VegWorld 31 by VEGWORLD Magazine

ISSUE 31 | JANUARY 2016

CRACKING THE Egg

Industry WIDE OPEN

HAMPTON CREEK CEO

JOSH TETRICK

HAS THE EGG INDUSTRY SCRAMBLING

LANI MUELRATH - PLUS

9 AMAZING VEGAN TRANSFORMATIONS

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CONTENTS VegWorld Magazine - January 2016

THE FUN SIDE OF VEGGIE LIVING 8

Vegan Hot Sheet

17 World Events Calendar 20 VegWorldly Wanderings 25 Infograph of the Month

Would you trust these two herbivores to feed you? You should. Their new cookbook hits all the right notes and then some.

FAMILY AND LIFESTYLE 27 That Moment When 28 Vegan 101 30 True Beauty 33 The Doctor Who Changed My Life 37 Plant Strong Families

A Miami Chef creates a magical vegan burger that takes home the grand prize in a one of a kind culinary contest. Story on page 10.

FEATURES 43 Josh Tetrick of Hampton Creek 48 Amazing Transformations

NUTRITION AND THRIVING 68 Medicine 71 Well Woman Way 75 Mind & Body 80 The Power Of Motion Dr. Linda Carneyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new column, Well Woman Way, tackles hormones head first on page 71.

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

CONTENTS VegWorld Magazine - January 2016

FRESH FINDS 84 Loves & Wants 89 Between The Pages 91 Veestro Review

RECIPES FOR FOODIES 99 Zoodles with Quick Sundried Tomato MaRAWnara 100 Enlightened Faux Parmesan 101 Green Split Pea Soup With Sundried Tomatoes and Dried Mushrooms 102 Balsamic Dijon Glazed Roasted Brussel Sprouts 103 Butterscotch Pudding 105 Brazilian Black Bean Soup with Baked Plantains 107 French Onion Dip 108 Avocado Cucumber Dip

This Rowdy Girl was the impetus for a lifestyle change that transformed a cattle ranch into an animal sactuary. Page 118.

109 Thousand Island Dressing 110 Portobello Mushroom Sandwiches

Credits

Editor’s Note

SOS Free Living with Chef AJ

113 Sanctuary Animal of the Month 116 Love, Lori Mark Reinfield dishes up delicious Brazilian Black Bean soup.

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

CREDITS Publisher Edward N. Smith III

VegWorld staff

Editor-in-Chief Amanda C. Smith Graphic design Lise-Mari Coetzee Associate editor Lori Fryd Associate editor Robin D. Everson

Contributors

Robin Tierney

Chef A.J.

Robin D. Everson

Josh LaJaunie

Karen Ranzi VegWorld Magazine

Lori Fryd

Sharon McRae

Linda Carney, MD

Andrea Denton

Michael Greger, MD

Renee King-Sonnen

Lani Muelrath

Mark Reinfeld

John Pierre

Hannah Sentenac Issue 31 - January 2016 |

EDITOR´S NOTE om A message fr the Editor of zine, a g a M ld r o W g Ve h Amanda Smit

his issue is about transformations. We are thrilled to have the opportunity to interview Josh Tetrick, whose company Hampton Creek, is transforming the food system. Nine amazing transformation stories are featured in this issue and VegWorld is undergoing a transformation itself. Starting this month, we will be a monthly publication. As such, we are excited to announce that we have several new monthly columns. We are particularly excited to be adding Dr. Linda Carney to our line-up. Dr. Carney is a plant based medical doctor and a widely respected voice in the plant based movement. Her new column Well Woman Way will take an in depth look at health issues that affect not only women, but the lives of those who care about them.

ransformations are a product of our choices. Choosing to buy smarter products. Choosing to take better care of ourselves. Choosing ethics over apathy. Choosing to care about something instead of ignore it. As vegans, one thing that we do consistently – often without much thought - is choose

life. Our own lives are enhanced by our choices, the Earth benefits and many animals are spared lives of terrible suffering. We win. The planet wins. The animals win. Someday maybe the whole world will be transformed by this realization. We sure hope so, because then…everybody wins.

Amanda Smith Editor-in-Chief VegWorld Magazine

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

THE FUN SIDE OF VEGETARIAN LIVING

Vegan Hot Sheet World Events Calendar VegWorldly Wanderings Infograph of the Month

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

Vegan Hot Sheet Latest Vegan & Plant Based Buzz

SOCIAL JUSTICE-THEMED

VEGAN BAR OPENS IN

ASHEVILLE, NC

eganism is an idea that touches many other issues, from environmentalism to healthcare and beyond. Now, the first-ever bar dedicated to another shared value — social justice — has opened its doors in Asheville, North Carolina.

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

VEGAN HOT SHEET THE BLOCK off Biltmore (aka TBob) is an all-vegan bar and eatery dedicated to honoring history and highlighting social justice issues. Located in Asheville’s YMI (Young Men’s Institute), the building is one of the oldest African-American cultural centers in the U.S., and was originally built for the young men working on the nearby Biltmore Estate. “We want to be a multicultural community living room,” says owner Cam MacQueen. “We’ll be doing lots of live music, spoken word, we’ll have ongoing art exhibits and receptions for the artists, documentary screenings, wine tastings. Plus we’ll be highlighting vegan food and busking for bites — basically food by donation.” The bar was inspired by Washington, DC’s Busboys and Poets — though the vegan aspect is a new twist by MacQueen. As far as eats, the spot will serve vegan soul food by master “vegan food artist” Ebone’ Graham. All in all, it’s a spot that’s committed to justice and equality — for humans and animals, both.

VegWorld Magazine

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VEGAN HOT SHEET

MIAMI CHEF WINS NATIONAL

VEGAN BURGER BATTLE

hile a typical burger battle is heavy on the meat, cheese, and clogging of the arteries, the first-ever Plant-Based Burger Battle in Miami last November offered a new approach to an old tradition. Launched as part of the five-day Seed Food and Wine Festival, the battle pitted 11 chefs against each other in an attempt to create the nation’s best vegan burger. Competitors included Jay Astafa of Jay Astafa Catering NYC; Ryan Bauhaus of Atlas Meat-Free Deli; Chef

VegWorld Magazine

Oliver Ponce of Austin, Texas’ Good Seed Burger, and many more, all of whom cooked up unique and creative cruelty-free burgers. The winner, by Chef Todd Erickson of Miami Beach’s Haven Lounge, was a beet, barley, and black bean patty with sweet soy and garlic, pickled English cucumber, scallion, lotus root chips, and spicy mayo on a potato roll. Judges included former NBA star John Salley, Bad Ass Vegan John Lewis, and Vegan Beer & Food Festival founder Nic Adler, among others.

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

VEGWORLD HOT SHEET

VEGETARIAN MENUS

SEE 66% GROWTH OVER THREE YEARS

t’s clear that vegetables are having a moment, and a recent poll shows the trend has made its way to restaurant menus, too. A recent Mintel Menu Insights report revealed that vegetarian menus have grown 66 percent from 2012 to 2015, and 61 percent of consumers say they enjoy items that “heavily feature vegetables.” “America may be known as a ‘meat and potatoes’ kind of country but data suggests that consumers are increasingly reducing the size of the meat and adding Brussels sprouts to the plate,” says Mintel foodservice analyst Caleb Bryant. The report also revealed that almost half of eaters (48 percent) look for health claims on menus before ordering. In addition, it suggests that restaurants could benefit financially by introducing more vegetable-based options “as restaurant goers aren’t just accepting vegetables, but are embracing them in their diet.”

LONG ISLAND GROUP HOSTS WORLD’S

LARGEST THANKSGIVING

ith long-term traditions of turkey eating and family bickering dominating Thanksgiving, it’s no wonder that a lot of vegans are wary of the annual affair. In 2015, however, the holiday earned a whole new image thanks to Community Solidarity.

The Long Island, New York-based organization hosted the world’s biggest vegan Thanksgiving. The group — which holds the title of nation’s largest vegetarian hunger relief program — served thousands of people

VegWorld Magazine

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VEGWORLD HOT SHEET in need in the days surrounding Thanksgiving. They hosted food shares, doled out hot meals, and created a community-wide support system. “On one side, millions of animals are killed for Thanksgiving and on the other side there are thousands of people in our community who go hungry,” said founder Jon Stepanian ahead of the event. “We wanted to create an event that would help those people while promoting cruelty-free healthy living.” The group shared 87,000 pounds of vegetarian groceries and winter clothing — 5,000 people in the first three hours and 15 minutes alone, says Stepanian. They also shared 4,822 plates of hot vegan meals including vegan drumsticks, cheesecakes and other veganized comfort foods. That’s giving animals — and people — a lot to be thankful for.

CERTAIN TARGET STORES

NOW CARRYING NON-DAIRY CHEESE

ajor retailers have been stocking increasing numbers of vegan options recently, with brands like Beyond Meat, So Delicious, and Hampton Creek showing up on store shelves everywhere. And now, Target is starting to sell non-dairy cheese. Among the other inroads it’s made in recent years (including offering its own line of meatless meats), Daiya is now available in certain locations. “In select stores, Target sells Daiya, a non-dairy cheese,” a company rep said.

Now that the market for dairy alternatives is worth $2.09 Billion in the U.S. alone (not including cheese), it’s a smart move for stores to get on board with plant-based options.

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VEGWORLD HOT SHEET

QUORN TO RELEASE VEGAN PRODUCTS IN U.S. IN EARLY 2016

uorn, the popular UK-based maker of items like chik’n cutlets and turk’y roasts, is officially bringing vegan versions of its meatless eats to the U.S. masses.

While previously, most of the company’s products have been vegetarian — not vegan — the team recently started rolling out vegan selections in the UK. Now, Quorn has confirmed that vegan items will be coming to the U.S., too, starting in early 2016. “At this time the range has not been finally confirmed it is at the moment 5 products,” the rep said. Details are forthcoming, but it’s good news for anyone looking for additional holiday meal options.

VegWorld Magazine

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VEGWORLD HOT SHEET

SINGAPORE CHAIN VEGANBURG MOVING HEADQUARTERS

TO SAN FRANCISCO

VeganBurg USA 1466 Haight Street San Francisco, California 94117 Monday-Thursday: 11:00A.M.-09:00P.M. Friday-Saturday: 10:00A.M.-10:00P.M. Sunday:10:00A.M.-09:00P.M. Phone : +1 415-548-8000 Fax : +1 415-548-8001

he U.S. has another plant-based burger option. VeganBurg, a popular vegan chain out of Singapore, has moved its headquarters to San Francisco. Its first store recently opened in the historic Upper Haight area of the city. “Our goal is to have a successfully running restaurant in San Francisco,”said Cynthia Riddell, VeganBurg’s head of marketing. “San Francisco is our new home with our headquarters here, too. Customers and fans across the nation, something like 18 states, and globally, continually request us, which is really exciting news.” The new location features a welcome mural with the Golden Gate Bridge, and a slightly altered menu. More locations are definitely planned for the future, but just how many remains to be seen. “We want to do good for our planet, so however many locations it takes to encourage and excite the world to choose a plant-based diet,” Riddell adds.

VegWorld Magazine

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VEGWORLD HOT SHEET

JEWISH ADVOCACY ORG CHANGES

NAME TO PROMOTE VEGANISM

ewish Vegetarians of America is no more. In its place is Jewish Veg. The notable organization, which has been around since 1975, decided to undergo a name change in order to show its support for a vegan lifestyle.

“We’re dropping the word ‘vegetarians’ from our name in large part because we’re now encouraging and helping people to go vegan,” said Jeffrey Cohan, executive director of Jewish Veg. The new name is also designed to be inclusive for all people, including those at different points along the path to a plant-based lifestyle. The name reflects the organization’s commitment to the Jewish values of “compassion for animals, concern for health, and care for the environment,” says Cohan. Jewish Veg is also undergoing expansion. The group has recently hired professional staff, and created a strong Board of Directors and Rabbinic and Advisory councils. In addition, it’s launched a “Veg Pledge” campaign to help people adopt plant-based diets, and has partnered with Hillel International to send Ori Shavit (Israeli vegan leader) to 10 colleges across the country to speak to Jewish students.

VegWorld Magazine

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VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

VEGWORLD EVENTS CALENDAR

VEGWORLD EVENTS CALENDAR Looking for the most exciting, fun, inspiring, and informative vegan events worldwide? Here they are! If you have an event coming up, let us know by sending the details to editor@vegworldmag.com

Arizona VegFood Fest January 9 & 10, 2016 Scottsdale, Arizona

Live A Better Life Fair March 19, 2016 Liverpool, England

Nashville VegFest April 9, 2016 Nashville, Tennessee

Healthy Taste of L.A. January 17, 2016 Los Angeles, CA

North Florida VegFest March 20, 2016 Tallahassee, Florida

Seattle VegFest April 9 & 10, 2016 Seattle, WA

Vegan Street Fair March 20, 2016 Los Angeles, California

Las Vegas VegFest April 9, 2016 Los Vegas, Nevada

HealthFest 2016 April 1 - 3, 2016 Marshall, TX

Berkeley Vegan Earth Day April 17, 2016 Berkeley, California

Texas VegFest Apr 2, 2016 Austin, TX

VegMichigan April 24, 2016 Novi, Michigan

Vegan Iron Chef February 24, 2016 San Francisco, CA VegFest UK Brighton February 27 & 28, 2016 Brighton, England Holistic Holiday at Sea Cruise February 27 - Mar 5, 2016 MSC Divina VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

VEGANUARY 2016

VEGANUARY:

BACK AND BETTER THAN EVER JOIN THE MOVEMENT AND TRY VEGAN THIS JANUARY

omething is definitely going on. A vegan cookbook was the fastestselling book of all time this year. Restaurants and cafés around the world are feverishly working on their ever-expanding vegan options and they are becoming the places to visit. Even Beyoncé has given it her seal of approval! It’s better for you, for animals and for the planet. This January 2016, everyone is invited to become a part of the excitement by taking the vegan lifestyle out for a test drive for one month courtesy of “Veganuary.” Supported this year by Animal Equality, an international animal advocacy organization, Veganuary is an online-accessible Awareness Month. It has been designed to support and encourage the vegan-curious, the vegetarian, the health conscious or those who just plain want to look and feel better. Everyone is encouraged to take the pledge and to eat like a vegan for one month.

VegWorld Magazine

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VEGANUARY 2016

Veganuary 2016 will be available to a worldwide audience via Veganuary. com. This website is packed full of helpful hints, advice and resources to help make the switch to veganism as easy as possible. An approved product directory, an extensive and vibrant recipe section, eating-out restaurant guides, personal success stories to inspire and motivate and information on animals, the environment, nutrition and health will all be at your disposal. To help you on your journey, Veganuary has released a Vegan Starter Kit that answers questions about all things vegan. The kit contains instructions about everything from label-reading and shopping guides to weekly meal plans. There are a range of plans devoted to many different lifestyles and needs - from gluten free to sports nutrition – all committed to helping get you through the month day-by-day, meal-by-meal. Veganuary’s Co-Founder, Jane Land, says “By signing up, you’ll receive hints, tips and advice in the lead-up to January, as well as support throughout the month. We’re aiming to have 50,000 people on board! Now is an opportune time to suggest the challenge to friends, family and colleagues – you can try it as the ultimate New Year’s resolution…” Veganuary is free to join. Simply sign up at Veganuary.com. Become a part of this growing movement and getinvolved in the discussion @WeAreVeganaury, facebook.com/Veganuary.

VegWorld Magazine

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VEGGIE TRAVEL

WINTRY PLEASURES SPRING ETERNAL IN THE

APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS Story and photos by Robin Tierney

eady to escape to a winter wonderland? One that’s affordable, peaceful and free from ski resort party crowds where attitude runs as high as the altitude? This Virginia mountain haven beckons with snowfringed peaks, crisp (not frigid) breezes and warm natural springs. Yes, they’re warm, some even hot, year-round. Fittingly named, Bath County is a scenic 90-minute drive from Roanoke’s airport in the Appalachians’ Allegheny Range. “Allegheny” in Algonquin means “endless,” which describes the vistas and also the many pleasures.

VegWorld Magazine

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VEGGIE TRAVEL

Soak in the springs “Taking the waters” is a centuries-old healing tradition. Here, choices include the Jefferson Pools, which supply the town of Warm Springs with 40,000 gallons of ever-flowing crystalclear mineral-rich waters that stay 98.5 degrees year-round. The pools are named for Thomas Jefferson, who for 3 weeks in 1818 took the waters for rheumatism. Now part of the Omni Homestead Resort, the pools reside in two octagonal wooden buildings. Considered America’s oldest spa structure, the men’s spa was constructed 1761. The ladies’ opened in 1836. Now a 60-minute soak costs $17 during both family and clothingoptional hours.

Above: Take a refreshing dip at the pool at The Homestead Resort. Photo by Robin Tierney. Below: The Omni Homestead Resort makes a nice winter getaway. Courtesy photo.

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VEGGIE TRAVEL Five miles south in The Homestead’s pretty spa garden, the natural springs that earned the town of Hot Springs its name run a constant 105 degrees. The hotel also has an indoor pool and a huge water park hydrated by natural springs and outfitted with slides, a lazy river and whirlpool. The water’s also part of spa treatments at The Homestead and at Warm Spirit Spa. I chose a free treatment: warming feet in creek waters flowing by the Jefferson Pools.

Go play outdoors Some 89% of Bath County is national forest, says naturalist Allen Cleek during a guided tour of Cascades Gorge, a waterfall that rushes along a 3-mile trail crossed by footbridges near The Homestead. Like to cross-country ski, snowboard, snowshoe or simply hike? All-season exercise spots include George Washington and Jefferson National Forests, Lake Moomaw and Fort Lewis. Douthat State Park offers winter camping from sites to cabins. Completed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in 1936, this National Historic Landmark has been named one of America’s top 10 family vacation parks and its design influenced the development of parks nationwide. In Warm Springs Mountain Preserve, deer, bears, songbirds and unique stonework appear along the 3-mile Sandy Gap Trail, built in the 1930s by the CCC. The main highway is named for home-grown golf legend Sam Snead. The Homestead draws golfers to the Cascades, a top mountain course, and the Old Course, which boasts the nation’s oldest tee in continuous use. There’s also an 18-hole miniature course.

Musical majesty Garth Newel Music Center, located in a barn-like structure with superb decor and acoustics, pairs

VegWorld Magazine

theme dinners, dance parties and pub nights with great performances. Garth Newel is Welsh for “new hearth” -- and this place is as warm as that suggests. Catch the Garth Newel Piano Quartet, one of the world’s top chamber music groups, as well as roots music, jazz and bluegrass by guest artists. Performances often come with gourmet meals -including sumptuous local-sustainable vegan options prepared by chef Josh Elliott.

Warm cool lodgings Established in 1766 by a military officer who was paid with a 300-acre land grant including 7 mineral springs, The Homestead expanded to 2,300 acres. Bought by Omni in 2013, the resort’s history is told in a gallery of historic paintings. The 483 rooms feature regal furnishings. Dining and recreational attractions fill the hotel and resort grounds. More venues and lovely B&Bs line Hot Springs’s picturesque Main Street.

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VEGGIE TRAVEL Or stay in the country in a silo or upscale log cabins at Fort Lewis Lodge, which is based on a 1750s former plantation along Cowpasture River in Jefferson National Forest.

Veg in Many visitors fuel up at The Homestead’s all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet. The many vegan-friendly choices include gourmet hash browns, hearty oatmeal with toppings from local maple syrup to fruits to nuts to specialty jams. I made a terrific warm salad at the omelette station -- skipping the eggs, of course. No need to lodge at Fort Lewis Lodge to enjoy Innkeeper Caryl Cowden’s home-cooked breakfasts and dinners. She’d make a terrific vegan chef; when I visited she made several fully plant-based dishes with local ingredients that non-vegans loved as much as I did. Examples: a green bean-shaved sweet potato pairing and veggie mini-burritos.

Year-round color Beloved for fall foliage, Bath County displays color year-round. For example, Scenic Route 39, running from Lexington into West Virginia, offers rich Appalachian woods, fog-shrouded peaks and ice-laced leaves. Along Virginia’s Western Highlands Artisan Trail, Warm Springs Gallery displays landscapes by local talents and visiting artists who come for the annual Plein Air Festival.

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VEGGIE TRAVEL So whether you desire natural springs or gorgeous vistas, you can bask in Bath Countyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s winter wonderland even while staying toasty warm.

Visitor info: http://www.DiscoverBath.com http://www.VisitVaMountains.com

About the Author Robin Tierney is an award-winning writer and photographer who covers travel, veg dining, art, culture, adventure, health, fitness and life with dogs. An ethical vegan for more than 10 years, her work has appeared in publications worldwide. For years, she has volunteered with dog rescues, supported animal protection causes and has published a dog adoption guide used by nonprofits in the US and overseas. Prior to going plant-based, she wrote two cookbooks and restaurant reviews. Reach her at travelveg@live.com

VegWorld Magazine

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INFOGRAPH OF THE MONTH This month’s infographic comes to us courtesy of Vegan Mainstream. To learn more about this exciting organization visit https://www.veganmainstream.com. If you’d like to share their infographic, we have it posted on the VegWorld Facebook page… https://www.facebook.com/vegworldmag

Vegan Mainstream polled 233 People & Asked,

What Inspired YOU to Become VEGAN?

A Vegan Athlete

Friend or Family Member

Social Media or Website

A Vegan Film/Movie

Co-Worker or an Acquaintence

A Vegan Book

A Vegan Celebrity

My Health or Health of a Loved One

A Vegan Organization

Including Animals, the Environment, a Vegan Cruise, a Vegan Radioshow, Spirituality, etc VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

FAMILY

AND LIFESTYLE

That Moment When Vegan 101 True Beauty The Doctor Who Changed My Life Plant Strong Families

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

THAT MOMENT WHEN

That Moment When features the awkward, enlightening or inspiring moments that all vegans experience in life. Share yours with us here

“S

o you don’t eat pizza?!” “What do you even eat?” “What do we feed her?” “Can she come over after dinner?” “Wow, being a vegan must suck.” “Hey, do you want to try… oh wait you’re vegan.” These are just some of the many statements I hear on a daily basis. People are always dumbfounded when I say that I am vegan. And even more shocked when I say I have been vegan for more than two years. Being a vegan in middle school isn’t the easiest thing ever and there are definitely cons about it. One of the most obvious cons is the fact that it’s hard eating at places other than your own home, especially when all they are serving is subs with meat and cheese. People are constantly asking what I eat and they just don’t understand that I don’t eat any animal products at all--and that no animal products include milkshakes and pizza. Also, most of your friend’s parents have no clue what to feed you.

But there are definitely pros! One of the best is probably the fact that I generally have clearer skin than most of the kids my age because I eat more fruits and veggies, and eat less dairy and processed foods. I also don’t have to worry about innocent animals being killed for my food. Another definite pro about being vegan is I don’t have to worry about nearly throwing up in Social Studies class while learning how animals were made into meat during the 1920s--trust me, if you read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair - you would become vegan in a heartbeat! And finally, somehow my veganism is always brought up and instantly becomes a conversation starter. Overall, I think that becoming vegan is worth it. Even though it may be difficult, in the end, it is totally worth it. If you really love something, or believe in it strongly, it’s worth working hard and fighting for it. And that is what I have been doing for more than two years.

About the Author Ainsley is a 13-year old who enjoys music and writing. She is active in her middle-school band and is a member of the National Junior Honor Society and yearbook club at her school. Her favorite activity is hanging out with her friends. She also loves traveling very much. VegWorld Magazine

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VEGAN 101

FIVE TIPS TO TRANSITIONING

TO A PLANT-BASED DIET

he headline was sensational and fed right into our meat-loving American society— “My Vegan Diet Almost Killed Me.” Viewers likely didn’t even have to watch the whole thing before passing judgment and reaching for some bacon. Better safe than sorry. I won’t spend any time analyzing the diet or motives of the former vegan blogger as it’s not my story to tell, but stories like hers can be scary to even the most dedicated vegans. “Is my diet killing me too?” “Am I eating the right foods?” “Am I missing the signs of my downspiraling health?” Eating a vegan diet is anything but the norm—society expects you to eat meat and cheese to maintain

VegWorld Magazine

a healthy diet and it’s what most of us grew up believing. Even though we know it’s not necessary, when stories like this come out, it makes us question whether we’re doing the right thing. That kind of doubt can make you decide that despite your best intentions, you’d be better off ditching the vegan diet so you didn’t risk the same health concerns. So how do you overcome these doubts? Here are five tips to transitioning and sticking to a vegan diet: 1. Know yourself—Some people are better off transitioning slowly to a vegan diet and some are better off going cold tofurkey and not having the temptation of animal products around at all. Figure out which type of person you are and what

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

VEGAN 101

will work best for you. Also, know your motivation 4. Invest in yourself—Switching your diet isn’t and remind yourself of that when you’re having a something to be taken lightly. To do it properly, you tough day. have to invest time and maybe even money to be fully prepared. Do your research. There are a lot of 2. Be kind to yourself—No one’s perfect. Some days free resources on the Internet to get you started, you mess up and have some cheese. Don’t be but if you prefer the hard copy version, invest in too hard on yourself and give up, thinking you just a couple of cookbooks. You are learning to cook aren’t cut out for this. Know that tomorrow is a all over again—most of us had never cooked with new day and you can do better. tofu before or heard of nutritional yeast before 3. Surround yourself—Just like when you were a gong vegan—investing in good resources to help toddler, it was best to surround yourself with in these areas is the difference between loving those who will catch you when you fall. As a your new way of eating and floundering in a vegan in a meat-eating world, you’ll often feel boring rotation of the same recipes. like you’re alone—but you don’t have to be! There 5. Be proud of yourself—What you’re doing is not are so many groups out there to catch you—both easy. It takes a brave person to fight the norm virtually and in person. If there’s no one in your and emerge victorious when society is stacked town who is vegan, the Internet is packed with up against you. I’m proud of you—and I’m not the folks who are—just a little searching and you’ll be only one—so go get ‘em! on your way!

About the Author Andrea Denton’s journey started with curiosity about a plant-based diet and the possibility that it would not only be a better diet for her family, but the solution to her husband’s battle with high cholesterol. An active fire fighter, he couldn’t shake the high numbers despite improvements in diet and exercise. After watching Forks Over Knives, she and her husband decided to switch their family of four to a plant-based diet for just six weeks. After six weeks, her husband got his cholesterol retested and it had dropped 60 points! They were sold and haven’t looked back! As a mom of two daughters, she enjoys finding tasty recipes that are enjoyed by not only her daughters, but their friends as well! Andrea is passionate about sharing the benefits of a plant-based diet on her website www.veggiecraving.com. You can follow Andrea on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

VegWorld Magazine

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TRUE BEAUTY

ith the approach of colder weather, it may be time to re-evaluate your skincare. You may not realize it, but skin is our largest organ; everything we put on it can be absorbed directly into our bloodstream. So it’s of utmost importance to me that my skincare products be completely vegan, cruelty-free, and safe; i.e., free of any potential endocrine disrupters, mutagens, or carcinogens. I rely heavily on the website http://www.ewg.org/skindeep/ to learn whether or not particular brands, products, or ingredients are safe, based on their rating. One of the brands that came up in my search for products that fit the bill was 100 Percent Pure (http://www.100percentpure.com/). They have a fairly extensive skincare, body care, and cosmetics line, but this review will focus on the (facial) skincare products. The “Vegan Package” seemed an obvious place to start. The company was generous enough to send one out for me to evaluate. Here are my thoughts:

Organic Cucumber Juice Facial Cleansing Foam

This cleanser is amazing; it’s a foam, so a little goes a long way. The cool cucumber scent is very clean and refreshing and smells so….well, so 100 percent pure, that it makes me feel great about putting it on my skin. 5 Stars.

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TRUE BEAUTY

Organic Aqua Boost

I think this may be my favorite product of all. I was very skeptical when I first saw it, thinking it was an unneeded extra. But two spritzes over my face after cleansing, then rubbing it in all over gently with my fingertips, and I was amazed at how hydrated my skin felt. I hadn’t realized it, but now I know my skin had been crying out for moisture, despite my using a variety of oils at nighttime and a fairly rich daytime moisturizer as well. The Aqua Boost felt like I was giving my skin a drink of water….it seemed to hold in the moisture and help it to absorb more effectively. This is a product I never want to be without. 5 Stars for sure!

Organic Argan Oil

The pump dispenser makes this a tiny bit messy, as it’s hard to control how much comes out, but I like the product itself. It is absorbed quickly and aside from the fragrance (which is all natural and neither overly pleasant or unpleasant), it’s much like some of the other face oils I’ve been using. I’ll definitely keep it in the rotation. 4 Stars.

Vitamin C Serum

Another pump dispenser; this is a nice way to add extra antioxidants into my morning skincare ritual. I use it after cleansing and before hydrating. Nice product; haven’t noticed any particular improvements yet but I feel good knowing I’m adding Vitamin C into the mix. 4-1/2 Stars.

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TRUE BEAUTY

Organic Coffee Bean Caffeine Eye Cream

I admit it; I wasn’t using any eye cream. As a “50-something,” I really should have been, although in fairness, I don’t have any significant lineage under my eyes….probably because I’ve always worn sunscreen, sunglasses, and/or a hat in the sun and have been eating an uber healthy diet for the past 6+ years. But I do feel like this product is making a difference in plumping up the area around my eyes for a brighter, fresher look. I’ve only been using it at night, as I’m leery about too much moisture around the eyes under my makeup, which already has a tendency to smear. A small pump spread between my two ring fingers, then patted around the under eye area seems to be just the right amount. I use a gentle tapping motion and the product is absorbed readily. I’m now a regular eye cream user, and I’m sure that’s a good thing. 5 Stars.

Bottom Line: If you’re like me and you’re conscientious about your personal care products, then 100 Percent Pure is a great place to shop. The products are mostly vegan, all cruelty-free, and made with truly pure, fresh ingredients. No added fragrances, just those of the natural ingredients. I’m looking forward to reviewing some of their color cosmetics next month! While we’re still on the topic of skincare, I’d like to share my favorite all-time, all-over body moisturizer too. Booda Butter is a fabulous, vegan, cruelty-free, all natural, and organic (does it get any better?) product that I’ve been using for years. The ingredients are simple: Organic Shea Butter, Fair Trade Cocoa

Butter*, Coconut Oil*, Olive Oil* and Jojoba Oil*. (*Certified Organic & Unrefined). The product is packaged in either a cute little metal tin, perfect for travel, (2.3 oz) or a BPA-free plastic tub (8.4 oz). It’s solid at room temperature, but a soft solid, so it’s easy to scoop some out…and when you rub it in, it melts like “buttah!” The smell is almost just like chocolate too, so when I put it on, I feel like I’m really rubbing the chocolate all over my thighs, but it doesn’t stick there like the real thing! It’s highly moisturizing and works well all over, including feet, hands, and lips. Although I haven’t tried it, I’m betting a little would go a long way towards taming the frizzies, too. The company is very generous, always throwing in a free lip balm with your order. Highly recommend this…. 5 Stars.

About the Author Sharon McRae is a Certified Health Coach and nutrition/cooking instructor for the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine’s (PCRM) Food for Life program. In her past life, she was a freelance makeup artist for a high-end cosmetics line, and she moved away from this work after learning about the prevalence of endocrine disrupters and animal-derived ingredients in the products. She strives to use and recommend personal care products that are as pure as the foods she includes in her diet in order to maintain optimal health. Learn more about Sharon here: http://eatwell-staywell.com/

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

THE DOCTOR WHO CHANGED MY LIFE

THE

DOCTOR

WHO CHANGED

MY LIFE

Michelle Rose was forever changed after encountering Dr. John McDougall’s powerful message of healing and hope.

can’t remember exactly what age I was when I realized I wasn’t like all the other kids in my class. Although one of the youngest in my grade, I managed to be one of the biggest. Perhaps it was the third or fourth grade when my friends would be able to share clothes at sleepovers, and I was embarrassed and left out. Then as I grew to the fifth grade, I wore junior’s size 13 pants that my mom would hem so they would fit my stocky frame. I remember weighing around 150 pounds at that point. I wasn’t extremely overweight, but definitely quite chunky. Eventually my friends caught up to my height, but my body was still determined to be ahead of theirs. It was such an awfully awkward time in my life. My goal was to blend in, to hide, so that no attention was given to me or my body that betrayed me with pre-

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mature breasts, a tubby middle, oily hair, constantly sweaty armpits, and ‘thunder thighs’. Oh, how I longed to be like the popular girls, thin and pretty, noticed by the boys, and full of confidence! It was a time of turbulence as I entered the seventh grade. Due to my brothers’ actions he was being sent to a school far away that was supposed to ‘straighten him out’. Looking back, I realize that this

”It was such an awfully awkward time in my life. My goal was to blend in, to hide, so that no attention was given to me or my body” Issue 31 - January 2016 |

THE DOCTOR WHO CHANGED MY LIFE

took away some stability in my life. He was close in age, only eighteen months older than me. My sister and I were left without him. She was four years older, and we had a rocky relationship. I looked up to her, and she found me annoying. She had her own weight and self-esteem struggle, and took it out on me.

time, but my ‘all or nothing’ personality and my love of baking (and eating) rich desserts would sabotage me. I was perpetually yo-yoing, either I was gaining or losing but never maintaining. I hadn’t found a diet that worked and was maintainable long term. I saw what my future held when I looked at my parents and other relatives. Most of them were overweight and many were diabetic and had other maThe summer between seventh and eighth grade be- jor health problems. The very idea of these diseases came my time to transform. My plan was to return frightens me. I’ve watched the people I love strugto my Middle School and finally look and feel how gle with these issues and I didn’t want to join them. I wanted. I was determined to be thin and get the Despite myself, that’s exactly where I was heading. attention that I craved. I agonized over everything I ate, punishing myself by various means when I felt When I met and married my husband in 2008 I was like I ate too much. I became anorexic and quickly a size misses size 14, which was the biggest I had lost at least 30 pounds before school started again ever been at that point in my life. He liked that I and even more as the school year went on. I had baked delicious desserts for him when we were devised ways of hiding my disordered eating. It was dating. He was a tall, solid, 21 year old man with a fairly easy because my parents both worked, and very physical job and able to eat copious amounts my siblings were busy with their own lives. I was of food. I remember us each ordering our own able, over time, to learn the reality of what I was do- large pizzas and eating them in our living room. ing to myself. It wasn’t worth ruining my body to be He maintained his weight as I gained. thin, and I was dressing in a way that attracted the wrong kind of attention. I was basing my self worth Around 2012 I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary on my perception of how others perceived me. I Syndrome, the same syndrome both my sister and did the things I thought people wanted me to do cousin struggled with. It explained in part why I instead of just being me. struggled more with my weight than others, although I do take a good portion of the responsibilThroughout high school and on into adulthood I’ve ity due to what I ate. PCOS affects many women, struggled with my self-image, my weight, depresand each uniquely. It affects the hormone balance sion, and low energy levels. I tried many diets and in a woman’s body and is linked with male pattern exercise programs. Some of which worked for a hair growth, acne, weight gain, depression, infertility, irregular menstrual cycle, and increased risk of diabetes and heart disease. I was told that weight loss is very effective in managing the symptoms of this syndrome, but it can be very difficult to achieve because of the syndrome’s effect on the metabolism. My weight went up and down as I struggled without success to find a balance between enjoying food and being healthy. By 2013 I had clothes in my closet sizes 12-18.

”I was basing my self worth on my perception of how others perceived me. I did the things I thought people wanted me to do instead of just being me.” VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

THE DOCTOR WHO CHANGED MY LIFE

In September of 2013 we moved to another state and struggled to start over. Money was tight and I had more time on my hands as I searched for work. Baking distracted me from the stress and also fed my food addictions. I ballooned from a size 16 misses to a size 20 women’s by the end of the spring. I was in denial about how large I had actually become. At my shorter 5’4 height, it was really unhealthy and uncomfortable. The scale did not lie, I was 237 pounds, only about 20 pounds lighter than my husband who is a whole foot taller than me! A friend took pictures of my husband and I at a graduation party and I could no longer deny it. Looking at that picture of a large woman wearing my lacy turquoise dress, I didn’t recognize myself. What would younger me have thought if she saw this future? Something had to change.

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I wanted to be able to enjoy my food and be a healthy weight. It seemed like too much to ask. I had watched the documentary ‘Forks Over Knives’ some years earlier, and it sat in the back of my mind. One day while visiting my mother in law, she mentioned a woman on YouTube who eats tons of bananas and is super thin. I love fruit, so I checked it out. The diet she promoted didn’t seem practical for me long term for several reasons (to each their own!), but it did get me interested in the plant based community. When I stumbled across Dr. McDougall one day, I liked what I read. He is a medical doctor and I was impressed by his decades of experience helping people regain their health. I immediately read up on his program online and delved into the plant-based world. I proceeded to check out as many books as I could

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

THE DOCTOR WHO CHANGED MY LIFE

from the library dealing with this type of diet. I read ‘The China Study’, ‘Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease’, ‘My Beef With Meat’, ‘The Starch Solution’, and more. The evidence was clear. Populations who eat mostly plants do not suffer from the diseases that most Americans contend with. The standard American diet is not really natural for us to be eating, and it has shifted over generations into daily habit of partaking of the rich foods that were once reserved for special occasions. Not only this, but I discovered that a vegan diet is the most environmentally friendly diet for humans. The more I learned, the more I knew I wanted to give it a try. I was now equipped with the fundamentals and had begun to shift my way of eating. I gradually removed the animal foods from my diet, while adding healthy starches like rice, corn, potatoes, and more veggies. I learned to make a variety of dishes ranging from simple to complex. There were some recipe flops along the way for sure! My chronic indigestion vanished within a few days, as well as my mysterious rash on the underside of my arms. I reviewed my eating habits periodically and adjusted it to better fit the ‘Starch Solution’ program. It was important to do that, because I’d find myself getting stuck in various ruts without realizing it. My husband has been a huge support to me, and a major reason for my success. He happily ate whatever I cooked at home and when we went out to eat he would either order the same meal as me or order something he knew would not tempt me. After a few months I began to feel better and have more energy, so we joined a gym. I hadn’t been to a gym in years, but I made it a new habit! I exercised moderately three days a week for about an hour. The weight loss continued for about a year.

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Never have I been able to eat as much as I want and maintain my weight so effortlessly. It really is what you eat, not how much. My friends can’t believe that I eat so much food, especially potatoes, and still lose weight! I lost a total of 85 pounds, Going from 237lbs to 152lbs, and a size 20W to a size 10 over the course of about a year, and my husband lost 40 pounds. I am a smaller size now than what I was at my high school graduation, and I am happy with my body for the first time in a very long time! I don’t hate shopping for clothes anymore; in fact I’ve come to love trying on dresses with this new body. I maintain the weight loss effortlessly as I continue to follow the program. I began reading ‘Dr. McDougall’s Program for Maximum Weight Loss’ this week and I plan to incorporate this program to lose a little more weight. I was old before my time when I had all that weight on me. Even though I am still young at 27, my friends tell me I look much younger now than I did last year. People used to ask me if I was going to continue this diet after I lost the weight. There is no doubt in my mind that if I stopped eating this way, I would go right back to where I was and that is a place I don’t ever want to be! Many of the foods I used to eat surprisingly no longer appeal to me. I was headed for a lifetime of disease and obesity. Besides, who doesn’t want to be able to eat as much as they want and stay trim? I only wish I had discovered Dr. McDougall sooner.

If your life was changed by a special doctor whose message resonated with you, please share your story by sending it to editor@vegworldmag.com

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

PLANT STRONG FAMILIES

GUIDING OUR CHILDREN TO THE TRUTH

ABOUT HEALTH, COMPASSION

AND THE ENVIRONMENT by Karen Ranzi, M.A

new mom authored a vegan recipe book and an article I read. In it, she responded to the main question she’s been receiving since she gave birth to her first child: “Will you raise your child vegan?” Surprisingly, she expressed that it’s more important for her daughter to have open options than to teach her compassion and principles of optimal health from an early age. This strikes a similar chord for me as I recently took 16 participants on a raw vegan retreat to Costa Rica called “Love Raw Food & Yoga Eco Retreat.” While there, we went to visit a longtime friend who has VegWorld Magazine

been raw vegan for many years and has lived sustainably on the plants of her tropical farm. However, she now feels we shouldn’t insult anyone when being offered food, that we should love them and eat their food with them even if it’s not our choice. I was surprised at her change in thinking that would have us abandon our true values to please others. Should we passively accept our children eating everything and anything that comes their way, even if it means ignoring the truth about health, life and the environment? Issue 31 - January 2016 |

PLANT STRONG FAMILIES

I see only one choice here: Is it to be Sickness or Health? Love and Compassion or Violence and Oppression? When my children were young, I knew that I, as their mother, was the center of their universe and they believed my message of truth about vegan living. My son healed from a severe asthmatic condition through green juicing and the raw vegan lifestyle. When my children grew into their teenage years and chose to experiment with non-vegan foods due to their perceived need to “fit in” with their peer group, they still had an early foundational base of knowledge about which foods would sustain health and which would destroy it. This early information eventually brought them fully back to a vegan and raw vegan lifestyle, completely on their own. Our children need us, as parents, to be wholly responsible for their health now, so they can take over that personal responsibility in the future. After nursing and weaning our children, there is no need for animal food. However, there is a vast commercial industry push to advertise and sell animal milk. Milks of different species vary according to how big and fast the newborn of the species

needs to grow. The bovine calf grows four times faster than the human baby, which explains why a cow’s milk is 20% protein and human mother’s milk is only 5 to 6% protein, a true indication that cow’s milk is for calves and not for humans. Cow milk is meant to make a calf into a 1,000+ pound cow in a year. Is this what we want for our children? And should we ignore this truth so that our children can feel accepted by others who are ignorant of these laws of nature? Although someone may seem healthy while living on animal flesh and animal products, eventually allergies, mucus and later degenerative disease often come into play. When the kidneys and liver become overloaded with food toxins from indigestible animal foods, toxemia levels rise. At a certain point, the toxemia level reaches toleration, and then symptoms appear. We’d do best to nurture and care for ourselves and our children and avoid this toxemia toleration level. The primary carrier of toxic environmental chemi-

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

cals is dietary fat, especially from meat, dairy, eggs and fish. Grazing animals eat plants tainted by industrial poisons. Usually, these toxins originate in polluted rivers, soil, rainfall, or farm runoff. These toxins accumulate in the animals’ fat cells after they eat grass and other plants. Animal fat is then eaten by humans as meat and animal products. Should we blindly disregard this information so that our child can “fit in?” Should we ignore the fact that animals spend part of their lives on feedlots, eating genetically engineered corn, soy and wheat, which in nature would be impossible? The animals get sick, so they’re injected with antibiotics. Those antibiotics find their way into our children’s intestines, killing their friendly or probiotic bacteria. An important aspect of their immunity gets compromised. Our children want to know the truth. When my daughter and her friend were nine years old, I overheard them talking about breakfast at the girl’s home the day before. My daughter had slept over at her friend’s house and told her that the bacon she ate for breakfast came from a pig that was murdered so she could eat it. The 9 year old friend got angry and argued with my daughter, insisting that wasn’t true, that the bacon was made at the supermarket, as this is what her mother told her. I was shocked that this nine year-old child had not heard the truth about where bacon comes from. Should we show our children that we eat plant food out of gentleness and compassion, or that we eat animal foods of violence and oppression? Dr. Will Tuttle, author of The World Peace Diet, explains, “We cannot reap happiness for ourselves while causing misery for others.” Children are so loving, pure and innocent. They feel connected to all creatures and that’s why so many children get upset when they find out that what they’ve been eating came from an animal. There was a boy who used to visit my home fre-

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

PLANT STRONG FAMILIES

quently when my children were growing up. He happily learned the names of fruits, leafy greens, vegetables, sprouts, nuts and seeds while spending time with us. The boy loved eating all of our healthful and delicious fresh plant foods. He asked many questions about why we weren’t eating hamburgers, cheese and eggs. My children responded to most of his questions, and the boy decided he would no longer eat animals. He bought a t-shirt with a picture of a cow on it and exclaimed to his parents that he was no longer eating them. The boy’s parents became alarmed because they felt he needed animal protein for strong bones and they refused to let him become a vegetarian. I saw the boy was saddened that his desire to stop killing was met with consternation. He stopped visiting us, as I believe it was painful for him to accept what he was eating while seeing a different, more loving way of living. There is much information on protein in a healthful vegan lifestyle. We need to be eating high quality biological protein especially high in leafy green VegWorld Magazine

vegetables and sprouts. And for those who choose beans, they also contain abundant protein. There is protein in all plant foods when whole. Even a banana contains 5% complete protein. Only fractionated refined foods contain no protein: sugar and oil, for example. Dr. Tuttle says, “There is a psychological block demanded by the action of eating animals.“ To heal ourselves spiritually, we must become conscious and stop harming innocent creatures. We cannot have spiritually healthy families while still modeling violence. The Golden Rule of each religion teaches kindness and love of others as the essence. How can we let our children think that a breast or leg of chicken or a piece of cheese is an acceptable food source? As a vegan since 1989, working with families in vegan and raw vegan nutrition, I see healthy, happy and loving children grow up beautifully on a vegan and raw vegan lifestyle. Why should we care for our dogs and cats while Issue 31 - January 2016 |

PLANT STRONG FAMILIES

not caring about cows, pigs, turkeys, ducks and chickens? We teach our children history lessons on the cruelties experienced by our human relatives and ancestors. Are we not incurring the same cruel holocaust on animals and then teaching our children that cruelty to others is an acceptable part of life? Our children’s future environment, Earth as it has been, is in great jeopardy. Dr. Tuttle points out: “In the past 25 years, more species have been forced into extinction than in the past 65 million years combined.” He says, “We eventually do unto ourselves what we do unto animals.” The documentary film “COWspiracy,” which is an

absolute must for every family to see and experience, shows us in very clear numbers that methane gas from the livestock industry is the number one cause of greenhouse gases and global warming. Are we going to overlook the entire truth about health, compassion and the survival of planet Earth so that we can eat an animal or its parts to “fit in” or not insult someone? I believe the children of the new generation, more than ever before, need for us to be shining examples of health and compassion through veganism. This light will guide our children to be our strong future leaders, who will take control in reviving our environment and respecting the creatures who share our planet.

About the Author Karen Ranzi is an award-winning author, motivational speaker, holistic health coach, certified raw food chef, speech/language and feeding therapist. Reach Karen at http://SuperHealthyChildren.com Visit her online at: http://SuperHealthyRaw.com Watch her on: www.youtube.com/superhealthychildren

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

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Issue 31 - January 2016 |

JOSH TETRICK INTERVIEW

CRACKING THE EGG INDUSTRY WIDE OPEN Josh Tetrick, CEO of superstar start-up Hampton Creek, has the egg industry scrambling.

osh Tetrick is an entrepreneur and an innovator, on a mission to make the world a better place… one sandwich at a time. In late 2011, Josh founded Hampton Creek with his long-time friend and animal welfare activist, Josh Balk. The idea was simple. Create a tasty vegan version of mayonnaise - without the eggs. If a product like this could appeal to the Standard American palate, this simple concept could be expanded upon and have a dramatic and farreaching effect – not only on individual health, but on the 300 million egg-laying hens used by the U.S. egg industry each year. Using vegetable products instead of eggs meant that Josh’s products could have a positive impact on the environment. Tetrick hoped that his vegan version

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of mayonnaise would be in demand not only from vegans, but also health conscious consumers and environmentalists. As a start-up company in Silicon Valley, Hampton Creek went the usual route of looking for venture capital. What was decidedly not usual, however, was that they were able to convince Li Ka-Shing, (Asia’s wealthiest man) Mark Benioff, Peter Thiel, and Eduardo Severin to invest in the fledgling company and to attract the attention and enthusiastic support of Bill Gates, himself. By mid-2013, the company had developed a creamy, vegan product called Just Mayo, made from canola oil and a specific variety of split pea.

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

JOSH TETRICK INTERVIEW

that did not meet the strict definition of mayonnaise. Moreover, their website had been updated to refer to these products as “mayonnaise dressing.” More telling was the fact that customer comments on Unilever’s website were being removed, edited, and then reappearing with the words “mayonnaise dressing” when referring to those products. Unilever defended the changes made to their website by claiming that they were only bringing it up to the standards that they were demanding from Just Mayo. It was suspicious, however, that they had not instituted those changes before initiating their lawsuit. Just over a year after they filed suit, Unilever dropped their claims against Hampton Creek under the pretense that Hampton Creek could simply continue to work on resolving labeling issues with regulators.

Within a year, Just Mayo was becoming so successful that it caught the attention of Unilever, a giant in the food world and maker of Hellman’s brand mayonnaise. Fearing for its market share, Unilever initiated a lawsuit against Hampton Creek, claiming that their product was misleading consumers by pretending to be mayonnaise when, it was alleged, Just Mayo was clearly something else. The lawsuit accused Hampton Creek of false advertising and stealing away Hellmans’ market share. Considering that the product had only recently begun appearing in Whole Foods locations, Unilever must have been very concerned about these trendsetting market disruptors! While the lawsuit was still ongoing, Josh Tetrick and others noticed that changes were suddenly occurring on Unilever’s websites. As it turned out, Unilever, itself, was selling several types of spreads

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Today, Josh Tetrick barely remembers the Unilever lawsuit. He is still running the growing company, which has also developed egg-free cookie dough and egg-free cookies. In 2014, jars of Just Mayo began appearing in Whole Foods. Now, only a year later, they can be found, not only at independent grocery stores across the country, but also at major chains including Safeway, Walmart, Target and Costco. With more investment coming into the company, Hampton Creek hopes to increase production and invent more egg-free products that will be less expensive, healthier and better for the environment. The technology which can replace eggs with plantbased formulas finally exists. With Josh Tetrick at the helm of Hampton Creek, nothing can stop them from their mission of becoming the most trusted name in the food industry, making it easier for everyone to make smarter, healthier choices - for themselves, for the environment and for the safety, protection and welfare of 300 million extremely overworked hens and their offspring. VegWorld is honored to have had the opportunity to interview Josh Tetrick for our readers:

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

JOSH TETRICK INTERVIEW

Based on your Twitter feed, your dog Jake seems to be a big part of your life. Did you grow up with animals? I didn’t really grow up around animals. That’s why Jake is so special - he’s pretty much a brother. Did you always have an eye towards business, or was there a time that you thought you might become a professional athlete? As a kid I definitely had a vision of being a professional football player. I played football in high school and as a linebacker for West Virginia University. I didn’t seriously consider business or entrepreneurship until later. Prior to starting Hampton Creek, you spent 7 years in Africa. In what ways were you influenced by your time there? My work there continues to influence me every

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day. I worked on several projects there - with the United Nations in Kenya, with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on investment law reform in Liberia, and to help out kids in South Africa. It all looked impressive on paper and to the folks back home, but deep down, I knew that it wasn’t enough. At the end of the day, the impact was small, slow, and inefficient. This pushed me to find something really meaningful to put my energy toward, something big. This turned out to be the food system. What motivated you to start Hampton Creek? I looked at our food system and it just didn’t make any sense. More specifically, I thought about my dad. Like a lot of people, he doesn’t eat particularly well or make the best choices at the grocery store. He doesn’t stop to ponder animal welfare or carbon footprint or nutrition facts. He’s just going to buy whatever is cheap and tastes good. He is not a bad person, and I realized that the problem is not people like my dad and the choices they are

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

JOSH TETRICK INTERVIEW

every single time. Even if Grandma has used the same brand of mayo in her potato salad for 50 years there is an opportunity for positive change. Hampton Creek is all about creating more of that. Now it’s about way more than mayo. In November 2015, we launched a full line of new dressings and baking mixes through Compass Group, the biggest foodservice company in the world. This includes ranch dressing and balsamic vinaigrette, along with cakes, brownies, muffins, and pancakes. And there is a lot more ahead. What does conscious capitalism mean to you personally and why is it important?

making. The problem is a system where the easy options are bad for your health and for the environment. It motivates me to think about how companies like Hampton Creek can make it easy for people like my Dad do the right thing. I keep him in mind every time Hampton Creek puts a product on the shelf. How did you decide to focus on mayo as your first major product? We had to start somewhere. Starting with mayo was a simple, but powerful step. Mayo is one of the most popular condiments in America, so it allowed us to immediately have a big impact. At Hampton Creek, we try to work from common truths. One common truth is that folks will always put mayo on their sandwiches and that kids will always want a cookie in their lunchbox. Another common truth is that the food that is tastier, more sustainable, safer, and affordable will be the food that people choose,

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It means building an enterprise that strengthens and contributes to the planet, rather than weakening or depleting it. At Hampton Creek, it means creating a food system where everyone can access food that is aligned with their values. This notion of conscious capitalism is one that everyone can connect with - from liberals to conservatives, from a single mom in the mid-West to a millennial in Hong Kong. This philosophy is how we get on the shelves of Walmart and 7-Eleven, and is the foundation of our massive partnership with Compass group. Your products are vegan, and many vegans love them, but you don’t market them as vegan products. What was the reasoning behind that? We focus less on specific verticals in food and more on addressing our core question, “What would it look like if we started over?” In general, someone like my mom or my dad, or Average Joe in Birmingham are not going to spend a little more on a prod-

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

JOSH TETRICK INTERVIEW

uct or try a new brand because it is better for animals or the environment. It’s not because they don’t care. It’s because they are too busy, or too stressed, or too tight on cash. Food is an emotional thing that affects us all in different ways. We figure that if we build our company around simply making it easy and delicious for people to do the right thing, the conscious thing, then we’ll bring everyone in. This is the way we believe we can have the biggest impact.

and baking mixes, as well the other products in the pipeline - we’re poised to increase this impact exponentially. What advice would you give young entrepreneurs based on the lessons you’ve learned as a businessman so far?

Identify a system that doesn’t make sense and build something better. Put your mind and your energy Were you surprised that certain industries pertoward solving a real problem in this world. Also, ceived you as such a threat? selflessness can be profitable. You can build an awesome, successful business and make a meanNot at all. That said, we don’t necessarily want them ingful impact at the same time. It doesn’t have to be to see us as a threat. We want them to see us as an either/or. In doing so, be willing to ignore or break opportunity for collaboration and a shared vision. to the rules put down by people who don’t necessarily know any better. Focus on your own vision. When you encountered obstacles (such as the Unilever lawsuit) was there a specific philosophy that What are your plans for the future? helped you to surmount them? Our plan as a company is to have a bigger posiThe public support we’ve received has been incred- tive impact on the planet than any company ever. ible. At the time of the Unilever lawsuit alone we got We want to be the biggest and most trusted name hundreds of thousands of responses and we contin- in food. Food is Hampton Creek’s first platform for ue to get messages from moms, grandparents, kids, change, but eventually we’d like to bring the quesand entrepreneurs who are inspired by what we’re tion “what would it look like it we started over?” to doing. Hearing those stories is what keeps us going, every industry and system. Right now we have team because it reminds us of exactly why we started this members in Monrovia, Liberia applying this question thing. This in addition to the support of our rock star to the education system and entrepreneurship by investors and advisors, it’s easy to see past the obbuilding a “Just School.” We are also putting a lot of stacles and feel really good about what we’re doing. energy into policy change in DC to accelerate positive progress. What is your proudest accomplishment so far with Hampton Creek? We are insanely proud of the impact we’ve had so far - on the environment, on health, on animal welfare. To give you an idea, we calculate our environmental impact for 2015 to be 2 billion gallons of water saved, 122 million square feet of land preserved, and more than 7 billion kilograms of CO2 emissions prevented. And that’s just through mayo and cookies. With the launch of our dressings

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

AMAZING TRANSFORMATIONS

MY PLANT BASED JOURNEY FROM FAT & FRUSTRATED TO FREEDOM by Lani Muelrath & Photos by LUMI Photography

he transformational qualities of plant-based living are so profound and unfold on so many levels it’s hard – for me, anyway - to pinpoint just one of them as “the” transformational story. Once you go healthy vegan, you transform and benefit your relationship with not just your health and your weight, but also the animals and all other living creatures, and Earth and her precious resources. Some of these benefits are immediate. Some take a little more time, such as weight loss and sustaining a healthy weight. Yet it’s this benefit – the ease of achieving and

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maintaining your ideal weight – that draw so many into the whole-plants-are-your-food fold in the first place. It certainly has been a tremendously important draw for me. So though to me “transformation” is a topic with extensive reach, in the interests of space I’ll focus here on weight. I could just talk about the food and diet here and perhaps it would be all the information you need. Yet it wouldn’t be true to the full story of my success. So I color in the bigger picture for you if you, like me, have the experience that there is more than simply “Here’s the food problem: Here’s the food solution”.

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Sustained 50 pound weight loss I now weigh fifty pounds less than I did 18 years ago at my top weight of 189.5. Mine has been a journey perhaps not unlike your own. My story has a few interesting twists and I tell it in full transparency to offer hope. The trail of my long and colorful diet history is littered with dog-eared diet books, stacks of journals, plenty of excess poundage, and as those of us with a ‘weight problem’ well know, lots of white-knuckle hunger, tears, and hair-tearing. I’ve been on the plant-based journey for 42 years. A good twenty five of those years, and for several years prior, I struggled with my weight. Despite multiple attempts and a variety of vegetarian diet schemes for weight loss that gave me intermitVegWorld Magazine

tent short - term success and frequent long-term failure, I kept trying. I dare you to top my listing of attempts. Important to the story, but beside the point. Through all those years of hit and miss, there prevailed within me two underlying convictions: #1) My hunger signals couldn’t be wrong or faulty. I figured that something is wrong with the system not my body - if I needed to count, weigh or measure everything. Something’s wrong with the system if I have to addle my brain with counting 1.73 grams of protein to 2.426 grams of carbohydrate, or any other livingyour-life-as-a-lab system. Wrong with the system not my body. Issue 31 - January 2016 |

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#2) There must be a way to eat that would allow me to use hunger and fullness signals as my guide I’d see the squirrels and deer grazing in the woods outside our door and they weren’t counting or measuring anything. And they weren’t fat, either. And it’s not because they didn’t have enough to eat. What had they figured out, without thinking, that I hadn’t? Sure, I knew about calories and most of my diet incarnations had some sort of calorie counting component. I could manage my weight with portions and counting. For awhile. But it was hard. And I was hungry.

Hitting Bottom Finally, decades of frustration had me wanting, more than anything, a healthy, happy relationship with food, eating and my body. I knew that knocking on the diet door once again in the fashion that I had been was no longer possible. And at my core I maintained that all I had to do was tune in, listen to my fuel signals, and eat quality food until I had enough. The only rules I had at this point were 1) eat when hungry until I wasn’t anymore, and 2) eat quality,

real food. It made sense, it satisfied hunger, and it broke me from the enervating cycle of dieting.

Letting Go Letting go of other ‘controls’ around food - micromanagement in the form of counting, weighing, measuring, exchanges, ad nauseum - was both a relief and very anxiety producing. Especially as –initially, anyway - I gained some weight. This was not without its challenges since as a college professor, fitness trainer and physical educator I was in front of people teaching health and exercise classes and lecturing all the time. It’s important to mention here, though the focus here is on the food, that this is where a mindfulness practice and cultivating some degree of mastery over practices of thinking provided the key for change – an entire story in itself. More ahead. Intuitively, though, I knew I was on the right track. Refer to “underlying convictions” #1 and #2 above. And the proliferation of plant-based literature with regards to health and weight loss provided an unshakeable mountain of evidence that invited me to press on. I saw no other livable alternative.

Redefining ‘quality’ food Knowing what I know now, initial gain as I experienced it was not necessary. I know because I have coached thousands of others in eating according to appetite to steadily lose weight and become leaner with the same principles that I implemented. Now, I have a different view of what ‘quality’ food is. Though eating a vegetarian diet free of meat, fish, chicken, and eggs, and avoiding processed foods as they were not considered ‘quality’ in my approach at the time, dairy products and vegetable oils were. Moderate fat intake at about 20% - 25% of daily calories was the standard I aimed for. Still, I gained that weight.

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I was eating according to hunger and fullness signals, true to my ideal. Was it perhaps that something was still wrong with the food, not my body? The fact that my body stored fat more readily than someone else’s was not a design flaw, it was a genetic survival plus. As my overall eating patterns and food quality improved, my weight plateaued. And then, slowly yet steadily, my weight started to drop in direct relation to 1) eating higher quality, whole food and excluding dairy products and 2) avoiding incessant under eating in my attempts to lost weight.

Critical for Success: Mindset Tools It was also during this time and through this process that I developed and deeply utilized the tools for mindset mastery that are fundamental to my personal and coaching practice. When one goes through the tremendous transformation such as I am sharing with you, it is not without just as much attention to mindset and mastery of psychology as to food plan and exercise. Without the inner shifts the other two legs of what I call the three pillars of transformation – the food, the fitness, and the frame of mind - are temporary and at best superficial. You have to keep in mind what you are looking for. Yes, a slim and energetic, healthy body, yet also productivity, fulfillment, and happiness. Our fitness and energy are a part of the bigger picture of our lives. Our bodies are the tools through which we experience our lives in fulfilling our passion of purpose, contribution, livelihood, avocations, and just plain joy of existence. We can all easily create a list of activities, contributions, and obligations, for which we are best equipped to fulfill when fit, healthy and energetic. Don’t discount the value of this, or excuse it away.

My McDougall Diet Failure Back to the food. Long before this change of events nearly twenty years ago, I had purchased

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a copy of the McDougall Plan. This was at about the same time that it came out in 1983. It had appealed to my ‘eat when hungry until you’re not’ vision and I eagerly jumped in. I lasted a few days, got hungry, and abandoned it. I tried the McDougall approach again a few years later, drawn by the sense and promise of it - eat according to appetite and be your natural thin weight - and ‘lasted’ only a few days once more. What finally made it all come together for me was actually meeting and spending a day with Dr. McDougall. I had been invited to attend an all-day physician’s seminar where Dr. McDougall took the stage for hours on end, presenting documentation, graphs, slides, images - you name it - in front of a roomful of cardiologists. Dr. McDougall’s patience, clarity, and ability to make everything seem so common sense had a disarming affect on the cardiologist crowd. And it drove home to me points I’d heard before. Yet I realized I hadn’t quite gotten the full message until that day. I left that seminar with a deeper understanding of how oils and dairy products were no doubt in the way of my progress. Yet the biggest moments of enlightenment had to do with the importance of starches. I realized that as much as I was intellectually convinced about the wisdom of the McDougall lessons on starches and satiety and what a good match it was for my ideals, the reason I failed initially is because I was holding back on the brown rice, potatoes, yams, and their friends in a way that was sabotaging my success. Though I professed to have given up carbophobia long before, there was still some residual influence that was hampering my progress. I was doing great with the vegetables. Mountains of them. But the persistent hunger that drove me to abandon the McDougall diet in my earlier attempts occurred because I wasn’t respecting enough the dietary bulk factor that would be necessary to

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realize my goal. Bulk is a huge part of satiety, and is a function of weight and fiber in the gut. Lack of enough of it is one of the big reasons that most diets fail. In my previous McDougall diet incarnations, I did fine on the fiber with all the high water content vegetables. But that wasn’t giving the stretch and fullness receptors in my system the right message to switch off the ‘hunger’ signal and switch on the ‘full’ switch. That takes a higher amount of calorie density teamed with bulk. That’s what the potatoes, brown rice, etc do. They affect the amount of calorie concentration, teamed with bulk and fiber, in any given food. Potatoes just happen to be the perfect combination of fiber, water, and calorie density to bring you into the ‘just right’ satiety zone. Starchy vegetables. Intact whole grains do it too. Paired up with the high water content vegetables and fruits, you have the recipe for weight-loss-without-hunger success.

Success: Freely eating creates eating freedom With my very next meal after leaving that physi-

cian’s seminar, I piled on the brown rice and potatoes with my vegetables, and eliminated oils and dairy. The fanciest I got with portions was to fill half my dinner plate with rice or potatoes and the other half with steamed vegetables using the eyeball method. This allowed me to eat according to appetite. I even ate good grainy bread every day of my fifty pound weight loss. My rules of eating, as had been my ideal, now allowed me to stay slim: Eat when hungry, ‘til you’re not. I call it just being a good animal. Every day, I am thrilled to walk into my kitchen with the happy knowledge that I have mountains of beautiful, delicious foods to choose from, and which I can eat to my heart’s content until I am full. I know now from years of experience now that this will keep me trim. The confident joy of staying slim while eating this way never diminishes. I never get tired of being able to buy cartfuls of whole foods wherever our adventures happen to take us in the world adventure and cook in the same way with the same result. I never get tired of the fact that when you get the food right, the fitness is so much simpler. It is a wonderful way to live.

People ask me how they should eat to lose weight so I tell them exactly how I eat. Usually they ask me more than once, because I don’t think they quite believe me. I look at it this way. By day’s end, if I were to take all of the food I ate that day and put it on a big tray, half of it would be piled with starchy veggies and whole grains and the other half with high water-content vegetables. There would be a couple of generous scoops of beans and a few pieces of fruit on top. A sprinkling of nuts or seeds. Over the course of weeks, there would be some festive feast meals thrown in.

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It’s a good summation of my food each day, give or take. A no-brainer. It’s not a religion, it’s a guiding set of simple principles. Breakfast is usually a big steamy bowl of whole grains and fruits with seeds or nuts and whole grain toast. Lunch is a hearty bowl of soup with starchy vegetables and/or whole grains, legumes, carrots, onions, mushrooms, and dark greens, or a large mixed salad - often with a sandwich on wholegrain bread. Dinner is a mountain of rice or potatoes or pasta, another robust serving of savory cooked vegetables and or salad. I call it my big plate trick for staying trim. Somewhere along the course of the day, I’ll have another fruit or two. If some days I’m hungrier, I don’t think twice about eating an extra big bowl of rice, second serving of potatoes, or grabbing a couple of chunks of good grainy bread. That’s not what makes us fat. But until we really get it about being well fed on those foods, with the ability to ring our happy satiety bells, we’ll struggle with our hunger and quite likely our weight. It’s that simple. VegWorld Magazine

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FIVE FAST WAYS TO PLANTIFY YOUR PLATE

About the Author Lani Muelrath, M.A., is an award-winning teacher, author, and top plant-based vegan lifestyle coach. Certified Specialist in Behavior Change and Plant-Based Nutrition, Lani has been featured on CBS TV, ABC TV, Prevention, USA Today, Forks Over Knives, and The Saturday Evening Post. Presenter for Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine, Complete Health Improvement Program, and guest lecturer at San Francisco State University, Lani is Associate Faculty at Butte College where her book has been adopted as required text. She is the author of The Plant-Based Journey: A Step-byStep Guide to Transition to a Healthy Lifestyle and Achieving Your Ideal Weight, recognized by VegNews as Top Media Pick for 2015, and Fit Quickies: 5 Minute Workouts. More from Lani at www.lanimuelrath.com. http://facebook.com/ lanimuelrath, https://twitter.com/LaniMuelrath, https://www.instagram.com/lani.muelrath/

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AMAZING TRANSFORMATIONS

AARON’S JOURNEY

‘‘M

y vegan journey all started almost 5 years ago. I was overweight and sick and always short of breath. I never wanted to do anything before work or after. I was always tired and my energy level was very low. It wasn’t until one day when my kids asked me to play outside with them that I realized that this was not the way I wanted my life to go. I didn’t want to be overweight and unhealthy. I didn’t want to always be telling my kids no when they asked to play outside. I didn’t want my life to be cut short because of unhealthy choices and the thought of

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not being involved in my children’s lives for as long as possible killed me. My wife was a huge supporter in this change and we did the transition together. Actually, my whole family did the switch together. My wife and I leaned on each other for support and would research foods to get an understanding of what was good and what was bad. It almost became a game of ‘can you believe what this has in it?!’ and finding what foods replaced others for the better. We started with picking healthy and fresh plant based

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meals and educating ourselves on nutrients and minerals and how they help fuel our bodies. I had some understanding of how food helped the body but I had no idea that it could be so powerful and work so fast. Cutting out alcohol definitely helped as well. After about a month of eating healthy and adding some exercise, I was feeling really good and my family was also feeling good. My kids were full of energy and so was I. One of the first things I noticed was my breathing. The full big breaths of air felt amazing. After my second month I was running and doing a lot of interval training and sprints and other forms of exercise that I was never really good at before and I was starting to really enjoy it. I was eating clean and healthy meals every day. Never missing a meal and sticking to the plan. I was exercising 5 times a week and sticking to it. The more I did the more I wanted to push myself. After about 6 months I noticed my body healing itself. I felt brand new. I had muscles that you could see and were stronger than ever. My daughter, who had been diagnosed with asthma, was no longer

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using her puffers and hasn’t used one since. We thought, is this real??!! Is this actually happening?! My wife and I were amazed and so proud we found a way to save her from a lifetime of inhaling steroids just to breathe. The feeling I get now, when my kids ask me to go outside and play in the forest until they are wiped out, but I could stay out there for hours more. It is the best feeling in the world. I always have time for them and join them in all their activities. I often have people ask me for training and nutrition advice and I am more than willing to share everything I have learned. It really is humbling. I started posting pictures of my meals on Facebook and was so overwhelmed with the positive response and number of recipe requests that I started my own face book recipe page, ‘vegan bodybuilding recipe and quick fixes cookbook page’. To achieve all of this personal health success, to know that every day we are saving so many animals from unnecessary torture and death all while leaving the environment a little better makes me so proud to say we are a vegan family and will be for life.”

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THE NEW AND IMPROVED ME

he China Study started my journey in June 2011, and after watching Forks Over Knives, I followed Dr. Esselstyn’s program to become heart attack proof. I dropped 15 lbs easily and stabilized at 135. I maintained that so easily without regular exercise that I started to become complacent. I remained vegan throughout but started to add back in oil – by eating out a lot more, having pita chips and humus or tortilla chips and salsa as a regular snack. It seemed harmless but before I knew it, I wasn’t following Dr. E’s program much at all – I was just a vegan that trended toward healthy.

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After a healthy pregnancy and the first year of my daughter’s life, it was time to reevaluate why I hadn’t yet returned to my ideal body weight (I hovered around 150 and thought 140 was more reasonable for my body frame and type). I had to admit that I had strayed farther from the whole foods plant-based diet than I intended to. I wouldn’t be able to sustain that pattern for the long haul. I also related to something my Dad had recently admitted about himself (and it’s true of so many of us) – “I can’t just cheat a little.” If I have a bite of a cookie (cake, muffin, chips, chocolate, you name it), I’m going to end up eating half the bag. It might

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not be all in one sitting, but I’d wrap up the bag and put it away and take it out again 5 more times before I would actually quit! It frustrated me that I could know what’s good for me and yet I repeatedly made poor decisions. I was familiar with Chef AJ’s work through her book Unprocessed, and I had a hunch she could help. When I had my phone consult with Chef AJ on Jan 3, 2015 and I told her I wanted to lose the last 10-15 lbs of my baby weight, she warned me progress might be slow. That ‘last 10 lbs’ seems to be the hardest for everyone. She reminded me that this program was not so much about moving numbers on the scale as it was about balancing my brain chemistry. It was about eating plant foods in their whole natural form in order to escape the pull of the Pleasure Trap. It was about embracing the realities of being addicted to certain food and celebrating that there’s a solution. All I had to do was follow a very specific program, diligently, to achieve optimum health. Losing the baby weight would be a bonus. It became apparent that I was battling an addiction to processed foods. I completely understood her analogy that you wouldn’t expect an alcoholic to just drink less, or to just switch to a different kind of alcohol and carry on. In the same way, I needed to abstain from the foods that were causing my cravings and overeating. Sugar and flour were my biggest culprits, so I eliminated those immediately. (I was already off animal products and mostly off alcohol already). In February 2015 I joined Chef AJ and John Pierre’s 21 Day Challenge, a group of people all starting the Ultimate Weight Loss Program at the same time. It was at that time that I became completely compliant with their program. For the next 21 days I committed to do everything I was told. (The food, the movement,

the mental, and the supportive social aspects). I tend to prefer ripping the band-aid off fast, and it just made sense for me to jump in with both feet. I’m thrilled to say that the UWL program works. I got through withdrawal from junk foods in a few days and the full 21 days gave me enough time to neuroadapt to the taste of real food again so that I thoroughly enjoy everything that I eat. It balanced my brain, improved all of my blood work results, and it moved that scale way more than I ever thought possible. When I focused on improving health and filling myself up with the right food, my body found its own ideal weight – Now a size 0 at 125 lbs!

After 2 1/2 months I took a tally on my results. Here’s a snapshot: Weight – Total loss of 25 lbs (then stabilized) Body fat – Dropped from 30% to 22% Inches – Lost 6’’ off my waist Cholesterol – 152 (my all time low) Triglycerides – 68 (also an all time low) Blood Pressure – 110/70 (A decrease of >30 points since my pre-vegan days)

The 21 day challenge ended long ago yet my new lifestyle remains. I have felt the best I have ever felt, and I have no desire to go back to my old ways. I am full of energy, have a more positive outlook in general, and feel a renewed sense of vitality. It helps me to have big goals to focus on, so I recently decided to start training for my first half marathon. Note that I didn’t run to lose weight. I lost weight and now I like to run! I sincerely wish this feeling on everyone I know!

About the Author You can learn more about Christin and continue to follow her inspirational journey online by visiting her blog, Beans Not Bambi. http://beansnotbambi.com

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CRITICAL CARE NURSE

ON A MISSION

y name is Ginette and I am celebrating 30 years at bedside in 2016. In 2004, I suffered a near fatal adverse drug reaction to a prescription medication. It changed my world forever. It took me on a journey that was difficult and life-changing . It led me to today where I now enjoy the health that everyone deserves. The first few years after this event, I suffered greatly from depression and anxiety and I ate my way through it. I arrived at a point in which I saw the end of my life creeping towards me. I gained the most weight I have ever weighed and started to suffer again from debilitating illnesses. I again sought out the advice of doctors but the one that led me to a new healthy me without prescriptions was Dr Colin Campbell. One book! One message! The China Study. I read it very quickly and changed what I ate. In one week, my ailments were arrested. The weight started coming off and I was on a new path to health. I devoured every book on the subject of a Whole Food Plant-based way of life. Dr. John McDougall is also a pioneer in this subject. I attended his Dr McDougall’s advanced study weekends in Santa Rosa. I obtained my Certificate in Plant-based Nutrition through Dr. Campbell’s program at Cornell University. I recently became a Food For Life Instructor with Physicians Committee and Dr. Neal Bernard’s program ( PCRM). What I went through was a terrible and frightening experience. The only good is that it has led me to where I stand today - the healthiest I have been in my entire life. No more suffering from depression or arthritis. No aches or pains after being a bedside VegWorld Magazine

nurse all these years. I even took up interval running this year. Something I never would have imagined I would have been able to do. I’m also able to work my shifts six days in a row. twelve hours each day (whereas before my limit was only 2 days and I was exhausted). I have energy, clarity and enthusiasm for life. These are the results of this empowering way of eating. I see the ramifications of the Standard American Diet (SAD) every day at work. I chose not to be complacent and to expect, as I get older, that this would be is the norm. Not for me! I am here today to say it like it is...food heals... whole foods that is. Thanks to Chef AJ, I have taken my health to a new level. And I am passionate about spreading the truth about what I have learned. Food is the Medicine - That is what I want to bring you. Not the ones in pill form. Now I’m not a young person telling you like it is. I am 64 and I’m investing in my Health Care Plan with no Deductible one bite at a time. Issue 31 - January 2016 |

AMAZING TRANSFORMATIONS

LISA & BRIAN

y husband, Brian, and I were both obese, suffered from hypertension and hypercholesterolemia. I was diabetic and my husband had metabolic syndrome. I have severe degenerative osteoarthritis and my husband is disabled from a back injury he suffered during an electrocution. He also has COPD lung disease from his days as a smoker. We were dabbling with dietary changes and not having any success. We read and followed Wheat Belly. I joined and failed Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig. Last November, I had ankle surgery, and was home watching documentaries on Netflix…Fat Sick and Nearly Dead led us to try juicing for three days…it was unsustainable. On 2/4/15 we made the plunge and adopted a whole food, plant-based diet after watching Forks over Knives. We follow Dr. McDougall’s starch solution plan 95% of the time with a restaurant excursion every few weeks to keep us sane. We both have normalized

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our lab values…are both off blood pressure and cholesterol medications...and my husband is off steroids. My level of pain to my left ankle has improved. We both have more energy. My husband has reached his goal weight of 150 lbs. He has lost a total of 52 lbs since February. I started out at 212 lbs and I am still losing weight. I currently weigh 154 lbs. Neither one of us is vegan. I come from a family that hunts and goes fishing. I was addicted to cheese and bacon. This has been the easiest dietary change I have ever made. I have no desire to go back to eating SAD foods. I have attached two pictures for you, the first one is us exactly one year ago in September 2014 and the second photo was taken September 2015. Plant strong!

Lisa Kuprian Issue 31 - January 2016 |

AMAZING TRANSFORMATIONS

PHIL GREEN’S STORY

had been overweight or obese for all of my adult life. I had been a yo-yo dieter for many years. I tried a bunch of them, including Atkins, but I always gained the weight back plus some more. I loved hot wings, more hot wings, cheeseburgers, pizzas, and Coca Cola. I always said “yes” when asked, “Do you want that super-sized?”.

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Somewhere in those years leading up to February 2013, I had just stopped trying. I had been diagnosed with fatty liver and high cholesterol and was given medication which I never took. I had sleep apnea and was issued a Bi-Pap machine to sleep with a mask on my face. Several years in a row I would get my blood drawn at my jobs’ Health

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Fair. When I would get my results in the mail, I would be so mad, scared and embarrassed that I would throw it away and not tell anyone. My cholesterol, glucose, triglycerides and blood pressure would always be high or elevated. The highest I saw my triglycerides was over 500 mg/dL. I also had intense chest pain usually at night as I lay next to my wife, praying that God would take care of her and my boys if I didn’t wake up. Plus, on top

In February 2013, I was a few months from turning

of all that, I had a few failures in the bedroom. This

not die from another event, I would likely suffer

really stressed me out, because my wife felt it was

from dementia. She told me all this not knowing that over the last 10 years, I had watched my parents get all of these in the same order she had listed them off to me.

because of her and that I wasn’t attracted to her anymore. That really hurt me knowing it was hurting her. I could see my health was starting to affect

41 years old and weighed 279lbs. My wife sets up a physical for me. The doctor told me I had the markers for Metabolic Syndrome. She said I had hypertension (162/100 that day), elevated glucose (pre-diabetic), high cholesterol, and high triglycerides. She said that someday I WOULD have a heart attack from which I would die or have a major procedure. If I lived through that and did

more than just me.

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I knew exactly what I was headed for. I had seen the template unfold before my eyes for years. And, for years, I had hated doctors and their pill pushing. Every time my dad went to the doctor, they upped the dosage of one of his current meds or gave him a prescription for another pill. He took so many pills but never got better and my mom was not far behind him.

quality to my life and to my body and mind - not foods that attack my body and makes me sick. I eat very simple meals like beans, rice, corn, squash, greens, water or veggie broth stir “fried” vegetables, baked potatoes, and lots of fruit.

Now at 43 years old, my blood pressure is great, my cholesterol is below 150, my triglycerides are excellent. I take no medication. I weigh 165lbs, which is But a pill was not what I was prescribed. I was given over 110lbs lost. I don’t snore anymore, I don’t have an instruction sheet which included eating a whole to sleep with a machine because I don’t have sleep grain vegetarian diet, avoiding all processed foods apnea anymore. My wife now knows it really was and drinks, and to exercise. my health problems back then and had nothing to do with her. All systems are in great working order. I knew I had to do it for my wife and young sons. I I can also get out more and play with the kids. I couldn’t let myself die and leave them. I didn’t want don’t have chest pains, I have more energy and I to burden them with years of illness, going in and feel awesome. out of hospitals, wondering if I’m going to make it through the night. This is what we lived through I have now run a couple of 5K’s. I love this lifestyle around ten years or so with my dad. and what it has done for me. I really hope someday I may be able to help influence, teach, or coach So, I thought about it and I started the next weekothers into good health and a better quality of life. end. I ate mainly fruits and veggies with a limited It is good for my health, good for the animals, and amount of milk and cheese and no processed good for the planet. I feel like I have a deeper unfoods, but I also ate sardines twice a week because derstanding and compassion for my own life and all I thought I needed the Omega 3. Three months lives. I also want to thank all those doctors out there later in May, I went back for a follow up and my who are working so diligently against the norm blood work was all in the normal range or a couple because they believe in healing their patients not of points away from normal! I kept this up until Sepjust treating the symptoms. If my doctor had not tember 2013. That is when I watched Fat, Sick and pointed me close to the right direction, I’m not sure Nearly Dead one night and THEN I watched Forks what kind of condition I would be in or if I’d still be Over Knives the next night. I then cut out all meat, here at all. dairy, oils and never looked back. I started researching and watching hours of videos featuring whole food plant-based heroes like doctors Esselstyn, Campbell, McDougall, Greger, Novick, Barnard, etc. and watching Netflix documentaries like a fiend. Food Matters, Hungry for Change, Veducated, etc. I’ve learned a lot. Now I eat so much great food that I know heals and adds

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AMAZING TRANSFORMATIONS

SHAYDA SHOCKS HER DOC

ack in 1997, a very prominent doctor who specialized in internal medicine, weight management and metabolism disorder, told me the following: “It would take Herculean efforts for you to ever lose weight and to maintain that weight loss.” Well, needless to say, that did a number on me mentally, physically and emotionally. Since my late 20’s I have tried every diet that was out there. Always losing the weight, but always gaining it back and then some. It wasn’t until my late forties that I hit my highest weight which was 240 pounds and started feeling really bad about myself. My cholesterol, at its highest, was over 400 and my triglycerides well over 700. I was prediabetic and was on medication for cholesterol, triglycerides, diabetes, etc. They had also said that I had metabolic disorder, insulin resistance and Syndrome X to name a few. When I turned 50, I had back surgery and the doctor had told me that I needed to get the weight off if I wanted my back to be healthy. I thought I was eating healthy but I was VegWorld Magazine

the classic junk food vegan. After all French fries, diet coke, bags of nuts and dried fruit are vegan, right? They say that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear! And that was so true for me. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I had hit rock bottom, and I didn’t want to continue living like this anymore. Something had to change. I remember visiting my mom one day, and when I arrived at her home, she was listening to a guy named Dr. Joel Fuhrman on his PBS special. I started liking what he was saying and started looked him up on my computer. I found out that he was having a retreat in Utah for seven days! My mother and I both went and we met some wonderful people and really enjoyed our trip. I knew I had stumbled onto something great. Plantbased eating made sense to me. My next health retreat was at an event called, Healthy Lifestyle Issue 31 - January 2016 |

AMAZING TRANSFORMATIONS

Expo. During that weekend, I heard about Chef AJ. I signed up for her whole food class as well. When I met Chef AJ, I knew in my heart that I had found the person who was going to change my life. I loved her energy and her food tasted out of this world. At this event, I also met John Pierre. He got me in gear with exercise and saved me from having to endure a painful surgery on my ankle. He was absolutely amazing. I had no idea how I was going to exercise, but leave it to John Pierre! Twice a week he came to my apartment. I never thought that sitting in a chair I could get such a workout. OMG!! There were no more excuses.

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We not only worked out, but he also worked on my head. He never talked to me about how much weight to lose. He kept talking about getting healthy. The other thing that he did, was to throw my scale behind my couch where I could not get to it. He always says that only a fish needs scales! I was addicted to it, and like most people I let the scale determine my mood, which was stupid. For years, I had been told that I should avoid eating bananas, rice, potatoes, beans, mangoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s etc. Now, I was being told to go right ahead and carb up! And there was no restrictions, What?? Eat

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AMAZING TRANSFORMATIONS

till I’m satisfied?? I would be crazy to give this up. My weight was moving downward. I had never felt better. I was very determined, and wanted to succeed so badly! I wanted to be healthy more than anything else. I did everything Chef AJ and John Pierre told me to do. I worked the program the way they said to do it, not my version of what the program should be. You need to be 100% focused! Some of my favorite meals became steamed greens in the morning, balsamic Dijon roasted Brussels sprouts, large salads, nutrient black bean soup, the stuffed potato meal and mushroom chili to name just a few. I truly believe that you need to immerse yourself completely and always continue to learn and grow. Keeping it simple is key to weight loss and also for maintenance. I also went to the Mc Dougall 10 Day program toward the end of the year. When I went there, Dr. McDougall took me off all my meds. He even taught me how to handle my own doctor. Four months after leaving Dr. Mc Dougall, mom and I went to visit our doctor. When he came in, he was very happy. He said he was very pleased by my numbers and that the higher dose meds were helping me. He was also pleased that my weight had come down.

“I truly believe that you need to immerse yourself completely and always continue to learn and grow. Keeping it simple is key to weight loss and also for maintenance.” VegWorld Magazine

Well I was about to throw him a curve ball. I said, Doc, I have something to tell you….I stopped taking my meds four months ago. He was shocked!! I said let’s sit and talk. I explained to him that the meds he gave me helped to make my numbers look better. But if I ate whole unprocessed foods, it can create miracles and I wouldn’t have to take any meds. He asked what I was eating. My mom said, potatoes!! Well, I thought his neck was going to snap. You can’t have potatoes, he said. Why, I asked? He said you’re pre diabetic. So I asked how’s my A1C? My CRP? My glucose, cholesterol, triglycerides? He said everything was down. My glucose was perfect! He could not believe it. He sat back in his chair and asked to hear more. So I began to explain everything to him. That began a whole new journey….for my doctor!! It has now been 4 years since I started this way of eating. As John Pierre had promised, I never had to have the surgery on my ankle, as everything healed. I am completely off all my meds and I have lost 100 lbs. I have gone from a size 1x to a size 6 sometimes a 4, and I have never felt better in my life. My weight continues to come down. The best news? My doctor and his family are now eating a whole foods plant based diet, SOS (sugar, oil, salt) free, and he is teaching this to his heart patients as well!! I truly believe we must educate our own doctors, and we must take control of our own health. Every chance I get I pass these great books to doctors, nurses, friends, etc. Whoever I can get my hands on. I owe a debt of gratitude to Chef AJ and John Pierre. I couldn’t have done it without them. Four years later, I still take classes. I still immerse myself in their program and I hang around like minded people. It’s the first time in my life that I have not gained my weight back and it’s still coming down. Thank you Chef AJ and John Pierre for saving my life!

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

NUTRITION & THRIVING

Medicine Well Woman Way Mind & Body The Power of Motion

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

MEDICINE

THE HEALTH CARE OF THE

FUTURE IS NOW! by Robin D. Everson

magine a world where going to the doctor is a pleasant experience.

You have a health care team whose sole purpose is to help you be the healthiest you can be. Whether you need a physical or if you suffer from chronic illnesses such as arthritis, diabetes, a heart condition, hypertension/high blood pressure, high cholesterol, memory problems, migraines, and weight issues, your team of medical experts will help you by creating an action plan specifically designed to guide you toward good health. Your health care team will empower you with the tools you need to succeed at your health goals. Using the state-of-the-art diagnostic testing, education on good nutrition and the latest in medical information, you will have the opportunity to be the you that you have always wanted to be â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a healthier you.

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MEDICINE

You might think this is the healthcare system of the future. It is not. It is the healthcare system of now. The Barnard Medical Center opens its doors Jan. 5, 2016 in Washington, DC. Lead by Dr. Neal D. Barnard, researcher, president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and George Washington University School of Medicine adjunct associate professor, the Barnard Medical Center is setting the standard for primary and preventative health care. “For nutrition-related conditions, like weight issues, diabetes, or cholesterol problems, we will help patients make powerful diet changes and to sustain them into the future. And even for patients who come in with a twisted ankle or a cough, we’ll let them know that we are here to help them maximize their nutrition. All doctors know that they should be helping patients with nutrition. Now we will have a medical center that actually does it,” said Barnard. • • • •

Compassionate Healthcare Cutting-edge Medical Treatment Nutrition Education Personalized Health Plan

The Barnard Medical Center is located at 5100 Wisconsin Ave., Ste. 401, Washington, DC 20016. For more information go to the Barnard Medical Center website

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

MEDICINE

WHAT ARE THE

HEALTHIEST FOODS?

ased on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which foods best supply shortfall nutrients while avoiding disease-promoting components? “I feel like this should have been one of the first NutritionFacts.org videos! Sorry it’s taken me so long to just step back and offer some of the basics. I’ve always pictured my role as more of providing the latest science, but you can’t understand all the new discoveries without a good foundation. Let me know if you think I should do more of these

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nutrition 101 videos or leave that to others and just focus on the shiny and new,” said Dr. Michael Greger. How low should one try to push their intake of some of the food components to avoid? See Trans Fat, Saturated Fat, and Cholesterol: Tolerable Upper Intake of Zero, How Much Added Sugar Is Too Much? and for sodium, High Blood Pressure May Be a Choice. Surprised that trans fats weren’t limited to partially hydrogenated junk? Check out Trans Fat in Meat and Dairy.

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

WELL WOMAN WAY

WELL WOMAN WAY by Linda Carney MD

o you know somebody who experiences heavy monthly bleeding? Have you ever wondered what causes hormonal imbalances? Welcome to our new monthly column on Women’s Health, where we will discuss which foods can assist us in solving common health problems. But it won’t just be for women. Foods can be used to boost natural testosterone levels - for him as well as for her. (Good for the goose, good for the gander!) Much like lawn fertilizer, the estrogen hormone is a growth promoter. Not just the estrogen contained in pharmaceuticals, but also the natural (bioidentical!) estrogen we, ourselves, make in our own bodies, whether male or female. Animal foods promote excess estrogen production which, in turn, fosters heavy monthly bleeding. A whole-food, plant-based diet can prevent this. What are the eight pitfalls

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which contribute to excess estrogen production, causing heavy bleeding? Do I need a blood test to see if my body contains excess estrogen? Stay tuned! When the cells lining the uterus are exposed to excess estrogen, overgrowth occurs in the plush blood-lining of our endometrial cells. Monthly bleeding becomes heavier and more painful. This estrogen excess occurs at the cellular level and may not appear abnormal on a blood test. (Check out next month’s column to see why not!) Estrogens derived from the cholesterol in animal foods harm us by over-stimulating hormone production. An excess of estrogen can be created from the cholesterol molecule, which comes from animal foods such as meat, dairy, and eggs. Phytoestrogens contained in plants, on the other hand,

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WELL WOMAN WAY

(including those in whole unprocessed soybeans) have a beneficial effect. “Phyto” means plant, or, literally, “to grow”. Plant-estrogens act as a decoy, binding to estrogen receptors and preventing our own estrogen excess from harming us. Phytoestrogens reduce symptoms by covering our cells’ estrogen receptors, making the cell unavailable to circulating estrogen.1 Less estrogen affecting the cell? Less overgrowth of the uterine lining! Less bleeding! Less pain! A 2015 study reviewing dairy hormones clearly found that “estrogens are unavoidable hormones in non-vegetarian human nutrition.” In the Western diet, 60 to 70% of animal-derived estrogens come from dairy products.2 Way too much dairy, containing very high estrogen levels, is consumed on the Western diet. Modern dairy farmers milk pregnant cows. The estrogen content of cow’s milk increases from 15 pg/ml to a whopping 1,000 pg/ml during pregnancy, which is a high-estrogen state even for ORGANIC milk products. Worse still, the hormones in animal feed pass into humans via meat, eggs, and dairy products. Not only is monthly blood flow worsened by high amounts of estrogen circulating in our system, but the incidence of all

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cancers, particularly of the breast, uterus, and--for men--the prostate, increases too.3 Fortunately, we can eliminate excess estrogen IF we eat enough fiber from unprocessed plants. There is NO fiber in meat, dairy, eggs, oils, or most juices. As our liver filters blood, it removes excess estrogen, sending it down the bile duct, out into the small intestine, to bind with fiber from plantfoods. Like a sponge, fiber “carries” excess estrogen out with the stool. A Western diet is unlikely to bind estrogen to fiber 4, permitting re-absorption of estrogen into the bloodstream. Enterohepatic (entero = intestines; hepatic = liver) circulation allows excess estrogen to keep cycling through the body repeatedly, causing heavy monthly blood loss and increasing the risk of cancer. This continues until fiber sweeps estrogen out of the system. This is far less likely on the Standard American Diet, which is devoid of fiber. Therefore, flooding with excess estrogen is promoted by animal foods (having zero fiber) and processed foods (having very little). In future issues, we will discuss how all that extra estrogen lowers testosterone and decreases sex drive! As estrogen

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WELL WOMAN WAY

cycles repeatedly, our cells are continually bathed in excess estrogen, thickening the lining of the uterus and increasing the risk for bleeding or for cancer. After all, cancer is defined as out of control growth! Plant foods such as beans, vegetables, fruits, and whole grains fight cancer, in part by providing fiber to protect us from reabsorbing and retaining our excess estrogen. More about cancer in future issues, too. High estrogen levels suppress ovarian production of both estrogen and progesterone, which otherwise keep monthly flow lighter. If estrogen is lawn fertilizer, progesterone is lawn mower, keeping the endometrial “lawn” trimmed. A diet of plants encourages optimal estrogen levels, preserving a normal uterine lining. This lining, the endometrium, is shed each month….if progesterone is properly balanced instead of suppressed by excess estrogen. Diagrams in future issues will show just how similar these hormones look, chemically. Healthy menstrual blood contains factors that minimize clotting which, in turn, reduces menstrual pain. However, a thickened endometrium fosters more pain as large clots struggle to pass through the narrow uterine neck. Even worse, saturated animal fats in the diet are inflammatory, causing even more blood clots, thus increasing menstrual cramps.9 Excess estrogen also encourages the growth of uterine fibroids, benign tumors which can worsen pain or bleeding.

Instead of making its way out of the body, the freed estrogen is reabsorbed into the bloodstream.5 And third, when we eat fat, we may wear fat. Fat cells themselves produce estrogen.6 Therefore, just carrying too much body fat increases estrogen levels. Plant eaters tend to weigh less, especially if they minimize oil, chips, nuts, or coconut. Neal Barnard, MD has studied the effects of diet on painful periods. Thirty-three dysmenorrheic women (who regularly experienced monthly pain) compared the effect of a low-fat vegan diet during two menstrual cycles to their customary diet. While eating vegan, the women reported fewer days of pain and less intense pain with their periods. PMS symptoms also reduced significantly. Some women felt so much better on the vegan diet that they refused to return to their former way of eating.10 Share this study with those suffering cramps! Want more information about those eight ways to prevent excess estrogen? Join me here next month for more secrets I’m eager to share! Until then, eat that low-fat unprocessed plant-based diet and breeze through YOUR month.

Eating fat promotes body fat and this leads to excessive estrogen in three ways. First, the liver is forced to produce bile acids to digest these fats. The more fat we eat, the more bile is produced, entering our intestines. Without fiber, gut microflora overgrow, converting bile acids into estrogen. This estrogen then gets absorbed from intestine to bloodstream. Second, with a high-fat, low-fiber diet, intestinal microflora actually separate estrogen from the fiber to which it was bound. Oops!

VegWorld Magazine

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WELL WOMAN WAY

About the Author Linda Carney MD was Medical Director for the employees of Whole Foods Markets at Rip Esselstyn’s Engine 2 Immersions in Texas. She practices medicine near Austin, Texas and loves to share helpful science at www.DrCarney.com.

Article Citations: 1. http://www.pcrm.org/health/cancer-resources/ ask/ask-the-expert-soy 2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/ PMC4524299/ 3. https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2007nl/ mar/dairy.htm 4. http://www.andjrnl.org/article/S22122672(12)00131-1/abstract 5. https://www.drmcdougall.com/newsletter/july_ aug.99.1.html 6. https://www.drmcdougall.com/health/educa-

tion/health-science/common-health-problems/ hormone-dependent-diseases-male-female/ 7. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/ PMC3188939/ 8. http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/95/2/488.abstract 9. https://www.drmcdougall.com/health/education/health-science/common-health-problems/ hormone-dependent-diseases-male-female/ 10. http://www.pcrm.org/sites/default/files/ pdfs/health/medstudents/Diet%20and%20sexhormone%20binding%20globulin%20dysmenorrhea%20and%20premenstrual%20symptoms.pdf

About the Author Linda Carney MD served as Medical Director for the first 7 Immersions by Engine 2 under Rip Esselstyn. She practices medicine just south of Austin, TX and loves to share science at www.DrCarney.com

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

MIND & BODY

FIVE PODCAST EPISODES THAT JUST MIGHT CHANGE YOUR LIFE

guess I should start by fully disclosing that the bulk of my podcast-listening has been with a podcast called the Rich Roll Podcast (the RRP). And I would also like to disclose that I have been a guest on said podcast twice. I know there are other podcasts out there worthy of my time, and I’m sure I’m missing out on some gems yet undiscovered by myself, my brain, and my long run routes. However, of what I am familiar with, and have found to be

assets in my journey to health and transformation, I would like to share with you. I’d like to add that the Rich Roll Podcast has been an education for me. Not only has it taught me how and what to eat, but it has also introduced me to ideas about mindset and spirituality that have helped me through some rough times. And Rich continues to bring the goods with every upload.

These are 5 of the best, most informative, and, for me, transformative podcasts I’ve ever heard:

1.) RRP Episode 50 with Dr. Garth Davis

If you know my story, you know how big of a roll running has played in my lifestyle transformation. And as I reached for more in distance, I found myself out on my running routes for longer and longer stints, which really lent itself to podcast-listening. VegWorld Magazine

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MIND & BODY

Well, I had been listening to the RRP for a few weeks when I popped in my earbuds and set off on my very first 13 mile run. I’ll never forget that morning because it was raining sideways, it was going to be my longest run to date, and, I know now, I was about to learn of a very cool Dr. in Houston Texas (very close!) who would further drive my passion for wanting to understand more about this new plant-based diet I was implementing into my life. Dr. Davis is a bariatric surgeon, who had given his patients nutritional advice that, in retrospect, was not conducive to overall health and optimal weight in their lives post-op. Dr. Davis talks about how medical school education really failed him, in regard to nutrition, and how that lack of nutritional education effected not only his patients’ lives but his as well. He found himself—as a Dr. whose expertise is fixing obesity— overweight, “through the roof” cholesterol levels, and a young family for which he wanted to manifest his best, most authentic form. I remember so vividly running up St. Charles Ave. on this 13 mile jaunt, buying-in more and more to this new plant-based lifestyle of mine with almost every word uttered by the good doctor. To date, this podcast is probably the one most responsible for my diving in to the movement the way I have.

2.) RRP Episode 57 with Dr. Jeff Spencer

Again, like Dr. Davis’ podcast, I remember the run I was on when I heard this podcast. I was listening to this podcast on my first “City Loop” run. The “City Loop” is a 15ish-mile route in New Orleans that I had heard about from a running friend. And by the time I got to listen to RRP 57, I had finished the Jazz Half Marathon and had run a 13-mile training run, so the “City Loop” route was now within my capacity. Besides, I was now training for my first marathon, so I had better become familiar with it. Speaking of this marathon, a part of me wondered “is it being selfish to devote so much of my time to this?” And I swear it was like Rich Roll was in my head when he published this podcast because by the

VegWorld Magazine

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MIND & BODY

time I was finished listening to Dr. Spencer, I had gone from wondering if it was ok for me to be training so hard, to deciding that training so hard and changing in a really big way would be my legacy. The way he related his “Champion’s Blueprint” had me thinking about thinking of myself as a champion in my own right; a “champion” to my family, to my friends, to people who need help and could use what I have found. Like Dr. Garth with plant-based nutrition, Dr. Spenser’s talk about mindset and structured goal attainment in this podcast was crucial to my growth.

3.) RRP Episode 41 with John Joseph

I was learning a lot from all the amazing guests on the RRP, and from Rich himself. I was starting to think of myself in a different way, I wasn’t shying away from the idea of calling myself an athlete, a plant-based athlete, or an advocate. I was loving the change in my life, and I was feeling good about it. All of the guests I had heard were very well-spoken, educated, level-headed, and fairly reserved, yet still passionate. But, when I heard John Joseph speak about this lifestyle in episode 41, my inner curse-like-a-sailor self’s interest was piqued. You see, I grew up going to the camp. Whether it was a fishing camp or a hunting camp, I spent a lot of time at the camp. If I wasn’t at the camp then I was probably at work, which could mean pouring con-

VegWorld Magazine

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MIND & BODY

crete or digging ditches. Or, during the fall in my teens and early 20’s, I would have been in a football locker room with teammates. One thing that the camp, work, and football have in common is copious profanity. I know it’s hard on some people’s ears, but to mine it is a familiar sound and a vernacular in which I am very comfortable. There is nothing like a perfectly time F-bomb to grab attention and drive home a point of emphasis. And in this episode, John Joseph grabbed a lot of attention. Don’t get me wrong, it is not the curse words alone that make this episode one of my all-time favorite. Although hearing someone weave his story with the strong threads of profanity provided a degree of nostalgia to me, it was the story itself that resonated with me. Like John, my very own dad is a product of a group foster home setting. And I know the struggles he has faced in his life as a result of having been thrown away. Hearing John’s story not only sprouted more profanity-induced hair on my chest, but it also drove home the point that anything is possible to overcome with the right mindset, which, given my pop’s history, brought a tear to my eye. Love ya, Dad!

4.) RRP Episode 80 with Howard Jacobson/RRP 79 with T. Colin Campbell

This podcast is best enjoyed after first listening to RRP 79 with Dr. T. Colin Campbell. Dr. Campbell and Howard wrote a book called Whole together, and their podcasts, listened to in succession, are a great one-two punch to the current health/food paradigm. Howard Jacobson Ph.D is a brilliant guy, one of those guys who’s obviously working with a magnificent computer between his ears, yet still down-to-earth enough to crack a joke and enjoy a chuckle. Besides his jovial, candid approach to the conversation with Rich, Dr. Jacobson offers some real gems in this interview. By the time I’d heard this interview I’d read The China Study and Whole, so I was really intrigued to hear

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MIND & BODY

the collective authors’ voices in a conversation. Just like the aforementioned titles brought real value to my life and aided my willingness to make changes through knowledge, so did these interviews.

5.)The Plant Yourself Podcast Episode 115 with Don Matesz The Plant Yourself Podcast is the brainchild of Doctor Howard Jacobson. As mentioned above, I heard of Dr. Jacobson on the RRP where he did an interview with Rich about his and Dr. T. Colin Campbell’s book Whole, one of my favorite books. He has more recently teamed up with Dr. Davis in writing Proteinaholic, which I am currently reading and loving thus far. But in this podcast, Dr. Jacobson interviews the author of a book called Powered by Plants, Don Matesz. Don brings some very interesting points to bear in this interview, and I found myself very intrigued with what he had to say about not only nutrition, but the behavior of animals. He contends there is no such thing as a biological omnivore; either an animal is designed to eat plants, or eat animals. The term “omnivore” describes behavior. Therefore, any omnivore is actually biologically best-suited for either plant-eating or animal-eating. We often assume that because we are omnivorous we are obligated biologically to eat that way, but this is false. The parcel of information that this podcast gifts to the listener fits beautifully with the nutritional science findings that seem to be hitting critical mass when it comes to meat consumption among humans. I know there are many, many great podcasts out there. I have actually been fortunate enough to have been an interviewee on several of them, and I encourage you to share with me your favorites. But, for now, I just felt compelled to share with the reader a few podcasts that are like money in the bank for my health=wealth mindset today. Happy listening.

About the Author Josh LaJaunie found himself weighing 400 lbs by the time he was in his early 30s. He recently lost over 200 lbs and has turned the tide on his health trajectory via the power of eating plants and running miles. He recently completed his first 100k, and logs 50-75 miles a week while listening to podcasts.

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

THE POWER OF MOTION

SITTING: THE HIDDEN VILLAIN

OF MODERN LIVING (PART I) by John Pierre

ave you ever wondered just how much you sit in a day? Chances are great that you’re sitting down right now. Do you sometimes complain about having low energy when all you do is sit all day? Shouldn’t you, theoretically, have more energy if you’re “storing” it for

build shelters, run from threats, and use their feet as their primary source of transportation over various terrains.

later? Yet the opposite seems true. Most people conserve their energy all day long, only to collapse when they get home. What’s really going on here? It’s hard to believe that one of the things that many of us do most during our day may be harming us in ways that we may never have imagined. In the past, strenuous physical activity had been an inescapable way of life for many populations. Our not-so distant ancestors had to forage for their food and water,

any form of strenuous activity at all and their primary method of transportation is the car, train, or bus. This often means that people are sitting for the majority of their day, and sometimes night. When we sit for many hours on end every day, we start to develop problems in the body that active cultures often did not experience. Unfortunately, those problems number in the many, and you’ll discover a few of the main ones here.

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But when we fast-forward to today’s modern society, we find that many individuals hardly engage in

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THE POWER OF MOTION

Let’s start with cognitive function. Creative thought has been linked to movement for a number of years. Cognitive function is improved with movement and diminishes without it. At the 2012 British Psychological Society’s Annual Occupational Conference, for example, scientists warned that the more you sit, the higher your risk of body mass index score and decreased wellbeing.1 So if you want to be alert and have the best access to your intellectual abilities, you’ve got to build in movement consistently throughout your day. It seems Einstein followed that advice, as he reportedly came up with the theory of Relativity while riding his bike; and Aristotle is said to have debated philosophical concepts with his students while walking. It appears that some medieval monks also acknowledged the power of motion as some walked around when they had to memorize long and arduous texts because doing so helped with their cognitive function. In modern times, a few leading edge companies keep Ping-Pong tables in their board rooms for employees to play with because it often helps them solve complex problems. And it’s not uncommon for people to “pace” back and forth to help themselves organize their thoughts as well as to remember better. Some athletes even report that their ability to solve problems is greatly enhanced while they are moving and engaged in their sport. That makes sense, since movement improves blood circulation through the brain, which sharpens our thinking, lowers stress and anxiety, and improves our mood.

fect recipe for disaster that keeps our “health care system” a booming business. Our bodies are dependent on movement to stimulate different physiological actions in our organism like our immune and respiratory systems. Movement promotes proper bone density, circulation, and endorphin release. Circulation is important for the proper functioning of the heart (a muscle) and endorphins help change our moods for the better by making us feel happier. Without motion, these important physiological processes cannot occur. Our heart thrives when we put it to work. Physical exertion works to pump oxygen into the heart and cause the expansion of blood vessels and arteries. This allows blood to flow efficiently and freely through them. The damage done by chair sitting is often insidious because it happens so slowly that we don’t even notice it. Prolonged sitting forces us to bypass our built-in feedback system (such as pain and a sore back) that would usually direct us to correct our posture by standing up and moving around. We

Another major challenge that we’re facing today is very low functioning and compromised immunity. Sadly, lack of motion is a large part of the problem. Inactivity is one of the leading causes of coronary heart disease, and, when coupled with the highly processed, nutrient poor diets that many American’s are consuming every day, provides the per-

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THE POWER OF MOTION

become accustomed to sitting while the damage is being quietly done. Remember, we’re talking about an unnatural shape you might hold for 35 to 70 hours a week, year after year. What ends up happening when you sit for long durations is that you essentially train your body to become unbalanced; a process that takes time. You may not become aware of the problem until pain, a spasm, tension, or fatigue catches your attention. Our bodies tend to adapt to what we do most often. Of course, in modern times, that means we’re forcing our body to become best adapted to sitting if that’s what we’re doing most of the time. The problem with that is that it makes us less adapted to standing, running, walking, and jumping. All of us should be able to do these motions with some proficiency, yet how many of us can? The reason our bodies have a tendency to conform to the positions and postures our bodies assume the most is because we have a tough connective tissue that covers our muscles called fascia. It’s pliable and tends to set in the position our muscles are in most often. If we’re sitting most of the time, our fascia adapts to that specific position, which is far from a good thing. When we sit, our hips and thighs are bent in relation to our torso, which causes the muscles on the front of our thighs, the hip flexors, to contract slightly and shorten. One of the reasons some peo-

ple walk with a forward lean is because of shortened hip flexors. Their muscles are not stretching as they normally should, and as a result they’re not walking straight since their fascia has adapted more to sitting than standing. Sitting for prolonged time periods shortens the hip flexors and puts undue strain on the lower back. The gluteus muscles as well as the upper back muscles get tight and we start to lose our full range of motion. This is a very dangerous situation, particularly as we start to age. Since the hip region is our prime mover, from where the power to propel our body through motion originates, if this region becomes weakened, our whole body may suffer as a result. Clearly, our bodies were not designed to simply sit around. In Part II of this series, I’ll focus on some solutions to counteract our sitting lifestyle.

Notes: 1. Sitting too long is bad for your mental health; Too much time in a chair also raises obesity, diabetes and health risk. New York Daily News. January 17, 2012. http:// www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/ sitting-long-bad-mental-health-timechair-raises-obesity-diabetes-heart-riskarticle-1.1007511

About the Author John Pierre is an author, and a nutrition and fitness consultant who has devoted over 25 years to improving the lives of others through his expertise in the areas of nutrition, fitness, women’s empowerment, green living, and cognitive enhancement. A dedicated activist, John works with people of all ages promoting the benefits of a plant-based diet, stress reduction, physical fitness, and the importance of compassion in life. John is widely recognized in the area of geriatrics for enhancing cognitive function in our senior population. John has been lecturing for over 20 years at various venues that reach thousands of people. John’s books The Pillars of Health and Strong, Savvy, Safe are available at www.johnpierre.com

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Issue 31 - January 2016 |

FRESH FINDS

Loves & Wants Between The Pages Veestro Review

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Issue 31 - January 2016 |

Things We

o L ve !

RE R E I P N JOH VES LO

Healthy Hunk Smooth Skin Shaving Gel and Healthy Skin Sunscreen What’s the best kept secret for healthy skin? Healthy Hunk skincare products! I enjoy using the Healthy Hunk Face and Body Wash and always follow up with the best oil-free moisturizer on the planet−Healthy Hunk Ultra-Hydrator. This vegan, cruelty-free, gluten free, non-GMO, and organic company is one of the few that packages in glass. It’s a win-win for both our skin and the planet. I also use the Healthy Hunk Smooth Skin Shaving Gel and Healthy Skin Sunscreen, which is an absolute must while spending time outdoors. Healthy Hunk products can be purchased at http://healthyhunk.com/ For ladies looking for an amazing skin care line for women, check out the Healthy Chick organic vegan skin care products at www.healthychick.com.

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

THINGS WE LOVE!

CHEF ASJ LOVE

The Instant Pot electric pressure cooker This multi-tasking devices replaces your rice cooker and crock pot and is also a yogurt maker. You’ll be amazed how quickly and easily you can get a hearty, healthy meal on the table. An added bonus is that you can get $50 off by using the code AJ when ordering off the website. www.Instantpot.com

NIE U A J A L JOSH

LOVES

Kalettes It took me a while to become a kaleoholic, but with time and commitment I was able to achieve Official Kale Junky status eventually. I really dig kale. I like what it brings to the table nutritionally; I like how it fills me up, holds up to various treatments, as well as being one of the best alkaline-producing things you can eat. But, I’m lazy, and I often find myself buying bags of organic pre-chopped kale versus whole bunches of kale, which seems to me less-than when considering whole versus un-whole. I like the idea of eating an entire plant, and, while in miniature, these new Kalettes I’ve found at my local grocer are, in fact, entire bunches of tender, purple kale. While I am not going abandon buying my big bags of kale, and I realize they’re kinda expensive and slightly wasteful from a petroleum standpoint, they are a nice change-up from time to time. I don’t cook them in any way, I just use them in a salad the way I would use kale normally. They’re insanely good, and a new food love of mine. http://www.oceanmist.com/products/kalettes/

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

THINGS WE LOVE!

. ROBIN DOVES NL O S R E V E Engage Organics Spices Creating healthy dishes without salt can be a challenge. Many spice companies include salt in their seasoning blends, but not Engage Organics. Their 11 seasoning blends are salt-free, organic, non-GMO and completely plant based. The vegan spice line is perfect for all dishes from roasted veggies to grilled bean burgers. They range in price from $3.99-$5.49, including its best-seller, Garlicsaltless®, as well as the Tuscany Mix, Mexi-Mix, Lemon Pepper, It’s-a-Dilly®, and Sweet Cinn®. There is also a seed free variety for those on special diets. The line is currently available in the San Francisco area and is expanding its distribution to the Pacific Northwest, Florida and the Northeast. But, if you cannot wait, which you shouldn’t, to try this amazing line of spices, you can order them online at www.engageorganics.com

MITH

AS D N A M A

LOVES

Alexandra K handbags These fabulous 100% vegan designer handbags from Poland are available in a wide variety of sizes and styles. Each is built with impressive high end craftsmanship, and they will ship almost anywhere in the USA or Europe. You can’t find a more well made handbag for the price. The quality far surpasses all expectations. I can testify that they are even more beautiful in person than on the website. Each numbered bag has an embossed metal label that states “This bag is animal cruelty free and vegan”. http://www.alexandrak.pl

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

THINGS WE LOVE!

MCR N O R A SH

LOVES

Booda Butter Here is the perfect antidote to dry, itchy skin during this colder weather. It smells heavenly, like a bar of decadent chocolate, and goes on smoothly, melting into your skin with a luxurious feel. It’s a multi-purpose product that you can use as a body moisturizer, lip balm, cuticle cream, frizz tamer for your hair, after shave salve... the list goes on and on. The ingredients are all completely natural, vegan, and organic, with no added fragrances or preservatives. And it comes in cute round tins that are great for travel…or if you’re looking for the best value, try the “Tub of Love.” The company also sells a wonderfully moisturizing lip balm stick and a multi purpose soap bar/ shaving cream/shampoo, “Suds of Love.” Order online here: http://www.boodaorganics.com/collections/frontpage

AND... 100 Percent Pure Cosmetics For the perfect holiday gift for the makeup maven in your life, try one of these beautiful, colorful makeup palettes from 100 Percent Pure. These vegan collections are all colored with 100% natural, antioxidant and vitamin packed fruit and vegetable pigments instead of synthetic dyes or minerals. And they’re free of the endocrine disrupters that are found in many other makeup products. There are three different color palettes: Naked is a collection of soft, neutral tones for a natural, “no makeup” look. Sex Kitten includes colors to create seductive eyes and glowing cheeks, and Mermaid includes beautiful, iridescent colors for eyes and a warm sun kissed glow for cheeks. Each palette includes three eye shadows, a blush, and a highlighter. All are very easy to apply and each palette comes with 2 free blushes, one for eye shadow and the other for blush/highlighter. Order online here: http://www.100percentpure. com/pages/search-results-page?type=product&q=palettes

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

THINGS WE LOVE!

J A F E H C !

S T N A W

To go on a McDougall Trip! These adventures are calling my name. I’ve been hearing about the McDougall vacations for years. Everyone who has been raves about them. When will my day come? Hawaii, Coast Rica, I don’t care! Heck, I would even travel to Toledo with them! https://www.drmcdougall.com/health/travel/

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

BETWEEN THE PAGES

THE HERBIVORES HAVE IT! Two activists find the winning recipe for cookbook success.

hat happens when two of the most passionate and committed vegan activists today sit down and write a cookbook? Eat Like You Give A Damn happens. Michelle Schwegmann & Josh Wooten, founders of Herbivore Clothing, have created a useful, beautiful, and dare we say - even enlightening, jewel of a cookbook.

From the very beginning, this cookbook is different. It starts off, even before page one, with the anonymous true tale of a Mercy for Animals undercover investigator. That doesn’t sound like an appetizing way to begin a cookbook, but not only does it work, the way it’s been done here has a touch of brilliance. Following that, are Josh and Michelle’s personal stories, invaluable tips and hacks to make eating vegan easier and more enjoyable and then… the recipes! Gorgeously photographed and ingeniously crafted, we wanted to try them all. Those we did try: Apple Peanut Butter Smoothie (page 15) and the Only-Kale-Can-Save-Us-Now Salad (page 83) were both rousing successes. This is a cookbook that will not sit on our shelf gathering dust, but live in our kitchen getting a workout. In a strange way, it also has a place in our hearts now too. You’ll just have to read the first seven pages to understand why.

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

BETWEEN THE PAGES

THE 30 MINUTE VEGAN: SOUP’S ON!

iami-based, award-winning chef and six-time author Mark Reinfeld, has done it again. He has created a new cookbook – The 30 Minute Vegan: Soup’s On!

While soup is mainly associated with the winter months, providing warmth and comfort for long, dark nights, Reinfeld’s new cookbook offers more than 100 quick and easy recipes for every season. Homemade soup can seem complicated or time-consuming. So many people limit themselves by purchasing pre-made, canned or boxed sodium rich soups. Reinfeld calls his style “vegan fusion” – a combination of ingredients from different culinary traditions in the same dish or menu. He also encourages natural methods of growing food such as using organic whenever possible and minimal processing when preparing dishes.

Basic vegetable stock, vegetable-based soups, soups and stews with grains, legumes, and pasta, creamy blended soups, raw and dessert soups, plus garnishes and sides are covered. Some of the great recipes in The 30 Minute Vegan: Soup’s On! are Spanish rice and artichoke heart stew, Un-chicken noodle soup and Cha-Cha Chili with tempeh. Things I love about this cookbook: • Reinfeld starts out with a template on how to prepare soups, so you are less likely to have a pot of yuck instead of a wonderful pot of yum to enjoy and share with your family and friends. • The majority of the recipes are gluten-free. Yes, vegan and gluten-free. Woo Hoo! • There is an entire section on raw soups so you

VegWorld Magazine

can check out raw cuisine and enjoy minimally processed meals. My personal favorites are the raw Mediterranean onion soup on page 176 (which is a raw twist on the classic favorite) and the spicy kale soup with pepitas on page 177. The ingredients and steps are simple. With a foreword by Dr. Neal Barnard, President of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, anyone switching over to a vegan lifestyle is sure to find easy and enjoyable soup recipes in this fabulous book. Mark Reinfeld’s seventh book is one that I highly recommend you have in your cookbook repertoire. By Robin D. Everson

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

VEESTRO REVIEW

VEESTRO: CHEF-PREPARED MEALS

DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR by Robin Tierney

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

VEESTRO REVIEW

like chicken -- when clucking and strutting, not on my plate. But those who like the taste of our feathered friends can do better than “the next best thing” -- because Veestro makes faux chicken with flavor and texture that beats what carnistas would call “the real thing.”

Ingredient info from the makers:

But before I dish on the details, let me tell you about Veestro.

• Preservative-free

What and who:

• Many gluten-free choices

• All natural • Non-GMO • 100% plant-based

• Dairy-free

• No cholesterol Founded by the sister-brother team of Monica Klausner and Mark Fachler, the online venture’s goal is to make it easy to eat healthy. Everything is made fresh, using recipes from Veestro’s vegan chef and all-natural ingredients, no preservatives and no animal products.

How it works: 1. Choose your dishes, juices and meal plans a la carte, as Meal Packs and through Veestro’s Weight Loss program. Shipping is free on orders of $199 or more.

• Good fiber source

More good things: • Aromatic, zesty recipes that have a personal chef vibe. • Clear nutritional info and cooling directions for stove/oven and microwave modes. • Choice of single servings and family-size packs that contain four servings.

2. Choose single or recurring delivery.

• Short, friendly how-to videos on the website featuring Monica’s tips for each dish.

3. Click through checkout, then receive an order confirmation, and fairly quickly, your order.

• Helping hand for weight control and changing diet. • Clear pricing. • Neat and tidy individual packages. • Sized for portion control (not a plus if you want heapin’ helpings).

Diet support: Borrowing a page from Jenny Craig, Veestro weight loss programs help you work toward goals while enjoying satisfying plant-based meals and juices delivered to your doorstep. Options include gluten-free options and Veestro’s new 21-Day Kick-

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

VEESTRO REVIEW

start meal and juice packs. You can replace one, two or three of your daily meals with healthy, organic, non-GMO, 100% plant-based Veestro meals and juices.

Surprises: Of the 5 single-serving menu items I received (sorry, hubs, not enough to share), two that I thought I wouldn’t like proved tantalizing. The Country Fried Chick’n Dinner ($11.99) used seitan to mimic a comfort food I never liked -- turning it into something I wanted more of. I would have liked more cauliflower and other side veggies, but then again, this dish is about the cutlets, which are juicy and have a perfect chewiness.

a skillet. I used my rice steamer, and that worked out equally well. Savory Croquettes with Veggie Hash ($10.29): Spicy mmmm-mmmm-good tomato dipping sauce! The croquettes are crispy on the outside and creamy on the inside. Toast in oven at 350 degrees for 1520 minutes, then take Monica’s video tip to broil them a few seconds for that extra crunch. I liked the zippy hash, too.

Dishing on the dishes:

Golden Chickpea Stew with Roasted Cauliflower Spinach ($10.49): While eating this light, mild dish, I wished I had some fresh ginger root to supplement the tasty bits that popped up every few bites. After finishing, I was still hungry, but this could be due to my having bicycled many miles that day.

Curry with Tofu and Vegetables ($10.49 for a single serving, $39.99 for 4 portions) features a savory sauce with creamy coconut notes and aromas that evoke Indian eateries, nicely textured tofu cubes and two fluffy rice patties. Normally you’d heat it in

Breakfast Burrito ($10.29). Yum -- hearty with a whole wheat tortilla bursting with a delicious tumble of beans, veggies, tofu scramble. Loved the cubed organic potatoes too. This low-cal wonder works for any meal of the day.

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

VEESTRO REVIEW

Veggie Empanadas ($8.99): Healthy twists, pleasingly tender and super-tasty. The 3 pieces practically disappeared before I remembered to dip ‘em in the included tangy chimichurri sauce. Chocolate Covered Cheezcake ($5.99): Yes, you can have dessert. This one’s made from organic silken tofu with no gluten involved. At 5 ounces, it’s not low-cal but with 6 grams of protein it will keep you from hunting for something that will sabotage your diet.

Where: Veestro delivers throughout the continental U.S. (sorry, Alaska and Hawaii). Each order is cooked fresh, frozen immediately, packed in dry ice and shipped FedEx Ground in an oversized secure package from Veestro’s kitchen in southern California.

Pricing: Most meals are in the $10-12 range. Other items range from $5.99 sides to a $6.99 cleansing tonic to the $189 5-day juice cleanse, Minimum order $35. What else sounds good: Veestro offers several dozen choices. On my bucket list: Veggie Lasagna, Roasted Beet and Kale Salad, Eggplant Casserole and Hand Greenade Juice, Hungry yet? http://www.veestro.com

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

Healthy Taste of LA An All Day Plant Based Health Conference Featuring

Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn Keynote Speaker

Ann Esselstyn

Jane Esselstyn, RN

Dr. Michael Klaper

Dr. Michael Greger

Chef AJ

Brenda Davis, RD

John Pierre

Sunday, January 17, 2016 (including lunch)

Armstrong Theater • Torrance Cultural Arts Center • 3330 Civic Center Drive, Torrance, CA 90503

Purchase Tickets • Get More Information At www.HealthyTasteOnline.com • (800) 481-6482. Speakers and program subject to change and improvement!

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

RECIPES FOR FOODIES

ZOODLES WITH QUICK SUNDRIED TOMATO MARAWNARA

BRAZILIAN BLACK BEAN SOUP WITH BAKED PLANTAINS

ENLIGHTENEDÂ FAUX PARMESAN

FRENCH ONION DIP

GREEN SPLIT PEA SOUP WITH SUNDRIED TOMATOES AND DRIED MUSHROOMS

AVOCADO CUCUMBER DIP

BALASAMIC DIJON GLAZED ROASTED BRUSSELS SPROUTS

THOUSAND ISLAND DRESSING

BUTTERSCOTCH PUDDING

PORTOBELLO MUSHROOM SANDWICHES

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

SOS FREE LIVING WITH CHEF AJ

Every year my New Years resolution is to lose weight, but invariably by the weekend of Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday I have already gone off my diet. I just tried a very expensive program where I had to weigh and measure all of my food, even my vegetables, and I was just so hungry and cranky all the time. And I just can’t imagine having to do this or count calories for the rest of my life. I am already vegan but I just can’t seem to lose weight and keep it off. I know that you have struggled with your weight and eventually became thin. What was your secret?

Signed, The Ever Expanding Elaine from Edmonton Dear Elaine,

I can distill the secret to Ultimate Weight Loss in 2 words. Calorie Density. Calorie density simply means the amount of calories per pound of food. So you don’t have to actually count calories, you just have to know the calorie density of the foods in a few categories. There were 2 bestselling books written in the 80’s that were based on the principle of calorie density: “Eat More, Weigh Less” by Dr. Dean Ornish and “The McDougall Program For Maximum Weight Loss” by Dr. John McDougall. I got to practice eating in accordance with the principle of calorie density each time I visited True North as a guest chef but what really helped me understand it was a book written by Dr. Barbara Rolls called Volumetrics. Dr. Rolls has done more research on this subject than anyone else and I had the privilege of interviewing her on my podcast Healthy Living with Chef AJ (available at www.HealthyTasteOnLine.com). In her laboratory at Penn State University where she studies human eating behavior, Dr. Rolls discovered that all hu-

VegWorld Magazine

man beings eat approximately the same amount of food, by weight, per day, usually somewhere between 3 to 5 pounds. If you change the calorie density of the foods you eat, you can literally eat twice as much food and take in half as many calories without the usual suffering and deprivation that goes along with dieting.

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

SOS FREE LIVING WITH CHEF AJ ries per pound. Contrast that with the foods that Americans eat most of their calories from which is processed foods and animal products which are much higher in caloric density. Things like bread and flour which contain 1,400-1,500 calories per pound, cheese which is 1,600 calories per pound, sugar which contains 1,800 calories per pound and oil, the most caloire dense and nutrient poor food on the planet, which is 4,000 calories per pound!!! Notice that these foods with a high calorie density are processed foods which contain no fiber, water or micronutrients and are not found in nature, while the calorie dilute foods are whole foods contain lots of micronutrients, water and fiber, and are found in nature. Dr. Rolls determined that if you keep the average calorie density per day to 550 calories per pound or less you can eat ad libitum (basically as much as you want) until comfortably full. As luck would have it, all of the healthiest plant foods on the planet like fruits vegetables, whole grains and legumes fall within that range. Vegetables are only 100 calories per pound raw, 200 calories per pounds cooked while fruit is around 300 calories per pound, potatoes and winter squashes about 400 calories per pound, whole grains around 500 calories per pound and legumes around 550-600 calo-

Here are some of my favorite nutrient rich, calorie dilute recipes that helped me and so many others lose weight. Shayda, who is featured in this month’s magazine, has lost over 100 pounds eating these delicious recipes; If you need more support, consider joining our Ultimate Weight Loss Program where we offer group support. You can learn more about it at www.EatUnprocessed.com or consider attending HealthyTaste of LA on January 17th for further inspiration since that is the weekend you say you fall off your diet. Tickets are still available at www.HeatlthyTasteOnLine.com)

THE RECIPES Zoodles with Quick Sundried tomato marinara Enlightened Faux Parmesan Split Pea Soup with Sun dried tomatoes and dried mushrooms Balsamic Dijon Glazed Roasted Brussels Sprouts Butterscotch Pudding

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

ZOODLES WITH QUICK SUNDRIED TOMATO MARAWNARA

ZOODLES WITH

QUICK SUNDRIED TOMATO

MARAWNARA

by Chef AJ

(RAW)

This sauce takes minutes to make but tastes like it was slow simmered for hours. The best part is, there are no pots to clean or vegetables to cut up.

Ingredients: • 1 cup oil-free sun dried tomatoes, soaked in water • 3-4 fresh Roma tomatoes (approximately 12 ounces) • 1 red bell pepper, seeded (approximately 8 ounces) • 1 -2 cloves of garlic, peeled • 3-4 pitted dates • one shallot (approximately 1 ounce) or red onion equivalent • 3-4 fresh basil leaves

Preparation: In a blender, blend all ingredients until smooth. If you prefer a chunkier consistency, then using a food processor fitted with the “S” blade and process all ingredients until desired consistency is reached. Serve over your favorite healthy noodles such as those made from rice, tofu, sea vegetables or zucchini. To make zucchini noodles peel zucchini then make noodles using a Spiralizer, Saladacco or vegetable peeler.

Chef’s Note: If you have a high powered blender you can make this sauce hot right in the blender. VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

ENLIGHTENED FAUX PARMESAN

ENLIGHTENED

FAUX PARMESAN by Chef AJ

Ingredients:

Preparation:

• 1 cup of oats

Place all ingredients in a blender or food processor fitted with the “S” blade and process until a powder.

• 1 cup of nutritional yeast • 1 Tablespoon of salt free seasoning (I prefer Benson’s Table Tasty)

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

100

GREEN SPLIT PEA SOUP WITH SUNDRIED TOMATOES

GREEN SPLIT PEA SOUP WITH

SUNDRIED TOMATOES AND DRIED MUSHROOMS by Chef AJ

Ingredients: • One pound green split peas • One large onion, chopped • One pound carrots, sliced • One celery heart, sliced • 2 Large Potatoes, cubed • 8 cups boiling water • 2 cups chopped oil-free sundried tomatoes • 1 small package dried mushrooms • 6-8 cloves garlic, pressed • 4 teaspoons dried parsley

Preparation:

• 1-2 Tablespoons salt-free seasoning* (I prefer Benson’s Table Tasty available at www.BensonsGourmentSeasonings.com 10 % off with code AJ) • 1 teaspoon dried basil

Place all ingredients in an Intantpot Electric Pressure Cooker. Cook on high for 8 minutes. Alternately, place all ingredients in a slow cooker and cook on low for 6-8 hours.

• 1 teaspoon dried rosemary

Chef’s Note: Serve over brown rice and/or raw or cooked spinach or other greens. Or stir in some greens right after releasing the pressure.

• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika

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• 1 teaspoon dried oregano • 1 teaspoon celery seed

• 1 bay leaf

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101

BALASAMIC DIJON GLAZED ROASTED BRUSSELS SPROUTS

BALASAMIC DIJON GLAZED

ROASTED BRUSSELS SPROUTS by Chef AJ

Tastes just like candy. You will want to eat the entire 2 pounds all by yourself! This recipe was given to me by my own plant based physician Dr. Roy Artal (www.drartal.com) Preheat oven to 450F. Trim the ends off of 2 pounds of Brussels sprouts and cut in half or fourths (depending on how big they are). Place in a large bowl and add 1/4 cup of your favorite low sodium Dijon mustard or salt free Stone ground mustard and 1/4 cup of your favorite Balsamic vinegar. Mix well until the veggies are completely coated. Bake on a piece of parchment paper or nonstick silicone baking mat for at least 30 minutes, or until desired doneness is reached.Â I like mine really well done, almost blackened!Â If you do not like Brussels sprouts or they are not available, try another veggie. I have done this with great success with broccoli, cauliflower, turnips and butternut squash. Roasting really brings out the natural sweetness in veggies and makes them extra delicious!!!

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

102

BUTTERSCOTCH PUDDING

BUTTERSCOTCH PUDDING by Chef AJ

Mairead Reddy brought this to the Ultimate Weight Loss Potluck in Cleveland and I could not believe that it was made from only 3 ingredients. It is so creamy and delicious and reminds me of the Snack Pack butterscotch pudding my Mom used to put in my school lunches.

Ingredients:

Preparation:

• 3 cups of roasted sweet potatoes

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Poke several holes in the sweet potatoes and roast for 90 minutes. Let cool and peel. Place all ingredients in a Vitamix blender and blend until smooth and creamy. Pour into dessert glasses and chill.

• 2 large, ripe bananas • ½ Tablespoon pumpkin pie spice

Chef’s Note: Make sure you roast the sweet potatoes and not steam or microwave them. Slow roasting caramelizes them and brings out the flavor. VegWorld Magazine

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103

BRAZILIAN BLACK BEAN SOUP WITH BAKED PLANTAINS

BRAZILIAN

BLACK BEAN SOUP

WITH BAKED PLANTAINS by Mark Reinfeld

SERVES 6-8

This recipe is courtesy of Vegan Fusion (www.veganfusion.com) and comes from The 30-Minute Vegan Soup’s On! cookbook.

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104

BRAZILIAN BLACK BEAN SOUP WITH BAKED PLANTAINS

Organic Ingredients: Baked Plantains

Black Bean Soup

• 1 large ripe plantain, sliced diagonally into 1/4 inch slices

• 2 teaspoons ground cumin

• 1 tablespoon pure maple syrup or sweetener of choice • 1 tablespoon fresh squeezed orange juice • 2 teaspoons oil (try coconut)

• 1 teaspoon chili powder • 1 1/4 cups diced yellow onion • 4 large garlic cloves, pressed or minced • 1 teaspoon seeded and diced jalapeño pepper

• Pinch of sea salt • 4 cups vegetable stock or water • Pinch of chili powder (try chipotle) • Pinch of ground cinnamon

• 2 (15-ounce) cans black beans, rinsed and drained well, or 3 cups cooked • 3/4 cup diced carrot • 1/2 cup seeded and diced red bell pepper • 1 cup fresh or frozen corn • 1/2 teaspoon orange zest • 1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice • 2 teaspoons sea salt, or to taste • 1/4 teaspoon chipotle chili powder (optional) • 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves (optional) • 1/4 teaspoon liquid smoke (optional) • 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh cilantro

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105

BRAZILIAN BLACK BEAN SOUP WITH BAKED PLANTAINS

Procedure: 1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Prepare the plantains: Place the plantain ingredients in a small bowl and mix well. Transfer to a well-oiled baking sheet and bake until golden brown, about 10 minutes, flipping once after 6 minutes. Carefully transfer to a serving plate so the plantains do not stick to the pan as they cool down. 2. Meanwhile, place a 3-quart pot over high heat. Place the cumin and chili powder in the pot and cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Add the onion, garlic, and jalapeño, and stir well. 3. Lower the heat to medium-high, add the vegetable stock, black beans, and carrot, and cook for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the red bell pepper and corn and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add all the remaining ingredients, except the cilantro, and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the cilantro and mix well. 4. Top each serving with a few pieces of plantain and enjoy.

About the Chef

Mark Reinfeld is the winner of Vegan.com’s Recipe of the Year Award for 2011 and has over 20 years experience preparing creative vegan and raw food cuisine. Mark was the Executive Chef for the North American Vegetarian Society’s 2012 Summerfest, one of the largest vegetarian conferences in the world. He is described by VegCooking.com as being “poised on the leading edge of contemporary vegan cooking”. Mark is the founding chef of the Blossoming Lotus Restaurant, winner of Honolulu Advertiser’s ‘Ilima Award for “Best Restaurant on Kaua’i”. Mark is also the recipient of a Platinum Carrot Award for living foods – a national award given by the Aspen Center of Integral Health to America’s top “innovative and trailblazing healthy chefs.”

VegWorld Magazine

Issue 31 - January 2016 |

106

FRENCH ONION DIP

FRENCH ONION DIP Recipe courtesy of Hampton Creek

Whether you are making preparations for a Super Bowl Watch party or just kicking back with friends, take a page from Josh Tetrick’s playbook with these awesome recipes from Hampton Creek that are sure to be a touchdown with your crowd. You can’t have a party without French Onion Dip. This party staple only requires five simple ingredients. Party On!

Ingredients:

Preparation:

• 1 cup Just Mayo

1. Mix all ingredients together until combined.

• 1⁄4 teaspoon onion powder

2. Add salt and pepper to taste.

• 1⁄8 teaspoon garlic powder

3. Serve with vegetables, pretzels or your favorite chips!

• Salt and pepper, to taste

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Issue 31 - January 2016 |

107

AVOCADO CUCUMBER DIP

AVOCADO CUCUMBER DIP by Jeffrey Larsen for Hampton Creek

SERVES 8 (2 CUPS)

The coolness of cucumbers and the creamy heartiness of avocados mixed with the right kick of Just Mayo Chipotle make the Avocado Cucumber Dip perfect for veggies or tortilla chips. For a rockin’ presentation, top with diced red peppers, sliced grape tomatoes and snipets of chives. It is highly suggested that it is served with crisp, red pepper strips, cucumbers, carrots and broccoli.

Ingredients:

Directions:

• 2 large avocados - pitted, peeled, and cut into chunks 1 small cucumber peeled, seeded, and cut into chunks 1⁄4 cup Just Mayo Chipotle

1. Place all ingredients in a food processor.

• 1 Tablespoon lime juice • 1⁄2 teaspoon salt • Pinch of freshly ground black pepper

2. Process until the mixture comes together into a smooth, creamy dip. 3. If the dip is too stiff, add water 1 tablespoon at a time until it reaches desired consistency. 4. Place the dip in a bowl and smooth a piece of plastic wrap over the surface of the dip to create a nice seal. 5. Keep refrigerated until serving. This dip is best if eaten within a day, after which the dip will go brown.

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Issue 31 - January 2016 |

108

THOUSAND ISLAND DRESSING

JUST

“THOUSAND

ISLAND”

DRESSING RECIPE COURTESY OF HAMPTON CREEK

Thousand Island dressing is a family favorite all over the world. Its’ zippy taste goes great on salads and provides an interesting twist as a sandwich spread. Now, you can make your own without all the icky and unnecessary chemicals found in traditional bottled dressing.

Ingredients:

Directions:

• 1 1⁄4 cup Just Mayo

Combine all ingredients in a food processor and process until smooth.

• 1⁄2 cup natural ketchup • 2 Tablespoons white onion, chopped • 2 Tablespoons cornichons, chopped • 1 Tablespoon chopped chives • 1⁄2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

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109

REAL WORLD VEGAN RECIPES

Portobello Paradise

Here we feature original recipes from VegWorld readers and everyday vegan home cooks who arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t famous, but serve up famously good tried and true recipes to their loved ones. To be included in a future issue send your recipe & a beautiful photo to editor@vegworldmag.com

This monthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Real World Vegan Recipe comes to us from Emilie in Williamsport Maryland. You can find her blog online at http://plantpoweredeats.com/ Emilie writes: Easy. Healthy. Delicious. This satisfying sandwich is quick and easy to whip up. The mushrooms are nicely flavored but still maintain a neutral enough profile to work well with a variety of different toppings. My garnish of choice is a combination of lettuce, tomato, mayo and cheese (the latter two being vegan, of course), but feel free to add you own unique twist with your favorite toppings.

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110

PORTOBELLO MUSHROOM SANDWICHES

PORTOBELLO

MUSHROOM SANDWICHES by Emilie

Ingredients SERVES 4

• 2 Portobello Mushrooms

• Sauce

• 1 green bell pepper

• 1 tbs balsamic vinegar

• ½ red onion

• 1 tbs low sodium soy sauce

• 2 cloves garlic, minced

• 1/2 tbs apple cider vinegar

Cook Time: 15 Min

• 1 tsp brown rice flour

• 1/8 tsp liquid smoke, to taste

Total Time: 25 Min

• Salt

• 1/4 cup water

Prep Time: 10 Min

• Pepper

Instructions: 1. Add vinegars, soy sauce, liquid smoke and ¼ cup water to a small bowl. Stir, and set aside.

7. Add sliced peppers and mushrooms.

2. Thinly slice onions, peppers and mushroom caps*.

8. Pour vinegar mixture over top veggies, stir to coat vegetables and return pan to mediumhigh heat.

3. Add a few tablespoons of water to the bottom of a pot or large skillet and bring to mediumhigh heat.

9. Cook until mushrooms and peppers are tender, adding additional water to prevent sticking, if needed.

4. When the water starts to bubble, add onions.

10. If there is still liquid left in the pan, add ½ to 1 tsp brown rice flour stirring to coat veggies, until liquid thickens into a sauce.

5. Stir onions constantly, adding water as needed to prevent sticking, until softened–about 5 minutes. 6. Reduce heat to medium and add the minced garlic. Cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly and sprinkling water as needed to prevent sticking. VegWorld Magazine

11. Remove from heat and sprinkle with salt and pepper, to taste. 12. Serve on your choice of bread, topped with your favorite condiments.

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PORTOBELLO MUSHROOM SANDWICHES

To Serve: • Your choice of bread • Desired toppings

Notes

You may remove the mushroom gills and stem, if desired (removing will give the finished product a more neat appearance), but leaving them in is not harmful.

You can see the magic happen HERE.

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SANCTUARY ANIMAL OF THE MONTH: ROWDY GIRL

SANCTUARY ANIMAL OF THE MONTH

Rowdy Girl the baton of his great grandpa’s multi-generational cattle ranch. Tommy had acquired 96 acres and had a beef cattle ranch operation that was the culmination of his efforts for his upcoming retirement from Dow. I had never lived on a ranch and frankly wasn’t impressed with all the dirt, bugs and cow manure but nevertheless, my curiosity and my love for Tommy coaxed me into getting to know my new life with as much enthusiasm and willingness as I could muster. Little did I know that I was on the verge of loving the animals I used to eat.

In order for me to feel like I was now a rancher’s wife, Tommy took me to a small local rancher Renee tells Rowdy Girl’s story down the road and introduced me to a little baby calf that didn’t have a momma. I don’t know what happened to her momma. No one ever told me, here do I begin to tell the story of but she was an orphan. Tommy asked me if I the darling Prima Donna cow named wanted to buy her and bottle feed her and call her Rowdy Girl? I guess I’ll start at the my own. My eyes lit up and all at once I was in beginning as all good epics must have a great love. So for $300, I became an official rancher. This beginning and Rowdy Girl must’ve been blessed from the moment of her birth. She is the catalyst for little darling would run and jump and leap into the air and she was a rowdy little thing and out of my a vegan farm animal sanctuary in Texas that is right mouth I blurted, “I’m calling her Rowdy Girl!!”. slap dab in the middle of cattle country.

On March 25, 2010, Tommy Sonnen and I remarried. I was a city girl and he had picked up

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Rowdy Girl became my obsession as she needed me twice a day for her bottle. I became her

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SANCTUARY ANIMAL OF THE MONTH: ROWDY GIRL

momma and I beamed when she would run up to me to get her bottle. She grew up and became part of our herd but was always “my girl”. She is the momma of Lucky and Houdini and neither of them have ever left the ranch. Her family is intact. In December of 2014 when everything at the Sonnen Ranch started coming to a head after I went vegan, I used Rowdy Girl, Lucky and Houdini as leverage to save the rest of the cows that Tommy was threatening to send to the sale barn auction house. If not for Rowdy Girl, there would be no “Rowdy Girl Sanctuary”. And this rowdy cow has transformed my own life. I have become just as rowdy as Rowdy Girl! Some folks even think that the name of the sanctuary is Rowdy Girl because of my rowdy persistence that won the heart of my husband who eventually went vegan, himself. He let me buy his herd to start the sanctuary in one of the most unlikely places of all… Angleton, Texas!

About the Sanctuary You can find out more about Rowdy Girl Sanctuary and support their work by clicking here: rowdygirlsanctuary.com

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feeding families / saving animals A Well-Fed World is a Washington, DC-based hunger relief and animal protection organization chipping away at two of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most immense and unnecessary forms of suffering... the suffering of people hungry from lack of food and the suffering of animals used and abused for food.

Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t like Heifer International? Sign-up for our monthly e-newsletter for information about our Plants-4-Hunger gift-giving campaign, and give the gift of vegan food to people in need without harming animals.

care@AWFW.org

www.AWFW.org

Ashraya Initiative for Children

Poplar Spring Sanctuary by Mark Peters

~how beautiful is a world that is healthy, well-fed and kind all at the same time~ VegWorld Magazine

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LOVE, LORI

MONTHLY MUSINGS ON THE PLANT-BASED LIFESTYLE

LOVE, LORI MONTHLY MUSINGS ON THE PLANT-BASED LIFESTYLE

BECOMING NANCY: by Lori Fryd and Illustrated by Claire Dicker

t’s easy to remember the first day I walked into the gym. It was New Years Day, January 1, 2013. I’d made the resolution not only to lose weight and regain my health...but to actually leave the house. For about 8 months, I really hadn’t ventured very far from the couch or the bed. I’d been cocooning myself. By the time I was shocked into getting moving again, I was one of the walking wounded. Bloated, pale, unhealthy, not so fat that anyone was trying to recruit me for The Biggest Loser...just fat and unfit enough to qualify me as your typical American.

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Entering the gym was unbelievably hard for so many reasons, not the least of which was just the change of environment. I wanted to run back home to my familiar surroundings and crawl into bed again. I didn’t know anything about the gym equipment so I just walked on the treadmill for a bit and then headed for the indoor pool. The gym has two really big pools. I decided to go into the deeper one because I figured the water would cover me more and I’d be less visible. There, I splashed about a bit and tried to remember what swimming actually was. Scenes from my

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LOVE, LORI

childhood at summer camps flashed through my mind and I started doing the side stroke and the back float, like they had taught me when I was 5. Everybody around me was doing laps. One lady, in particular, caught my eye. She was executing perfect laps in sharp rhythmic strokes, back and forth, with effortlessness and grace. I looked at her with envy and then I did a lap too. Except I swam horizontally across the pool (way less than half the length of the vertical lap). Five clumsy strokes, arms feeling like lead, water going up my nose and in my eyes and ears. OK. That was enough for me. Done. Sniffling, coughing and gargling pool water, I headed for the locker room. After my shower, I was drying my hair in a little dressing room area. That was when I met Nancy. She was sitting next to me drying her hair too. She sort of smiled at me and I sort of smiled back. We struck up a conversation. It turns out she was the lady I’d seen earlier doing absolutely beautiful precision laps in the pool, while I was muddling around like a top-heavy weeble. When we’d finished drying our hair, I noticed that she and I were about the same age and that we had the same hair style and coloring. Honestly, we looked alot alike except for one thing. Nancy was fit, trim, gorgeous and vivacious. I was the gloomy Pillsbury Dough Girl. There we sat, side-by-side, in front of the merciless dressing room mirror, two middle-aged ladies, a living breathing before and after picture. All I wanted in the world, at that moment, was to become Nancy. Suddenly, I felt so overwhelmed by the road ahead, I could barely breathe. I just started to cry and, before I knew it, my head was on her shoulder while I sobbed, “Oh, Nancy, I’ve really let myself go!” Nancy comforted me. She let me cry and then she told me her story. She’d had the same New Years resolution as me the year before! January 1, 2012 she, too, had gotten into the pool for the first time in years and had barely been able to VegWorld Magazine

stay afloat in the water. She encouraged me to go slowly and keep trying and to never give up. Then she squeezed me once more while I put my brave face on and she headed out the door. I never saw Nancy again. Yesterday afternoon, I went to the pool and did my laps. I’ve been getting stronger in the water and I’m up to about 30 minutes now. Over time, my form has improved greatly. I no longer swallow half the pool, I’ve stopped inhaling water up my nose (which has greatly relieved the lifeguards) and I now feel so confident and free while I swim. When my laps (vertical this time) were over, I got out of the water and started toweling myself dry. A nice lady, whom I had seen there from time to time came over to chat. She complimented me on my stroke and told me she wished she could swim like me. She said that she needed to lose weight and was hoping that swimming would be easier on her arthritic knees. I gave her alot of support and encouragement and I believe she was grateful when we said our good-byes. The years go by and we move through cycles of growth. If we are lucky, we meet kind people like Nancy who offer us a shoulder to cry on and a word of encouragement when we need it the most. And then, if we are very lucky, we find the strength we need within us to make a change and we pay forward the kindnesses which have been shown to us. I am dedicating this column to Nancy and to all helper angels, who seem to appear in our lives from out of nowhere, and who give us just what we need at the right moment. This one is for you, Nancy, wherever you are. You’ll never know how much you helped me. As I left the pool yesterday, I kept thinking: What a wondrous journey it has been.....becoming Nancy.

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