“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Chris and I have been interested in eating healthy for many years. I gave up meat for two years while I was teaching middle school, and it was a great experience, but it didn’t stick. And I wasn’t eating especially healthy vegetarian, with lots of sweet cereal and Taco Bell black-bean and cilantro rice burritos. Chris has also been searching for solutions to her serious stomach issues and first eliminated meat from her diet a few years ago before her celiac diagnosis. Along the way, there were a few books that I read that made an impact on me. The first was Michael Pollan’s book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” followed by “In Defense of Food.” Both books challenged the diet culture all around us as well shedding light on the marketing machine that drives a lot of how we feel about what we eat and ultimately what we actually eat. A lot of what Pollan has to say can be found in a really interesting article he published in the New York Times back in 2007. I also read a book called “Grain Brain” by Dr. David Perlmutter that was published in 2013. When I first read this book, I was a little turned off by how aggressive and sweeping Perlmutter’s claims were. But the ideas in the book, about the effects of wheat, sugar, and carbs on the brain and our overall health, stuck with me.

In the fall of 2019, Chris also read “Grain Brain” and it was amazing how it captured so much of her food experience before and after her celiac diagnosis. I read it again myself (listened to it, actually). Then we both watched two movies. The first was “The Game Changers” and the second was “Forks Over Knives.” What had previously seemed some complex - what Pollan describes as “Nutritionism” - began to make a lot more sense, especially in light of research like that described in “The China Study” by Colin and Thomas Campbell. And while there are different opinions about how valid some of the conclusions made in the movies and books, two things were clear. First, mostly plant-based diets are healthier than mostly meat-based diets. And second, I just feel better when I eat plant-based meals that don’t include any meat. So here we are. We’ve already been eating pretty healthy for the last few years, but for me it has been hard to give up meat. Here in Hawaii, especially, there are so many good meat-based dishes - kalua pork, beef bulgogi, smoked brisket - and they are everywhere. I find meat addictively tempting - when I start thinking about it, it’s hard not to end up eating it. So it is only by making it a hard and fast rule that I can eliminate it entirely. Giving up gluten is also hard, but while I love good bread, it’s not the same as meat, and we’ve been able to find good gluten-free breads that are whole food and healthy.

One last word about the rationale for giving up meat. The primary purpose for us is to take better care of ourselves and to live healthier. But there is another side to meat consumption that motivates us too. The amount of resources that it takes to produce meat-based protein is significantly more than that required to produce plant-based protein. See this article from Cornell University from 1997 for some incredible data. Given the state of our planet, this aspect of meat consumption deserves some consideration and is reason enough on its own to go plant-based.