Could Food Be the Best Medicine? Moving Toward Plant-Based Eating

Just over a month ago, I was flipping through Netflix trying to figure out what to watch. Then the documentary The Game Changers zipped by. For reasons unknown to me, I decided to watch it. Little did I know it would change the course of my month, and perhaps even my life.

The Game Changers follows the story of a Special Forces trainer and winner of The Ultimate Fighter, James Wilks, as he explores outdated myths about meat-eating and showcases some elite athletes, who have gone all-in on a plant-based diet. https://gamechangersmovie.com/

Why would they do that?

Well, according to the documentary (and other sources), switching to a diet centered around plants can yield significant performance advantages to athletes, providing optimal fuel, increasing blood flow, making muscles more efficient, and speeding up recovery by lowering inflammation. Of course, the health benefits of moving toward a plant-based diet belong to everyone – not just the athletes.

The documentary reveals how a single animal-based meal can quickly thicken the blood, which slows down the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to the body, including the muscles during exercise and recovery. Plant-based meals have the opposite effect, allowing blood to flow quickly to its destination. Not only that, but an animal-based meal can constrict the arteries by 40% just two hours after eating.

Full-on yikes.

As someone in his 50s and facing an uphill battle with a body slowly breaking down, reducing inflammation struck me as a key long-term goal. Apparently, while animal products contain a wide range of pro-inflammatory compounds, plant-based foods are packed with anti-inflammatory compounds, including thousands of powerful antioxidants. According to one study, a plant-based diet can help reduce measures of inflammation by 29 percent in just three weeks.

I was sold.

Overnight, I stopped eating meat. In the last month, I have largely avoided eating eggs, cheese, and other dairy products (which are all pro-inflammatory). But not wanting to be a zealot, I’ve allowed for some wiggle room. After 3 weeks of no meat and mostly plant-based eating, I ate bacon and eggs during a weekend getaway with friends (I don’t regret it!). Then I went right back to plant-based foods for most of my meals.

My approach has been pretty straight forward. I eat until I’m satiated, and I don’t count calories or grams of protein (weight loss or gain isn’t my goal). I also make sure I have the key nutrients and vitamins in my diet, including B12, calcium, iron, magnesium, and Vitamin D (oat milk, chia seeds, hemp seeds, nuts, spinach, and Black Strap Molasses all help with this). I also take B12, Vitamin D, and DHA/EPA supplements. One last caveat: I likely will never stop eating the occasional cake or muffin that has been made with eggs (We all have to draw the line somewhere!).

Admittedly, my transition had been made a tad more challenging after recently adapting to eating within a 9-10 hour window each day (see my blog on INTERMITTENT FASTING). During the first few weeks, I thought about eating a lot – day and night — my sleep was interrupted, and I had a rumbling tummy. Then my body and mind made the adjust, and I found my brain was clearer, I had a newfound energy surging through my body, and I was having more restful sleeps.

For the first month, I kept a log that tracked if I ate veggie or full vegan, the number of hours of my daily fast, and how my energy/moods were. I will likely track this for another month or two.

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Plant-centered eating is also good for the planet, as the environmental footprint is much smaller.

Meat, dairy, egg and fish farming use something like 83% of the world’s farmland yet provide less than 20% of the world’s calories. And every year, 70 billion animals are consumed globally. Growing animal feed requires vast amounts of land, which is the single biggest source of habitat destruction. And that doesn’t even touch on the vast water resources needed to produce animal foods (that’s why I don’t drink almond milk – because growing almonds requires a ton of water). Water contaminated by livestock is also a major environmental issue…

According to the Game Changers website, the livestock sector is responsible for 15% of global man-made CO2 emissions, which is about the same as the emissions from all the transport in the world (including planes, trains, cars, trucks, and ships).

I recognize, of course, that being able to pick and choose what foods I ingest is a privilege, given that billions of people on this planet are just trying to get a basic level of calories – of any kind (perhaps a blog post on the growing chasm between rich and poor is in order).  In the same way, I would never lecture someone from the arctic that they should try to survive on a plant-based diet.

For me, moving toward a plant-based diet isn’t an attempt to stop time or the aging process. My goal is to feel good and optimize my health for the road ahead. Afterall, we only have one body and one planet, so let’s take care of them both — as if our lives depended on it.

*

Other notes from The Game Changers website:

GENETICS VS. LIFESTYLE: Globally, cardiovascular disease kills roughly one in every three people, with cancer killing one in every six. For most of the leading causes of death, genes are only responsible for about 10 to 20 percent of our risk. More than 60% of all global deaths are due to chronic diseases and conditions such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and certain cancers, with poor diet considered a major contributing factor in all of them.

EATING MORE PLANTS: Despite recent diet trends that promote eating more animal products while avoiding grains and numerous types of fruits and vegetables, the Global Burden of Disease Study involving nearly 500 researchers from more than 300 institutions in 50 countries and examined nearly 100,000 data sources — concluded that the top four foods we need to consume more of in order to reduce our overall risk of death are fruits, nuts/seeds, vegetables, and whole grains [but don’t forget legumes, either!].

Some links:

Good resource for nutrition and health information: https://nutritionfacts.org/

No Meat Athlete: https://www.nomeatathlete.com/blog/

[Please note, that my opinions/experiences do not replace the advice of a health professional].