Talk to Rip Esselstyn for even a few minutes and it's impossible not to get fired up about plant-based diets and the possibility of a complete change in America's eating habits and health.
Rip is the former triathlete and firefighter who wrote the bestseller, "The Engine 2 Diet: The Texas Firefighter's 28-Day Save-Your-Life Plan That Lowers Cholesterol and Burns Away the Pounds."
He's now on a mission, working with Whole Foods Market and its Health Starts Here Healthy Eating Initiative program to share his "PlantStrong™" message to a nationwide audience, educating Whole Foods' team members, customers and community members on how to adopt a plant-smart diet comprised of whole grains, beans, legumes, fruits and vegetables.
"Basically, I tell people we want to avoid anything with a face and anything with a mother," Rip told me in a recent conversation. Those foods "unfortunately contain the three big building blocks that promote disease: animal fat, animal protein and animal cholesterol."
Rip knows getting the plant-based message across to others means overcoming some resistance.
"I tell people, right now we have a country that is plant-weak. If you were to look at caloric pie of how Americans eat, close to 60 percent of America's calories are coming from refined and processed foods. You know, the white stuff: the fried chips, the soda pop, fruit juices, doughnuts and cakes. Almost 30 percent comes from animal products: all dairy, all meat. And only 10 percent is coming from plants and half of what is coming from plants is coming from French-fried potatoes! So really only 5 percent is coming from fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans and a limited amount of nuts and seeds."
Rip wants to raise that 5 percent to "50 percent or 75 percent or whatever makes sense in your life," and recommends following the four pillars of Healthy Eating outlined by Whole Foods Market:
1. Be "PlantStrong," with raw and cooked veggies, fruits, legumes, beans, nuts, seeds and whole grains.
2. Eat whole foods that are fresh, local, organic, seasonal and unprocessed instead of refined, highly processed and filled with artificial flavors and colors, preservatives, sweeteners and hydrogenated fats.
3. Get healthy fats from plants, such as nuts and avocados. Avoid oils and processed fats and, if you eat animal products, make sure that they're lean meats, seafood and low-fat dairy products.
4. Make sure your foods are nutrient-dense, with a high level of nutrients compared to calories. Look for your food to provide a variety of vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients and antioxidants.
Rip coined and trademarked the phrase "PlantStrong" which Whole Foods adopted as one of their pillars. To me, it sounds like Lance Armstrong's cancer-fighting "Livestrong" phrase, combined with the message that a plant-based diet will make you stronger in so many ways.
"It's very inclusive," Rip says. "I don't use the terms that make people want to run in the opposite direction, like 'vegetarian' or 'vegan.' I stay away from using those terms and I use 'plant-strong' because I think it's inclusive inviting."
He's convinced that if people give him just 28 days, he can change their lives permanently. "The reason why I've come up with 28 days, Meg, is that it's not forever. They can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and this way it's my hook to at least get people to try it. Committing a month to eating plant-based, they'll have a newfound awareness of food and their relationship with food, and realize that, 'OMG, I'm not going to disappear and I'm not going to melt away when I don't have my meat.' In fact, life goes on and it goes on even better than before." After those four weeks, Rip says, people can decide just how plant-strong they want to be. Rip recently got a chance to put that into practice in Mercersburg, Pa., where he went to high school. A doctor in town saw an article about Rip's new book in the Mercersburg Academy alumni magazine and she invited him to come back to town to help her lead a community health makeover.
"The doctor said, 'We are just swimming with obesity and Type 2 diabetes and heart disease and would love it if you'd come and start planting seeds and help get these conversations about health and diet initiated,' " Rip says.
So, he talked to young schoolchildren, high school students, businesspeople and factory workers and more than 100 people agreed to take his Engine 2 28-day challenge. Local restaurants got into the act, too, offering "Engine 2 Plant-Strong" dishes. "The local tavern, yeah, they made the most amazing, different Engine 2 Plant-Strong options. I was blown away. Mercersburg -- a little town in south-central Pennsylvania -- I'm telling you, they rocked it!
"And when I came back 28 days later for the graduation ceremony, people's cholesterol had dropped 20, 30, and 40 percent and we had people that lost up to 37 pounds in 28 days! A lot of other things people reported, like acid reflux, went away. IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) went away. Constipation went away. Kidney stones went away," he says. "Their collective efforts to take action toward healthy, plant-based eating could be a model for small towns all over America."
It also reminded Rip of a simple truth. "People just don't realize how much power sits at the end of your fork."
For more information about The Engine 2 Diet, please visit Rip's website.
Would you consider trying Rip Esselstyn's Engine-2 plan? Do you already follow a plant-based way of eating? Tell me about your experiences. I'd love to hear from you!
Follow Meg Wolff on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MegWolff
Taking small steps towards a healthier way of eating sounds like a great way to get started!
Thanks for coming by. Love hearing from the Mercersburg grads. So, it sounds like you all are being followed very closely. Keep up the good work!
Rip certainly has energy and enthusiasm, a great combination!
No, of course not! NOT any religious affiliations. Geez.
Not pushing religion, just promoting a way of eating!
It's an arbitrary belief, just like the belief that say, eating fungus is morally reprehensible. We all have lots of arbitrary beliefs. And I'm not going to argue that they're all bad, or there's no place for them: you can't always describe why you feel a certain way, you just do.
But that's not a reason to try and construct a mythology around it, demonizing dietary fat and cholesterol to the detriment of human-health everywhere, and insisting our natural diet be replaced with various manifestations of anti0nutrient rich cereal grains.
Yes, it is a way of eating. It's a way of eating based on a set of morals/ethics, just like Muslims and Jews don't eat pork. It is not a way of eating based on health. And trying to sell it as such has helped give us our obesity and diabetes epidemic, where for the last 50 years doctors have been insisting (in line with the vegetarian talking point) we give up dietary fat and cholesterol and move to a carbohydrate-based diet.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_46/b4203103862097.htm
Thanks for the link, I'll check it out.
Loved the article, well worth the read!
Thanks for your comment. I agree, I've been eating this way for 12 years myself and once you get the hang of it, it is easy. I feel so good I could never eat the way I did before (and the food tastes great!).
I'm curious if you noticed any improvement in your running? My husband, also a long time runner, has been eating this way for 12 yearrs though he iincludes olive oil and some fish. He swears that his knee inflammation has been helped by this way of eating, too.
So great to hear from someone that has gone through the Rip's program! Glad that you are feeling so well and that it is showing in your numbers, too. I think this program has the potential to help millions of others. I appreciate your taking the time to comment. Will you continue to eat in this healthy way?
http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/EmergencyPreparedness/BioterrorismandDrugPreparedness/ucm137284.htm ))
As I mentioned in the other comments, yes, these people were followed by a doctor who monitored then before and after. No false claims.
Love hearing from someone who has tried it! And, nice to hear you will be plant strong as a way of life!
Veganism is an experiment with less than one generation of data available for any significant portion of the population. Anecdotal reports indicate that while some people can thrive for extended periods on such a diet, they are many who develop illnesses after an initial period of health improvements. Some examples can be found in “The Vegetarian Myth” by Lierre Keith.
I would like to propose a third dietary choice for those who cannot sustain themselves on a vegan diet, or who simply want another choice than the SAD diet. This eating plan is backed by the largest “clinical trial” in the history of humanity, having been tested over about 2.5 million years and 100,000 generations. It was abandoned about 400 generations ago in favor of an agricultural model, at which point our health began to decline. Some, such as Pulitzer Prize winner Jared Diamond, believe this was the worst mistake in our history.
A description and references regarding this “new” dietary choice can be found in “The Original Diet – The Omnivore’s Solution.” Ask your librarian for a copy.
Roy Mankovitz, Director
http://www.MontecitoWellness.com
A research organization
I respect that you are an omnivore, but I disagree with what you've written about plant-based eating. However, thanks for coming by.
Thanks for stopping by. I did hear about it, and I'm looking forward to seeing it in March! I'm not near any of the screenings either, but I'm interviewing Rip about it (it's in LA on Nov. 11th!). Did you see the trailer?! http://forksoverknives.com/
In fact, the whole "I'll change your life in just 28 days" bit seems calculated to appeal to exactly the wrong kind of "quick fix" mentality that, IMHO, is an American AFFLICTION, not something to be catered to. After all, "fast food" is a product of the same mind set. Nope, give me "slow" food and REAL food -- of ALL kinds, not just "plants," but also meat, fish, eggs and dairy, and forget the gimmicks.
All of the people in this example were being followed by a doctor and they were eating healthy delicious plant-based food, I saw the menu. Not processed. Rip was invited to go to Mercersburg to do this. The reported information was based on FACTS. None of these adverse reactions that you are going on about were exhibited in these cases. Everyone had good results. Now maybe if it were a high protein diet you might have these problems. Plant-based diet IS all about REAL food, whole grains, beans and vegetables. Please don't try to confuse the facts. At any rate ... great to hear from you, again!
The real food /health dichotomy isn't between "animal-based" foods (meat, eggs, dairy, fish) and "plant-based" foods (everything else). It's between cr@ppy, highly-processed foods with added sugars (plant-based) and God knows what else versus REAL foods, whether from plant or animal sources. So while I think Esselstyn's advice to eat more fresh, unrefined foods that aren't highly processed and loaded with additives is good, if he really wants to improve human nutrition in America he'd do better to focus on the REAL problem, instead of also demonizing foods from animal sources, which humans have been eating very successfully throughout their evolutionary history.
If you don't want to eat something from a source with "a face or a mother," whether for "ethical" or even just sentimental reasons or whatever, be my guest, but the belief that food from animal sources is the reason for poor nutrition in the U.S. and that animal fat, animal protein and animal cholesterol promote disease is just based on bad science. I guess Rip is a "true believer" in his father's ideas, but that doesn't make them correct.
It seems irresponsible to suggest that a vegetarian diet can cure things like acid reflux, kidney stones, and irritable bowel syndrome. I actually developed reflux and IBS while on a vegetarian diet, and find that things like whole grains and legumes (a staple of veggie cuisine) seem to aggravate my symptoms. Perhaps the improvements they experienced in Mercersburg were due to cutting out the processed junk, rather than animal products per se?
If the concern is actual public health, we would stick to the recommendation of eating fresh, unprocessed, nutrient-dense foods, regardless of whether they are of plant or animal origin. Pushing vegetarianism is not only unnecessary for heath, but likely to turn many people off from the bigger, more important message.
The China Study certainly proves that a plant-based way of eating promotes health (40 years of government funded research). As far as the people who followed Rip's 28 day program in Mercersburg, the improvements in their health were well documented.
Maybe it's not for you and that's OK.
I think you know that Rip is NOT promoting "fried chips, the soda pop, fruit juices, doughnuts and cakes."
Rip is making a difference in the lives of MANY people by his work with plant-strong eating based on good science and his own twenty years of experience eating this way.
When you see the results of his father's (Caldwell Esselstyn) work with people that have had the bypass surgeries and have no other hope get well (and are still alive 20 years later), it's hard not to believe the facts.
Didn't see the post that you mentioned got censored. Why don't you try adding it again?
I think you're correct on focusing on what we all agree on, we all need to eat more plants!
Thanks for your comment. He does have the right idea and it's really great when someone like Rip can take this idea another step forward and help many people.