Our Diet: The Cure for What Ails Us?

I hate change. First of all, it’s work. You have to actually think about what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and how you’re going to pull it off. It’s much easier to just maintain the old comfortable status quo, regardless of the dangers. Secondly, change upsets everyone close to you, since they are much more comfortable with you maintaining the status quo, as well. And third, change – to be effective – must be maintained. Which puts us back to numbers one and two – it’s work and it annoys your loved ones.

However, positive change is always worth the effort and the arguments. And sometimes, it’s even tasty!

Case in point: my mother was recently diagnosed with diabetes – on top of her high cholesterol and high blood pressure. She’s not alone. In 2007, 23.6 million Americans had diabetes, 73 million had high blood pressure and 101 million Americans had high cholesterol levels. Most newly diagnosed diabetics have been treated for high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels. Let’s face it: when it comes to being a healthy nation – we suck!

My mother was adamant about not adding another medicine to her already impressive repertoire. An Amazon search provided us with several books on the subject and within days we were reading Dr. Neal Barnard’s Program for Reversing Diabetes (Neal Barnard, M.D.) and The 30-Day Diabetes Miracle (Franklin House, M.D., Stuart Seale, M.D., and Ian Blake Newman). To our surprise, both books recommend similar lifestyle changes – a vegan diet!

To be vegan is to ingest only plant based foods. That means, in addition to eliminating meat and seafood you’ll be cutting out eggs, milk and dairy products as well. This sounded a tad… well…weird, so I read both books thoroughly and did online research, as well. Several studies compared a vegan diet to the ADA (American Diabetes Association) recommended diet with startling results. The followers of the vegan diet had fasting blood sugar levels 59% lower than their ADA counterparts, and were able to reduce or eliminate their medication and still control their glucose levels. The vegan group also lost twice as much weight as the ADA group. It’s important to note that the ADA diet is a much healthier diet than most Americans enjoy. It includes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean chicken and fish. Yet this group still relied heavily on medication to control their disease.

Dr. Neal Barnard’s Program for Reversing Diabetes does an excellent job of explaining the disease and the cure, as well giving easy directions for beginning a vegan lifestyle. The recipe’s were simple and tasty, including vegetarian refried beans and Thai-style coleslaw. We were able to pick up all the necessary ingredients at the local grocery store, but an hour drive to the nearest Trader Joe’s grocery store saved us a wad of cash. I also visited a nearby Amish marketplace to stock up on assorted whole grains and dried beans.

We returned home with bags of brown rice, 9-grain mix, quinoa, whole grain tortillas, sprouted grain cinnamon raison bread, hummus, tofu, veggies, soymilk and assorted vegan “meat” products. We were ready!

My goal was to find simple foods that my mother could put together without much thought or prep time. It’s important to start the day with plenty of whole grains, so I tried various grains (steel cut oats, 9-grain cracked cereal) in the slow cooker overnight. They were edible, but too creamy (read mushy) for my taste. I much prefer putting the grains in a heavy pot over medium heat and toasting them somewhat, then adding the appropriate amount of water. Bring to a boil, then cover, reduce the heat, and simmer til done (about 20 minutes for flaked grains, or 45 minutes for whole grains). Then I add various dried fruit (you can cook the fruit along with the grains, to plump them), seeds or ground flaxseed and maybe some soymilk and agave sweetener. Delicious! Any extra goes into the fridge for a snack or next day’s breakfast!

Another book I devoured was Vegan Express, by Nava Atlas. Her recipes were simple and delicious! For example, cubed tofu fried in a tablespoon each of olive oil, soy sauce and agave sweetener is quick and amazingly good, even to tofu newbies! Even my ten year old daughter gave the tofu a thumbs up – possibly because it included nothing green!
Other recipes included Nearly Instant Thai Coconut Corn Soup and Thai Pineapple Stir-Fried Rice (ok, I like Thai food – but she had a LOT of other recipes, too!)

Many tasty meals required no recipes. I threw lentils, onions & garlic, shredded carrots and kale into a crock-pot with some vegetarian broth and extra water one morning, and we returned home to a nutritious, yummy stew! For lunch we’d layer hummus, Thai-broccoli coleslaw, vegetarian re-fried beans and fresh salsa into a whole grain wrap – it was amazing! As good as any restaurant food I’ve ever purchased!

I learned about being vegan to help improve my mother’s health. After enjoying the foods for a few days and reading about the overall health benefits of the lifestyle, I decided to try it myself!

My mother and I are both feeling fantastic on this whole foods approach to life! We have plenty of energy and are both enjoying losing weight without feeling hungry! I have no doubt that this diet will not only help her diabetes, but her high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels and her diverticulitis!

If you’re interested in reversing disease and enjoying good health, I recommend getting Dr. Barnard’s book, as the vegan diet does take planning. It’s important to make sure you get enough protein: beans, lentils, tofu, soymilk, etc. It’s also important to take a B-12 supplement, since B-12 is found primarily in organ meats, eggs & milk. From my own lessons from the front: make sure you have quick food on hand and eat some kind of food every few hours or so. Don’t let yourself get depleted and hungry. (I postponed lunch for an hour while I ran errands, and felt horrible. It took two cucumber & hummus sandwiches, a glass of water and a glass of soy milk before I finally felt human again.) Remember to drink plenty of water! We almost never drink enough, and our bodies crave that simple refreshment.

Here’s to our Health! Here’s to living long and joyously! If these books and studies are correct, we need not resign ourselves to the inevitable American diseases that leave us dependent on the pharmaceutical industry for our very lives. For me, that’s enough motivation to effect some serious change. To be quite honest, I don’t know that I’ll remain vegan forever. I’m committing to it for a month to see how I feel. Then I’ll try occasionally adding milk and eggs and see if there’s an effect. I may eventually even splurge on a steak, I’m not sure. The danger is in slipping back into the American eating habits that are killing us. But I’d really like to have the occasional egg – we just got chickens!

If you are ready to eat for your health, be prepared for plenty of grief. I think folks tend to believe the commercials about how milk does a body good, or how our bodies need animal protein to survive. We can’t live on lettuce alone, true – and I certainly wouldn’t want to. But whole, healthy foods taste fantastic – and leave me feeling much more satisfied than a greasy cheeseburger or heavy macaroni and cheese. But it’s hard to give up our comfort food, and friends will be happy to talk you out of such drastic change.

Why not test the waters? Get the books and do the research (and that does NOT mean asking your friends and family – trust me!) then commit to a one month trial. Get your blood levels checked before and after so you have hard numbers for the naysayers, in addition to your personal testimony.

Join me! Let’s try vegan for a month and see how we feel! What have we got to lose except fat, sludgy blood, disease and exhaustion?

I’m ready to BE the new and improved model. You?