Acknowledgements and Notes

Acknowledgements:

This blog is based mainly on the work of Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Dr. Colin Campbell, and others promoting nutrition from plant based, whole, unprocessed food, oil free, without added sugar, and with minimal salt.

For more, please see the books at the foot of this blog and the "Essy's Favorites and Videos" page as well as in other posts below. (Note: this is a PAGE and NOT a POST!)

Special thanks to Carol D'Anca who shares her deep nutritional knowledge and extraordinary culinary expertise to inspire me and so many others to see our daily meals as continuing sources of good health and joy.

And many thanks as well to Ariane Glazer whose knowledge of raw vegan foods is encyclopedic and exceeded only by her generosity of sharing information and good food! While some of her recipes use oil, they are valuable and easy to modify when needed.

This Blog is NOT intended to replace medical advice!
This blog is intended to give general information and food preparation ideas. For medical advice please consult your qualified health care practitioner.

Note on Navigating this Blog More Efficiently:

When using the links on these posts use the back arrows (<) to get back to your original spot rather than closing the window. That will save you a lot of time! If any of the links don't work please let me know using the "Keep in Touch" form.


Note on referenced books. You can find books by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Dr. Colin Campbell and Carol D'Anca at Amazon.com.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

The Engine 2 Diet and other books by Rip Esselstyn

I've been reading The Engine 2 Diet by Rip Esselstyn, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn's firefighter son.   This book is based on whole foods plant based nutrition and should be especially attractive to men who may see WFPBN as just a lot of salads.

Some of the recipes include processed ingredients that I would question (such as "vegetarian meat crumbles") but most of the recipes are fine.  The text includes information about the nutritional value of WFPBN (Whole Food Plant Based Nutrition) and a brief exercise program.

The experience of a group of firefighters on this plan should interest men especially!   You can find a lot of the information in the book plus plenty of recipes and great video footage at http://www.engine2diet.com/

And if you would like a copy of the original Engine 2 Diet or  Plant Strong (a great source of information about whole food, plant based nutrition) or the Seven Day Challenge as a great way to get started,  please see the Bookstore on the food of this blog.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Forks Over Knives -- A New WFPBN Movie

I'm excited because next week we'll have a free pre-screening here in Chicago of a Whole Food Plant Based Nutrition MOVIE!   Forks Over Knives opens in regular theatres next March.   To learn more about this film featuring Dr. C. Colin Campbell and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn and his son firefighter son Rip Esselstyn (author of the Engine 2 Diet) go to http://www.forksoverknives.com/.   Perhaps there will be screenings of this movie in your area!    Whole Foods is sponsoring this screening here, and afterwards there will be a Q & A with Rip Esselstyn and Dr. Terry Mason, Medical Director of Cook County Hospital.  This should certainly get many folks here thinking about health in a new way! 

UPDATE:  August, 2016   You can now order Forks Over Knives, a full length feature (1 hour, 36 minutes)  as a DVD from Amazon, or view it on You Tube or Amazon for a small fee, or watch it on Netflix.    While this film is now a few years old it is still inspirational and will help viewers understand the importance of whole food, plant based nutrition.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Is Public Health the New Commons?

Is public health the new commons?

In a 2010 lecture about fish and oceans for Dr. Colin Campbell's online Plant Based Nutrition,  Dr. Bruce Monger, an oceanographer at Cornell University discussed the principle of the commons.  The commons, in this context, holds that a commonly shared resource (such as the ocean in Dr. Monger's case) belongs to all, and ought not be monopolized for profit or for other reasons.  

Can the principle of the commons be applied human health?  

Virtually all "affluent" nations have publicly funded health care to some degree.  In the US we have Medicare, Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program.  As of this writing we may have still more public coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

We also subsidize, de facto,  "uncompensated care" through increases in costs for certain services provided at no cost but which translate into increased health insurance premiums.  And then there is the more indirect social cost of caring for families in the event of illness or death of the breadwinner, and the other indirect costs of illness.  Our social welfare system spreads many of these expenses among the taxpayers generally. 

This being the case, can we view public health as a social benefit resembling the traditional commons in many respects?  Can we view the costs of attaining and maintaining health be viewed as a responsibility of our "economic commons."

Professor Monger spoke of the "tragedy of the commons" occurring when a few industries benefit from exploiting a resource.   This raises many questions which need to be answered in arriving at a rational, fair health maintenance system.

Do companies which produce unhealthful foods exploit the commons of health?
Do they do so when they do not pay for the external costs in poor health generated by their products? 
Do they do so when, via trade associations, they adversely influence government agencies established to protect health?

Do health care providers abuse the commons when they are more concerned with profitability of their facilities than with the application of more effective, safer, "low tech" approaches to health care?

And do individuals who "know better"  -- who have seen the statistics and have even been told by their health care providers to change their diets -- abuse the commons when they continue behaviors which pass their health care costs along to the public?    

Perhaps this last sounds like "blame the victim" and we must be mindful of how companies use to their advantage the addictive nature of unhealthful foods.  The question remains: How far can we take the principle of the commons as applied to the oceans and other environmental concerns to the economics of health?

How Meat Production Harms the Environment and the People in it.

To see Chicago Tribune article on U.S. EPA and waste from Illinois factory farms click here.

In 2015 the film Cowspiracy documented the severe environmental effects from animal agriculture.
To learn more about this excellent film and purchase a copy, please click here.

More recently, in August, 2016, the Chicago Tribune produced an important expose on pig farming in Illinois, showing how it harms the environment, the pigs, and even the farmers involved who are trapped in a downward economic spiral.

To see a pdf of these chilling articles please click here. 
Note: This is a large file of news article facsimiles (about 28 mB), so please be patient!

Monday, September 20, 2010

Getting Started with Whole Food Plant Based Nutrition

I started this blog while rounding the home stretch in a six week certificate program in Plant Based Nutrition sponsored jointly by the T. Colin Campbell Foundation and eCornell, Cornell University's distance learning facility. Dr. Campbell is an emeritus professor at Cornell in the field of nutritional biochemistry. He has authored or co-authored not only hundreds of scientific papers and books, but also of The China Study, a best selling book that explores the links between animal-based foods and illness.

My classmates are from all over the United States and the world. Some are health care professionals, some work with clients in variety of ways to help them achieve their wellness goals, some are from the corporate world, and some, like me individuals interested in learning more about the role of nutrition in health and disseminating that information to the public.

This blog is intended as a platform to discuss related interests and issues. It is not intended to offer medical advice of any kind. Anyone reading this blog should consult their own health care provider if they wish to pursue anything discussed here.

UPDATE: August 2016.  After a long hiatus I am returning to this blog.  I have been fairly closely following a whole food, plant based nutrition program in my own life and so far it has served me well.  

We now know so much more about this and I am looking forward to documenting my own journey as well as sharing some of the interesting things I am learning from time to time.