeah, oh, family.
- So, the first, for the first five years of the study,
I saw everybody every two weeks in my office,
went over every morsel they ate.
We checked their cholesterol,
their blood pressure, and their weight.
At the second five years, I got a little more courageous
and stretched it out to once a month.
At the end of a decade, I was able to,
they were on autopilot by now.
I was able to stretch it out to quarterly,
and then at the end of 12 years, which made it,
by then, the longest study, I think, of its type,
ever in the medical literature, 12 years, we published it.
- And so, the results-
- Well, what was so exciting
was that we suddenly began to see that these patients,
and I should mention that these are patients who were sick.
They had failed their first or second bypass.
They had failed their first or second angioplasty.
They were too sick for these procedures or they had refused.
Five were told by their expert cardiologist
they wouldn't live out the year.
Those five all made it beyond 20 years.
And it got to be pretty darn exciting to see,
not only could be get rid of their symptoms,
but we often would see
striking examples of disease reversal.
- So, these are people that are
probably not able to exercise, it sounds like.
- No, they could certainly walk,
and walking is a wonderful exercise.
- So, nutrition and then you advised them
to do some walking or?
- Oh, sure.
- And they were able to slowly but surely start doing stairs
and start doing running?
- Well, I'm not sure, I wasn't asking them to run.
I was, first of all, my goal was to get them to survive.
Remember, there were a number that were told
they wouldn't live out the year.
This is by expert cardiologists.
But as you begin to see them lose weight,
their symptoms began to disappear.
Then when we carefully studied them,
they were reversing their disease.
Pretty exciting stuff.
- The men and women
that participated in Dr. Esselstyn's study
all had very advanced coronary disease.
Now, most of them were told
there wasn't much else that could be done.
The patients were put on a strict plant-based oil-free diet.
Within months, their cholesterol levels dropped
and increased blood flow to their hearts
and lived much longer than anyone expected.
If a plant-based diet can do that much
for those terminal patients,
what could it do for the rest of us?
Today, I'm gonna be making a healthy Parmesan sprinkle,
you know, for salads, pastas, or pizzas.
It uses one cup of raw cashews, one teaspoon of salt,
a teaspoon of garlic powder,
and four tablespoons of nutritional yeast.
Now, I'm gonna be using my hand processor,
but you can go ahead
and mince these cashews up by hand if you want.
So, let's go ahead and get started.
So, the first thing I add is the raw cashews.
Now, go ahead and mince 'em up.
Okay, that's the consistency I like to see.
It's kinda like granules.
Okay, so the second thing I had is the nutritional yeast.
We'll go ahead and put the salt in there
and the garlic powder.
And that's pretty much it.
So, let's go ahead and mix this up.
And there you go, that's pretty much it.
The next thing you do
is just transfer it into a jar of sort.
And there you go, Parmesan cheese.
Mm, very good.
Now, I can go ahead and put this in the refrigerator.
It keeps for a pretty good long time.
Lasagna has always been a favorite dish of mine,
and when I came up with a delicious
whole plant-based version of it, I was really excited,
and today, I'm gonna be using some spinach,
some zucchini, some fresh basil,
some mushrooms, some chickpeas, some tofu,
but first, let's get started on those noodles
'cause they always take so much time,
and then I can get started on some of the other stuff.
Okay, so now I'm gonna go ahead with my ricotta mix.
I usually start with about 1/2 a cup of fresh basil.
I go with about 1/4 cup of raw cashews,
a teaspoon of garlic powder,
teaspoon of dry parsley,
little bit of pepper,
some salt,
and we'll go ahead and chop this up.
Okay, that's lookin' pretty good.
Now, we'll go ahead
with a teaspoon and 1/2 of Dijon mustard,
a teaspoon and 1/2 of balsamic vinegar,
one teaspoon of tamari,
1/2 a cup of nutritional yeast,
one can of chickpeas,
and of course, some lemon juice.
Let's go ahead and get that goin'.
Okay.
A little bit of vegetable broth.
Let's scoop it off the sides a little bit with my scraper.
Mix it up again.
Okay, that's lookin' really good.
And as you can see, I've got these paper towels
underneath each layer of the tofu.
The whole idea of this is to draw out some of the moisture.
Now, I've been replacing these
throughout the whole time I've been making the lasagna.
Now, as you can see, there's not much moisture left,
so I think these about good and ready to start crumbling up.
And I just use my hands
and I just kinda break it up into little tiny pieces,
similar to like ricotta cheese.
Okay, so I've crumbled up all the tofu,
but I got one more chance to go ahead
and towel blot it one more time
just to get that extra moisture outta the tofu.
Okay, so I put my crumble tofu in a bowl.
So, let's go ahead and put my basil and chickpea mix.
Let's mix this up.
Now, you can always taste it
just to see how things are goin'.
Mm.
Just a tad bit more salt, just a tad.
There we go.
And we'll mix this in.
All right, this is mixed in pretty good,
so now we're gonna go ahead
and start choppin' up the rest of the vegetables
and start sauteing 'em in my frying pan.
Now, as you can see, I've cut my vegetables kinda small.
I wanna keep 'em less bulky in between each noodle.
So, let's go ahead and get these sauteing.
Okay, so I'll go ahead
and add a little bit of vegetable broth,
so I can start sauteing these vegetables.
Okay, so these are comin' along great.
See, the moisture's just startin' to evaporate a little bit.
This is totally optional.
I like to put in just a little bit of salt
and a little bit of pepper,
but this is just for your own taste, whatever you like.
These are comin' along real good.
Okay, I just preheated my oven at 350,
so now it's time to go ahead
and start assembling the lasagna.
The first thing I usually like to do
is to start with my marinara sauce
at the bottom of the pan.
Yeah, I just like to get a thin layer at the bottom.
Maybe a little more.
Okay.
Then I'll go ahead and put a layer of noodles on there.
Kinda pat it down a little bit to make sure there's no air.
Then I'll put my ricotta mix on there.
Okay, now this is the tricky part.
You wanna kinda just spread it out evenly
on top of the noodles like this.
Okay.
Then I put a layer of spinach.
Just kinda lay 'em on there.
There.
Then I put a little bit of the vegetables in there.
And just kinda distribute them evenly as best I can.
Put a little bit more sauce in there.
Kinda spread this around.
Another layer of noodles on top of this.
Make sure you get out all the air.
So, I've pre-cut these noodles for this particular pan.
I'm gonna go ahead and put some more of my ricotta mix,
another layer of spinach,
a little bit more vegetables,
okay, a little bit more sauce.
I've got room for one more layer.
Put that on there.
A little more of my ricotta mix.
And I wanna kinda pat it down a little bit.
Then I go ahead and finish it off with a layer of sauce.
So, as you can see, I'm not quite all the way up to the top.
I don't want it drippin' over into the over
and get all messy.
So, it's just short of the top.
So, go ahead and spread this around nice and even.
So, I'm gonna go ahead and put this in the oven.
Oh, does that smell great.
So, I ended up leaving it in the over for about 35 minutes,
but again, that depends on where you live.
And there ya have it, lasagna.
Now, this is one of those meals
that you might wanna make on a Saturday or Sunday
when you have a little bit more time,
maybe you have some special guests that are comin' over,
but I'm sure they're gonna love it.
Let's go ahead and check this out.
Mm.
It's so good.
I wanna talk about the internet.
You know, when I was researching information for the show,
I was amazed at all the different
conflicting information out there.
You could pick a subject
and there would be this group and then that group,
and then all of a sudden, you're just like,
I can see this confusion.
Is there anything you can say to us that could help us say,
the best way to get through the internet
or get your information, what's your advice on that?
- oh, well, I mean, because of that conflicting information,
because of the corrupting influence of commercial interests
in the field of nutrition and broader, in medicine,
you need to stick to the science.
- You have to realize
there are a lot of powerful vested interests
that are trying to keep you confused.
You know, if you, you don't need to,
they don't even need to make a case for their product
or their type of product,
they just need to keep you confused enough
to say, ah, the heck with it, I'll eat whatever I want to.
And that's a win.
- Right.
- And when you look online or in social media,
you can find information about, for example,
the ketogenic diet, low carb, high fat.
There's the low carb, high fat camp
that is like all meat all the time,
and then there's the vegan group
or the no added fat sort of plant-based group,
which I'm a part of,
and they could not be more opposite,
and then you go on there, and there's doctors on both sides.
There is, you know, there's people citing studies, it seems,
you know, there's little numbers next to their statements,
at least for the average person-
- But who reads that stuff?
- Right, yeah. - Who follows up?
- You know, it's hard to follow up.
So, it seems it's impossible to figure that out.
And I think if you have, you can have five PhDs,
and you could stand in front of that shelf
at that bookstore, that nutrition bookshelf,
and have no clue what to buy or what's actually healthy,
and so, it's not really people's fault
we have this disaster of,
you know, of a public media around nutrition.
There's a lotta reasons for that.
But I think the fundamental aspect
I would encourage people to do
is do a little bit of extra homework
to see if there's some science behind it.
That can be hard to do,
and I appreciate it can be very hard to do,
but for example, with heart disease,
you know, there's only one diet
that's been shown to reverse atherosclerosis,
shown to actually shrink blockages in the heart.
There's only one diet and lifestyle
that's been shown to do that.
When you start looking at the second level of information
behind the headlines, you see, okay,
this is actually published in real scientific journals.
It's not some tangential information, it's, you know.
So, just pay attention to the science
and who's doing the science.
- Go for the science.
In other words, if you're gonna take your instruction
and your learning from the media, right,
from television, from the internet, why not do this,
go to the peer-reviewed scientific literature.
See right now, there have been a plethora of books
that have come out, books where the author
has ever taken a responsibility
for research and then done the book.
I've written multiple papers on this subject
that have been published in the peer-reviewed literature.
That has to be the, we have to have the bar be high enough
so that it is not hyper snake oil.
This is only gonna sell itself
on absolutely rock solid science.
- I have to say, I've concerned myself,
you know, as a scientist in a sense,
with that question for 30, 40 years.
How can a consumer, and having been a member
of these expert panels that translates science
into public information, that's their job,
and so, I've had to think a lot about that, a lot of us do.
You know, how do you make this palatable,
the scientific information palatable to the public,
and when the public is lookin' for information,
how can they, in turn,
discern what is reliable and what's not?
I think that's really the question.
And unfortunately, it's very difficult.
It's really difficult.
We could say things like, I mean,
you can look up the, if you're inclined to do so,
you can look up, say, what did that come from,
and then you look at the paper.
You might see some name, author that's in there,
and then you can look at the bottom of the paper,
and you see if certain industries may have supported it.
That may give you a hint.
But even if there's no industry support
for a particular paper,
some of the authors sometimes are still prisoners
of the other corporate interests for whatever reason.
They may, you know, that's just their mindset.
Sometimes, they're not even aware of it,
but you know, these pressures creep in there.
So, it's difficult for the public to really know,
to be honest about it,
and for me, sorta bein' in science,
that's why I like to go back and see if I can't craft,
you know, a story that's based as much as possible
on science, you know make it scientifically credible,
but at the same time, one of the reason for confusion,
which is related to this,
and the internet has all kinds of things.
You got, read it here, you read it there,
you got different ideas.
That's a really big problem in our society.
And one of the problems or reasons for that
is because of the way we think about nutrition,
the way we think about food.
Someone can look at a food and say,
uh, this is better than that
because it has so much of this particular nutrient
or this has more than that one kinda thing.
It's all focused on one thing,
and that's what we call, I call reductionism.
And when we get into that business,
and because foods have almost
infinite variety of nutrients in them
and other chemicals and stuff like that, everybody,
it's like going to a circus.
I mean, everybody can pick out their favorite thing.
Aw, this has got more of this vitamin.
Well no, that's got this one.
It ends up bein' just an absolute zoo.
- Today, I'm gonna be making classic tomato soup.
I'm gonna be making it with two cups of vegetable broth.
I've got 1/2 a can of white beans.
I've drained and rinsed those.
I've got some basil, an onion,
and a 28-ounce can of peeled whole tomatoes.
So, let's go ahead
and get started on choppin' up that onion.
These are comin' along good.
Now, I'll go ahead and add 1/4 teaspoon of rosemary.
I got a little bit of salt and pepper.
And we'll give these a little bit of a stir.
Okay, so they're startin' to just scorch a little,
can always put a little bit of vegetable broth in there.
Okay, those are comin' along nicely.
Now, we'll put two tablespoons of tomato paste.
Go ahead and stir this in.
Put a little bit more vegetable broth in there.
At this point, I'll lower the heat a little bit.
Add a little bit more broth,
and we'll go ahead and turn this off.
This is lookin' pretty good.
I'm gonna go ahead and transfer these into my pot.
Okay.
And then I am going to put one teaspoon of brown sugar,
one tablespoon of nutritional yeast.
Got my two cups of vegetable broth.
Go ahead and put that in there.
Got my 1/2 a can of white beans.
Put them in there.
28-ounce can of peeled tomatoes.
Get them in there.
Now, I'll get some basil.
I'm gonna go ahead and just cut this up just a little bit.
Just a little bit there.
Put some basil in there.
Okay, I'm gonna put a lid on this,
and we're gonna let this simmer for about 30 minutes.
Right now, I'm gonna go ahead and preheat my oven at 425.
Okay, so I've preheated my over at 425.
I'm gonna go ahead
and start cuttin' up this bread for the topping.
Now, I'll get my baking rack with my cookie sheet.
Just kinda arrange 'em out a little bit,
so they can breathe.
Okay, so I've arranged these out on my baking rack.
I'm gonna go ahead
and put 'em in the oven for about seven to 10 minutes.
Okay, the soup's been simmering for about 30 minutes.
Let's check it out.
Mm, this looks really good.
All right, now I'm gonna go ahead
and transfer it into my food processor.
And I put a little tin foil over it
just so I can catch that hole and just put it in there.
Okay, so I put the whole thing into the food processor,
and it was a little too full,
so I had to put some back.
So, let's go ahead and puree this.
Okay, so I've pureed half of the batch,
and let's go ahead and check it out.
Remember the croutons that I made earlier,
put a couple of those in there,
then maybe some basil.
This is gonna be great.
Let me get one of these croutons in there.
Mm.
That is so good, oh my gosh, you're gonna love it.
Mm.
You know, living in the Southwest,
we have a lot of wonderful Mexican food,
and it tastes delicious, but there's only one problem.
It's not exactly that healthy.
Mexican food uses a lot of oil, a lotta lard,
and a lot of animal products, but who's to say
you can't make a healthy-conscious Mexican dish?
With this particular recipe,
I'm gonna be using portobello mushrooms and mango.
So, I start off with the portobello mushroom.
The first thing I usually do is cut off that stem,
so I can half my flat surface
to cut 'em up into nice slices.
So, the general rule is one mushroom per person,
but as you can see, that's a lot.
It all depends on actually how hungry your family really is.
Now that I got my sliced up mushrooms in a resealable bag,
it's time to make the marinade.
Now, I usually like to start with equal parts of soy sauce,
balsamic vinegar, and Worcestershire sauce,
but here's the thing about Worcestershire sauce.
Sometimes, it's made with fish.
So, you might wanna check your local grocery store
just to make sure that they have a vegan version,
which is one I found right here.
So, put a little bit of steak rub in there,
a little bit of chili powder in there,
and some cumin.
Some salt and pepper.
Again, the salt's always optional.
There.
So, now I go ahead and mix this marinade all together.
Open my bag and put the marinade inside.
Then I close up the bag
and just kinda roll 'em around a little bit
so they get to coat all the sides of the mushrooms.
Now that I let that marinade for a while,
let's go ahead and cut up all the rest of the vegetables.
So, normally when I cut up the onions,
I like to save a little bit for the pico garnish.
Now, normally I don't use both of the bell peppers
for this particular recipe,
but instead I'll save some of it for another meal.
So now I've cut up all my vegetables,
it's time to put 'em in a skillet and start fryin' 'em up.
Now, usually what I do
is I start with a little bit of vegetable broth
that I've made before, just a little bit,
and then I get into my spices.
Put little bit of my steak rub in there, sprinkle that in.
Again, a little bit of cumin.
A little bit of kick,
put a little bit of chili powder in there,
but it all depends on your tastes.
Of course, a little bit of salt and pepper.
And let's start fryin' this up.
Okay, these are cookin' up real nice.
So, the next thing I usually like to do
is add a little bit of dried tomatoes.
And just for a little bit of nice sweetness,
a little bit of brown sugar, just a little bit.
That all depends on you.
Mm, it's already startin' to smell great.
So, now I take my mushrooms
that have been marinading in the balsamic vinegar,
soy sauce, and Worcestershire, and add them in.
Oh, these are cookin' up real nice.
Now, the trick is, you don't wanna have
too much liquid down on the bottom of your pan.
You want the onions and the green peppers
to kinda caramelize a bit.
So while these are cookin', let's go ahead
and start cuttin' up my mango and my cilantro.
So, you remember the onions from before?
Well, I'm gonna save
a little bit of the cilantro for the pico.
Mm, these are comin' along just great.
Now as you can see, some of the liquid
is startin' to disappear down on the bottom,
which gives it that nice caramel flavor.
Little bit of that brown sugar and all those spices,
mm, it's gonna be awesome.
So, now it's time to finish up the pico with some tomatoes.
So, now I got the basic elements of my pico,
it's time to add a little bit of spice.
So, I usually use a little bit of salt.
That's optional, again.
A little bit of pepper.
And a little bit of chili powder.
And really, that's about it for pico.
So, I'll go ahead and put this in the frigerator
and let that start to chill a bit.
So, now this is comin' along just great,
and as you can see, a lotta liquid
is now missing from the pan,
which is where you want it to be.
So, let's go ahead and put in the mango.
Let's go ahead and continue to fry this up a little bit.
Now, this particular mango wasn't exactly that ripe,
so I'm gonna go ahead
and cook it for just a little bit longer,
but normally, if it is a ripe mango,
it doesn't need a lot of frying.
So, now this is pretty much ready to go
and lookin' really good.
I like to add a little bit of lime.
Let's go ahead and put a little bit of lime in there.
Mm.
This is gonna be amazing.
Now, I'll just add my finishing touch,
which is a little bit of cilantro.
Aw, this is lookin' really, really nice.
So as you can see, most of the moisture is now gone.
The onions have caramelized just a little bit.
The mango has sweetened up everything.
Now, it's time to put it in a tortilla.
Mm.
It's gonna be so awesome.
So, the trick is, with a tortilla,
is you don't wanna put too much in there,
otherwise you can't fold 'em up too good.
Then the next thing I like to do
is serve 'em with a little bit of beans
and my pico de gallo.
This is gonna be good, I can tell.
Mm, it's so good.
So, if you're lookin' for a healthy Mexican dish,
this is sure to please your family.
So, I've been getting some a little bit of resistance
with some of my friends adapting this lifestyle,
the Mediterranean diet is just the one
that they seem to be happy with, and of course,
I read a lot of the studies on the Mediterranean.
What's happening, to me, it seems like they're saying
that you can just use a lot of olive oil,
and can you explain the Mediterranean diet
and why it's not quite where we need to be or whatever?
- So, the Mediterranean diet has been marketed heavily
by this idea that a diet high in oil
and sometimes, it's red wine, you know,
is very healthy,
and the reality of it is that the Mediterranean diet
is a more plant-based diet,
so there's more fruits and vegetables,
there's more grains, there's more,
there's less processed meat, there's less red meat,
and there's less liquid dairy,
and those things all taken together
in the overall dietary pattern,
there's no doubt that Mediterranean diet is healthier.
There's a lot of evidence to suggest Mediterranean diet
is good for heart disease.
It's good for other diseases, you know, chronic diseases,
but I think that, you know, including all the added oil,
in my opinion, I think is stopping the Mediterranean diet
from being as powerful as good nutrition can be.
- Exactly.
- It's healthier in spite of all that added oil,
not because of it.
And you have to remember,
oil is not a food.
If you go back to 1915, just a little side note here,
if you go back to early 1900s,
the very traditional Mediterranean diet in Italy
with manual laborers was about 15% fat,
16% of all calories from fat.
That's very low fat by today's standards.
I mean, if they were using olive oil,
it was small, small amounts.
You have to realize,
you don't get a liter of olive oil every week
without major industrialization,
commercialization, and trade,
and it's a very processed product to get that much oil.
It takes somewhere between 15 to 40 olives
to make a tablespoon of olive oil.
I'd rather you eat olives
'cause you make the oil, you're throwing away the protein,
you're throwing away the fiber,
you're throwing away minerals,
you're throwing away all sorts of good stuff.
So, stick to whole foods rather than just food fragments.
- Yeah, I've followed that question
concerning the Mediterranean diet for some time.
In fact, that almost is orchestrated
by the industry in early 1990s.
They sponsored, for example,
a really, very significant conference
at Harvard at that time,
and I was one of the keynote speakers at that conference,
and I could tell you,
I had lunch with a person who brought the money
to get the conference going, a graduate of Cornell,
she was representin' the olive oil industry.
That was a big-
- It's always, yeah- - Big push
in olive oil industry- - It's always
some kind of, yeah.
- Into this country, and it was successful.
- Sure.
- Because once they got that going and it had the,
sorta the reputation, essentially,
of, you know, having this conference
sort of back what they were doing.
As I say, I was one of the keynote speakers.
There was about four or five of us,
and I actually, at that conference.
Here's my argument based on the data.
The Mediterranean countries, Italy, Greece, Crete,
you know, the island of Crete, Southern France, Spain,
those countries had been known for some time
to have a little less breast cancer,
a little less colon cancer, and a little less heart disease.
That was pretty well established.
Not a lot less, but it was significantly lower
than, let's say, the UK, England, or the United States.
Those are the main countries being compared.
And so, we also had this impression,
so the olive oil industry liked to tell us,
that they consume a lot more olive oil in those countries,
and that's why they have lower rates of those diseases.
- Damn.
- And so, they made this
rather superficial sort of conclusion, if you will.
Oh, the reason they have less of those diseases
is because they consume the olive oil.
And they do consume more olive oil,
but in those countries,
they're consuming the fresh olive juice, I like to call it.
It's really high in oil, and if you go back to the villages
where they first were observing this phenomenon,
it was mostly the raw juice
and some oil and prepared fresh as it were,
and so they see a bit of a decrease
in these high rates of heart disease
and cancer comes down a bit like this.
In rural China, and that's one of the reasons I was there
is because in rural China,
we had evidence on heart disease too,
and there in China, they really were consuming low oil.
In the Mediterranean countries, the oil dropped a bit.
Our level of fat consumption,
oil consumption is fairly high in the West,
Mediterranean countries, down a little bit,
and that helps to, apparently,
reduce, so they thought, these diseases.
In China, heart disease rate was almost nil,
and there, they're consuming much less oil.
So, that's the story that emerged.
In reality though, in those Mediterranean countries,
they're consuming more plants.
- Yeah, of course.
- And in China, they're consuming more plants.
So, in fact, they consume even more plants
than they might in the Mediterranean countries,
but the Mediterranean countries, actually,
it was the plants that they were consuming
that was decreasing the heart disease rates.
It wasn't the oil.
- No. - All that much.
As I say, it may have contributed a little bit,
and in fact, the man who actually,
the scientist who actually was the first
to make quite a lot of news about this question
concerning the Mediterranean diet was,
his name was Ancel Keys.
Ancel Keys was sittin' in the front row
when was I lecturing.
I heard Ancel Keys speak at Cornell
when I was a graduate student.
Later, Ancel Keys, yeah,
I think he was about 95 at the time,
and so, I have become quite familiar with his work
over the years, and he actually, from my reading of this,
I didn't talk to him personally about this,
but after that conference, he was a little bit bothered
by the how the Mediterranean diet story was being distorted,
and he wrote an article, and he said,
what he saw in the Mediterranean countries at that time
was the fact that a lot of them
tended to be close to being vegetarians.
That's really what was,
had a lot to do with the lower rates of disease.
- Right, right.
- So, the Mediterranean diet in this country,
it has been more studies.
There was more recently, it was a big study, well-organized,
published out of Spain
by a number of different investigators,
and they saw the same thing.
There was a group that consumed more nuts also of interest,
and they consumed more olive oil.
That was almost designed that way.
And then they followed to see
what effect it had on heart disease, for example,
and sure enough, people consumed the Mediterranean diet,
more vegetables and stuff like that, they had,
what I just said before, just down a little bit,
actually, most of those disease rate,
they weren't even statistically significantly lower.
- Wow.
- It was a couple, so the industry's had their day.
It's been a field day.
And so, everybody in this country talking about
Mediterranean diet is really great.
Well, you know, yes, sort of.
It's going in that direction.
- Sort of. - More fruits and vegetables
and so forth like that.
But that's right, this whole food plant-based diet
is not the Mediterranean diet.
I must tell you that.
- Well, I know, interesting thing is
the Mediterranean diet just became,
oh, that means for us to,
we're gonna get better omega,
omega- - Three.
- Omega-3, so we drink, I said drink,
you know, we guzzle this olive oil
because we're getting all this-
- Yeah, it's crazy.
- It's just, you know.
- It's a bizarre, that'd be a bizarre thing to do.
- I mean, it's saturated-
- Unhealthy.
- It's saturated fat, right?
- No, the olive oil primarily,
it tends to have a little better fat composition,
if you will, then let's say, corn oil or other kinds of oil,
a little better because it has more monounsaturated fat,
oleic acid is the name of the fat in olive oils.
It's monounsaturated, and that's a little less problematic,
presumably, in terms of its effect on the body,
so it sounds a little bit better,
but there's other evidence to show,
and I think Dr. Esselstyn will tell ya about that too,
that the olive oil, fatty acid in the olive oil
is also problematic, it's pretty serious.
So, he says no oil.
What he means by that is no added oil,
but he goes a little bit further than I do.
He talks about also not using
even plant foods that are high in oil.
He's not very much in favor
of nuts or avocados and things like that, but-
- Well, I mean, he's talking about heart disease.
He's talking about people- - He's talking about heart
disease. - With heart disease.
You don't have a lot of cards to deal with right now.
You're just trying to, you know,
let's be very careful about everything we eat.
So, he probably just trying to say, you know, no oils-
- That's right, he is, and he got good results,
and so, that's his story.
But in reality, the hidden message here in all of this,
not very well told, especially to the public,
is that the closer you get to a plant-based diet,
the diseases start comin' down.
The closer you get to a plant-based diet
and don't add back a lotta oil,
and in this country, yes, we use some olive oil
to do that thing,
but use mostly corn oil and stuff like that.
That's very high in omega-6 fats, which are pro-inflammatory
and that is not good.
So, that's why I say no added oil.
Gotcha.
- Yeah, but as far as eating the foods,
you got some plant foods that's got more oil in them,
like peanuts and some nuts.
And there's some benefits there, they're helpful.
- Well, no, I think it's been marketed, no question,
but I did a recent paper for a VuMedi
for the American College of Cardiology,
which I was asked to join
their nutrition committee two years ago,
a little unusual for a retired general surgeon
to be a part of the American College of Cardiology
nutrition committee, but in the VuMedi that I did there,
my assignment was oil.
And they looked up, and there were multiple,
multiple peer reviews, scientific articles
clearly showing both monounsaturated
and polyunsaturated fats really will injure the endothelium.
I mean, where has there ever, ever been a group of patients
seriously ill with cardiovascular disease
where you give them a Mediterranean diet
and the disease is halted or reversed.
It doesn't exist, and so, olive oil can't do that
because it's injuring the endothelium.
See, the whole thing, what we're really, I think,
those of us who are involved with this,
try to steer patients away from processed food.
See, if you go into a grocery supermarket,
and if you're gonna live out of a box, a bag, or a can,
you gotta just so carefully read those ingredients
to be sure there's not oil and sugar and too much salt,
but if you go into those supermarket grocery stores
and you go to the produce section,
if you're gonna buy bok choy, Swiss chard, kale, collards,
hey, there's no label on it.
Just like it came off the soil.
This is right off the field.
Exactly.
- And you're getting something there
that has not been processed,
and therefore, it's unlikely to injure you, yeah.
Although, with patients with heart disease,
I'm a little stingy on anything like avocado
'cause it's just, again, too much,
avocado and nuts, too much saturated fat for my patients.
If they don't have heart disease, I'm not restrictive.
- Well, the benefits of a Mediterranean diet
are primarily because of the high vegetable consumption,
vegetable and nuts, two most health-promoting components
of the Mediterranean diet.
It's not the wine, it's not the oil.
It's the healthy whole plant foods,
but note, one of those whole plant foods,
low fat, you know, like dark green leafy vegetables,
but another, nuts, that's a high-fat food,
but yet, extraordinarily health-promoting,
may actually add years to your life
to add a palm full or an ounce of nuts a day.
In fact, there was a randomized controlled trial,
the PREDIMED study, thousands of people
randomized into multiple groups,
and one group got sent a package of nuts
in the mail every week for a period of years,
and the other half didn't,
and those that received the nuts, encouraged to eat the nuts
had half the stroke rate than those that didn't.
So, not eating nuts may double your risk of having a stroke.
So, high-fat, low-fat,
as long as we're talking about whole plant foods,
not oil, that's processed,
oil's like the table sugar of the fat kingdom.
Right.
- Right?
I mean, so you think of carbohydrates, well,
so you take all your sugar beat, right, healthy food,
you remove all the nutrition, you're left with sugar,
that's the primary source
of table sugar in this country, right?
Same thing, you take something like a walnut, super healthy,
remove all the nutrition, almost all the nutrition,
you're left with a walnut oil, all right.
It's a little vitamin E, some fat soluble nutrients,
but all the fiber's been removed,
all the healthy plant protein,
and so, I encourage high-fat, low-fat,
the important thing is to get your nutrition
from whole plant foods.
- So, eating the whole walnut.
- Eating the whole walnut.
In fact, walnuts- - Not processing-
- Are probably the healthiest nut.
- Yeah, absolutely.
Today, I'm gonna be making black bean burgers.
I'm gonna be using an onion, some green peppers,
some garlic, and the black beans, of course.
I'm gonna be using a food processor today,
but you can go ahead and mince up your vegetables by hand.
But the first thing I like to do
is to get my oven preheated at 350.
So, let's go ahead and get started.
Now, I'm only gonna be using
half of the onion for the bean mix.
The other half, I'm gonna use for the garnish.
As for the green pepper,
I'm only gonna use half of the green pepper as well,
and the other half, I'll just use it for another meal.
I'll go ahead and put this green pepper
into my food processor,
and let's go ahead and slice up some of the onions
for the garnish.
Okay, I'll go ahead
and save these for later, for the garnish.
Gotta put my half an onion, cut up my garlic gloves,
halve the halves.
Okay, so now I'm gonna go ahead and add two baby carrots.
Might as well cut this up a little bit.
A teaspoon and 1/2 of cumin.
Teaspoon and 1/2 of chili powder.
Now, teaspoon and 1/2 of steak rub.
That's usually found in the barbecuing aisles of your store.
So, a teaspoon and 1/2 of steak rub.
A tablespoon of Dijon mustard.
A teaspoon or a tablespoon,
that's all up to you, of sriracha.
I like to put in just a little bit of salt.
And of course, some pepper.
A tablespoon of cornstarch.
And we'll go ahead and give this a stir.
Okay.
Let's go ahead and get it off the sides.
I like to use one of those rubber scrapers.
It works so nice.
And it's really safe for my food processor as well.
All right, let's go ahead and give this another run.
All right, now let's go ahead and get started on our beans.
So, I get a bowl,
and I go ahead and put my two cans
of drained and rinsed black beans.
I go ahead and mash 'em with a fork.
This takes a little bit of time to do.
Just go ahead and just keep mashin' 'em.
All right, so my beans are mashed up pretty good.
The next thing I usually like to do
is to tear little pieces of whole wheat bread,
little tiny pieces.
Okay, so now I'm gonna go ahead
and add all my vegetables and spices into the mashed beans.
So, now I add about 1/2 a cup
of whole wheat flour into this mix.
Leave a little bit there just so I can get stirring.
Then I put some of my torn-up whole wheat bread slices.
Maybe a little bit of water.
And start givin' this a stir.
So, as you can see, it's just a little bit wet,
so I can go ahead and add a little bit more
of my whole wheat flour,
a little bit more of my couple slices of whole wheat bread,
and keep mixin' this up.
So, I'm gonna go ahead and add the,
this is 1/2 a cup of flour I put in here now.
1/2 a cup of whole wheat flour,
and maybe a tablespoon of water.
All right, that's lookin' pretty darn good, and I can tell
that I can already start to mold these into balls.
So, I go ahead and make 'em into patties.
Go ahead and put 'em on some parchment paper
on a baking dish.
Go ahead and grab me another one.
Roll 'em in a ball and then start flattenin' 'em out.
Okay.
So, now we'll go ahead and put these in the oven.
Okay, these turned out great.
What I did was I cooked 'em for about 12 minutes on one side
and then I flipped 'em
and cooked 'em for another 12 minutes on the other side,
and these look fantastic.
So, let's go ahead and give 'em a try.
All right, okay, go ahead and put some lettuce on there,
maybe a couple little bit of onion on there,
I got a couple tomatoes, maybe a couple pickles on there.
Let me go ahead and cut this.
And as you can see, that's lookin' pretty darn good.
I can't wait to check it out, oh my goodness.
This is gonna be good.
Mm.
So good.
And so good for ya.
Your family's gonna love this, mm.
Today, I'm gonna be making a broccoli salad.
It's sweet, it's creamy, it's crunchy.
I'm gonna be making it with a purple onion,
some broccoli, of course, some dried cranberries,
maybe some raisins, purple cabbage,
and some Mandarin oranges,
but first, let's go ahead and get started
cutting up these vegetables.
Now, I always like to put in some type of fruit.
Today, I'm gonna be using Mandarin oranges.
You could use apples or grapes,
whatever you have in your pantry.
So, I'm gonna go ahead and cut these up
because they're just a little too big for a bite size.
So, I'm gonna be using about 1/2 a cup of dried cranberries.
I've got some raisins in here,
but whatever you have in your pantry.
I've also got a couple tablespoons of dried coconut flakes.
Now, it's time to make the dressing.
I usually start out
with about 1/2 a cup of unsweetened almond milk,
a little bit of pepper,
got a tablespoon of maple syrup,
this is grade A maple syrup.
I've got a teaspoon of miso.
And then I've got a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar.
We'll go ahead and get this stirred up.
So, it takes a little while to break down the miso,
but eventually, it begins to blend.
Now, the last thing I like to put in there
is about a teaspoon of sugar.
This is optional, but I just like
a little bit of that sweetness in there.
Go ahead and break this down a little bit.
Okay, this is blendin' up real nice.
I'm gonna go ahead and put into the salad.
Just try to drizzle it all over the place.
And then just start tossing it.
You just wanna get it so it glazes over all the vegetables.
Okay, so this has been in the refrigerator for about an hour
and what that does is it allows the dressing
to marinade into the vegetables and it tastes awesome.
Let's go ahead and check it out.
I like to re-stir it up a little bit, mix it up.
There we go.
Mm.
Let's go ahead and check it out.
And there you go, this gonna be awesome, I can't wait.
Mm.
That is so good, mm.
You're gonna love this one.
Today, I'm gonna be making a simple
but delicious sandwich spread.
It uses a 15-ounce can of chickpeas,
I've drained and rinsed those,
1/4 cup of nutritional yeast, 1/4 cup of raw cashews,
I've got a little bit of spinach in here,
and of course, some lemon juice,
and I've got a couple other spices,
but let's go ahead and get started.
You know, you can always mash up the chickpeas
with a back of a fork in a bowl,
but I'm gonna use my food processor
just to speed things up a little bit.
Got my 1/4 cup of raw cashews,
got just about, eh, maybe 1/4 cup of spinach.
Process this up.
Okay, we'll get it off the sides a little bit.
Okay, as you can see, it's a little bit pasty,
so I wanna kinda get it a little bit wetter,
so I can always add just a little bit of water.
Just a little bit.
See how that is and we'll give it another run here.
And then we'll get it off the sides again
with my rubber spatula.
Okay, I'll put a little bit more water in there,
so that was about, this is about 1/4 cup.
Okay, we'll go ahead and scrape it off the sides again.
Okay, it's now startin' to get really nice.
That's about the consistency we like.
So, now I put in a teaspoon and 1/2 of apple cider vinegar.
I got a teaspoon of tamari,
a teaspoon of garlic powder.
I like to put in about 1/2 a pickle, 1/2 a dill pickle.
I got 1/4 cup of nutritional yeast.
Then I like to put in just a little pinch of dill.
Little bit of salt.
Little bit of pepper.
To cup up a lemon, I like some lemon juice in there.
Okay.
Little lemon juice.
Yeah, there we go.
And then I like to put in a little bit of sriracha.
This is all up to you though,
but I just like to give it just a little bit of kick,
but this is totally all up to your personality.
Go ahead and get it off the sides again.
All right, that looks pretty good.
So, now it's time to go ahead and transfer it to a bowl.
All right, that looks really good.
So, let's go ahead and make a sandwich.
Okay, I've got a couple slices of whole wheat bread,
I've got us a couple slices of cucumber,
some kale, and some tomatoes.
So, let's go ahead and check out this new spread we made.
Okay, let's put a little bit of kale on there,
maybe a little bit of tomatoes on there,
and them some cucumbers.
That's a nice lookin' sandwich.
Let's go ahead and check it out.
So, there you go.
Mm.
Very nice, very nice.
I love the way the spread works with all the vegetables.
It's a very, very good sandwich,
and it's extremely healthy for you.
You're gonna love it.
You know, when we make this change, it's difficult,
and sometimes, we have to buy something that has a label,
and have any advice on some of the processed foods,
additives, and preservatives, is that harmful
or something we should worry about,
or is it more of the other things in the process?
- You know, I think that this fear
about all preservatives, for example, or coloring
or those types of industrial additives to food
is a little bit of a distraction, to be honest.
I don't think that is the ultimate determinant
of health or disease in our food.
I think the qualities of food
that make it healthy or unhealthy is the food itself.
It's the nutrients in the food.
It's the protein, the carbohydrates, the fat.
It's not those minute amounts of preservative in there.
And it's a distraction for people
to get over-concerned about those things.
I tell people when they're in the grocery store,
basically keep it really simple.
There's two questions I want them to ask
when they're lookin' at that food label.
Go through the ingredient list at the bottom,
and say, is this a plant or an animal,
and is it a whole food or is it a food fragment,
is it a processed food.
And if you have mostly whole foods
that are plants, you're good,
and if you don't, you know, put it back.
And that's, you don't, forget the numbers,
forget everything else, keep it kinda simple,
and you can kind of ignore the preservatives.
I've had a number of patients, for example,
who they think they're doing really, really well
by getting all these sort of foods
that are labeled as super natural, super organic,
you know, it has the aura of these health companies,
and the second ingredient is sunflower oil,
and it's a very high-fat food,
and they're trying to lose weight
or they're trying to do xyz,
and yeah, there's no preservatives
in this sort of health thing, quote unquote health package,
but it's not healthy nutrition.
- Well, you know, we got, our society evolved in a sense
to rely on food prepared elsewhere.
We don't have gardens.
And so, the moment we start doin' that
and puttin' it in jars and packages and so forth,
you gotta be concerned about preserving it, obviously.
Some of those preservatives are rather important
in terms of preventing oxidation and that sort of thing.
So, we can't generalize too much
about some of those additives because they're useful
just because we're using those kinds of foods,
you know, for the larger population.
As far as if we're using fresh foods,
you know, obviously, as much as we can,
and have gardens and so forth, we don't need that stuff.
Exactly.
- So, additive business is the business preserving foods.
It was for the most part,
but now people put other stuff in there too,
give it some color, yeah, give the diet,
or maybe also puttin' things in it
that enhances taste in some way, like salt.
Sugars.
- And sugars, that sort of thing.
They're playin' to our addictions.
- Why are you eating food that needs preservatives, right?
I mean, this is just to make processed foods shelf stable
to make more profit off of them.
It's good for shelf-life, not good for human life.
I mean, the best food has no label at all,
no ingredients list, we're talkin' about the produce aisle.
Fresh fruits and vegetables, yes they go bad,
but that's because they're fresh.
Right, right.
- And there's not a lot of money to be made,
but those are the healthiest foods,
the ones that don't need,
so instead of, is this preservative better,
sodium benzoate better than, you know,
the best foods don't have nor need preservatives.
- One of my all-time favorite foods is pizza,
and I love making it at home.
So down at my local grocery store,
I found some pizza dough that's already made,
but as I can see that it already has some oil in it
or I could also get those pre-packaged pizza crusts,
but that has oil and it also has some dairy products in it.
So, you know, pizza dough
is really not that difficult to make.
It just needs a cup of warm water, 21/2 cups of flour,
one teaspoon of sugar, and a package of dry yeast,
and it's really kinda fast and simple.
So, let's go ahead and get started on the yeast.
So, like I said, making pizza dough from scratch
is really not that difficult,
as long as you pay attention to a couple details.
Now, I have one package of dry yeast,
one teaspoon of sugar.
Now, the reason I put the sugar in there
is because I need the yeast to have something to feed on.
Now, here's the important part of it,
I've got a cup of warm water,
and I picked up one of these inexpensive thermometers.
I need it to get to about 110 degrees.
All right, that's 110 degrees right there.
So, we'll go ahead and put this into the mix.
Give it a little bit of a stir.
Now, we're gonna go ahead and let this sit for 10 minutes.
Okay, so my yeast is doin' its thing.
I'm gonna go ahead and make up my flour mix.
I've got 21/2 cups of all-purpose flour,
one teaspoon of salt,
on teaspoon of garlic powder,
and then I like to put in tablespoon of nutritional yeast.
So, I'm gonna go ahead and mix this up.
Okay, that's all mixed up pretty good.
My yeast has been sittin' for about 10 minutes.
It's time to go ahead and add it to the flour.
And I'll just go ahead and stir this in.
Mm, it smells good already.
Okay, so this is lookin' really good.
So, I'm just gonna go ahead
and let this sit for about five minutes.
Okay, I've got parchment paper on top of a cookie sheet,
and then I just sprinkled a little bit of flour.
This dough has been sitting for about five minutes.
Let's go ahead and start rollin' it out.
I like to get a little bit of flour on top of it
just to kinda mist it down a little bit.
Now, you can do this by hand, but I'm gonna go ahead
and just kinda roll it out with a rolling pin.
I like to start in the middle and just kinda work my way out
and just keep workin' it.
Now, I like to roll mine out kinda thin,
but that's all up to you.
So, you can see, I've got it about,
oh, maybe 1/4 inch, maybe, somewhere in there,
but I like it kinda thin, but that's completely up to you.
The next thing I like to do
is sometimes when I cook this in the oven,
I get a little bit of bubbling,
and I kinda wanna keep that to a minimum.
So, I'll just go ahead and put a couple fork marks in there.
There.
Now, usually I like to precook my crust just a little bit,
so I put 'em in the over at 475 for about five minutes.
Now, pizza sauce is actually kinda simple to make.
I'm gonna use one 15-ounce can of tomato sauce,
one six-ounce can of tomato paste.
I got a tablespoon of oregano, a teaspoon of paprika,
and teaspoon of garlic powder.
So, I'm gonna go ahead and mix these together.
Get my tomato paste in there.
My oregano,
paprika, and my onion powder.
Now, we'll go ahead and mix this together.
And there you go, that's a very basic pizza sauce.
Now, you can add any kinda spices that you like.
I know I've heard some people
like to put in a little bit of sugar, a little bit of salt,
you know, whatever it is that you like,
but this is a very basic pizza sauce.
You know, the fun part about pizza
is you can put just about any kinda topping you want on it,
it all depends on your personality,
but today, I'm gonna be putting a little bit of pineapple,
little bit of basil, some spinach, some bell pepper,
some mushrooms, and some onions.
So, let's get this chopped up and get it in this frying pan.
Okay, these are comin' along pretty good.
Now, I personally like to put
just a little bit of water in there,
just so they have a little bit of a sauteing to 'em.
Okay, we'll let them cook a little bit,
and let's go ahead and start chopping up
some of these other toppings.
Okay, so I had my pizza crust
in the oven at 475 for about 10 minutes.
I tend to like a little bit more of a crispier crust,
but, you know, it's totally up to you,
but let's go ahead and start putting the toppings on.
So, remember the sauce that we made from earlier.
We'll just go ahead and start puttin' that on.
And I like to use the back of a spoon
because it just seems to smooth it out pretty good.
All right, now we'll go ahead
and add those sauteed vegetables that I made earlier.
Just kinda arrange 'em out a little bit evenly,
so it's all distributed.
Okay, then I'll put a little bit of my basil.
A little bit of the spinach.
And then a little bit of my pineapple.
Again, this is totally optional.
It's just about your personality, what you like.
Okay, I'm gonna go ahead
and put this back in the oven at 475.
Okay, so I've just taken it out of the oven
at 475 for about 20 minutes, and this looks fantastic.
So, let's go ahead and cut it up.
And let's give it a try.
And remember, the Parmesan cheese that I made earlier?
Let's put a little bit of that on there.
Mm, it's gonna be great.
And I like a little bit of pepper,
but that's totally up to you.
Okay.
Let's go ahead and give it a try.
Mm, that's so good.
Your family's gonna love this, mm.
Today, I'm gonna be making
vegetable barley soup in the slow cooker.
I'm gonna be usin' some carrots, some zucchini,
some celery, some great white beans, diced tomatoes,
an onion, and of course, some barley,
but let's first go ahead
and get started on choppin' up these vegetables.
Okay, now it's time to put in the rest of the ingredients.
I usually put in a tablespoon of ground garlic,
a tablespoon of dried parsley,
a tablespoon of regular sugar,
a couple bay leaves,
and then a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce.
Now, this is the Worcestershire sauce
that I found at the local store that is vegan.
It has no fish in it.
A little bit of salt.
Of course, some pepper.
I have a can of diced tomatoes,
a can of great white Northern beans,
one cup of barley.
So, I've got 32 ounces of vegetable broth
and another 32 ounces of vegetable broth.
And that's pretty much it.
We'll go ahead and give it a stir.
And we'll go ahead and put this on low
for about eight hours.
Aw, this has been cookin' all day, and let me tell ya,
it is makin' the house smell really nice.
Let's check it out, mm.
Lookin' really good.
Aw, that looks fantastic, mm.
Let's go ahead and check it out.
Mm.
Very good, I love the tomatoes in there.
So good, your family's gonna love it.
Today, I'm gonna be making hummus from scratch.
Now, you're probably gonna ask,
why would you make hummus from scratch
when you can just go to the grocery store and buy it?
Well, the thing is about the hummus at the grocery store
has a lot of olive oil in it, and we all know edible oils
are not exactly that great for us.
Now, my version lasts
a little bit under a week in the refrigerator,
but the stuff you buy in the grocery store
can last a lot longer,
so that makes me think that there's probably
a lot of additives and preservatives in it.
Now today, I'm gonna be making it
with a 15-ounce can of chickpeas
that I've drained and rinsed.
I've got a couple cloves of garlic,
a little bit of lemon, and of course, some vegetable broth.
So, let's go ahead and get started.
First thing I do is put my chickpeas in my food processor
and then get started on mincing up my garlic.
Okay, so now I like to add all my spices.
I usually like to go with a teaspoon of Dijon mustard,
and I like to put 1/2 a teaspoon of tamari,
it's totally optional,
but I like a little bit of that tamari in there.
A little bit of salt and pepper.
I like to put in a little bit of flaxseed,
whenever I can, put a little bit of ground flaxseed,
just like a teaspoon.
Then I like to put in a tablespoon of tomato paste.
This is totally optional.
I just like that taste of just a little bit of that tomato,
a little bit of that garlic in there.
Okay, go ahead and cut up a lemon.
Let's get my lemon juice in there.
Okay, squeeze one half, of course, the other half.
Then, I've got some vegetable broth on the side ready to go,
but let's put just a little bit in there
to get it started.
As you can see, it's a little dry,
so I go ahead and put in a little bit more vegetable broth.
Okay, and that's totally up to you.
It's the consistency that you like.
I don't like it so pasty.
I like it a little bit more smooth.
Let's get it off the sides.
Okay, I'm gonna put a little bit more broth in there.
All right, this is lookin' really good now.
Go ahead and put this on a bowl.
Mm.
Okay, so now I'm gonna go ahead and cut up my pita.
So, I've got one of my pizza cutters,
so I'm just gonna go ahead and cut this up.
And there ya go, this gonna be great.
I can't wait, mm.
Mm, that's why I love all those spices in there.
That's so good, but it's homemade.
I know what's in it, that's the fun part about it.
Mm, I'm gonna enjoy this, mm.
Today, I'm gonna be making Mexican tomato, beans, and rice.
It's gonna have some garlic, some jalapeno,
lime, orange, some onion, some cilantro,
fire roasted tomatoes, some lettuce,
and of course, three cans of black beans,
but first, let go ahead and get started on our rice.
Okay, so first, let's go ahead
and start mincing up the onion,
the jalapeno, and the garlic.
Okay, let's add a little bit of water.
Okay, so I like to put a couple tablespoons of cumin,
one tablespoon of chili powder.
Okay, while this is sauteing,
I wanna put just a little bit of water.
That buys me some time, so I can get started on my sauce.
Okay, so now I'm gonna go ahead on my butter sauce.
I go with about 1/4 of nutritional yeast,
1/2 a cup of unsweetened almond milk.
I've got some salt and pepper all ready to go.
And I'll give this a little stir.
Okay, that's lookin' pretty good.
We'll save this for later.
Had to add a little bit of water,
give me some time while I work on my dressing.
Now, the dressing, I used white wine vinegar,
about three tablespoons,
I got a little bit of salt and pepper,
one tablespoon of sugar, and of course, the orange.
So, we'll go ahead and put the vinegar in there,
a little bit of sugar,
some salt and pepper,
and of course, the orange.
All right, and that's pretty much it with the dressing.
It's a nice sweet but yet sour, kinda tangy.
I'll put that aside while I continue on the rest.
Okay, now let's go ahead
and add our fire roasted can of tomatoes
and of course, our three cans of black beans.
Start warmin' all this up.
Remember, if it gets a little too dry,
go ahead and put a little bit of water in.
Okay, so now that that's simmering,
let's go ahead and cut up a little bit of lime.
Okay, and we'll cut up some cilantro.
Okay, put a little bit of cilantro in there.
Save this other half for the garnish.
And let's go ahead and chop up some lettuce.
Let's get this mixin' in.
All right, that's lookin' pretty good.
Let's go ahead and check on our rice.
Okay, so I've warmed up my butter sauce that I made earlier,
so it's nice and warm.
So, I'm just gonna drizzle
a little bit of the butter sauce on my rice.
And I'm gonna go ahead and get some beans and tomatoes.
A little bit of cilantro.
I like a little bit of lettuce on there.
And then, my dressing.
Give it a little bit of a stir.
And put a little bit even on the lettuce.
There ya go.
All right.
Aw, this is gonna be nice.
Just mix a little bit of the rice and beans in there, mm.
It's gonna be so good.
Mm.
So good.
The dressing is awesome, but this is rice and beans,
little bit of tomato, mm, it's so good.
Our daughter's in her year of medical school,
and I asked her, what's a typical,
what kind of nutrition course did she take,
and she said, they had us do 20 hours of nutrition
to become an MD.
Any thoughts on that?
- So several surveys have shown
that about 20 hours in four years of medical school
is average of nutrition training,
so she actually is not doing badly
by the super terrible metric across the system.
Doctors are not trained in nutrition at all,
and if they do get nutrition training,
it's not likely related to disease.
To be honest, it's mostly biochemistry.
It's probably related to the Krebs cycle
or protein metabolism or this type of stuff
you remember for the test and then you forget
the biochemical steps and blah, blah, blah.
And it's a shame because most doctors
will admit that nutrition and lifestyle
has a major role on most of the diseases they treat,
and yet, there's no training.
And the reason is
is because it's not really considered real medicine.
Even if a doctor really wants to spend time doing that,
it's hard to get reimbursed
for doing that type of counseling or work.
So, it's a trade school, right,
medical school is sort of a trade,
and you're training people
to do things that they can get paid for.
So, I mean, that's an oversimplification,
but what we consider to be real medicine
tends to be drugs and surgery, which is unfortunate
because lifestyle is really at the base
of so many of our common diseases.
- Yeah, it's unfortunate because we go to a doctor,
let's say, and we have no one else to really ask, you know?
Is my diet causing some of these things?
And, you know, I would ask those questions,
even though I really knew what I was talking about,
just to see, and I was really surprised
at the mixed elements that they said to introduce,
like fish oils and stuff like that,
triglycerides are a little high, get some fish oil.
That'll fix it.
- Physicians suffer severe nutrition deficiency in education
and most doctors are just never taught about the power
that healthy dietary choices can have,
and so, they graduate without this powerful tool
in their medical toolbox.
Of course, there's other kind of institutional constraints,
the time, reimbursement,
many doctors just simply aren't paid
for educating people about making healthier choices.
Of course, you know, big pharma, the drug companies
play a role in transforming medical education and practice.
But yeah, most doctors just never, just were never taught,
so the average nutrition education on the order of 20 hours
out of thousands of hours pre-clinical instruction,
whereas most deaths are preventable in the United States
and related to nutrition.
So obviously, nutrition is number one thing
taught in medical school, right?
Obviously, it's the number one thing
your doctor talks to you about
at every single medical visit, right?
How could there be this disconnect
between the science and the practice of medicine,
and mostly, it's just ignorance, they never knew,
but you share with doctors how,
I mean, it's very frustrating
to practice primary care medicine these days
'cause most the patients come into your office,
you can't help.
I mean, you just kinda slow down the rate at which
they kinda spiral down to death with chronic disease,
but here's a tool where your patients
can actually get better and kind of reignites that spark
of why we all went into medicine in the first place,
right, to help people.
I mean, if wanted to make money,
we'd go stock broker or something, right?
But no, people go into medicine
because they want to take care of sick people,
and finally, there's something
we can actually do for these patients
and can really kinda revolutionize the practice of medicine
for patients and providers a like.
- Doctors don't know nutrition.
I've spoken to a lot of medical schools,
at least 150 or maybe close to 200 now, all over the place,
and so, the message I bring to them,
and I'm gratified that they're takin' that kind of interest,
that I'm even invited to come to speak about this
'cause I'm quite, as I did just yesterday morning,
I say, you know, your whole profession
is focused on the wrong thing.
And furthermore, you're not trained,
so you don't really have the knowledge
to be able to judge what I'm talking about.
- Yeah.
- Kinda thing, I mean, it's a tough message,
but you know, I do it, obviously politely,
and I totally understand
because these are people just like me or everybody else,
they wanted, in fact, they're better,
they're servin' the public,
but they didn't know that the best solution for health
is the one area of medical science they don't hear about,
even if nutrition is taught, and I would argue at ASU,
the nutrition that your daughter may have had
is largely biochemical in nature
because they take the biochemical discussion
and they call that nutritional discussion.
And it's not really quite fair.
It's good to have the biochemistry background,
as I said before, because she'll be in a better position
to be able to look at the information
in a more informed way this summer in college by doing that.
- Well, she knows a lot about the science
of how the body works, how the medication-
- It's very important.
- Works, and everything like that.
She understands all that, but it's just interesting
when we go out to dinner, you know,
I'm surprised at the amount of education that doctors get,
and yet, I talk to 'em about this,
they look at me like-
- That's right, that's part of the problem.
- Today, I'm gonna be makin' barbecue bean wraps.
I'm gonna be makin' it with rainbow chard,
a half a sweet onion, some bell pepper,
and some pinto beans,
but first, let's go ahead and get started with the sauce.
Now, it took me a while to find some barbecue sauce
at my local grocery store that doesn't have any oil in it.
So, this is one cup of barbecue sauce,
one teaspoon of balsamic vinegar,
one teaspoon of Dijon mustard,
one tablespoon of brown sugar, now this is optional,
but I like a little bit of sweetness in there.
Okay, we'll give this a bit of a stir.
Okay, and now I got three cans of pinto beans.
I've drained and rinsed them already.
Go ahead and put those in there,
and we'll give this a nice gentle stir.
Get this barbecue sauce all mixed around the beans.
All right, that's lookin' pretty good.
Now, let's go ahead
and get started on choppin' up some of these vegetables.
I'm gonna be using half of an onion on this recipe.
I'll just go ahead and save the other half for another meal.
So, I like to dice these up pretty small.
All right, so I'll go ahead
and use the other half of the bell pepper for another meal.
But let's get this onion chopped up.
Then we'll go ahead and put this in with the beans.
So, we'll go ahead and mix this in.
Now, we'll go ahead and cover this and put it on low.
Okay, so now it's time
to go ahead and cut the chard into wrap pieces.
Okay, so now you can see
that I have 'em in like little wrap-size pieces.
Okay, so the beans are done.
I had to cook 'em on low with a lid,
but I had to keep an eye on 'em
to keep stirrin' 'em every so often
so they didn't scorch up.
Okay, so let's go ahead and make one.
Let's grab a little bit of the bean mix.
Wow, this is gonna be good.
And you just kinda wrap it like a taco
and just go ahead and enjoy it.
Mm, that's so good, and it's so good for you.
Mm, your family's gonna love this.
You know, when I was a kid growin' up,
I used to love mac and cheese.
It was just such a nice comfort food,
but unfortunately, it's just not that good for us.
So, I came up with a recipe that requires some carrots,
some gold potatoes, some nutritional yeast,
some lemon juice, but the first thing I usually do
is to get the water boiling
for both the noodles and the vegetables.
So, we'll go ahead and get started on that first.
Okay, so the waters are boiling.
Let's go ahead and put the vegetables
into the boiling water.
Now, go ahead and put our noodles in.
So, this has been about 20 minutes,
and these are lookin' real good.
You wanna make sure that the carrots
are cooked all the way through,
so they can blend real easy.
So, I'll go ahead and put this in my food processor.
There ya go.
Okay.
Okay, so that's about the consistency I like,
over mashed potato-y kinda consistency.
So, that's lookin' real good.
Okay, so now we'll go ahead
and add the rest of the ingredients.
I usually go with about 1/2 a cup
of unsweetened almond milk,
1/2 a cup of nutritional yeast,
about a teaspoon of salt,
1/2 a teaspoon of garlic powder,
1/2 a teaspoon of onion powder,
1/2 a teaspoon of dry mustard,
and then I have about a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar,
and then I always like to, ah, the lemon,
I like the lemon in there.
Go ahead, I think I used two lemons, so.
Yeah, this is lookin' really good.
So yeah, that's the consistency that I like,
just it's kinda creamy, it's really nice and creamy.
Look at that, that's great.
I don't want it to thin
because you wanna have it so it's more like a cheese.
I'm gonna go ahead and pulse this just a little bit more.
Okay, so the noodles are all done.
Let's go ahead and get them out and drain 'em.
See, that's why I like the sauce just a little bit thicker
'cause as you can see,
there's gonna be a little bit of moisture on these noodles.
Go ahead and put these noodles in a bowl.
Now, that was a pound of noodles.
As you can see, I still got a little bit left over,
but unfortunately, my dish, wherever it is, over here
is not that big, so I'm gonna be just kinda goin' with this.
So, it's almost a pound of noodles.
This is the extreme health version of mac and cheese.
It doesn't require any cashews and of course,
you understand that cashews are very high in fat.
Now, if you wanna make this version
taste a little bit more like traditional mac and cheese,
then go ahead and add some more
nutritional yeast and more salt.
Now, I've preheated my oven at 400 degrees,
so I'm gonna go ahead and put this in the oven
once I get done
but let's go ahead and stir this up real nice.
Mm, this is lookin' really good.
Now, you can go ahead and eat it just like this
or you can go ahead and put it in the oven,
like I'm about to do.
I'm gonna put it at 400 degrees for about,
I don't know, 15 minutes, we'll see how it looks.
I just wanna get that little brown,
little brownness to happen on the top of it.
Go ahead and smooth this out a little bit.
Okay, this has been in the oven
for about 20 minutes at 400 degrees, and like I said,
if you like your mac and cheese a little bit more buttery,
go ahead and add more nutritional yeast,
but let's go ahead and check this out.
This is gonna be good.
Mm, so good.
You know, Italian food is a favorite at my house,
but sometimes, it can be a little daunting
trying to figure out
what the pasta at the grocery store is made of.
Is it made with oil, does it have eggs in it,
and what kind of flour is it they're using?
But don't forget, gnocchi is a great alternative
to an Italian dish and even some salads,
and it's relatively easy to make
and a lotta times, you can make it
with the stuff that you have in your pantry,
provided you have a couple potatoes.
Now today, I'm gonna be making my gnocchi
with whole wheat flour,
and the reason why I'm doing that
is because I want a little bit of that fiber in the meal.
The only thing is with whole wheat,
it does give it a little bit more of a chewy texture,
and that might not be so cool with your family,
but you can go ahead and use whatever flour you want.
The first thing I usually like to do
is to get this water boiling,
so I can get my potatoes cooking.
Ah, water's boiling.
Let's go ahead and put these potatoes in.
Now, this should take about 15 minutes,
give or take a few, but I mean,
it all depends on if it's tender or not,
and I usually like to just test it with a fork
just to see if it's just right.
Okay, so while my potatoes are boiling,
I'm gonna go ahead and get my sauce started.
This is a basil marinara sauce
that I made a couple weeks ago.
I put it in some of these glass jars
and I actually put it in the freezer
as long as I have some space in the glass for it to expand.
The thing I like about the glass jar,
if it's frozen, and I'm in a bind,
and I gotta, you know, no time,
I can always set this in some boiling water
just to get that defrost process going
before I go ahead and start warming it up for sauce,
but you can always get these plastic commercial containers
that they sell, like on Amazon or something like that,
and the thing that's nice about 'em
is the lid is really secure,
and as you can see, they have that perforated edge,
and they work really nice.
But the only problem is, once this is frozen,
I don't think I would stick this in boiling water
to defrost them because I'm not really sure
what kinda chemicals come off of plastic,
so I don't even go there.
So, the choice is yours.
So, let's go ahead and get a sauce warmed up a bit.
Put my lid on and put this on low.
Okay, so it's been about 15 minutes.
Let's check to see how these potatoes are doing.
Okay, let's check this out.
So as you can see, it's still a little bit hard,
so I'm gonna go ahead and put these in
for just a little bit longer.
Okay, so the potatoes are done now.
Let's go ahead and get 'em outta there.
Now, what I usually like to use is a potato ricer,
and what it does is if you use a masher,
it tends make a different type of consistency,
but as you can see, the ricer has a different,
you know, small holes, this other one has different dies,
but as you can see, this is the size that like to do.
So, it's pretty simple to operate.
All you do is put your potatoes down in there,
and then go ahead and just rice 'em out.
Okay, let's grab another potato, couple more maybe.
There ya go.
And here we go some more.
Okay, now I've got my potatoes boiled
and pushed through a potato ricer,
so now it's time to go ahead and put some salt in there.
And then, the wheat flour or whatever flour.
Now, here's the thing about gnocchi.
It's basically two parts potato to one part flour,
but it all depends on how wet everything is,
but you wanna turn it into that gnocchi dough.
Okay, so now I've got my dough all ready to go,
it's time to start makin' the gnocchi.
Now as you can see, it's got that consistency
that's not exactly sticky,
but it's just enough where I can mold it up into a roll
and start cutting it up.
So, the first thing I usually like to do
is to just divide it up into quarters.
Then I'll go ahead and make out a roll.
Okay, so now I've rolled it out into like a tube,
so I'm gonna go ahead and cut it into one-inch pieces.
Okay, so to make your gnocchi a little bit more authentic,
you can always put a little bit of design
with the back of your fork, and the way you do that
is you just kinda press with your fingers
and roll it so it gives it that perforated design.
Now, you can either go ahead
and freeze these for another time,
and the way you do that is I would put these
on a cookie dish or something like that,
so they can be separated, put 'em in the freezer,
and then when they're frozen,
go ahead and put them in a re-closable bag,
but for now, I'm gonna go ahead and we're gonna eat these.
So, now my water is boiling,
so I'm gonna go ahead and scoop these up
and start puttin' 'em in.
Okay, now they're all in there,
and usually, gnocchi when it's cooked,
is it basically just comes to the top.
Okay, so now I go ahead and add just a little bit of salt
and let this cook up.
Okay, all the gnocchi has risen to the top.
It's time to go ahead and serve it.
I like to get off all that moisture.
We'll put some sauce on there.
Maybe a little bit of basil,
and as you can see, that looks amazing.
This is gonna be good, I can tell.
Mm.
That's so good.
So, if you're looking for a relatively easy meal to make,
gnocchi is not that difficult,
and usually it can be made
with the stuff you have in your pantry,
provided you got a couple potatoes.
So good, mm.
I still have a lot of people still on the carb thing.
Can you explain to us
the misconception about the wrong carbs?
- Mm-hmm, there's no single
greater source of confusion in nutrition right now
than people's perception of carbohydrates.
I can tell you, I have diabetics, and universally,
they've come in horrified about carbohydrates.
They've been avoiding rices, potatoes, sweet corns,
and you know, there are healthy carbohydrates
and then there's the stuff that we eat in the U.S.
So, you know, most of the carbohydrates,
something like 90% of all the grains we eat, for example,
are refined grains, they're white flours.
We have voluminous amounts of sugar,
added sugars in our diet.
So, there's no doubt about it that most of the carbohydrates
in the typical American diet are highly processed,
part of highly junky foods, you know,
the stuff wrapped in packages at the gas station, okay?
Those are terrible.
But the healthiest diet that I think exists in the world
is actually a high carbohydrate diet,
but it's the high healthy carbohydrate diet,
so they're whole foods, again.
We keep comin' back to this idea of using the whole food,
as opposed to food fragments, you know, fragments of food.
If you eat a potato, that's fine.
Potatoes are healthy, they're good,
brown rice, great, fine.
Sweet corn, great, fine.
You know, I've had diabetic patients
with very advanced severe disease
start eating rice all the time, potatoes all the time,
sweet potatoes, in particular, beans, sweet corn,
and their need for insulin plummets,
you know, their illness begins to reverse,
and it's a super high carbohydrate diet.
You know, fruits and vegetables are carbohydrates,
they are good and healthy carbohydrates,
and anybody who says to avoid all those healthy things,
they just don't really understand carbohydrates, I think.
- If you say, carbohydrates are bad,
and you're talking about a can of Coca-Cola,
well, of course, it's bad,
but if you're talking about carbohydrates
in the form of blueberries, then that's,
I mean, that's one of the healthiest foods out there.
So, you can't talk about whether carbs are good or bad,
fat is good or bad, you have to talk about the source.
I mean, otherwise, it doesn't really make any sense.
- If they just were more specific, which almost never are,
if they're more specific, they're talkin' about
refined carbohydrates, like sugar and white flour.
If they stayed with just that message, yes.
I mean, carbohydrates only come from plants.
See, here's the hidden message in that story.
When they say, let's have less carb,
what they're saying is let's not eat plants.
You know, it's an attack on eating plants
because all carbohydrates come from plants.
- It's a dangerous generalization.
- It's a beautiful story just for the industry,
the livestock industry, you know, the dairy industry,
and all the rest, they love that story.
- You know, there's nothing like coming home from work
to the smell of a home-cooked meal.
Today, we're gonna be making a whole plant-based potato soup
made with gold potatoes.
So, the first thing I do is begin peeling the carrots.
And I usually like to go with a sweet onion.
I usually like to keep the skins on the potato.
So, that's six gold potatoes.
Now, let's go ahead
and add the rest of the ingredients and spices.
I usually go ahead and start with the vegetable broth,
maybe a cup of unsweetened almond milk,
of course, some water.
I like a little bit of garlic powder,
just a little bit of dill,
of course, bay leaf.
I like a little bit of basil in there too,
just a little bit of basil,
and of course, some pepper and some salt.
Now, the thing is with potato soup,
you kinda need some salt, but again, that's optional.
The nutritional yeast, I usually like the go
with about 1/2 a cup, maybe a little bit more.
I'll give that a stir.
Well, there ya go.
This is lookin' pretty good.
So, we'll go ahead
and put this on low for about eight hours.
You know, the really cool thing about a slow cooker
is that you can cut up all your vegetables
before you go to work or the night before.
You know, sometimes you need to chop up vegetables
or make cream sauces or puree things,
so I needed to find a hand processor
that was relatively easily to clean and had some power.
This is Kico hand processor,
and it was about 40 bucks on Amazon.
It also comes with these other items,
which are really helpful.
It comes with this, like, this container
that you can actually go ahead and puree things
or make your sauces or something like that
and then be able to pour it back into whatever.
It also comes with a chopper, which is actually kinda nice.
It's pretty simple to use.
You just go ahead
and pulse the vegetables in this container.
As you can see, it's relatively easy to clean.
This comes off, be careful about the blades,
they're pretty sharp.
It's relatively easy to clean and get out
because it doesn't have quite a bit of stuff in there,
like your conventional blenders.
It's really fast, it's really simple,
and that's the whole thing with me in the kitchen.
I like things to be easy to clean,
easy to put away, and get goin'.
Okay, so this has been cooking on low for about eight hours.
Aw, this is lookin' really good, really good, really good.
Now, you can eat it just like this
or you can make cream of potato soup,
which is really relatively easy to do
if you have a hand processor or a blender.
Now, some people like it where it has
a little bit of chunk still in there.
Mm, this is lookin' really, really good.
And as you can see,
it's got a little bit of chunk still in there.
And then I usually like to finish it off
with just a little bit of chives.
And there ya have it, cream of potato soup.
Now see, the thing is about this particular recipe,
it's fairly easy to just chop up a bunch of vegetables,
put 'em in the slow cooker, and go about your day,
and come home to a nice, warm comfort food ready to go.
So, let's go ahead and check it out.
Mm.
Today, I'm gonna be making a breakfast.
It's scrambled veggies with hash browns.
I'm gonna be usin' a quarter onion, a half a bell pepper,
tomato, a little bit of kale, and some tofu.
Through the whole process,
I've been putting these paper towels underneath the tofu
to help get some of that moisture out,
but the first thing I usually like to do
is to get started on my hash browns.
These are just frozen hash browns
that I bought in the grocery store,
and I preheated the skillet,
so let's go ahead and get these started
'cause they take a little bit.
Okay, so I'm gonna go ahead
and cut up this half a bell pepper.
Go ahead and put this in my other skillet.
Okay, now I got a quarter onion.
I'll go ahead and dice this up.
Get some onion in there.
Chop up my kale.
And usually what I like to do
is I like to get some of the seeds out of the tomato.
So, we'll go ahead and do that.
And what I do is I just kind of take my knife,
my little knife and just kinda scoop it out,
just kinda cut it a little bit,
and then just kinda pull some of those seed out.
Just get some of those seeds out
just like that.
Those are lookin' pretty good, okay.
Go ahead and dice these up.
Put some of that in there.
Just kinda stir these up a little bit.
All right, let's check on our hash browns.
I didn't use any oil, so these are lookin' really good.
These are lookin' pretty good.
Okay, so now it's time to go ahead
and make the dry spice mix.
Get myself a bowl.
I go with 1/4 teaspoon of tumeric,
1/2 a teaspoon of garlic powder,
1/2 a teaspoon of chili powder,
1/2 a teaspoon of paprika,
a teaspoon of nutritional yeast,
and then again, some salt and pepper.
The salt's always optional.
I'll go ahead and mix up our dry spice mix.
Okay.
So, I'll go ahead and move these over to one side.
We'll go ahead and put those in there on the other half.
Now, I can put a little bit of my dry spice in there.
You know, and I can always put 'em in the hash browns too.
Okay, save this for the tofu.
Okay, now it's time to get the tofu all ready to go.
So, now I go ahead and just crumble it up,
crumble the tofu up by hand.
Now, I go ahead and towel blot it some more,
try to get some of that moisture out.
Towel blot it again.
I mean, that's the whole idea is to get this moisture out.
Okay, so that's lookin' pretty good.
Let's check on these veggies.
Aw, these are comin' along real nice.
Yeah, these are comin' along real nice.
Now, you can always add a little bit of water
if you want to, but I kinda like to keep it dry,
you know, just kinda stir fry 'em up a little bit.
I'm not really tryin' to saute 'em,
I'm just tryin' to heat 'em up pretty good.
Now, we'll go ahead and add our tofu.
Spread it out a little bit.
Now, I can add some of the spices again.
Okay, and we'll give this a stir.
Aw, this is lookin' really great now.
Mm, all those spices are workin' together.
It's got a great color to it, it's nice and colorful.
Let's go ahead and check it out.
Let's get some hash browns in there, mm.
There ya go, I'm sure this is gonna be amazing
and a very simple breakfast.
Let's go ahead and check it out.
Get a little bit of potato in there.
Aw, this is gonna be so good.
Mm.
Oh man, this is so good.
Nice and wonderful breakfast, mm.
Your family's gonna love it.
Can we actually clean our arteries?
I read about nitric oxide,
as we get older,
not being there as much for us.
- No.
- Dr. Esselstyn said that something like kale,
so chewing the kale, mixing with your saliva,
helping that nitric, can you explain it to me,
what nitric oxide is and how does it help us?
- Yeah, one of the critical,
the reason I tell everyone to eat
dark green leafy vegetables every day,
it's just one of my daily dozen,
I have this kind of a daily dozen recommendations,
all the the things I try to encourage people
to fit into their daily diet,
so berries every day, the healthiest fruits,
greens every day, the healthiest vegetables,
tablespoon of ground flaxseeds, 1/4 teaspoon of tumeric,
you know, on down the list, how much to drink,
how much to exercise, et cetera, but why greens?
Well, there's lots of reasons, but one of those
is that is the most concentrated form of vegetable nitrates,
and that is converted in our body into nitric oxide,
which is this potent molecule that opens up our arteries.
It allows our arteries to dilate, open up,
and so, I mean, that's how nitroglycerin works, actually.
You know, people take 'em
when they have crushing chest pain,
opens up their arteries, but we can eat,
that's why, that's the whole beet juice phenomenon,
you know, athletes chuggin' down beet juice
to get that edge in athletic performance,
it's 'cause the nitrates found in beetroot.
You don't have to drink beet juice.
You can actually, they've studies done
on just like canned beets,
you know 75 minutes before your 5K,
you can shave off a minute, you can hold your breath longer,
all, you name the sport, I mean, you can improve cycling,
and most critically, people who are hypertensive,
brings down blood pressures, people have COPD,
emphysema, it can improve lung function,
but the most concentrated form's actually not beets,
dark green leafy vegetables.
So, you can do the same
kind of athletic performance enhancing benefits with,
frozen spinach study done,
but it's probably the highest, maybe arugula,
and then on down the list,
basically all dark green leafy vegetables,
and what happens is the nitrates
are converted by bacteria that actually live on our tongue
to another molecule which is then used by our body
to create nitric oxide in our blood vessels,
wherever you want it, to open up and allow blood to flow
and decreases heart disease risk by a variety of mechanism
beyond just dilation,
and our body knows this and it's so smart,
it actually pumps the nitrates back into our salivary glands
to bathe our tongue so that reaction happens.
So, you don't actually have to,
the first time you eat the kale,
you don't have to mix it,
you could put kale through a tube
through your nose into your stomach
and still get the benefits because your body's not stupid
and smart enough to recycle the nitrates
back onto your tongue through your salivary glands,
so you can get the benefits of nitrate-rich vegetables.
So, it's one of the reasons
I encourage people to eat greens every day.
- Nitric oxide keeps all those cellular elements
within our blood stream
flowing smoothly like Teflon, rather than Velcro,
keeps things from getting sticky.
Number two, nitric oxide
is the strongest blood vessel dilator in the body.
When you climb stairs, the arteries to your heart,
the arteries to your legs, they widen, they dilate.
Nitric oxide.
Number three, nitric oxide
will protect the wall of the artery
from becoming thickened, stiff, or inflamed,
protects you from getting high blood pressure, hypertension.
Number four, this is the key, a safe and adequate amount
of nitric oxide will protect you
from ever developing blockages or plaque.
So, literally, everybody on the planet,
whether they're in Cleveland, Detroit, or Chicago,
who develops cardiovascular disease
has their disease because, by now,
sufficient decades in their earlier life,
they have succeeded in so trashing and injuring
and compromising the capacity
of their endothelial cells to make nitric oxide,
they don't have enough nitric oxide to protect themselves.
I ask a patient, let's say, who comes with angina
or they've had a heart attack,
I've tried to imagine getting their head
inside the coronary artery
that has got the blockage in their heart.
They would see that this blockage
is an absolute cauldron of oxidated inflammation,
therefore, we need antioxidants.
No, do not go down to the health food store
and buy a jug of pills that says antioxidant
'cause it won't work and it's probably gonna be harmful.
Therefore, you're gonna get your antioxidants from food.
What food?
Food that is high in what we call ORAC value, O-R-A-C,
oxygen radical absorbance capacity.
So, if you're having raspberries, blueberries,
strawberries, and blackberries
on your oat cereal in the morning, terrific,
but nothing can trump the antioxidant value
of green leafy vegetables.
- You know, when I first started
on a whole plant-based diet,
I was not really a big fan of kale.
I don't know if it was a personal thing.
It just tasted bitter to me.
But it wasn't until I started experimenting
with different types of vinegars,
some spices, and maybe some sweetness from some fruit,
but I actually started to enjoy the taste of it.
But see, that's the thing with this diet,
it takes time for you to recalibrate
and readjust yourself to actually
start to acquire a taste for plants.
So today, I'm gonna be making a sweet and sour kale salad.
So, let's go ahead and get started
on cuttin' up these vegetables.
Okay, so now I'm gonna add some beans.
I have some white beans here.
I've rinsed and drained these, but you can use
any type of bean that you have in your pantry.
So, go ahead and put those in there.
Now, this is ground flaxseed.
I like to put it in whenever I can.
This is great opportunity to put some ground flaxseed.
This is a teaspoon.
Then I'll go ahead and put my fruit and vegetables in there.
Now, I'll put a little bit of my tangy dressing,
give it a little bit of a shake.
Mm.
It's gonna be good.
Go ahead and toss this up a bit.
Gonna give this a try.
Mm.
So, that looks fantastic, let's give it a try.
Mm.
That is so good.
So, that's a relatively easy salad to make.
Today, I'm gonna be making a Spanish black bean soup.
I'm gonna go ahead and cook it in the slow cooker,
and then thing I like about a slow cooker,
if you one like I do, you can remove the pot,
you can go ahead and put all the vegetables in there,
throw it in the refrigerator,
and then fire it up in the morning
when you go about your day.
This particular recipe has a sweet potato,
an onion, a red bell pepper, jalapeno,
lime, garlic, and some cilantro.
So, let's go ahead
and start with cutting up the vegetables first.
I like to dice the peppers up kinda small.
Now, I saved the other half of the cilantro
for the garnish on top.
Go ahead and squeeze some lime into this.
Okay, so now it's time to go ahead
and add the rest of this stuff.
I've got a can of fire-roasted tomatoes.
My three cans of black beans, I rinse 'em,
and you know, of course, drain 'em.
Put them in there.
I've got some, a little bit of frozen corn,
you know, about 1/2 a cup.
Okay, now I add a little bit of salt.
It's optional, always.
Two teaspoons of cumin,
one teaspoon of chili powder,
and then, of course, 32 ounces of vegetable broth.
If you like a little bit more thick of a soup,
this is good, but if you want it a little more watery,
you might wanna add a little bit more.
Stir this up.
And the thing that I like about it,
it's really a colorful soup.
It's got the sweet potatoes, the red bell pepper,
the cilantro, you know, it's just,
and the black beans,
it's just a really, really pretty lookin' soup.
Now, you could either put this in your refrigerator
and fire it up the next day,
or let's go ahead and get it started.
I'm gonna put this on low for about eight hours.
Okay, so this has been cookin' for about eight hours on low.
Let's go ahead and check it out.
Mm, this looks great.
Mm, can't wait to dig into this.
Put a little bit of that cilantro that we cut up earlier,
and we usually like to serve it with a tortilla.
Go ahead and fold that up.
Now, let's check it out.
Ah, that smells awesome.
Mm.
This tastes great.
I'm sure your family's gonna dig this one.
There's a lot of vegan recipes that call for nuts.
Let's see what the experts say about this.
Let's say, we're not in that range of heart disease,
you know, plant-based diet,
I like my walnuts, I like my almonds,
and is there a point where you go, whoa, Craig, watch it?
- Yeah, so my stance on them
is that nuts are sort of maybe foods,
nuts, avocados, the other high-fat plants,
and that's because a lot of people
are working on weight loss, and clinically,
clinically, I just, there's something very unique
about people doing a low-fat whole food plant-based diet.
I'm asking them to give up their added fats,
I'm asking them to give up
their fatty cheese and their fatty meats,
and they still want that kinda creamy heaviness
to some of their food.
They gotta change their taste, but they're not there yet,
and they realize that a nut is a whole food
and you can blend up a cashew into a cheese sauce,
you can blend up a cashew into creamy soups,
you can put walnuts and make a pesto blah, blah, blah,
you know, every other recipe now,
suddenly, with 1/2 cup of nuts.
Guess what, they're not gonna lose weight.
They're not gonna get the maximal health benefit.
And that can be a big problem,
so I think for people looking for maximal weight loss
and people who have that type of goal,
I say, no nuts, you know, change your tastes,
get rid of the fatty creaminess,
but there's a lot of research on the flip side,
there's certainly a lot of research
associating nut intake with improved health outcomes.
So, I think if you go through a period
where you adapt your taste, you get to the healthy weight,
or you're at your healthy weight goal,
go ahead and add nuts back into your diet,
and that's my take on it,
and include them in your diet.
I think they can be very healthy.
But do it moderate, you know, do it sparingly.
- There've been a lot of things written recently about nuts,
many of which have been supported
by the nut companies themselves,
and nuts are loaded with saturated fat.
I suppose there's probably not a problem.
If somebody were to eat three walnut halves a day, okay?
Okay.
- But if Dr. Esselstyn ever says
that you can have two or three walnut halves,
that's not what people would remember.
Esselstyn said nuts are okay.
Nuts are highly addicting.
If I ever said that,
there'll be nuts in the glove compartment,
they'll be in the kitchen, the bathroom,
the bedroom, the hallway, the workbench,
and that's a lotta saturated fat.
And I'm very competitive for my patients,
I want them to do well,
and how many people do you know who eat one nut?
But I have seen a study, it's called PREDIMED,
done in Spain, they gave three different types of diets,
Mediterranean diet with oil, Mediterranean diet with nuts,
and then the fat diet they called low fat,
which was 39 and later 37%.
To qualify for the study, all the participants
had to have no evidence of cardiovascular disease.
At the end of five years,
every single one of those categories,
there were scores of patients
who had heart attacks, strokes, and death.
Higher number of strokes in the group on the low-fat diet,
but in that group with the nuts,
here you start with patients,
no demonstrated cardiovascular disease,
and scores of them develop, while eating nuts,
develop these cardiac events.
So, I have my reservations about wanting people
to eat all that saturated fat.
- I see a lot of vegan recipes
that they just automatically go to coconut,
coconut oils, you know, stuff like that.
- Yeah.
- It's coconut, like, white lardy lookin' thing.
- Yeah, yeah, bad. - Is good, bad?
- Yeah, no, coconut oil is bad.
So, coconut oil is one of
the rare plant sources of saturated fat.
So, most saturated fat comes from meat and dairy,
but palm kernel or palm oil, cocoa butter,
these tropical oils, and coconut oil
will raise your LDL cholesterol as bad as lard,
as bad as beef tallow.
Not as bad as butter, but yeah, it's bad.
I mean, so it raises your LDL, your bad cholesterol,
which is a primary risk factor for
number one killer of men and women,
you don't wanna be adding coconut oil to your daily diet.
- We have this addiction to fat or oil,
fat and oil. - Of course, yeah.
- We have, addiction has been part of our system
for generations almost.
So, vegetarians are limited because, as I say,
90% are still usin' dairy.
That's a serious compromise.
And vegans are not using diary,
they, well, like vegetarians too,
they just add back a lotta oil.
- Today, I'm gonna be making
creamy butternut squash mushroom risotto.
I'm gonna be using one butternut squash,
four cloves of garlic, I've got some kale,
I've got some onion here, I got eight ounces of mushrooms.
I'm gonna be using one cup of Arborio rice
to three cups of vegetable broth.
The first thing I usually like to do
is to start getting the broth warm.
So, let's go ahead and get that started.
I'm gonna go ahead and put this on low,
and now it's time to start cuttin' up the vegetables
and gettin' 'em into the frying pan.
There, so I've cut this up.
I'm gonna go ahead and save the other half
of the butternut squash for another meal.
Go ahead and cut up these mushrooms.
Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and save this kale
for just a little bit later,
but we'll get these vegetables fryin' up a bit.
I like to get 'em caramelized a little bit,
so they have that nice flavor.
It's already startin' to look really beautiful.
You got the butternut squash in there,
the brown of the baby bellas,
a little bit of those onions in there.
Mm, it's startin' to smell really good.
Now, I always have a little bit of vegetable broth on hand,
so if I need to put just a little bit of moisture in there,
I can.
Now, I like to put in a little bit of pepper,
a little bit of salt.
Okay, these are comin' along real nice,
but every so often, I add a little bit more
of my vegetable broth.
Now, this is not the broth from the three cups.
This is separate from the broth.
It's just to keep all of this sauteing happening
and not burning it.
So, just keep adding a little bit more of the broth.
And the whole trick of it is,
is to try to get those butternut squash kinda soft,
a little bit more creamy tasting.
But it all kinda depends
on the size of the butternut squash,
the pieces that you make,
but these are still kinda not quite cooked all the way.
So, I wanna make sure they get nice and soft.
Of course, one way to check it out
is to just go ahead and grab one.
Mm, yeah, it's almost there, almost there,
so we're comin' along.
Now see, it's startin' to dry up a little,
but you can hear it, so I'll go ahead
and add just a little bit more vegetable broth.
There.
Mm, I can smell the garlic, the onions, those mushrooms, ah,
and the butternut squash, it's comin' along real good.
See, there's just a little bit of moisture in there.
You can just kinda see it,
it's just at the bottom of the pan.
That means I'm okay, but once you start to hear it
startin' to scorch a little bit,
go ahead and add a little bit more vegetable broth.
This is lookin' really good.
Okay, the vegetables are comin' along really good.
So, I'm gonna go ahead and push 'em all to one side.
Get my rice in there.
Just put a little bit of the broth in there.
All I wanna do is just kinda
get the rice to be a little bit more translucent,
just kinda crisp it up a little bit.
Go ahead and add a little bit more broth.
I'm adding just a little bit of the broth in there
just to kinda get the rice to sizzle a little bit.
Okay, I'm gonna put a teaspoon of thyme over everything.
Then I've got a 1/2 teaspoon of white wine vinegar,
just kinda put that all around,
just a little bit of salt in this rice,
little bit of the pepper,
get a little bit more broth.
So yeah, it does take a little bit of time.
Okay, these are lookin' real good.
I usually like to go one cup at a time,
again, this is pretty hot broth.
I go one cup at a time.
Now, I'm gonna start mixin' the vegetables all together.
You know, risotto always one of those things,
you just kinda have to take your time,
add a little bit of water, keep stirring it.
It's a little bit of work,
but you know what, it's so worth it.
I can feel the rice is already startin' to absorb up.
See, I got a little bit of water there,
see how there's water in there?
So, I just gotta keep stirrin' it.
Just keep stirrin' it.
Okay, see the, it's just startin' to dry up a little bit,
so I'm just gonna keep stirrin' it just a little bit longer,
but I know I'm gonna put a little bit more broth in there.
Okay, it's time to get another,
another cup of broth, add it in there.
So, it might feel a little bit soupy, but that's okay.
That rice is gonna go ahead and absorb all that broth
and is it gonna taste great.
Okay, it's startin' to soak up again, see?
See how it's soakin' up, there's no more water in there?
So then, I'll go ahead and get another cup
of broth and just reintroduce it back in again
and continue stirrin'.
I know this looks a little soupy,
but you have to be patient with risotto.
All right.
That broth is soaked up again.
I'll go ahead and put a little bit more in there.
So this, I've actually used
a little bit more broth than I normally do
because I'm using a frying pan,
risotto is all about moisture,
so it tells you when it's done.
Now, I'll go ahead and add my chopped up kale.
You know, and this is totally up to you.
Go ahead and stir this in.
You know, somebody once asked me,
how much liquid does it really take to make good risotto.
You know, the rice tells you how much you need,
but the basic rule of thumb
is one cup to three cup of broth,
but if I'm usin' a fryin' pan like I did,
I ended up using a fourth cup.
So, it all depends on the rice.
You wanna get the rice so it's nice and tender,
but let's go ahead and give this a taste.
Put a little bit of kale on top of there,
and let's give this a try.
Mm.
Very good.
That is awesome, it takes a little while,
it is a little bit labor-intensive,
but you know, it is well worth it, mm.
Can you explain why we need fiber so much?
- Oh, fiber is critically important.
And when I say fiber, I mean fiber containing foods,
not fiber supplements.
I know people tend to think of fiber
as just kind of intestinal regularity,
and that's what we used to think,
but now, we realize that no, it has critical,
it's critically important, not just for gut health,
but throughout our body, see, so.
- Fiber and, it's called resistance starch,
both only found in abundance in whole plant foods,
these are probiotics.
This is what are good bacteria eats
so that hey thrive, and what to do with it, fiber,
is the produce these short chain fattty acids
like butyrate and propionate,
then they are absorbed back in our system,
circulate throughout our body
and have all sorts of beneficial effects,
and so, improves our immunity,
may improve mental health, may improve, I mean,
has these anti-cancer properties,
not just in the gut, but throughout the body,
and so, as we learn more and more
how important our gut microbiome,
the kind of friendly flora in our gut is,
realize, well how we do best support our gut bacteria.
It's all about fiber and resistance starch-packed foods,
and so that's legumes, beans, split peas, chickpeas,
and lentils, whole grains, fruits, and vegetables,
you know nuts and seeds, herbs and spices,
real food that grows out of the ground,
these are the healthiest choices and one of the main reasons
may be because they feed our good gut flora
and that has all these kinda
knock on benefits throughout our body.
- You know red beans and rice
is always a favorite at my house,
and the thing I like about it
it's really easy to make.
It usually takes a bell pepper, celery stalk,
some garlic, of course, some red beans, and some spices,
but usually before I start doing all this,
I get started on my rice
because it takes time to get going
Today I'm gonna be going with long brown grain
I usually start with one cup of the rice
to a two cups of vegetable broth.
Now, here's the thing, the vegetable broth with the rice
tends to give it a little bit more flavor.
So again it's one cup rice, to two cups broth.
We'll give that a little bit of a stir,
get some of that rice down that's hangin' up on the sides.
And we'll go ahead and get this started.
Like I said. I'm only gonna use
one bell pepper for this recipe,
So, we'll go ahead and save this other half for another meal.
Let's go ahead put some garlic in there.
So, now I've got all vegetables all chopped up
I got my celery, I got my bell pepper,
I got my onion all chopped up, I even minced up some garlic,
so let's go ahead and stir fry this up a little bit.
First thing I do
Is put a little vegetable broth in there.
I can always add more.
Usually, I like to go with a couple tablespoons,
Of nutritional yeast.
A couple tablespoons.
a teaspoon of onion powder,
just a pinch of pepper,
a little bit of salt.
You can either go with some chili powder
or you can go with some srirachi.
I like srirachi, so that's what we're gonna go with today.
Just one tablespoon.
So, we'll go ahead and stir this up a bit.
Now, you can always add some more broth as needed.
But it's good to get these onions and everything
to caramelize a little bit, work together,
While that's sauteing a little bit,
I'll go ahead and cut up a little bit of cilantro.
So, I've been sauteing the vegetables up,
and the thing I like to look for
is just where that the liquid is just disappeared
you know, the broth that we put in from earlier.
You want it more of a sauce and a watery vegetable mix.
So yeah that's lookin' real good.
So, now we'll go ahead and add the beans.
We'll stir these in.
I like to kind of fold 'em.
I don't want to break up the beans too much.
Okay, so this is cookin' up real nice,
warmin' everything up.
Now, let's go ahead and check on that rice
to see how that's doin'.
Mm, this is smellin' awesome.
And you see, you got
just a little bit of liquid down at the bottom,
which is okay 'cause the rice,
the starch will start to absorb some of that.
Let's go check on this rice to see how it's doin'
Lookin' pretty good.
We'll go ahead and fluff this up.
Lookin' pretty good.
And I usually like to cut up a little bit of lemon in there.
Mm.
It's lookin' really good, really good.
Then I finish it off with some cilantro.
Again, this is totally up to you,
But I love the taste of cilantro.
Let's get some rice.
Mm.
And then the beans.
And there you have it
That looks amazing.
Let's go ahead and check it out.
Mm, so again, this is really relatively easy meal to make.
It doesn't take much work.
Mm, so good.
- There's still a lotta people
that believe that dairy creates strong bones, you know,
it's just like it's embedded into our brain somehow,
either through school or milk or, I'm not sure.
Can you please explain?
- Well, it's an advertising campaign.
And so, it's a marketing ploy.
If you look at the science, if you do meta analysis,
milk does not appear to protect against hip fracture risk,
whether you're drinking it as an adult,
whether you're drinking it as a teen,
doesn't matter, doesn't work.
In fact, it may actually increase fracture risk.
A few years ago, Swedish researchers
looked at more 100,000 men and women, followed for years,
and found that milk drinking women, for example,
had higher rates of total mortality,
meaning they live significantly shorter lives,
more cancer, more heart disease,
and more fractures, all right, more milk, more fractures.
- It's the opposite.
- Milk drinking men also had higher rates of death,
which may help explain why countries
with the highest milk consumption
also have the highest hip fracture rates.
Could be other things, but I mean, bottom line,
there's no protection against
osteoporotic fractures with milk consumption.
There's certainly things we can do,
but that's just unfortunate marketing ploy.
- If you look at the relationship
between calcium intake across countries
and bone fractures, for example, the more calcium,
the more bone fractures in observational studies,
so it's not quite the great health benefit
that we understand it to be
or that we think it, that we've been taught,
let me put it that way. - Yeah, we've been-
- Taught.
- Embedded in our schools and-
Yeah.
Can you please explain
this misconception of the milk, strong bone?
- Yeah, well, that's a total fallacy.
As a matter of fact, there's a Harvard study
and there's an Australian study
about which clearly shows that the patients
who are taking a greater amount of milk are more likely
to have fracture to their humerus and so forth.
So, if you're gonna talk about milk,
what you really have to say
that is totally truthful about it,
milk was designed as the ideal calf food.
If you're gonna take a calf and in six or eight months
grow it into a 600-pound animal, that's milk.
That's what it was designed for.
Cow's milk was never designed for humans.
I mean, there's studies that show
it accelerates cardiovascular disease,
look at the saturated fat in cheese, milk,
look what casein does from the cancer standpoint.
Yeah, it's definitely a food that we don't want.
- You know, when you're 54 years old, you see cuts-
- That's right.
- And you go, I know how long that's gonna take.
- Right, right.
- And you just have it in your head, it happens,
I heal 50% faster, and I don't wanna preach 50%, but it.
- I have a word for that, by the way,
I'm also aware that that would happens,
we see it in many different ways.
I say the default position of the body at all times,
the default position is to create health,
create and restore health,
if, and it's a big if, if we ate the right food.
The body can't, you know,
even when we're eating the wrong food,
the body struggles to heal.
- Because it's fighting something else.
- Because it's now, but now it's spent so much energy
fighting this other stuff, so it's gonna be slower
and less efficient, et cetera, et cetera.
If we give it the right food, we will heal faster.
I can give you a specific example of my own.
Just a year ago, the day before Christmas,
I went out to play some handball with my grandsons.
Okay.
- And I used to play it some, but they were very good,
they were 21 and 22, something like that,
and my son, very active, very athletic,
outstanding athletes, always eatin' this stuff-
- And I'm sorry- - By the way.
- And how old are you?
- 83.
- 83, you're out playin' ball.
- 82, last year.
- So anyhow-
- 82?
- Yeah, so, I'm out to play some racketball,
and I just wanna get a point on 'em if I could
'cause they're really good.
- They're quick.
- I'm not as quick as they are now, obviously.
And I went flippin' through the air
and landed on my hip and broke my hip.
- You did?
- I did.
I broke my hip, and you know, that's bad news.
Someone my age, they say, oh, you see,
it's over now for you.
That's the cause of very high mortality.
- Yeah.
- And you don't heal very fast.
- So, you broke your hip a year ago?
- Yeah, it was one day before Christmas,
and not even a year.
So, you know, it was gonna take me
supposedly six months to a year to recover,
you know, that's what the story was.
And so, I went down to the hospital.
There was a hospital across the lake over there.
And the doctor, he's a bone doctor,
he didn't know what I know, by the way,
but in any case, he did an operation, put a couple pins,
he was gonna put a couple pins in my bone, right?
We came out of the operating room,
I'm still, you know, anesthetized, I guess,
and he saw Karen and he goes like that.
And so, he said, your husband,
I mean, Karen can tell ya,
your husband has really strong bones for someone his age.
I haven't quite seen that thing before.
And so, she says to him, well do you know why that's so?
- Yeah.
- Because he doesn't use dairy.
Which is exactly the opposite
of what he tells all his other patients.
I don't use dairy.
He said my bones were so strong
that he put another pin in it.
He put four pins in it.
- He could, he had some good bone to work with.
- He had good bone to work with and he was amazed.
I go back then for the checkup,
and I know what, I've lost track of the time a little bit,
but somehow, the fracture that you can see on the-
- The x-ray?
- X-ray, stuff like that, it was healed
in just a fraction of the time.
I'm back running against again.
So, now I can run four miles a day.
You know, it's amazing.
- You know, when I was a kid,
I really just did not like the taste of cauliflower,
and I'm not sure maybe if it was the way my mom prepared it.
She either steamed it or drizzled cheese all over it.
But we all know cheese
isn't exactly that good for us anymore.
But while I was visiting my friend Colin Campbell,
his wife Karen came up with a really interesting way
of making cauliflower, the main dish, and it was fantastic.
So I thought to myself,
what if bring in just a couple more vegetables.
So I thought, let's try a gold potato
and maybe some broccoli.
Let's see how that turns out.
Just get rid of that green stuff that's all over.
And then I like to take my other smaller knife
and just kinda cut into a circle.
And just pop this out.
Now that I've gotten myself a little cutout,
I'm able to kinda see where
I can start cutting into this cauliflower.
See how it's breakin' apart?
It's not too hard.
But the whole idea is to figure out a way
to make it into a bite-size piece,
not too small, not too big.
So then, I go ahead and I put it into my steamer.
So, I go ahead and take off some of the leaves.
Take off the flour and I'll use that for another meal.
Get the tough part of the broccoli,
get rid of that 'cause it just doesn't steam up into,
it kinda gets a little bit chewy,
but if you like it, hey, go for it.
Put it into quarters, slice it half lengthwise
and then again, slice it half lengthwise,
which'll give me four pieces each cut.
Now, a lotta people like to take off the skin of the potato.
Me, I like the potato skin.
Again, I'm just making 'em into bite-size pieces.
Now, I need to wash all these vegetables.
So, let's go ahead and wash 'em.
So, you can see I've added cauliflower,
broccoli stalks, and a potato,
but what if we added an onion?
So, now that I've clean
and cut up the vegetables into bite-size pieces,
I'm gonna go ahead and steam it for about 20 minutes
until they're nice and tender.
Now, the sauce is actually kinda simple.
It's three tablespoons of nutritional yeast,
three tablespoons of miso, and some unsweetened almond milk.
Now, when adding the unsweetened almond milk,
I usually just mix it in
until it gets that consistency like a sauce.
And as you can see, it's already startin'
to get to that consistency that's pretty good.
So, sometimes I like to put in just a little bit more
just so it's a little bit more liquid-y,
so it can get all around all of those vegetables.
Now keep in mind, I'm gonna be puttin' this in the oven,
so we wanna be able to have it mix in quite well.
Well, there you go, there was two ounces.
Now, so what I'll do is I'll go ahead
and add a little bit of lemon pepper.
I seem to like, I like lemon pepper,
just get a couple pinches of lemon pepper,
some paprika, a little bit of paprika in there
just to kinda give it that color.
If you wanna spice things up,
I use a little bit of chili, chili powder.
It's all up to you.
Some garlic powder.
Remember, garlic powder is a little bit stronger
because it's so fine.
And then I like to put in a little bit of salt and pepper.
But this is all up to you,
and always, salt is always optional,
but I like to put a little bit of salt in it.
Now, continue to mix this up, so it's a nice consistency.
Let's check on our vegetables.
Oh, they're lookin' really, really good.
Now, the thing is, you probably wanna check
to see if the potatoes are done,
and just kinda make sure that they're soft.
Yup, those are pretty good, ready to go.
Let me get my casserole dish.
You can just go ahead and put them in.
That looks about good.
If you wanna put more, that's fine,
but as you can see, it's lookin' pretty good right now.
So, now what I'm gonna do
is I'm gonna go ahead and pour this over the vegetables.
Stir it up just a little bit,
so all of the sauce gets kinda
evenly distributed around all those vegetables.
Just gotta be careful not to break up the potatoes
or, you know, mush 'em up, there ya go.
Now, the last thing I like to do
is put a little breadcrumbs on here.
So, now let's go ahead
and put this in the oven at 350 for about 20 minutes.
Well, I've just taken it out of the oven.
It took a little bit longer than I thought,
maybe 25 minutes at 350, but boy, this smells fabulous.
Mm.
Vegetables like this is just amazing.
So, creating a casserole as cauliflower as your main dish
can prove to be an amazing taste.
Mm, I love the way the miso
mixes with the nutritional yeast.
This is sure to please your family.
How much protein do you think we need per day then?
- That's a good question.
I give lectures on this 'cause I spent my whole career
working on the protein question,
but the amount of protein,
if we consider it in terms of percent of total calories,
best way to do it,
the amount of protein we absolutely need
is somewhere around four, 5% of total calories,
it's quite low, that's a minimum.
What that, when you do the experiments,
that's the amount of protein you need
to compensate for the protein lost on a daily basis.
So, if you consume a diet around four, 5%, that's minimum,
experimentally, but then, at the time,
they first did that in the early '40s,
they wanted increase a little more
to make sure everybody got enough protein
'cause everybody's concerned about protein.
So, they increased it
by two standard deviations, statistically.
That brings it up to about eight or 9% total protein
from four or five up to eight or nine,
and that became what we called
the recommended dietary allowance
or recommended daily allowance, the RDA.
- Yeah, right, right.
- So, they RDA was born that way, that's where it came from.
Starting at four or five, increase up eight or nine,
two standard deviations in theory
covers 98% of the population who need protein, okay,
totally theoretical at this point.
So, up around eight, 9%,
so eight or 9% protein is the ideal level.
All of that can be easily supplied by just plants.
- Yeah.
- But what we actually do
because of a reverence for this protein thing,
and we usually mean animal protein
'cause that's what most people think,
we start eatin' animal foods
and justify it on the grounds that, oh, I need this protein.
Been that way for, you know, 150 years.
I need this protein, so eat meat, get the protein,
and then all of a sudden, a higher and higher percentage
of our total protein consumed is animal-based,
and the average in this country
is about 70 to 75% of our total protein is coming from,
average, it's coming from animal foods.
That's where, once you start puttin' in animal food and diet
and you know, things are goin' to hell in a hand basket.
You know, the protein is gettin' up there
and more higher percentage is animal protein,
an animal protein, unlike plant protein,
has a higher degree of efficient utilization.
So, it can cause more damage.
Plant proteins don't do that.
- Yeah, I think increasingly, there is data to suggest that
when you increase protein,
you do create some medical disasters.
I mean, if you want red meat,
then you're gonna promote cancer.
- You know, we focus a lot on protein.
We have for, gosh, hundreds of years,
since it was discovered,
but I think we overdo it in this country.
There's a lot of emphasis on protein for appetite control,
weight loss, muscle gain, muscle building,
I mean, just about everything,
if you wanna manipulate your body,
protein seems to be at the first part of the recommendation.
It's always eat more.
And it's a real shame
because we already eat way more
than the sort of recommended amount
what we need to grow and maintain our body in this country,
and most of it's from animal-based foods.
The majority of the protein we eat is animal-based protein,
meat, dairy, and eggs.
There's evidence that that can promote high cholesterol,
atherosclerosis and heart disease.
There's animal experiments showing that that type of protein
can actually affect cancer promotion
and increase cancer promotion.
These are the big diseases that we struggle with, right?
And then you also mentioned kidneys.
There's over 100 years of data
showing that a high-protein diet,
particularly when kidneys are already damaged,
if you have an already-damaged kidney,
and it's not functioning at full capacity,
I think, eating a very high-protein diet
is about the worst thing you probably can do,
and some degree of chronic kidney disease
is actually pretty common in our country,
especially at older ages.
So, I think we're way overdoing protein,
and it's shame that it's used to frequently.
- So, it's pretty safe to say that we could get
the protein that we need from a whole plant-based diet.
- Absolutely, we can get all the protein we need
from all natural plant foods.
You know, tomatoes have protein.
Oats have protein.
People think that it has to be tofu and beans,
and you've gotta eat tofu and bean at every meal,
but that's not true, just eat whole foods.
The only things we eat in abundance in America
that have no protein are added sugars and oils,
fats and oils, 'cause those things have been processed,
they're fragments of food where you take the original food,
you throw away the protein,
and then you eat the sugar or the oil,
and those, we eat a lotta sugar and oil,
but otherwise, if you eat a whole food,
I mean, all these plants that are growing around you,
they need proteins to function,
so you're gonna get enough protein.
- Friend of mine recently started a whole plant-based diet,
and I asked her, I said, what kind of breakfast
do you normally have, and she said oatmeal.
And I said, great, what kinda oatmeal do you have,
and she said, you know, the stuff from a pouch,
and you just put it in the microwave with some water.
Well, old-fashioned oatmeal
is really not that difficult to make,
but here's the difference between the two.
As you can see, one is really processed.
It's been ground up
and there's really not a lot of fiber left.
Of course, it's much better
than scrambled eggs, butter, bacon, sausage, whatever,
but old-fashioned oatmeal is not that difficult to make
but so much more benefits from it,
and not only is it good for your digestive system,
it's good for your entire body.
So, today I wanna go over some of the easy ways
and fun things you can do with oatmeal for breakfast.
Okay, so let's get started makin' the oatmeal.
I usually go with about a cup and 1/4 of water.
I'm makin' it for one.
And then to about 1/2 a cup of old-fashioned oatmeal.
Turn it up.
Now, here's the thing,
I've got a bunch of stuff here for you to kinda consider.
It's all up to you and personality.
These are just ideas.
But I usually like some cut up bananas,
some apples, some strawberries,
and then if it's in the winter months,
maybe some canned pineapples, maybe some canned peaches,
or maybe some canned Mandarin oranges,
but it's all up to you.
And in the pantry, you can also have
maybe some dried cranberries, some raisins,
maybe some coconut, I got some blueberries here,
and I always like to put in a little bit of flaxseed,
that's always good, walnuts once in a while,
but sometimes, I like to sweeten it up a little bit,
and this is totally up to you,
if I do use maple syrup, I like to use the grade A syrup,
not the fructose stuff, the bad staff,
or maybe just a little bit of brown sugar.
The thing is about dates
is you can't just throw 'em in there.
You gotta cut 'em up and mince 'em up into little pieces.
So, I'm gonna go ahead and do that right now.
Go ahead and put those in.
And the thing about dates,
it's a natural way to sweeten up your oatmeal
and also, dates are really good for ya.
Okay, so we'll go ahead and cup some strawberries.
Okay, put some bananas in there, some apples,
maybe some blueberries in there,
not much, but I like a little bit of coconut in there,
just a couple chopped walnuts, get my flaxseed in there,
maybe some raisins, I like raisins,
just a little bit of maple syrup.
And that's pretty much it.
Let's go ahead and check this out.
And there ya go.
So, it's relatively easy to do.
It's just about the time that it takes you
to cup some fruit, maybe grab some stuff from the pantry,
but this is so much better for you
than that instant stuff.
Mm, and it's so good.
Today, I'm gonna be making
creamy penne with sun-dried tomatoes.
I'm gonna be using some basil, some garlic,
some sun-dried tomatoes, a little bit of lemon juice,
some raw cashews, some unsweetened almond milk,
and as you can see, I always try to use
some type of whole wheat pasta.
It's very important for us
to have some type of fiber every single day.
You can go ahead and use a knife to mince everything up,
but I'm gonna go ahead and use a food processor
just to speed things up.
First thing I usually like to put in there
is about 1/4 cup of raw cashews.
I've got five fresh leaves of basil.
I've got a 1/2 a cup of nutritional yeast.
I got about four cloves of garlic, I've halved them.
One teaspoon of dried mustard,
1/2 a teaspoon of dried onion, a little bit of salt,
and of course, some pepper,
and then we'll go ahead and give this a pulse.
Okay, that's about the consistency I like.
It's a little bit like a Parmesan cheese kinda mixture.
Now, it's time to go ahead and put in the wet ingredients.
Some lemon juice.
Now, here I've got a tablespoon
of red wine vinegar, tablespoon.
I've got my full cup of unsweetened almond milk.
And then I've got on standby, some whole wheat flour.
Now, let's go ahead and pulse this up.
All right.
Okay, so as you can see, its sorta thin,
so I'm gonna go ahead and add some of the whole wheat flour.
So, this is about 1/4 cup.
I got a little bit left there,
just to kinda see how things go.
Give it a pulse.
Let's go ahead and check this out.
Okay, it's still a little bit thin,
so I'm gonna go ahead
and put the whole 1/4 cup of whole wheat flour.
Now, it's time to put in the sun-dried tomatoes.
These are not the jar can that has the oil in it.
These are the packages that usually are found
in your produce section of your local grocery store.
So, I'm gonna go ahead and put these in.
Okay, that's lookin' pretty creamy,
so I'm gonna go ahead and it a small pot that I have.
You can always microwave this if you want,
but I'm gonna go ahead and put it in here.
Okay, so my noodles are about done.
Let's go ahead and get 'em drained.
Go ahead and put these in the bowl.
Let's go ahead and add my sauce.
Let's go ahead and stir this up.
Now, you can always add a little bit of hot water to this
if it gets a little too thick.
I usually to just grab some of the water from the pasta
and just kinda reintroduce it back in there
until I get that consistency that my family likes.
But this is lookin' really, really good.
So, let's go ahead and give it a try.
Mm, that is so good.
So, it's relatively easy to make,
and I'm sure your family is gonna enjoy it.
Mm, so good.
If we're eliminating the milk,
what's the best way to get the vitamin D then?
- Sunshine, just sit outdoors and even,
you're gonna get considerable radiation
even if it's a bit cloudy, you know, at times.
I mean, just bein' outdoors
and having the experience of the sunshine will,
in most cases, present you with enough vitamin D,
and actually, it shouldn't even be called a vitamin.
Vitamin D is not a vitamin, it's a hormone.
Vitamins by classical definition are those things
we have to consume because we can make them.
In the case of vitamin D, we can make it.
All it needs to do is shine the sunshine
on some precursor compounds in our skin
and it converts it over to vitamin D.
- And so, the supercharged?
- Yeah, the supercharged is the metabolite, exactly.
You can form on your skin, it goes to the liver,
that form is called 25 hydroxy vitamin D,
it's a storage form.
So, we store it, we store it in our liver largely.
And then, when the body wants some vitamin D activity,
it actually pulls out some of that
and converts it to a product,
that was our word, called supercharged vitamin D,
and I'm not sure anyone else used that,
but chemically, it's the 25 hydroxy
is converted into a dihydroxy form,
oftentimes in the kidney and elsewhere,
and it's that form that's like
a thousand times more potent in the storage form,
and so, the body's working with a system.
It's converting some of that
to something that's far me potent,
and that has to be metered, monitored,
and the body does a beautiful job of doing that.
It decides on how much to take this
and how much to make here,
and the amount it makes here is what the body decides
needs to be made for that purpose.
- There are some northern climates,
like where I am in Rochester, New York,
where a vitamin D supplement in the winter time
when I'm hardly getting outside
and even if I did, with our latitude,
where I'm not gonna make much vitamin D,
a vitamin D supplement, I think is a good idea,
a small one, you know, 1,000 units.
Generally, vitamin D is a sunshine thing.
It's not really a food thing.
- So, I read this really interesting thing
about the 1990s in China
had a extremely dramatic shift in their diet,
and there was also an increase in diabetes in this region,
and I attribute it to, I think,
the change in their Western introduction of foods.
Do you have any thoughts on?
- Yeah, if you ask a lotta people,
you tell them, okay, diabetes is now rampant in China,
what do you think that's due to?
A lotta people will say, oh, so the white rice.
But if you look-
- 1,000 years, right?
- Right. - Yeah, all of a sudden.
- Right, right, if you look back through the past 50 years,
China has had this remarkable economic transition very fast
and very comprehensive and what happened in the late 18,
no, I'm sorry, the late 1980s
was the fast food started coming in.
In the 1990s, it was some of the supermarkets
and convenience kinda businesses,
and what you see is that the diet of China
changed rapidly and dramatically from about 1970s, 1980
all the way up to 2010, probably still changing,
and researchers have found that the dietary transition
was characterized by basically two, three big shifts.
One was the introduction of cheap, edible oils.
So, they started having oil available cheaply and using it.
So, much higher fat intake.
The other was increase in meat consumption.
So, poultry, pork, for example.
And the other, of course,
when you're increasing those things,
you have less beans and less whole grains
and some of the less good stuff.
So, it's a typical transition
that's happened around the world
from a traditional diet full of carbohydrates,
healthy carbohydrates to a poor Western diet,
and just about every 10 years, from 1990 to 2000 to 2010,
diabetes rates doubled in China.
They actually now have as much diabetes
as we have in this country, it's a half a billion people
or whatever 50% of the population is in China.
It has prediabetes or diabetes.
It's a disaster.
It's absolutely a disaster for China,
and it's very clear what led to it.
It wasn't the white rice, not that I'm a fan of white rice.
The white rice probably made the oil a little worse
and the meat a little worse,
but clearly, the thing that changed
was increase in edible oils and increased meat consumption.
- As we eat the Western diet and we accumulate,
especially in our muscle cells, we accumulate fat,
see, ordinarily, the way the glucose metabolism works
is your body's insulin will escort the glucose
into the muscle cell, turns the key, insulin turns the key,
in comes the glucose into the muscle cell
where it will be metabolized.
But when you're eating the Western diet,
you increase fat in your muscle cell.
The fat is like glue in the lock.
So, the insulin puts the key and it can't turn the lock.
So, now the glucose accumulates in the bloodstream
and there's your diabetes.
But what happens with these patients,
what is so remarkable, time after time after time,
we see these patients with heart disease who are diabetic,
and as they start eating whole food plant-based nutrition,
they metabolize the fat out of their muscle cell,
and suddenly now, insulin can once again
turn the key in the lock to escort the glucose
into the muscle cell to be metabolized.
- Today, I'm gonna be making
crusted eggplant meatballs over spaghetti.
I'm gonna be making it with some basil,
some garlic, some sun-dried tomatoes,
I've got one can of chickpeas.
I've drained and rinsed those.
I got my eggplant, of course, 28 ounces of marinara sauce,
and 16 ounces of whole wheat pasta.
The first thing I usually like to do
is to get this water boiling
so I can get started on my noodles.
So, as you can see,
I like to cut the eggplant into 1/4-inch pieces.
Okay, I've got a little bit of vegetable broth.
I'll go ahead and put that in there
and start sauteing these up.
Okay, I like to put a little bit
of salt and pepper in there.
Now, let's check on this water.
Okay, it looks like it's boiling.
I'll go ahead and put my noodles in.
Also, gonna cut up my basil a little bit.
I'm gonna cut up my sun-dried tomatoes a little bit.
Okay, and we'll save these for a little bit later.
All right, these are comin' along real nice.
So, they're startin' to dry up a little bit,
so I'm gonna go ahead and put just a little bit more
of my vegetable broth in there.
And just keep sauteing them.
Okay, so my eggplant and garlic is sauteing up real nice.
I'm gonna go ahead and make my coating mix.
I got with 1/4 cup of raw cashews,
1/2 a cup of panko breading, 1/4 cup of rolled oats,
I got a teaspoon of salt,
and the salt is, again, always optional,
two tablespoons of nutritional yeast.
I'm gonna go ahead and use my food processor today.
So, let's go ahead and get this mixed up.
My rolled oats, my panko,
my raw cashews, and some salt.
So, that's my coating mix.
Okay, so I just preheated my oven at 375.
It's time to make the meatball mix.
I've got my one can of drained and rinsed chickpeas.
I've got my sun-dried tomatoes.
These are not the ones
that you get in the jar with the olive oil.
These are in the package, the plastic package
that you find in your produce department.
So, I've got some sun-dried tomatoes.
I don't know, it's probably about three tablespoons.
Then I've got my basil.
And we're gonna go ahead and pulse this up a bit.
Go ahead and get it off the sides.
And now, I've got 1/2 a cup of vegetable broth.
We'll go ahead and put that in there.
Mix this up.
All right, that's lookin' pretty good.
So, I've got a teaspoon of oregano, I put that in there.
One teaspoon oregano, one teaspoon of parsley.
I'll go ahead and mix this up.
Let's get it off the sides.
So, as you can see, it's kind of a pasty mix.
Don't wanna get it too wet.
And I'll put my nutritional yeast in there.
And this is optional,
but I like to put just a little bit of salt in there.
Little bit of pepper.
Just kinda mix this up a little bit.
Now, it's time to add the eggplant
that's been sauteing with the garlic.
All right, start mixin' this all together.
Now as you can see, it's still, it's still kinda loose.
See how it's just a little bit loose?
It's not really ready to make a meatball.
That's why I have on hand
about 1/2 a cup of Italian breadcrumbs,
and I just kinda mix it in there a little bit
just to kinda get that right consistency,
so I can start rollin' it up into a ball.
I'm gonna go ahead and add the rest of the breadcrumbs.
So, that right there is 1/2 a cup of Italian breadcrumbs.
Okay, so now it's time to go ahead and make the meatballs.
I've lined a cookie sheet with some parchment paper.
I've got my coating mix all ready to go.
So, it's like an assembly line.
Now, here's the thing about meatballs,
it all depends on your family,
your personality, what size meatball.
My family tends to like 'em a little bit smaller.
It takes a little bit longer, but it is well worth it.
So, let's go ahead and start makin' some meatballs.
So, it's basically just like normal meatballs.
Just go ahead and roll 'em in a ball,
and then I just like to roll 'em in my coating mix,
and just go ahead and start puttin' 'em on the cookie sheet.
Okay, so my meatballs are all done.
I'm gonna go ahead and put 'em in the oven at 375
for about 30 minutes.
Okay, so my meatballs are in the oven.
So now, I'm gonna go ahead
and start warmin' up my marinara sauce.
Oh, these meatballs turned out fantastic.
I just can't wait to taste them.
So, let's go ahead and get ourselves a little bit of pasta.
Let's put some sauce on there.
Give me a couple meatballs.
A little bit of sauce on top of the meatballs, aw.
This is gonna be good, I can just tell, mm.
Let's go ahead and cut one.
Oh, they look fantastic.
Let's go ahead and get a little bit
of the spaghetti in there.
Mm, that is so good, aw, fabulous meal.
Today, I'm gonna be making an Asian-inspired dish.
It's Mandarin orange cauliflower over a bed of rice.
It's a little bit like sweet and sour chicken,
except its whole plant-based.
I'll be using a head of cauliflower,
an onion, of course, some green onions, some garlic,
two cups of tomato sauce, and a can of Mandarin oranges.
I usually use the 11-ounce, which is the smaller can,
not the real tall one.
But before I begin, I usually get started on my rice
because it always takes so much time to do.
So today, I'm gonna be doing a long-grain brown.
One cup of rice to two cups of water.
Go ahead and give this a little bit of a stir,
and this usually takes about an hour.
So, I'll go ahead and get this started.
Okay, so the rice is cooking.
Now, it's time to cut up the cauliflower
into bite-size pieces.
I'm gonna go ahead and coat these
with unsweetened almond milk
and then coat 'em again in some breadcrumbs and some spices
and just go ahead and put the cauliflower in the bag.
Okay, so I've got the cauliflower in the re-closable bag.
I'm gonna go ahead
and put some unsweetened almond milk in the bag.
Now, all these is gonna do is just coat all the cauliflower,
so it just has a little bit of moisture
for the breadcrumbs to coat to.
Just gotta make sure it's nice and closed.
Just keep working in that unsweetened almond milk,
so the cauliflower is now coated.
Okay, that's good and coated.
So, now I'm gonna go ahead and get my second re-closable bag
and put my breadcrumbs in,
but first, let's put a little bit of pepper
and some salt, again, that's optional.
Give this a shake around.
There we go, so now I got some spices I the breadcrumbs.
Go ahead and put that into the re-closable bag,
and I'm gonna take my cauliflower and start coating it.
And as you can see,
there's really not much unsweetened almond milk left.
I think I used maybe, I think these are 1/2 a cup.
So, I'll just go ahead and transfer that in.
Okay, get rid of that bag.
And again, make sure it's closed
and then just begin coating all the cauliflower,
and the breadcrumbs are gonna go ahead
and stick now to the unsweetened almond milk.
So, what I have here is a baking rack.
It's similar to a cooling rack, like, you know, for cookies,
except this can go in the oven.
The reason why I like this
is because it has a little bit of a dry fryer,
the air can ventilate around the vegetable
and make it crispy on all sides
instead of just sittin' 'em on a baking dish like this.
So, before go ahead and start arranging 'em,
I like to put a little bit of tin foil,
so I don't have to clean up all the mess.
Okay.
So, now the air can circulate around all the vegetables,
so now, I'm just gonna go ahead
and arrange all the vegetables on this baking rack.
So, there you have it.
Now, I have my vegetables laid out on this baking rack,
and you can see how the air
will be able to ventilate around it,
which will give it a crispier edge
around the entire surface of the vegetable itself.
Okay, so I'm gonna go ahead
and put this in the oven at about 400 for about 20 minutes.
Okay, so now it's time to make the sauce.
So, I'm gonna go ahead and start mincin' up the garlic.
We'll go ahead and put these in the pan.
Okay, so now I'm gonna go ahead
and add just a little bit of water to the garlic.
Mm, it's smellin' really good already.
You can always add a little bit more water.
Okay, that's just starting to get a little bit translucent,
so I'm gonna go ahead and start cuttin' up my onion.
Then I like to put just a little bit of pepper in there.
And a little bit of salt, and that's optional.
The garlic is just startin' to caramelize a little bit.
Don't forget, you can always add a little more water.
All right, so I got a little bit of water in there,
you can see in the bottom,
just so it doesn't burn things a little bit,
but I've caramelized the onions,
I've caramelized the garlic a little bit.
Now, it's time to go ahead
and start cuttin' up the green onion.
I usually break up the green onion into two parts.
Half of it goes into the sauce
and the other half, the green part
actually goes as a garnish on top of the main dish.
So, let's go ahead and start cuttin' this up.
There, I will save that for the garnish on top.
Let's go ahead and check on the onions
and make sure the water's not disappearing,
and as you can see,
it's just starting to disappear a little bit.
So again, I just add a little bit more water as I go
and continue to stir 'em up.
They're getting nice and yellow,
so that means they're caramelizing up pretty good.
So, now it's time to go ahead
and cut up the rest of the green onions.
And we'll go ahead and put these into this mix right here.
We'll go ahead and give this a stir in.
So, I keep checkin' the water to see if it's still there.
It's got a little bit of moisture in there,
so I'm good to go,
but I can always add a little bit more as I go.
There, that's lookin' really good.
So, now I go ahead
and just start throwin' in the rest of the stuff.
I usually like to go with
a couple tablespoons of brown sugar.
Just put a little bit more water in there.
Then 1/4 cup of white sugar.
I got a tablespoon of tamari sauce.
And a little bit of srirachi, or sriracha,
you know, like a tablespoon maybe, that's all up to you.
Get this goin'.
And then I go ahead and add my two cups of tomato sauce.
And we'll let that start to stew up a bit.
Okay, so I like to let this cook for about 10 or 15 minutes,
just to kinda get rid of some of the moisture in the sauce,
and I'll go ahead and add the Mandarin oranges.
Again, that's about 11 ounces, I think it was,
and then go ahead and put in my green onions.
Mm, you got a little bit of the Mandarin oranges
with some of that garlic, mm.
It's gonna be really good.
Now, I'm gonna go grab the cauliflower
that's been baking in the oven.
Okay, so as you can see,
it's kind of a little bit crunch, you know,
it's nice bite-size pieces.
So, I'm gonna go ahead and dump this into the sauce.
Now the thing is, you wanna do this
just before you're about to serve it
because it does keep some of the moisture.
Let's get some rice.
Let's see how this is doin'.
Oh, this is lookin' good.
We'll go ahead and fluff this up.
Woo, it's a little hot.
Put some rice on a plate.
Put that away.
And we'll go ahead and get some of this.
And there you go.
It's like a sweet and sour chicken,
but it is whole plant-based, it is awesome,
and I can't wait to taste this.
Mm, the cauliflower's got
a little bit of that breaded crunch.
Mm, I love the garlic, mm.
You know, I just, I just can't believe
this is whole plant-based, this is awesome.
You're family's gonna dig this one.
How did we get to this point of ignoring
or even buying into this Western diet?
Is that what you're saying?
- Yeah, how did we get into the Western diet?
Why did we go there?
And furthermore, at this point in time,
why is that being defined as the best diet?
- Yeah.
- 'Cause that's where I started.
We already had the animal, the study, the data from China.
Then we had all this background stuff from the laboratory,
you know, lookin' at mechanisms and all that kinda stuff.
Put 'em together, what do you see?
That kinda information all of the sudden
comes together like this.
- Making a change from a Western diet
to a whole plant-based lifestyle is not easy.
I was able to lower my cholesterol levels
to when I was in my 20's.
I'm also no longer pre diabetic.