Salad Dressings, Plant-based style

3/2/1 dressing should be 1/2/3 dressing

One favorite dressing remains the 3/2/1 dressing from the Esselstyns, although it may be dubious to some because of the maple syrup. I guess you could use molasses or date sugar instead. From a practical standpoint, of keeping your measuring spoon clean, the sequence should be 1/2/3:

1. 1 tablespoon of maple syrup (molasses, date sugar)
2. 2 tablespoons of Dijon mustard,
3. 3 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar,
4. juice of 2 lemons or limes, or 1 lemon and 1 lime.

And, you can add in whatever spices you want. Sometimes I will chop a tomato finely and add in some chopped onion and make a batch, so it can marinate in the fridge and I have ready made dressing for 2-3 days.

Hummus dressing

Hummus provides an easy route to a creamy plant-based dressing. Here is a recipe, but there are many ways to do it, and if you're in the habit of making your own hummus anyway, you can whip this up in a flash:

• 1/2 cup of hummus
• juice of one lemon or one or two limes, or alternatively 2 tbsp of balsamic or wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp of water
• some liquid aminos and pepper to taste

Depending on your mood, you can again add in chopped parsley or other herbs, or chopped tomato or finely chopped onion - I prefer red onions for salads.

Amit Goswami - The Quantum Doctor

The Quantum Doctor: A Quantum Physicist Explains the Healing Power of Integral Medicine by Amit Goswami
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Crystal clear. The mind of the patient is the healer. As much as that was metaphysically clear to me before from Advaita and Buddhism and later from A Course in Miracles, having Goswami's explanation based purely in quantum physics really helps flesh it out more.
Ever since I've started to live the Whole Foods, Plant-based lifestyle, it is clear to me that while this model 'empowers' the patient, that this is in and of itself futile, and leaves you stuck with no way out, unlerss you knew you had a mind which is capable of making a different decision.
You get no further than the mechanistic reasoning of The Pleasure Trap, which explains nothing, although it makes you more aware of the mechanics of food addiction. Shifting the focus to the mind (and not the brain) really facilitates the realization that the mind can make a different decision, that I don't want to live like that any more. The healing modalities are then a matter of choice. The Whole Foods Plant-Based diet then is just one healing modality, albeit a big one.

Had Goswami really known about it, he would not have had his bypass operation, nor would he have made an exception for allopathy in respect of cholesterol lowering drugs or viagra, since high cholesterol and ED are purely symptoms of the bad diets that lead to cardiovascular disease, and there is no reason not to change your diet once you understand that. He would also have understood the real reason that the genetic angle is largely pointless because of T. Colin Campbell's clear demonstration that cancer is 90% nurture and not nature. In other words, cell damage is unavoidable if you do any living and while it is always good to reduce your exposure to known carcinogens, there is no way to do so 100%. Campbell's research proved clearly that cell damage must be supported by bad nutrition in order to lead to cancer. In a high nutritional state cell damage is less likely to occur, for your body will have plenty of anti-oxidants, but beyond that animal proteins are the fuel that eventually produces cancer, and you now have the ability to avoid them.

The upshot is, for me, that the Whole Foods, Plant-Based lifestyle shifts the action to the mind of the patient. Things like The Pleasure Trap help explain and understand the addiction to bad food, but it is the realization, with Goswami, that the mind is in charge of the body, introduces the meaningful possibility of a different decision. We choose healing, and the particular modalities are then mostly a matter of personal preference, what works for you. The Quantum Doctor is the new paradigm where the mind of the patient is in charge of the healing, and this wipes away the mechanistic, body-centered, and ultimately Newtonian paradigm of allopathy, but it equally wipes away the silly paradigm of naturopathy of mind-body-spirit, which explains nothing. Once we start understanding the primacy of the mind in healing, new things become possible.

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Vegetable Lasagna - our January 2018 Suppers/#WFPB meal at St. Helena's

This time around it was all chaos, as one of the organizers was not feeling well, but we made it work regardless.

The plan was vegetable lasagna, based on a recipe from the book The Vegan Cheat Sheet by Amy Cramer and Lisa McComsey, with a side dish of spinach, and a mixed green salad with Dr. Barnard's Roasted Red Pepper Vinaigrette. (Note: the book underestimates the amount of filling you need, in my view, so below I upped the amount of cauliflower relative to the book. We found out the hard way that we ran out of the white filling too soon.)

This is a very lovely #WFPB (Whole Foods, Plant-Based) dinner. And the #not62 health campaign in the Bronx would not be the same without it! The people of the Bronx are learning.

The Menu - Recipes

Note: these quantities were for 9 people. You can adjust them accordingly. Out of our $15 grocery money we only spend about $9, so in all there was an $6.00 refund.

To begin with, here is the salad dressing:

Dr. Barnard's Roasted Red Pepper Vinaigrette

Makes enough dressing for 1 large salad

1 large roasted red pepper

1 clove garlic

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

1/8 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pep per

1/2 tsp fresh thyme leaves

Place all ingredients in a blender or food processor. Serve and enjoy.

For the salad we used:

1 head of red leaf lettuce

1 head of green leaf lettuce

1 head of romaine lettuce 

1 green pepper

1 red pepper

1 yellow pepper

1 red onion

6 cloves of garlic

6 sundried tomatoes

4 fresh tomatoes

2 tablespoons of Chia seeds

2 tablespoons of milled flax seeds

(Confession, we ran out of time, and we ended up making a 3/2/1 dressing with red pepper - 3 measures balsamic, 2 measures dijon mustard, and 1 measure maple syrup), so we'll do this recipe again some other time. In fact I will make it today.)

Tomato Sauce (Red)

Note: finding oil-free pasta sauce is not always easy, though there are some on the market. You can find one at Trader Joes, see this listing of OIl-free vegan products at Trader Joes, provided by Forks over Knives. Anyway, we could not find an oil-free sauce in the neighborhood, so I made it from scratch. As it was I started a bit late, but the idea was to have the pasta sauce ready when the class started at 3 PM, so that the class could make the salad, the spinach, and build the lasagna, so we just had to shove it in the oven. So we ran a bit late this time, but the meal was enjoyable.

Ingredients:

4 28Oz cans of Organic Diced Tomatoes

4 onions, cut fine

8 cloves of garlic 

10-20 leaves of fresh basil chopped fine

7 leaves of laurel

2 peppers

2 8 Oz packs of mushrooms (one white and one crimini)

1 lb of carrots shredded

Braggs Liquid Aminos to taste 

Preparation:

• Cut up the onions fine, and start dry-roasting them in the pan
• add the peppers, cut up, and stir it up
• add the garlic (first flatten it and cut it fine) and stir it up
• add the carrots (match stick cut) and stir it up
• add the mushrooms, sliced (note the mushrooms yield a lot of moisture) and stir it up
• when these ingredients start to get soft and feel cooked, add the tomatoes and stir it up
• let simmer, and finish with Liquid Aminos to taste
• make it smooth with an immersion blender

Spinach side dish

4 bundles of spinach cut in 1.5" lengths

2 onions cut up fine

7 cloves of garlic flattened and cut fine

8 chilis sliced fine

3 jalapenos, remove the seeds

(Note: the chilis were fine for most, but a bit much for a few people, but evidently, you can vary that to taste. The jalapenos are much milder.)

Again, start with dry-roasting the onlons, chilis, jalapenos and garlic, and when it is soft, add the spinach, and let it cook slowly for another 7-10 minutes.

Lasagna filling (White)

2 14 Oz packs of Silken Tofu
5-6 cups of steamed cauliflower
(Note: the original recipe suggests 2 cups of cauliflower per pack of tofu, but in practice, I find 3 cups of cauliflower per pack of tofu is a better ratio. Be sure to cook the cauliflower really soft.)

When the cauliflower is soft, add the tofu, and make a smooth sauce with a stick blender.

3 yellow squash sliced
3 zucchini sliced

Building the Lasagna

2 12 Oz packs of Whole Wheat Lasagna, or 3 packs if they are 9 Oz
some nutritional yeast

(Note: this was the fun part, doing it assembly style... We used 2 12 Oz boxes of Ronzoni Healthy Harvest Whole Wheat Lasagna - note: it is available next door, at Chang-Li Supermarket. More and more supermarkets are starting to carry it.)
Preheat the oven to 425 F

• start with a layer of pasta sauce
• layer whole wheat lasagna strips in the sauce (typically 3 strips make one layer)
• layer on the white filling
• make a layer of sliced squash/zucchini
• repeat until the pan is full, finish with a layer of red sauce on top.

 In the oven for ca 45 mins.

Serving suggestions:
The salad is obviously colorful.
The main dish is red/white, with a side of green.
For topping, you can sprinkle on some nutritional yeast

Conclusions

The above is a very complete and satisfying meal. And, it was fun to build with the group, even though this time we went far over schedule, mainly because I started too late to make the pasta sauce and the Cauliflower/tofu filling in advance.
As a reminder, why do we avoid ADDED oils? In other words, why did I make fresh tomato sauce because I could not find an oil-free sauce nearby? Because added oils paralyze our bloodvessels for 3-6 hours after every meal. The blood vessels can no longer expand with extra energy expenditure. It is tremendously important for heart and vascular health to understand that you do not want any added oil in your diet. Here you can hear it from the horse's mouth: Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn says no oil. I repeat, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr. says: "No oil!" If you're still not clear, here is Dr. John McDougall saying the same thing.

Another feature: this meal really embodied 2 of our 4-6 daily portions of green leafy vegetables - a salad and a side dish of spinach. Green leafies provide massive doses of anti-oxidants, and by chewing them we are converting nitrates to nitrites and enabling our digestive system to manufacture nitric oxide, which is what keeps your endothelium healthy.



The point of the exercise however, remains, that in the spirit of the Suppers program, this is all about home cooking, and about creating a mutual support mechanism on a local level. Audelle has been doing Suppers meetings at her home in Throgs Neck for a long time, but doing this at the St. Helena's school cafeteria enables a slightly larger group.
Meanwhile, the idea of sharing the grocery bill, also teaches us that a very healthy and abundant Whole Foods Plant-Based meal can be made on a budget. In this case, we came out to $9 per person. The highest we ever did was $11.50 per person, but it seems that we can typically do these productions for under $10 pp in groceries. You can do it for less, or you can spend more. In the long term you are reducing your medical expenses and nearly completely eliminates the need for any supplements. In this case we added chia seeds and milled flax seed to the salad for Omega-3s and as long as you keep that in mind, the only supplement you should ever need is a vitamin B12 every other day.
If you think about it, the degenerative diseases which consume 86% of our healthcare expenditure, are diseases of affluence and can largely (ca 75%) be prevented or largely reversed with the Whole Foods, Plant-Based diet. It produces such nutritional abundance that the mere thought of supplements is silly. On top of that, there is more and more evidence that isolated supplements are not absorbed as well by the body, or even absorbed at all, as nutrients which are consumed as part of a whole foods diet. In some cases, supplements can even be toxic.

#WFPB and the KISS Principle with the Esselstyns

One of the most helpful things of attending this year's Plantstock conference was a presentation by mother and daughter Esselstyn, Anne Crile Esselstyn now a spry 82 years old, and daughter Jane, who is an RN. Together, they made comic duo that grabbed your attention, and presented a stand-up comedy routine that was still quite serious and drove across one big point: Keep It Simple, Stupid, or as it is known in polite company: the KISS principle.

Eating leafy greens 6 times a day sounds like not feasible, until you learn from mother Esselstyn how to become an expert stripper, as she has taught all her children and grand-children: an expert kale stripper, that is.

Obviously, you wast the kale and then, in one fell swoop, you strip the leaves from the stems into some kind of a colander. You boil it for 5-7 minutes, to your desired level of tenderness, and you can serve a "fist-size" plate of boiled kale at any time of the day. You can season it with balsamic vinegar, or even with one of the delectable infused balsamics from Bema and Pa's which were omnipresent at Plantstock. My favorite of the moment is the habanero-infused variety.

Another simple idea is to make a sort of a roti with collard green leaves, you can pack it with rice, some green beans, okra, or other veggie, some mushrooms, some kimchi, roll it up, and that's an easy meal you can carry with you anywhere.

In general:

• Breakfast is oatmeal (a lot of people seem to prefer steel-cut, as do I), with whatever fruit tickles your fancy.
• Lunch is a giant, meal salad with lots of greens and peppers, tomatoes and whatever else tickles your fancy, add some chia seeds, some ground flax seeds (make it fresh, flax meal loses a lot of its nutritional value quickly), wheat germ, etc. Oil free dressings are easy, Jane's go-to is 3/2/1: 3 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, 2 tablespoons of mustard, and one tablespoon of maple syrup - and obviously, you can add your favorite herbs and spices to that. Plus you add a good amount of some cooked whole grain, be it quinoa, or kamut, or teff, millet, or whatever is your own favorite.
• Dinner is the time you let your imagination run wild.
• In between, for snacks, you can eat fruit or your little plates of leafy greens with balsamic.

This is really how simple it is. So, even though the Esselstyn clan has produced many wonderful cookbooks that can give us all inspiration, it is important to realize, that the basics are as simple as this. A child can do it. On a lot of levels, that is the most important thing to realize, for otherwise the changeover can seem daunting. Once you commit to the changeover get rid of all the junk food in your pantry, in particular any oil. Endothelial health is extremely important and all added oil produces a paralysis of the arteries, as reported here by Dr. Michael Greger on NutritionFacts: Olive Oil and Artery Function. Or, as Dr. Ostfeld at Montefiore likes to say, added oils are like having Mike Tyson for a sparring match with your arteries for a punching bag.

Plantstock 2017 - The #WFPB Mecca in Upstate NY

After changing to a #WFPB (Whole Foods Plant-Based) lifestyle 2.5 years ago, I have recently begun to read much more and seek other sources of information, because I realized that there is a profound change in the works in my own life, but also in the world.

Caldwell, Rip, and Anne Esselstyn at Plantstock 2017

Attending Plantstock 2017 seemed like the thing to do, and boy am I glad I did. The roster of speakers was quite impressive, and covered a wide area of expertise and life experience. Below I'll just recap the stories as best as I can, to bring out the points that seem the most relevant for now. The bottom line is, as I've shared in previous posts, #WFPB is not a diet, but a new nutritional paradigm that is very much based on a solid body of research, starting with The China Study, which was just re-issued in an updated 2017 edition. The theoretical foundation of the China Study, combined with the clinical work of Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn and many others, plus a cascade of newer research have create a broad-based new approach to health, nutrition and medicine, which is actually closer to the Hippocratic ideal than most of modern medicine manages to be. Hippocrates is thought to have said "Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food," regardless if he did say it or not, he also formulated the principle of "do no harm," which is in the Hippocratic oath that doctors take, and apparently promptly forget. In the US, with the most expensive (and unaffordable!) healthcare system in the world, iatrogenic illness continues to be a leading cause of death, if not THE leading cause of death.

The biggest thing about the #WFPB lifestyle is that you can no longer get around it after hearing numerous doctors say that the greatest improvement in health outcomes is the simple dietary change to #WFPB, which far surpasses any medications in its effectiveness (which is not to say medications have a role to play, sometimes). At Plantstock, we heard a mixture of research reports and clinical experience, both personal testimonials of lay people, and experience from doctors. The enthusiasm knew no bounds, for these are life-changing experiences, and people can't shut up about them!

I keep attempting to simplify the definition of the #WFPB concept, and I think you could say it this way:

• Maximize fiber, not protein, this automatically leads you to plant-based nutrition, and away from animal protein, which has been shown to be a carcinogenic in the high dosages that are common under the Standard American diet (SAD).
• Use Whole Foods as much as possible, and avoid added oils, or sugar, and limit salt. Small amounts of oil or sugar as it naturally occurs in vegetables, fruit (e.g. avocado) and nuts.
• Get a healthy level of exercise.

The point is, we over-consume protein, and we don't get enough fiber. #WFPB fixes that in one fell swoop, and people can eliminate all supplements except B12, and most medications, as 75% of health care spending is on treatments for chronic, degenerative diseases, which respond well to the #WFPB diet, and in many cases, patients are getting off of all or most of their medications within the first year, and sometimes immediately. Instead of worrying about drug interactions and side effects, you should worry about your next cup of spinach.

One clarification about terminology is in order. The term vegan is not meaningful in the sense that it is more a marketing concept than a well-defined nutritional practice. "Vegan" includes people who are motivated by animal welfare, environmental concerns, weight loss, or nutritional wholeness. Famous are the stories of malnourished vegans, who merely eliminate animal proteins, and mabye even honey, but do not follow #WFPB, and therefore tend to lack complete nutrition. If you go vegan and continue to eat donuts, you will fail. The Whole Foods Plant-Based paradigm is defined in all its glory in the books The China Study, and Whole by T. Colin Cambpell, Ph.D. which include an account of the foundational research. Within #WFPB there is the "Plant Strong" plan which Rip Esselstyn promotes, which is for otherwise healthy people who want to get healthier. For severe heart patients, the original Esselstyn diet, as defined by Caldwell Esselstyn is sometimes referred to as the "Plant Perfect" diet in which you avoid not only added oil, but also fruits such as avocado and coconuts which have a lot of oil, as well as most nuts. Other vegetables still contain whatever little bit of oil the body really needs.


Here is a recap of the accounts that stood out for me most, in no particular order:

• Dr. Saray Stancic of Ramsey, NJ. Dr. Stancic is a Lifestyle Medicine Physician, focused on #WFPB, and the way she arrived at her new practice was because she was once diagnosed with MS, and ended up dependent on twelve medications she could not tolerate, and then she discovered #WFPB and within one year she was off of all medications, and decided to change her specialty to Lifestyle Medicine. She is also involved with a new documentary we will soon hear more about Code Blue.
• Eric L. Adams, Brooklyn Borough President, his was a story of a personal experience, followed by public action. He was at one point diagnosed with life-threatening diabetes, but refused medication, and consulted Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn instead. Inside of three months, his A1C had gone from the high teens to 5.7, and his cardiologist asked him for Dr. Esselstyn's phone number, as he was about to go in for surgery to get stents, but was clearly interested in an alternative. Since then, Brooklyn has committed $13 million for #WFPB education in schools, and has funded the building of a greenhouse in a housing project. Eric's speech was remarkable in that he explicitly raised the spiritual dimension of the process. There is such a thing as wanting to be well!
• Of course there were Rip Esselstyn, the organizer, his father, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, his wife Anne Crile-Esselstyn, and their daughter (Rip's sister) Jane Esselstyn.
  Rip's presentation about his new book, The Engine 2 Seven-Day Rescue Diet: Eat Plants, Lose Weight, Save Your Health was dynamic and inspiring. The program is a mini course in #WFPB, in which you can make the switch quickly and completely in one week, or use it to get yourself back on track whenever you feel you need new inspiration and simple dishes you can prepare quickly.
  Caldwell Esselstyn was of course inspiring, and you always learn a new nuance about his path to the discovery of #WFPB, which was all about stopping to treat symptoms and starting to treat the cause, since his working experience showed him how heart patients were never really healed, but continued to deteriorate, and he wanted to make a change.
  Jane Esselstyn, RN was an inspiration by explaining in graphic terms how the major mechanisms work, based on her experience as a sex-educator in the schools. Her presentation was unforgettable, because it made complicated stuff, such as the mechanisms of diabetes, simple to understand. Her explanation of why ED is merely an early manifestation of CVD (Cardiovascular Disease) simply because the arteries to the penis are smaller and more easily compromised by a diet full of animal protein.
  The mother and daughter combo was priceless in the way they explained the simple principles of the diet, along the lines of the KISS principle, such as oats for breakfast, a big salad for lunch, and more variation for dinner. One of the most practical suggestions was how to eat simple cooked kale (5 mins) with some balsamic vinegar. At the conference they served it with delicious infused balsamic vinegars from Bema and Pas.
  In short the Esselstyn family is really involved in all aspects of the #WFPB revolution, and they are an inspiration for us all.
• Then there was Dr. Neal Barnard, of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, speaking about his new book, The Cheese Trap, which was super informative and motivating, because once you understand just how bad cheese is and why it is addictive, that is enough to get rid of it for good. He also revealed himself as a rock musician with his group CarbonWorks. There seems to be no limit to this man's range.
• There was Milan Ross, whose introduction to #WFPB hailed from his joining Whole Foods in 2012. He was sent to a #WFPB immersion program by Whole Foods, and it changed the direction of his life. He lost 200 lbs, and became free of medications, including for high blood pressure and cholesterol. He now has his own line of vegan food products. his upcoming book is titled The Change. That says it all.
• There was Dr. Melanie Joy speaking on the unconscious paradigm of carnism, the eating of animal protein, which would help anyone to understand why veganism can be threatening, because it upsets the apple-cart.
• John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods was interviewed by Rip Esselstyn about his new book, The Whole Foods Diet, and also shared some of his experiences in building Whole Foods, including their innovative approach to health care, in which they offer their employees a #WFPB immersion program if they need it, and are self-insured for medical costs. Of course the new acquisition by Amazon came up, and his own decision process, in which he ascertained that it would enhance and not diminish the Whole Foods company culture. Based on what I know about Amazon, they could learn from Whole Foods.
• Dr. Irminne Van Dyken, MD is a general and trauma surgeon in Hawaii. With her husband she created the Out of the Doldrums youtube channel. She spoke about the effects of #WFPB on intestinal fauna, and the most amazing thing is to learn just how fast change takes place.
• Then there was James Wilks, Mixed Martial Arts champion and budding film maker. His story was amazing. For him it began when he had a knee injury and became interested in nutritional approaches to aid his recovery. He devoured scientific articles, and stumbled across some archaeological research showing that the gladiators in Rome ate a primarily plant-based diet. He experienced powerful help in his recovery from #WFPB. We will certainly hear more about him. He is not one so shut up about it!
• Tim Kaufman, a former trial lawyer from Atlanta, now living in Costa Rica, shared an amazing story about personal recovery, from a time when he weighed 430 lbs and in December 2016 was at death's door with an enlarged heart. Up to the day of the conference he lost 137 lbs in eight months, and he promises to be there next year and weigh 190 lbs. Rest assured this man will not shut up. Check out his blog, Fat man rants. In his moment of recognition of his predicament as a completely self-inflicted wound, he realized that he had spent his professional life as a trial lawyer trying to catch people in a lie, but he had been living a lie himself.
• Josh Lajaunie a self-professed "coon-ass" from Louisina swamp land, who extricated himself from a family tradition of meat eating and chronic illness, and embraced a plant based lifestyle as he became a running champion who was recently featured on the cover of Runner's World Magazine. An almost incredible story, his entire immediate family is now on #WFPB and collectively lost 1008 lbs since they started, the point being as always that #WFPB is rich in fiber so you can eat however much you like and you will automatically return to a homeostatic, optimal weight.
• Adam Sud's story was a searing account of obesity and a cascade of illness ending in drug addiction, which was finally reversed with a #WFPB diet, and he is now a health coach for Whole Foods. Mind blowing stuff.
• Dr. Avram Cooperman is a specialist on Pancreatic Cancer, associated with Mount Sinai hospital in NY, and he is working on a book. His talk focused specifically on the impact of #WFPB on cancer prevention, and was very, very powerful and informative. He is clearly in command of his subject. I cannot wait for his book.
• Susan Benigas runs the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, and her talk was very informative. You now have a way to find medical professionals who understand #WFPB, which makes all the difference in the world, since most doctors are woefully uneducated in nutrition. She also runs the Plantrician project.
• Alexis Fox presented jointly with Susan Benigas, she runs a company called Lighter, which enables on-line buying for #WFPB meal plans.She also made mention of the environmental degradation of animal husbandry which was part of her path to taking an interest in these issues. The truth remains that going vegan is the largest single thing anyone can do to stop environmental degradation and climate change.
• Dr. Elizabeth Winings spoke of the relationship between autism and nutrition, and once again this was a completely surprising discovery that diet can make a lot of difference. 
• And perhaps the greatest surprise of the show was Saudi Prince Khaled bin Alwaleed, who follows a #WFPB diet himself and as an investor is actively involved in areas related to meat alternatives, as well as renewable energy and energy efficiency. He is another person we are bound to hear more about. Abolishing the livestock industry is just one of his personal goals.

Hopefully, the above is helpful. One thing is for sure. #WFPB is emerging as a paradigm shift that is now being propelled by such powerful stories of personal change that it cannot help to take the world by storm. To some, this just looks like a ripple, but as an economist, I know that change happens at the margin, and the growth of this movement is furthermore unstoppable for the simple reason of its solid foundation of unassailable scientific evidence, and growing support from the organizations that include the AMA, and ACC (American College of Cardiologists), various politicians and others from all walks of life.

I mentioned above how Eric Adams was the only speaker to explicitly address the spiritual dimension of the process, but I would emphasize that in all of the personal testimonials there was a strong element of a personal crisis and a catharsis in learning about and adapting #WFPB from what were in many cases near death situations. I will be writing more about this.

New Food Realities WFPB - Whole Foods Plant-Based

For most of my life, I thought I knew something about nutrition. As a child I loved to help out in the kitchen, and learn cooking. In our household cooking was a serious affair: my mother ran the place like a hotel, for my father was a psychiatrist and had his practice at home, and meals were a major social occasion, both lunch and dinner. Whether it was us kids bringing friends over, or my father's friends and professional contacts, including other doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists from all over Western Europe, authors, economists, ministers of state, and clergy. Lunch and dinner were often social events. Proper meals were being served and conversation was usually in three languages, mostly Dutch and German, but sometimes French or English. Ever since we went vegetarian when I was age two-and-a-half, my mother was always preoccupied with meal planning and nutrition. In those days, there seemed to be a lot of preoccupation with: but how do you get your protein? This being Holland, the answer was of course dairy, although there was some awareness of pulses, peas, beans and certain grains as sources of protein. But we definitely thought cheese was a health food, and eggs weren't bad either. Milk was still nature's perfect food. That was then, this is now.

As an adult, during a 20-year marriage, I was the cook. Cooking was my relaxation when I came home from work. In those years I had become omnivore, but still always had a vegetarian-leaning cooking style. I made pasta sauce completely vegetarian, using mushrooms, and my Italian (now ex-) wife within six months admitted my pasta sauce was better than her mother's. For which my mother-in-law never forgave me. During those years however, I also thought an organic filet mignon was health food, and if it wasn't organic I'd eat it too.

The last 20 years, I was slowly drifting back to a more vegetarian lifestyle, until I decided for health reasons that it was necessary to become a bit more rigorous, and after one false try maybe five years ago, I finally and completely shifted to the Esselstyn diet in May of 2015, and the results were dramatic. These days I am off of all medication and back at my fighting weight of age 22.

Vegan or Whole Foods Plant-Based (WFPB)

Vegan means strictly speaking that you're not eating animal protein: no meat, fish, fowl, dairy or eggs. Strictly speaking the term means little else.
Ever since Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn's work gained popularity (which got a big push when Clinton credited him with overcoming his heart disease), a more strict regimen has become more popular, no-oil vegan. No processed oils, and moderation in oily fruit (avocado, coconut), nuts and oil seeds. The biggie for most people is no more cheese. No, cheese is not a healthfood, as Dr. Neal Barnard of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine explains in his tell-all book about cheese, The Cheese Trap. Three months after stopping all dairy, I indulged in cheese at a reception, along with some red wine. The taste still seemed attractive at first, but the after taste was of having eaten window caulking and it felt heavy. Then I read the book and finally it all made sense. No wonder statistically cheese is totally correlated with the American obesity crisis... from 4 lbs per person per year, we are gobbling 33 lbs per person/per year today.

Most people fail to make the transition at first, as did I when I first tried the Esselstyn approach, because the preparation of food became a challenge, but this time around I prepared myself better, got some more vegan cookbooks, and accessed all the information I could find. Meals became fun explorations of new possibilities, and presently, a year and a half later, it feels like I am entering a consolidation phase based on a whole new cooking paradigm and a new ability to improvise with flavors and textures with the excitement of the discovery that everything tastes better and more flavorful if you stop cooking with oil. And your arteries will thank you!

The truth is not in what you don't eat but in what you can and should eat, and that is a very rich and varied plant-based diet, full of veggies, legumes, fruits etc., and it becomes an entirely new journey of discovery, as this blog tries to show. In short, the first time I tried the Esselstyn diet, I made two mistakes. One was to focus on what I could not have and trying to find alternatives, and the other was not to be sufficiently clear on the methods of preparation.

One practical example was about cooking without oil, in the Esselstyn book there is talk about stir-frying with water, but I don't believe it explains it clearly. I am finding that though some pans are more suitable to this than others, in general you can dry-fry onions, garlic and chilis, and then when it starts to brown you can add a half a cup of water, or vegetable broth, or even water from steaming vegetables, and with that base you can cook spinach, or malabar spinach or almost any other vegetable dish, lentils, etc. Once you are handy with this, it is a cinch, and the bottom line is, all vegetables taste endlessly better prepared this way. Oil or butter ruins the taste. Here I was making sautéed spinach all of my life, and I thought I was pretty good at it. I knew nothing until I tried the oil-free method. Spinach prepared this way is heavenly!

And there are tons of resources, such as Forks over Knives, the Engine2 diet, and the 21-day kickstart program from PCRM, and many other places where you can go for support. Here in the Bronx there is the wonderful resource of the Cardiac Wellness Program at Montefiore Hospital, run by Dr. Robert Ostfeld, who offers a half-day course to learn the Whole Foods Plant-Based diet, in the best of the Caldwell Esselstyn tradition, and on a budget. You can even bring your significant other, so that at least you get support at home. I am now registered to go to his next workshop on July 15th. The bottom line is with the growing support options, people who are looking to make the change have an extensive support system at their finger tips. A lot of it is free, and once in a while perhaps you'll buy a book or do a workshop. And the fear that you can't afford it is not well founded, for meat and dairy are expensive both in dollars, and in the toll you pay with your health.

Books

• Always first: Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Jr., Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease: The Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven, Nutrition-Based Cure and 

• T. Colin Caldwell, The China Study: Revised and Expanded Edition: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, and Long-Term Health 

• Dr. Neal Barnard, The Cheese Trap: How Breaking a Surprising Addiction Will Help You Lose Weight, Gain Energy, and Get Healthy

• Not strictly no-oil vegan, but a helpful little guide: Amy Cramer and Lisa McComsey, The Vegan Cheat Sheet: Your Take-Everywhere Guide to Plant-based Eating

 A new life-style

Most surprising for some is the experience that you can eat whatever you want whenever you want once you're on this track, as long as you stay within the bounds of no-oil veganism, and use only whole foods. But there is never a sense of dieting. Eat to your heart's content, and your body will adjust, and weight management is no longer an issue.

The potential for no-oil vegan for the restaurant business

This to me is the most exciting realization that has come to me, and I've begun to discuss it with restaurant owners: Not only does no-oil vegan cooking simply taste better, but it is the most universal choice for a restaurant menu. A vegan won't touch a merely vegetarian meal, but a vegetarian will eat no-oil vegan, a vegan will eat no-oil vegan and a no-oil vegan will obviously eat no-oil vegan. So, when a party of 6 enters your restaurant and one is vega-anything, you can always accommodate them with a no-oil vegan dish. You simply cannot go wrong. This new life is getting interesting.

The Year of the Pulses 2016 - United Nations

The United Nations declared 2016 the International Year of the Pulses. As luck would have it, I live in little Bangladesh, on Starling Avenue in the Bronx, and there are some ten stores on my street alone that sell any number of pulses: endless varieties of lentils (red lentils, whole lentils, Urad Dal, Masoor Matki-crimson lentils), green peas, yellow split peas, chick peas, and on and on and on.

In supermarkets around there are many more varieties from Spanish Cuisine, the entire Goya Foods line, either dried, or in cans, and there are even some interesting organic entries here and there, some you can find at Chang-Li supermarket (they stock Braggs Apple Cider and Liquid Amino's) on Benedict avenue, and Pioneer Supermarket on Castle Hill has a small, but growing section of organic produce and some organic dry goods, including excellent organic black beans from a brand called Wild Harvest.

In short, I am in Pulse heaven, and gradually I am learning more and more recipes, and ever since I decided to go 100% vegan a year and half ago, I am having more fun with food than I ever did in my life before.

One recent favorite recipe came from the Whole Foods website,
for Yellow Split Pea and Sweet Potato Soup:

Yellow Split Pea and Sweet Potato Soup

• 1 large onion, chopped (about 2 cups)
• 1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger
• 2 cups dried yellow split peas
• 2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
• 1/2 cup toasted pumpkin seeds
• vegetable bouillon, tamari, or liquid aminos to taste 

Method: 

Heat a large pot over medium-high heat. Add onion and cook, stirring, about 5 minutes or until translucent, adding little water if necessary to prevent sticking. Stir in ginger and cook 1 minute, stirring. Add 8 1/2 cups water, peas and sweet potato and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer, cover and simmer for 1 hour.

Uncover and continue to simmer 15 minutes. Carefully purée soup with a hand held immersion blender or in batches in a blender until smooth and creamy. Garnish with pumpkin seeds.

My personal variation is that I spray the pumpkin seeds (available at Chang Li), with Bragg's Liquid Aminos after toasting them on an oven tray. That just gives them a little extra flavor. You can just snack on them, or use them as suggested here, to spice up certain dishes.

The recipe is simplicity itself, and my routine has become to cook large pans of soup, and freeze two or three portions, so that I always have soup in stock in case I have limited time for cooking. A quick soup and a salad will tide you over.

Veganism is spreading

Lately it seems that veganism is spreading with amazing speed, both the no-oil vegan cuisine promoted by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, also known as the Plant Perfect Diet, and the low fat Engine2 Diet promote by his son, Rip Esselstyn, aka the Plant Strong Diet, and then there is always the hybrid program,  Forks Over Knives, based on the movie.

The number of stories is growing, and in many cases people are successfully eliminating a whole list of medications from their lives, and instead of spending the rest of their lives worrying about the side effects of their medications, not to mention drug interactions, eating healthy is becoming more wide spread.

Of Cauliflower and Curry Sauce, Black Rice and Roasted Mushrooms

Cauliflower is plentiful just now, and with the many Bangladeshi markets in my area, good curry is not hard to find... not to mention one nearby building is nicknamed (among Bangladeshis) the curry palace, because it has such an overwhelmingly Bangladeshi community. Steamed cauliflower with curry sauce is an old favorite, that I had not made for many years, but with the new vegan regime, I suddenly got interested again.

Black Rice is great stuff, it tastes terrific, and it has high nutritional value. It also makes for an interesting contrast with the white of the cauliflower, and I like this particular combination better than cauliflower with brown rice (white rice of course is a no, no). I cook it in my trusty old Zojirushi rice cooker like brown rice, on the GABA Brown Rice cycle. Black Rice is easy to find in my area. The Chang-Li supermarket usually stocks at least two varieties, a Chinese one, and my favorite from a company named Heartland:

Heartland Products at Chang-Li in the Indian section

From the same company comes also a lovely black quinoa, which I love also. 

According to the Wikipedia article cited above, black rice contains iron, vitamin E, and more antioxidants than Blueberries. What more do you want? But the Wikipedia article continues: Black rice contains essential amino acid like lysine, Tryptophan; vitamins such as vitamin B1, vitamin B2, folic acid; and is a good source of minerals including iron, zinc, calcium and phosphorus. And, like I mentioned above it creates an interesting picture on your plate with the cauliflower.

The Recipe

If you don't have a steamer, Chang-Li has classic bamboo steamers. So, steaming the cauliflower is easy. Rice I usually make ahead for a few days, then comes the critical piece, the curry sauce, based on a recipe from Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn's book, Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease: The Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven, Nutrition-based Cure (page 163). Esselstyn's book is the Bible of the "plant perfect," a.k.a. "no-oil vegan,"  diet. My principal difference with the Esselstyn recipe is that I don't want to be too stingy on the curry, so for his 1-2 teaspoons, I substituted 1-2 tablespoons, and I use heaping tablespoons to boot, but the amount will vary with the type of curry you are using.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup brown rice
• 2 cups water
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
• 1-2 tablespoons white miso
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1-2 heaping tablespoons curry powder
• 1 teaspoon of arrowroot, dissolved in water. (Added last)

Preparation:

1. Blend the rice and water together in a blender, food processor, Nutribullet, Vitamix, etc. to liquify the rice.
2. Add the nutritional yeast, white miso, garlic powder and curry powder, blend together.
3. Bring to a boil over low flame, stirring continuously.
4. Turn off the heat and add the dissolved arrowroot to thicken.

This is the best curry sauce recipe I have ever found, and it makes a nice, thick sauce if you get the arrowroot right.
It could not be easier: pour a liberal helping of this curry sauce on your cauliflower on the plates. Serve with roasted mushrooms (with rosemary), or a Seitan or Kao-Fu stew, or some bean dish to complement the proteins in the rice.

For the record, Arrowroot can always be found at Chang-Li too in the West Indian section, and they also have some excellent organic miso, both white and red.
Around here the nutritional yeast can be found at Good n Natural, at 2173 White Plains Road.

The more I get into this, the more fun I have with all the new recipes.

Forks over Knives, with black bean salsa

Finally the time came to watch Forks over Knives, the brilliant documentary about the vegan life style, which for me ties it all together. I already have the FOK recipe app on my phone, which is a tremendous inspiration for recipes. Then there is also the Engine2Diet site and book - and there are the excellent books by Dr. Esselstyn, In short, sources of inspiration to learn vegan cooking abound.

What an inspiration to see people who dump a whole regimen of medications, and instead simply commit to eating a healthy, vegan diet. I have now had that same experience myself twice, the first time, almost thirty years ago, I asked my doctor exactly what a certain allergy medication did (it was Claritin), and when he explained it, I said don't even bother writing the prescription - all it does is suppress the symptoms. I was determined to find the cause instead, and, besides drinking more water, after trying numerous supplements that promise to boost glutathione (GSH), which is the core of your immune system, I ended up on the advice of a biochemist friend using Jarrow's NAC Sustain, which is a sustained release N-Acetyl Cysteine, combined with a 500 mg Glycine, at a combined cost of less than $10 per month. Not only did my allergies go away, I have barely had a cold to speak of ever since then, and that was 25 years ago. The poor doctor would have had me on Claritin from then on out. The same thing happened again at my physical in 2014, when the doctor found me 'slightly overweight' at 190 lbs, and marginally hypertensive, I took the BP meds for a while, but by May 2015, I went vegan instead, and without effort I'm down to 166 lbs, and feeling noticeably better and I am sure at my next physical I will pass with flying colors.

Clearly, the economics are that we cannot afford to continue the SAD, Standard American Diet, which by the way was similar to the SDD, the Standard Dutch Diet that I was raised on. Despite being raised a vegetarian, there was a deep conviction that animal proteins in the form of milk were essential. Now it is clear, animal proteins promote cancer growth, plant-based proteins do not, and the over-consumption of fats and sugars feed into diabetes and heart disease. The whole ED-epidemic is just an early warning signal of compromised circulatory systems, and the canary in the coalmine for heart disease. In short, the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries thrive on sick-care, preserving illness and tending to more and more sick people, who follow the USDA dietary guidelines, which serve the agricultural industry, instead of worthwhile nutrition and healthy eating habits. I've looked more deeply into the environmental economics recently, in a parallel post on my green energy blog, here.     

I definitely use all of the resources listed above, and more, for inspiration, and recently I also visited a vegan supper club in the Bronx, on Meetup that is hosted at a private home in the Throggs Neck section (still walking distance for me). What an inspiration that was! And the experience of many people is that once they make the change, they make it quickly and lose the urge to go back, because they feel so much better. My own private little vegan joke is that the butcher on my street has a daughter who's vegan, and admits that meat is heavy to digest, but like so many who never seriously tried, he feels like he didn't eat if he did not have meat. He is a very nice man, whose store has been there for 50 years, and even now I stop in for a chat periodically, even if I don't eat meat any more. He's going to retire sooner than later, and who knows, maybe he'll switch to vegan too, that would be hoot.

As part of the further exploration for vegan shopping in the area, I made my regular expedition to Good 'n Natural on Weschester Avenue by Pelham Parkway the other day. It is always a delight to shop there. Their organic  produce selection is always great, but yesterday I was hunting for rice cakes, and fortuitously found a whole selection and some were even on sale. Some supermarket rice cakes are made with white rice, but the health food store variety are made with whole grain rice, and nowadays they have many flavors, including with wild rice, etc.

I use the rice cakes to serve one of my favorite snacks of the moment, which is Black Bean Salsa. Here is the basic version from Ann Crile Esselstyn that is posted on Meetup in the No Oil Vegan, Dr. Esselstyn's & Rip's E2 Diet NE Ohio:
http://www.meetup.com/Dr-Es-Vegan-No-Oil-Diet-Cleveland-Akron-Ohio/pages/Recipes_by_Ann_Crile_Esselstyn/

You can make endless variations on this simple salsa, with adding non-GMO corn to the black beans (one can of each), or different kinds of salsa, and adding more peppers, depending on how hot you like it. Chipotle peppers in Adobo sauce, or Jalapeno's (or both, or, eh well, if you're totally no-oil, skip the adobo sauce...). As a light snack on a puffed whole grain rice cake, or with corn chips, you can eat this any time of the day, I love it... I am continuing to have more fun with interesting dishes than ever before, and the weekends become the time to cook some staples of rice, and beans, ahead for the week so I have an easy time putting meals together.