Motivation
The first inkling that I might need to change my diet came when I saw the Bodyworlds exhibition I mentioned in Welcome And Policies. In the section on centenarians, which is what inspired this whole venture, it mentioned that they ate primarily plant-based diets.
At the time, I was eating a modified keto diet, primarily animal-based foods with a significant plant-based component. Once I decided I wanted to become a centenarian, that information about plant-based diets concerned me.
My best chances for reaching my goal are to follow the examples of those who have already done it. My animal-based diet failed to do that. But the concept was still pretty abstract, so I didn't do anything about it.
Then I watched the Netflix documentary The Game Changers (which I'll refer to as TGC). This was consistent with information I had seen in other sources, and convinced me it was worth changing.
- I was generally familiar with Dr. Dean Ornish's plant-based dietary guidelines from the 90's. My wife and I had briefly considered following them, but found them too big a change at the time.
- The original edition of the The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook: A Delicious Alternative for Lifelong Health, by Nancy Harmon Jenkins, had promoted a largely plant-based diet in the 90's for long, healthy life. The diet is summarized in the Oldways Mediterranean Diet Pyramid.
- My daughter had switched to vegetarianism in 2018 for the purpose of reducing her resource consumption.
- The book The TB12 Method: How to Achieve a Lifetime of Sustained Peak Performance, by Tom Brady, describes how he uses a primarily plant-based diet to achieve record-breaking performance as a professional athlete.
- The books The Blue Zones: 9 Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest and The Blue Zones Kitchen: 100 Recipes to Live to 100, by Dan Buettner, describe a primarily plant-based diet as one of the secrets to longevity.
- The book Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, edited by Paul Hawken, ranked "Food: Plant-Rich Diet" as the #4 top solution (out of 80), "based on the total amount of greenhouse gases (it) can potentially avoid or remove from the atmosphere" by 2050. That's behind only "Materials: Refrigeration," "Food: Reduced Food Waste," and "Energy: Wind Turbines (Onshore)."
- Drawdown also includes the essay "Why Bother?" by Michael Pollan, talking about why to bother planting a garden to grow some of your own food. It ends: "The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world."
- The Bodyworlds exhibit.
TGC discusses multiple factors that influenced my decision:
- It presents multiple athletes who compete at world-class levels on plant-based diets.
- It describes the negative effects of animal-based diets.
- Dr. Ornish and others describe how plant-based diets can reverse those negative effects, and are typically the diets associated with long, healthy lives (Buettner's book The Blue Zones Solution: Eating and Living Like the World's Healthiest People is prominently visible on Ornish's bookshelf).
- Arnold Schwarzenegger and other athletes talk about how to go about changing from an animal-based diet to plant-based, and how it doesn't have to be all or nothing, it can be a step at a time.
- Chef Charity Morgan cooks up some delicious-looking plant-based recipes for her husband, Derek Morgan, and his Tennessee Titans teammates.
- It says meat production uses 83% of the world's farmland while providing only 18% of the calories we eat, and that animals consume 6 times more protein than they supply.
- It says meat production results in overuse of fresh water, resulting in shortages for other uses, and that one hamburger has 2400 liters of embedded water in producing it.
- It says that farm animals in the US produce 50 times more waste than the human population, and that the livestock sector is responsible for 15% of global manmade emissions, the same as all the forms of transport in all the world.
- It says that agriculture can provide the solution, by shifting to plant-based food production, which globally would free up an area of land the size of Africa.
- Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy, City University of London, sums it up succinctly when he says, "The message is overwhelming both for public health and environmental reasons. The more plants you can eat, and the less meat and dairy you can consume, the better."
So it's good for me, and it's good for the planet. I have my personal reasons for changing my diet that affect me directly, and my altruistic reasons.
If that's too tree-hugger for you, consider this: It's not purely altruistic. There's also self-interest: to achieve my goal of a sustainable life, I need a sustainable planet. I'd like to live to my 100's in a world that's not wracked by climate change, resource exhaustion, and suffering populations. Read Harry Harrison's MAKE ROOM! MAKE ROOM! for that vision.
Logistics
For now, I'm trying to split up my meals and snacks as follows as I adjust my habits and work down the animal-based foods we have in the house (the meat, eggs, and cheese we have in the refrigerator):
- 50% vegan (no animal-based foods at all)
- 25% vegetarian, with a small amount of animal-based foods on the sides
- 25% with animal-based main dish
I had been planning to work through the whey and casein protein powders I have in the pantry, but after finally watching the 2011 documentary Forks Over Knives (which features several of the same people who appear in TGC, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn and his son Rip Esselstyn, and Dr. Terry Mason), I'll give them to someone at work.
I'll replace them with pea and soy protein powders. For those who are concerned that soy contains estrogen, TGC says it is phytoestrogen, not estrogen, and that it blocks estrogen reception. As bodybuilder Nimai Delgado points out in the film, he has no lack of testosterone.
Once I've completed the shift and tried it for a while, I'll decide how to proceed. On the one hand, while my wife enjoys the vegetarian dishes, she also likes to have animal-based foods at all meals, either as main dish or sides. That determines both what we eat at home, and what restaurants we go to.
I'll replace them with pea and soy protein powders. For those who are concerned that soy contains estrogen, TGC says it is phytoestrogen, not estrogen, and that it blocks estrogen reception. As bodybuilder Nimai Delgado points out in the film, he has no lack of testosterone.
Once I've completed the shift and tried it for a while, I'll decide how to proceed. On the one hand, while my wife enjoys the vegetarian dishes, she also likes to have animal-based foods at all meals, either as main dish or sides. That determines both what we eat at home, and what restaurants we go to.
On the other hand, the reported negative effects of even a single animal-based food serving make a pretty compelling argument for me to avoid them entirely.
Making The Change
While in the past my wife and I found the changes to a plant-based diet to be too much at once, over the years we've actually been eating more and more of these foods. We've already come to treat many of them as major components of our meals and snacks.
My modification to the typical keto diet (where I had already cut out highly refined carbs and replaced dairy milk with almond milk) was to add more vegetables, fruits, seeds, nuts, and whole grains.
So I was already pretty far along. Tipping over to replacing all the animal-based foods is proving to be easier than I expected. Meanwhile, TGC is very clear about taking it at whatever pace I'm comfortable with.
Knowing how to choose and prepare a variety of flavorful foods has been a big help. Part of the key is keeping it enjoyable, because eating is truly one of our sensuous pleasures. I don't want to feel deprived for the next five decades, I want to enjoy great food.
We've recently gotten some cookbooks that look very helpful:
- The Oldways 4-Week Vegetarian & Vegan Diet Menu Plan: Power Your Day with Wholesome Plant Foods, by Oldways and Sharon Palmer, is a practical guide to information and simple recipes.
- Weeknight One-Pot Vegan Cooking: 75 Effortless Recipes with Maximum Flavor and Minimal Cleanup, by Nicole Malik, looks like a good answer to the daily time pressures that drive us to fast food.
- But I Could Never Go Vegan!: 125 Recipes That Prove You Can Live Without Cheese, It's Not All Rabbit Food, and Your Friends Will Still Come Over for Dinner, by Kristy Turner, looks like a great way to help us get past the desire for animal-based foods.
- The Middle Eastern Vegetarian Cookbook, by Salma Hage, is my current favorite, because we love many Middle Eastern dishes and flavors.
Good luck Steve! Go for it!
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