Welcome to our “Eat More Vegetables” issue. The idea is simple. We want to inspire you to love produce. How? Delicious recipes! Some of my favorites from this issue: the zucchini rollatini with smoked mozzarella (yum!), the fennel broiled with Farm and Judith Fertig’s grilled beets with raspberry-thyme sauce. And then there’s the Israeli story focused on the first meal of the day, jammed with—you guessed it—vegetables. If I could, I’d munch the crispy artichokes over labneh every single morning and follow it up with a sabich, an Israeli pita sandwich with roasted eggplant and piles of fresh parsley. I promise, you are about to eat very well!
This is our fourth year riffing on this “eat more vegetables” theme. To me it’s fun! (Though my view is admittedly a little warped. I lust for all produce!) We also do this annual issue because it’s anobvious way to help all of us eat a little healthier. But the past few weeks I started wondering, is it really so obvious? Yes, at the moment, more than half of Americans say they want to consume more vegetables. And simultaneously, going plant-based only, aka vegan, is gaining steam like never before.
But as these plant-power trends keep growing, the contradictory rumble of alarming ideas about the danger of vegetables keeps breaking through. Just as we were wrapping up these pages, two separate people brought up the book The Plant Paradox, in which the author warns that vegetables contain unsafe compounds called lectins that are making us sick. One asked if I thought the concept was bunk and the other told me that he’d read it and found out kidney beans were likely poison! The next day I got an email from my gym suggesting I do a nutrition challenge. I would log what I ate and get deductions for, among other things, beans of any sort and the poor maligned potato. That afternoon, I got a call from a writer telling me that he had gone vegan the week before and was planning to eat that way for an entire year. The purpose: he wanted to see if a 100% plant-based diet could improve his cholesterol enough that he wouldn’t need to start popping statins. So which is it? Are plants the enemy or the savior?
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These conversations were reminders that nutrition can be confusing. In this digital age it’s hard to know which ideas are backed by solid science and which are sketchy at best, dangerous at worst. This is in part why we asked investigative journalist Patrick Clinton to write about whether the vegan diet is the healthiest possible way to eat. To get to the punch line: yes, it’s pretty clear, according to a preponderance of studies, that if not the single healthiest diet, it’s among the healthiest, when done right. But Clinton’s piece also brings up some of the over-the top claims being tossed around by some vegan-advocacy organizations, such as “eating an egg a day equals smoking 5 cigarettes a day.” Clinton helps put these alarmist theories in perspective.
Since we are doing an entire issue trying to get you to eat a more veg-focused diet, you can guess where Eating Well lands on the question of whether we should be worried about eating plants. Nope! We’re not. But where are we on the question of whether we should all go 100% vegan? We’re not there, either. We love it all. We believe in pleasure… pleasure mixed with a dose of balance and good sense!
Bonus: Behind the Emerald Curtain
Green juice isn’t a new concept, but drinking straight-up celery in the name of better health? We look at the science.
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Proponents say slugging entire glasses of juiced celery lowers blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol, improves digestion and fends off inflammation, anxiety and even certain cancers. (And this is the abridged list of claims.) But what makes celery juice so special?
The most popular explanation for its purported healing powers is that celery contains a cluster of sodium believed to strengthen the electrical impulses between neurons, improving brain function; to increase stomach acid, aiding digestion; and to break down the cell membrane of pathogens, destroying them on contact. And the only way to get a big-enough dose is to drink an entire head of celery.
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The problem: No data supports that this sodium cluster exists, let alone has any benefits. “This is snake-oit salesmanship of the worst kind,” says Rachete Pojednic.
Ph.D., Ed.M., an assistant professor of nutrition at Simmons University. She adds that there’s also no reason to think sipping celery is healthier than crunching it whole. We love celery-it is a vegetable-but juicing it strips out the fiber.
Some evidence suggests that compounds like anti-oxjdants and phytochemicals in celery may tower blood sugar and cholesterol-in theory. The science has been conducted in petri dishes and rodents and is far too early to apply to humans. And, in excess, it could cause skin reactions or interact with prescriptions.
Is Vegan Really thee Healthiest Diet?
Some of the things you read about this plant-based diet would have you believe that the omnivores among us are doomed to extinction (or at least disease). So before we start Eating-well and all, let’s separate the solid science from the hype.
One of the most important forces reshaping the American diet is the quest for a magic bullet: a d simple all-powerful something that we can X eat (or avoid) to find ourselves instantly slim, healthy, beautiful and wise. Kale, ‘ acai, alkaline water, gluten-free, anything— we’re ready to believe.
Lately, veganism—avoiding all animal products, including eggs, dairy and honey—is the bullet of choice among the glamorous. Gwyneth Paltrow, the celebrity health queen, is unsurprisingly vegan. So’s Venus Williams. And Beyonce has periodically cut out animal products in preparation for concerts to give her more energy, and urged her Instagram followers to do the same.
But some advocates are spouting “facts” about veganism and health: They declare that the World Health Organization (WHO) said eating meat is as carcinogenic as smoking. (It isn’t, and the WHO didn’t.) Or that eating an egg a day contributes as much to cardiac disease as smoking five cigarettes a day. (Totally overblown.) These claims paint a portrait ofveganism as the only truly healthy diet, and that anything else as just slow poison.
OK, but is veganism really the dietary be-all and end-all? Look into the individual claims and you’re likely to come away confused. Some research (well, the single paper that I was able to find) links eggs to increased arterial plaque. But others, including one gigantic Chinese research .
Project, suggest that eggs may reduce heart disease risk. Science as a whole does a good job of figuring out the world. Individual studies, however, are often wrong-as much as 40 percent of the time. If you want to know what science says about a huge multifaceted question like diet and health, you have to look at a lot of science.
So what does a lot of science say about veganism?
Before we answer, let’s stop and acknowledge a couple of things: First, health isn’t the only, or even the primary, reason to go vegan. Ethical and environmental concerns are enough on their own to make someone choose the plant-based path. Two topics deserving of their own articles, so we won’t get into them here.
Second, eating vegan doesn’t automatically mean you’re eating well. Nutter Butters are vegan. Not to mention unfrosted Pop Tarts. And even a junk-free vegan diet raises health concerns.
The healthiest thing you can consume is good information.
With new trendy diets emerging all the time, it’s hard to know what information is real and what is fluff. That’s why our eCornell-affiliated Plant-Based Nutrition Certificate program is so valuable.
We aren’t selling a diet; we’re sharing scientifically based insights to help people better understand nutrition and take full control of their lives.
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