Vesanto Melina

I'm a registered dietitian, and I realized that we as dietitians had never learned about vegetarian nutrition. You know, it was kind of thought to be a hippie trend then, and, you know, we didn't really learn the nutrition. So I started teaching dietitians about plant-based nutrition and also the public. I did some courses at university and special workshops for dietitians. And out of that grew a book.

Dr. Yami

Welcome to Veggie Doctor Radio. I am your host, Dr. Yami, board-certified pediatrician, certified lifestyle medicine physician, certified health and wellness coach, author, speaker, mother, wife, and human being. I passionately believe in the power of diet, habits, and mindset in sparks and sustaining well-being and joy in our lives. This podcast combines expert interviews and thoughtful monologues to explore plant-based nutrition, lifestyle medicine, parenting, mindset, and other exciting and fun topics. I hope that these episodes inspire you, uplift you, and equip you with the knowledge and tools to live your best life. Are you ready to get started? Let's do it.

Dr. Yami

Vesanto Melina is an internationally known nutrition consultant and speaker, academic instructor, registered dietitian, and writer. She was the recipient of the prestigious Riley Jeffs Memorial Award in 2016. The highest recognition that the Board of Dietitians of Canada can bestow on a member. Vesanto with co-author Brenda Davis Rd. has written nine classics on plant-based nutrition, and their latest books are Plant Powered Protein, which was published in 2023, and the Kick Diabetes Cookbook, published in 2018. She is also the lead author of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics' latest physician paper on vegetarian diets. Vesanto lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. More information can be found at nutrispeak.com. So this is such a lovely episode that I had with Miss Vesanto Melina. She is such an amazing person, a warm, compassionate, radiant being to be around. And I had the pleasure to meet her in person at the Plant-Based Prevention of Disease Conference in October, which by the way, I have been invited to go back and speak at the Peapod Conference in June in Raleigh, Durham, North Carolina. in June of 2024. So if you are looking for a conference to attend that is very inspirational and it's just going to fill you up with energy and enthusiasm, I recommend the Peapod Conference and hopefully I can see you there next June. But back to the Vesanto, she's lovely. We had just a lovely conversation. I asked her about her name because she actually changed her name back in 1980, I think. So she tells me story in the episode. We also talk about her transition from vegetarianism to veganism, what she thinks has changed the most in the vegan diet in the past three 30 years, what the biggest public misconception is of the vegan diet. If she ever worries that people don't eat in the most healthy and sustainable way when they're on a vegan or plant-based diet, the effects of the standard American and standard Canadian diet on children. We also talk about her writing books starting at the age of 51. So there's a lot of really fun information. She has some really good tips, and it was really a pleasure to talk with her today. I hope that you really love this episode, and I hope that you have a very fantastic day. Remember that the information on this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not meant to replace careful evaluation and treatment by healthcare professionals. So if you have concerns about you or your child's eating, nutrition, or growth, please consult a healthcare professional. Santo Melina. Welcome to the show. What an honor and a pleasure to have you today.

Vesanto Melina

Oh, it's a pleasure to see you too. It certainly is.

Dr. Yami

Well, I am, you know, I am so privileged because I recently got to meet you in person and you are such a lovely person and just being next to you, you exude so much warmth and just positive energy. So I'm really excited to get to know you a little deeper. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna launch straight in to maybe It might be kind of an invasive question, but you know, you've written 14 books, many of which are bestsellers and have become classics in the plant-based nutrition world. You've had an impressive career, but I really want to know where it all began. I read that you went to an ashram in India and you changed your name after that. So can you tell us a little bit about that?

Vesanto Melina

I did. Yeah, my original name was really different. It was Louise Goranson, Swedish name. Wow. At least the last name. But, um, I, and I, I had taught nutrition at university. My, both my parents taught at the University of British Columbia. I also taught at the University in Seattle briefly, but, um, and I'd had children, um, but I wanted to really see the other side of the world. You know, I'd had a very academic career, and so I wanted to just get more rounded out. So I went to India and ended up staying there for four years. It was a thing we did in the 70s, the late 70s and the early 80s. We were trooping off to various places, including India, and it turned out to be a wonderful experience because India is so diverse and, you know, such a rich culture and an old culture. And by the way, my children still go there. My son goes up and does yoga in Rishikesh, and when he pre-covid, anyway, but we ended up I just found it very interesting being there. And in an ashram in Pune, I was given the name Vesanto, which means springtime. Springtime of love was my name. So anyway, it was a very interesting experience. The whole of India, the ashram, all of it. And also, that's what made me adopt vegetarian diet because it's so a profound a part of that culture. You know, they feel connection with all sides of life, you know, animals. So anyway, that started me off.

Dr. Yami

Wow. And so your children went with you too.

Vesanto Melina

Yes, yes.

Dr. Yami

And how old were they at the time?

Vesanto Melina

Let's see, 11 and nine. Yeah.

Dr. Yami

Wow.

Vesanto Melina

So it was interesting.

Dr. Yami

What a cool experience.

Vesanto Melina

It was very cool. And we did things about kind of homeschooled a little bit, like how many rupees do you pay the rickshaw when you go to MG Road, you know, that kind of thing.

Dr. Yami

So, but that was a really important time in your life because if that's when you adopted vegetarianism, that's kind of what set you off for the rest of your career. I'm curious, With the vegetarianism, did that stem from that concept of ahimsa, like that yoga concept of ahimsa?

Vesanto Melina

It did, yes. I mean, in India, it's so profound a part of things. But I... certainly rounded up my understanding. You know, it takes a while to really grasp what's going on. And so a lot of my understanding of Ahimsa has grown since, you know, 1980 or so. I adopted a vegetarian diet in 1978, but since then, I've just learned how many excellent reasons there are for adopting a plant-based diet.

Dr. Yami

Yeah, it's definitely an evolution and a journey over time, for sure. Well, you know, you became vegetarian at that time. So what prompted you to make the transition from a vegetarian diet to a vegan diet in 1993?

Vesanto Melina

Okay, well, I came back from India, and I'm a registered dietitian, and I realized that we as dietitians had never learned about vegetarian nutrition. You know, it was kind of thought to be a hippie trend then, and, you know, we didn't really learn the nutrition. So I started teaching dietitians about plant-based nutrition. and also the public. I did some courses at university and special workshops for dieticians, and out of that grew a book. Now, when I was learning about it, I started learning what happened to farm animals. And in Canada and in the United States, I learned about how, you know, little calves, if they had fallen, during transport to the slaughterhouse they'd be just dragged out by a chain and kind of crashed down to the ground and I mean just things that were really upsetting for me to hear and so um I started thinking that it would be better to be completely plant-based and in our but I wasn't I was vegetarian not vegan at that point I used I love cheese I loved you know all kinds of dairy and used eggs once in a while and baking, that kind of thing. But I put a chapter in that first book called Without Dairy, and it just showed how you could manage. It didn't say dairy was bad. It just said, here's how you get the nutrients. And When I was writing it, I thought, oh, I could do that. So I did. So it was very much about animals. Yeah.

Dr. Yami

I love how you were able to convince yourself through the science. That's really funny. But I think a lot of that happens to a lot of people and a lot of people assume, they're like, well, what's wrong with dairy and eggs? You're not killing an animal, it's not hurting anything, but they're just completely unaware of the impacts of factory farming on the animals, especially at the mass quantity that the public demands, you know? And it's not even just that, obviously, the effect that it has on the land and the environment and the workers, but there is harm that is done whenever we're having an increased demand for these products.

Vesanto Melina

That's right well with dairy like the mother cow produces milk for her young but the young don't get it and the girl calves are taken away and supposed to grow into cows that will produce milk for at least six years and then of course they're turned into hamburgers and the male calves become veal they're put in these little tiny little tents for four months or so, living in isolation. And then, yeah, so it's kind of a really tragic thing for those of us that are close to animals and see what it's like for them. And it's the same with chickens. A lot of the boy chicks are just ground up. And I mean, it's just a whole tragic situation. And we have now these ag gag laws that don't allow people to go in and see, but it's been very troubling. And I realized that sense of things is spreading. More and more people are aware of that. And of course, now we're starting to see the environmental impacts, like the effect of beef on the carbon dioxide emissions is about 20 times that of tofu, for example. So if you can start to learn a really good tofu recipe, you know, it's just a real big leap and a very positive one for people.

Dr. Yami

Yeah, it makes a big difference. And it's not too much of a sacrifice because tofu is delicious.

Vesanto Melina

Yeah, well, it's gotta be marinated and stuff. Yeah, unusually.

Dr. Yami

But whenever you've been a ******** you know, plant-based eater, vegan for a long time, you get to the point where you actually enjoy it plain. But at the beginning, no, at the beginning, whenever you're transitioning, yes, you gotta be very careful to season it and marinate it, but like my kids, they’ll eat it plain. They also eat nutritional yeast plain, which is a little strange, but you know, that one's also an acquired taste, right? It takes you a while to acquire that taste, and then your kind of hooked on it. You've been vegan for about 30 years now. What has changed the most in our approach to a vegan diet since that time?

Vesanto Melina

Oh, it certainly has changed. I mean, when we first wrote our book, it was called Becoming Vegetarian, that book, even though it was a vegan book. But I didn't even know the word vegan. So that was an evolution. And now we're often wanting to use the word plant-based because there's a slight difference between plant-based, like whole food plant-based and vegan. But what happened at first was that it was quite a challenge to be vegan. I think it isn't now really at all. But at first, for example, the milks were not fortified with vitamin D. They were not allowed to be fortified in the United States and Canada. And I was actually part of that evolution that ended up that, see, the non-dairy milks like soy milk could be fortified with vitamin D like cow's milk was. That kind of thing has been blocked a lot by the dairy industry, but now it's allowed. That happened in Canada around 1997 and in the US a bit later that they allowed soy milk to have vitamin D added to it. So there've been changes like that that happened. And of course, now you look at the skews in the supermarket of all the non-dairy milks and you've got a huge range. I put oat milk in my tea and soy milk used for a lot of different things because the protein's so much higher. So there's that kind of thing. And then there are all these veggie meats. which can help people in their transition. And there are restaurants all over the place. Like if you look on the website, happycow.net, and just look in your location or wherever you're traveling to, you'll see a whole pile of vegan restaurants, vegetarian restaurants in all kinds of parts of the world. Things have changed.

Dr. Yami

Yeah, it's incredible. I want to, there's two comments I want to make. One, the hypocrisy of the dairy industry if they were trying to block fortification, because we know that mammalian milk is low in vitamin D. So cow's milk has to be fortified anyway if we're wanting to make sure that people are getting enough vitamin D, especially in certain parts of the country. But Also things like how iodine gets in there and those kinds of things. I mean, cow's milk is definitely something that is also fortified. So it's very hypocritical of them to be like, no, this is not milk. You can't tell the public this is milk and don't fortify. I mean, it's just very interesting to see that. And then the other comment I want to make is when I go grocery shopping, which isn't very often because now I order all my groceries, which I think is good because it saves me a lot of money, But I love grocery shopping because it's really fun to see all the products. I usually stay like in the organic specialty section, but this weekend I had to go get to the grocery store to get ingredients for all my Thanksgiving things. And I end up going in another aisle that's not in the organic specialty one. And if there's like a mac and cheese section, I don't know if you know this, there's like an entire section for mac and cheese, I had forgotten that because I hadn't ever been in that aisle in a long time. But there were five different vegan mac and cheese boxes, and two of them were gluten free. So there was two gluten free vegan and, you know, vegan this, plant-based this. And I was like, okay, this is really becoming mainstream if it's in the regular mac and cheese section. You know, I was pretty shocked about that.

Vesanto Melina

Good points.

Dr. Yami

I'd love to know, in your opinion, what is the biggest public misconception of a vegan and/or plant-based diet?

Vesanto Melina

Oh, I'll say a couple of things. So one is that it's going to be really hard. And the other is that soy isn't good for you. Those are so there's two. Yeah. So yeah, it actually isn't that hard. And it really helps to start finding a little group of people. If somebody's in transition going more plant based, they're often vegan meetups or vegetarian groups that are forming. Or you can just check with a few neighbors and see if there are people that want to get together and try out recipes, because it can help so much when you try out something. You know, when you get a taste of it and you go, yes, I want to make that again. Or no, that one's not along my lines. And you don't want to have to bought 20 ingredients or six ingredients or something and then not use them. So that can really, really make a big difference. Absolutely. And then soy, um, soy is there, there have been some very funny, I think, um, misconceptions about soy. Um, and several of them were based on some research. Well two incidences where guys ate a lot of tofu and by a lot I mean 20 servings a day or 12 servings a day in one case and the other case and one was a young man of 19 one was 60 years old so anyway these guys ate a lot of soy different forms soy milk tofu over the course of a year and developed man ***** Well, you're not supposed to eat 20 servings of anything, whether it's carrots or kale or, you know, that's just to have such an unbalanced diet. I don't know if they had free access or what it was. So, and their doctors just told them, hey, quit that, you know, go back to a more balanced diet and everything returned to normal. But that is the origin of why people got afraid of soy, that it would affect our hormones in a certain way. And that was just in a very, very extreme situation. And it turns out that soy is actually very beneficial. Like if kids have soy, they will reduce their risk of breast cancer for girls later in life. And it seems they'll probably reduce the risk of prostate cancer for boys. And then in later life, if you have these cancers, you can reduce the risk of recurrence. So soy turns out to be a tremendous benefit, and it also has much more protein. than the, say, rice milk and even simple oat milks, that kind of thing. So it's helpful for kids. If you want to have your child have more protein, soy milk is a better choice.

Dr. Yami

Yeah, and it's yummy and versatile. There's so many different ways to use it. One of the ways that my husband and I like to eat it is the roasted soybeans. And we can even get the roasted soybeans that come cooked oil free. And it's such a great snack after our exercise and our hikes, taking them to hikes and things like that. And they're just yummy and crunchy. You can put them on salads. There's all kinds of ways you can use them. So there's lots of different forms of soy in their whole form that are very enjoyable to eat.

Vesanto Melina

Let me show you. In our plant-powered protein book, there's these little cubes. And I love marinating some tofu. And then this one's happened to be tempeh, but it could be tofu and they're just marinated. And then I put them in the air fryer and have them for a snack and use those. Just have them around all the time. Like you might eat potato chips, except that's not a good choice. And the tofu is a really good choice.

Dr. Yami

So yummy. Have you ever made tofu feta where you like cut it into little blocks and then marinate it with all the herbs and spices and everything in there. That's really yummy too. And then you can add it to a lot of your different recipes. Have you ever tried that before?

Vesanto Melina

No, that sounds good.

Dr. Yami

It's really delicious. And I love how you brought up the social aspect. It makes such a huge difference because I think a lot of people in their brains, they think, oh, a plant-based diet, oh, that's going to be really bland. And I don't even know how that just sounds like such a big sacrifice, but once people start tasting the food, they're like, wait a second. If I ate like this, I could eat like this all the time. And that would happen to me at my cooking classes all the time. Just super simple recipes, simple ingredients, nothing gourmet. People would taste it and be like, well, if I was eating this, I could definitely do it. And it starts to change your mind set about what it actually tastes like to eat a plant-based diet. So I think that's very important as well.

Vesanto Melina

It is. You got that one right on. With our books, we have recipe testers. We've got five in British Columbia and one in San Francisco that test all our recipes. And they have different amounts of skill. And unless something gets five stars, we don't let it into our books. And they're all at different places on abilities. So we've got things that are nutritious. And they taste good.

Dr. Yami

Wow. I love y'all's process. That's, you know, very high quality. Amazing. Yeah. I'm just curious about you as a dietitian. I think probably people make a lot of assumptions about dietitians, right? And you probably have had that awkward instance sitting at the table with other people and nobody wants to order desserts. But I do wonder if you ever worry that there are people that don't approach a plant-based diet in the healthiest and most sustainable way. Is that something that worries you or that you think about?

Vesanto Melina

Oh, sometimes I don't. But yeah, there's so many different options now. So I'm personally just glad when people move towards plant-based and it's okay to eat things like the veggie meats or things that are fairly processed. Now, it seems that with time we tend to move towards whole food plant-based, and that means it's much more like it came from nature. Um, you know, not so processed, but, um, anywhere on the spectrum seems good, you know, a good place. And then, and then people evolve with time. Um, because of course we learn with a whole food, you get all the vitamins and minerals and protective, uh, phytochemicals. That phyto means plants, so plant chemicals that protect us and reduce our risk of chronic disease. So that's a really good choice. But if you're starting off and you eat things that are fairly processed, well, that's a good start, you know, just the taste is even more similar to what you were eating before.

Dr. Yami

Yeah, baby steps. And I think also, as you progress on the journey, if you tune into your body, you can start kind of differentiating which foods give you that sense of well-being that you want. Like, definitely now we have so many options. We can eat anything vegan. We could have vegan cake and ice cream, all of the snacks and everything. But, you know, once, you know, we go on vacation or we have, you know, those holiday weeks and at the end you're just like, ugh, I'm not feeling as good. And you gravitate towards eating more of the whole foods because intuitively you start learning that it just feels really good.

Vesanto Melina

Yeah, that's for sure.

Dr. Yami

What do you think about the effects of the standard Canadian or standard American diet on children in this modern age.

Vesanto Melina

Oh, it's kind of tragic in a lot of places. There are so many foods that people are eating, for example, 25% of many people's calories is from soda pop, or even more. And that's just like sugar, and, you know, water, few other flavorings, but that also causes major pollution for the way those sugars are grown. So that's one thing that is really difficult. The beverages should be things that deliver nutrition, not just sugar. And then a lot of children are growing up in areas where they don't have that much produce nearby. I was interesting, I was giving a presentation in Manhattan recently to school food administrators, and they're really leading the way. They have school foods that are served, now get this number, to 800,000 men. meals a day to children. And they've started to make the Friday meals are plant based. And now they've done that for quite a while. And now they're having the Monday meals more plant based in the for the schools. And some of these kids, you know, wouldn't have had that much some of the meals at breakfast, they wouldn't have had that much at home, or they wouldn't have had that good of a meal at lunchtime. And so, you know, we've got some really innovative ways of addressing this kind of thing. And they're foods that the kids like, like these are really well tested. So they've got, you know, falafels and just all sorts of things that, that kids will go, hey, this is good, you know. So, um, I'm interested to see these evolutions because some children don't have that much access to good foods. And I've been interested too, some adults really didn't learn to enjoy cooking or preparing foods. And so when that's been the case, it's hard for them to teach their kids to like healthy foods. And I was fortunate because my mother taught at the Child Study Centre at UBC, but she loved having kids do things. So we used to have, you know, food preparation was just part of life. And, and I had my son chopping up, you know, a banana with a little plastic knife when he was one and a half. And, you know, if they get in there and feel things and try them out, they'll get to like foods. So I really appreciate when people can have their Children help them with a bit of food preparation.

Dr. Yami

Yes, for sure. And I agree. that New York City seems to be on the leading edge when it comes to school food and innovation. And I think what's really important for some of these changes is that we don't give up and that we keep trying. different things because what I've heard is like, oh, if we serve more fruits and vegetables, we do this. Kids just don't eat them. They just throw them away. Well, that doesn't mean we give up. That means we try a different approach or change the recipes or, you know, just keep going because also it just takes time for people to learn to like new foods, especially if they've never been exposed to them ever in their entire lives. So it just takes time. So we have to be patient. We have to really decide that this is a priority. So I'm sure Canada is pretty similar because there's a lot of things that we're similar on, on these things. But in the United States, children are deriving 70% of their calories from ultra processed foods, 70%, which is a huge number. And so going back to what you said earlier, any step that we make towards eating more whole plant foods is. positive, you know, like it doesn't have to be an all or nothing thing. Just taking those baby steps towards that direction of eating more whole plant foods can be really impactful, especially when it comes to our children.

Vesanto Melina

There's one more thing I want to say about school foods, and that's in New York, they quite a while ago stopped serving hot dogs. And hot dogs and bacon and ham and sausages are all class one carcinogens. So they're in the same category as Roundup and cigarette smoke. And we don't sell cigarettes on the school playground. You know, or at, you know, events for kids, but we still are selling hot dogs in many, many cases. And this just does not make sense. They are class one carcinogens, according to the American Institute of Cancer Research and the World Health Organization. Like there's a lot of research gone into that and we shouldn't be serving bacon either to kids, even though it tastes good. But there are veggie bacons now and you can and veggie hot dogs, you could go that route. So it's just something I hope a lot more people pick up on and we don't set up our children for, you know, later chronic disease.

Dr. Yami

I agree with you 100%. What I have been asked to consult before on like preschool menus or school menus and like my very first thing is get rid of the processed meats. Like that's number one, just get rid of the processed meats, replace it with something else or just get rid of them because for sure we know that that can cause harm. I would also add to your list pepperoni, because pizza is a very common school food. So pepperoni ends up there every week in some schools, sometimes twice a week. So hot dogs, bacon. lunch meats and pepperoni, I think if we could start with that, even before we change anything else, can make a huge difference for these kids decades down the road. Of course, we're not seeing the effects immediately. And I think that's what people have a hard time making the connection. But we know that there's possible consequences with colon cancer and other types of cancers. And of course, the saturated fats with heart disease. So it's very important point.

Vesanto Melina

Oh, by the way, for pizza, when my kids were little one which they're in their 50s now but um we had pizza parties and the kids would be lining up down the block to come but they were we let them um depending on what age they were they would chop up the veggies or I would you know some mushrooms and pepper colored peppers and um We were using dairy cheese at that point because it was long, long ago, but now we'd more use the plant-based cheeses, but we'd have people put together their own pizza section and it was all healthy stuff on top of it. And they loved that. We put a little flag on it that this was George's or this was Sarah's or Devlin or whatever. It worked really well.

Dr. Yami

That is so fun. And it is such a great way to get kids excited about trying different vegetables because they get that choice aspect to it. They're like, okay, I'm in charge of my pizza. I want to add a little of this on it. I'm not going to add that. And it just works really well. It works well with salad, potato bars, taco night, that same concept of letting the children pick what they want on their, on their little item is so brilliant. So it sounds like you had a blast with your kids and all of the neighbor kids as well.

Vesanto Melina

That's right.

Dr. Yami

I'm gonna change gears a little bit because I feel like this talk is a little bit more about you and I just want to, I want to highlight you, but one of the things that I learned when I met you at the Peapod conference is that you didn't start writing books until you were the age of 51. So what advice do you have for those that feel that it's too late to pursue their dreams or do big things in life? Because you've had such a massive impact and it's not like you started when you were in your 20s. You know, it was a long evolution before you got there and then started writing books and it was like one after another and lots of bestsellers. So what advice do you have for those of us that are like, oh, it's too late. I didn't start soon enough. I'm too old or whatever.

Vesanto Melina

That's interesting. Well, it's hard to write a book when you have children. I don't know if you've noticed that, but if you can just get a whole sentence together, you know, and get to the end of it, like it's just, you've got much more time and available. You can kind of sink into writing and writing is a process, at least I find that you, you drop into it, you drop into what your readers are going to be interested in. And even though you don't know those readers, you still are thinking about what your message is and how to craft it and who it's for. And so that takes a little while to get into that space. And if you get interrupted all the time, you just don't get to stay there. So I found the whole process of writing was much better after my kids were grown and gone in the world, you know, gone off to their lives. but it also took a lot of life experience. I certainly couldn't have written a book when I was just fresh. I could, my first job was teaching university, teaching nutrition at university, but I couldn't have started writing because I, you know, it took like going to India, traveling around the world a couple of times, having some sad things happen in my life and some good things happen and you just get a much broader perspective. So you've actually got something to base some books on. And, uh, but some people could do it earlier. Well, you're doing a lot when you've got little kids, but it's a challenge, right?

Dr. Yami

Oh, absolutely. And I agree with you because I think we talked about this a little bit at the conference too. I'm the kind of person that I need a lot of time to write. I'm not a fast writer. I really need to get into, be uninterrupted and really think about it and think about it some more. And so for me, I, I'm, it's just not quick. It doesn't come quickly. when I write. So I agree with that, that whenever you have more space, uninterrupted space, which does not happen when your children are little, but I think what you're trying to say, too, is that you don't have to rush. So instead of people feeling like, okay, well, this is pretty much it. You know, I'm a mom. I have little kids. This is all I'm going to be able to do. Maybe just enjoy and savor that time. Continue to accumulate life. life experience that leads to wisdom and know that there's going to be a whole nother stage in your life, which I'm approaching that, you know, the stage when you've launched both of your kids off into the world and suddenly you're like, wow, I have lots of time and I actually have a little bit of life experience to draw from. So it doesn't just end, it continues and it's okay to continue to pursue these goals and contribute to society, you know, at whatever age.

Vesanto Melina

That's right. Yeah, that really makes a difference. And of course, writing a book isn't the whole story. You also have to promote it. Like people won't even know that you've got a book. And so one of the blessings that I've had is to be able to travel. I've been to Reykjavik, next year I'll go to, or next summer I'll go to Brazil, you know, going to Costa Rica, like just all kinds of different places where people are interested. You don't always make a lot of money, but You, uh, you know, have the fun of going and meeting people that are interested in getting healthy and lessening climate change and you actually get the feeling that it's a pretty good world out there. You know, that there's a lot of really wonderful people. So the whole process of writing books is really quite a pleasure. I think, you know, it's a fun thing that you can do later in life.

Dr. Yami

I love that. I love that perspective. And thanks for sharing that. I love hearing that with your travel, you've actually become even more positive about the world, because I think a lot of us are starting to have a very negative mindset about the world and our fellow human beings. So it's good to know that you have a different perspective that we can all adopt. Well, I'd love to hear what activism tips you have for those that would like to share their love of animals and plant-based nutrition. So there's some that are just now starting to shift their paradigm, shift their worldview, and adopt this way of eating and living. What can they do to help spread the message? What are different things that you advise?

Vesanto Melina

Okay. Well, one of the things that we've done lately, my husband and I, we live in something called co-housing, and it's a Danish concept where we own our own house, like a townhouse, but it's in a group of 31 townhouses, and we have a big common house. So we have a big dining room that we can access. We can have like 50 people there. But, so I have every month something called a snack luck. because I found that, well, for one thing, I'm not that good at doing food demos, like talking and preparing food and not knocking over the bowl or whatever, you know. And so at SnackLuck, we have people each bring something vegan and people can look at Meatless Meetup and they'll see some of the different events we have. Um, they just come, we often have a speaker. We had Michael Clapper recently, and then recently we had a, a food demo person just showing how to keep recipes simple. So every month there's a different presenter, including me sometimes. And then people just come, they each have to bring a snack, a vegan snack, and they just try out all kinds of things and then they meet each other. also. So it's kind of fun. There are restaurant dine-outs that are fun, but you just get to sit between two people there so you don't get to move around. So this was a really fun thing. Now I also like to influence political people. I'm quite concerned that we put so much subsidy money in the US into the meat industry and some into dairy, but huge amounts into the animal products industry. Like, you know, 70% at least of all the subsidy money goes into that. And, and including things that are carcinogens, like we're subsidizing these things. And, um, I think it's really important to have the, uh, contact with politicians who are making these decisions and let them know, hey, this is not just a matter of helping farmers. Like there are all kinds of farmers. We're helping particular types of farmers and produce products that are really should be on their way now, like, you know, lessening their impact on people's diets. And so I think it's good. One of the things I've done is collect all the e-mail addresses of federal politicians and then in another category of state or provincial politicians, and then of city politicians. And then with one click, because I've got a list on an Excel spreadsheet, I can write and say, hey, the city council meetings should have vegan options, or they should all be vegan once in a while, or plant-based, or something like that. You know, just ways to communicate. We should not be subsidizing on a federal level all these animal products to such a huge extent, we should subsidize some of the dairy alternatives, considering that 70% of the world's population has some degree of lactose intolerance or lactase insufficiency. Like people get sick because of eating milk and they're better off with the dairy alternatives. And yet we're still subsidizing these to such a huge extent. We should be also subsidizing plant foods, organic foods, you know, that kind of thing, you know, spreading it more evenly around. So anyway, that political influence thing is a good one. And then for all kinds of people, just find out where there are people in your area. The vegetarian resource group has often had vrg.org, and it's in Baltimore, I think it is. They have, you know, where contacts are in different parts of the world, or people can just put out a request on e-mail, you know, where are people in my town, you know, what are some groups, societies that are plant-based or vegan or vegetarian? Use whichever words you like. So that's a, that's a really helpful one. And then just asking around your neighbors, your church group, you know, does somebody else want to get together and try out these things with me? So all these activisms, and I really applaud people for all the things you are doing already, all the listeners.

Dr. Yami

Thank you for that. And yeah, I think for people just starting, you know, everybody has different personalities and some people are a little bit more introverted and, you know, may have more difficulty with spreading the message. But back to what we were talking about before. Just taking a plant-based dish or recipe to work and being like, Hey, I brought this dish. Who wants to try it? I mean, that can be such a huge thing because it makes people curious or like, wow, this is really good. Can I have the recipe? And you don't even have to mention that it's plant-based or vegan because everybody loves free food. So just say, Hey, I brought some brownies, or Hey, I brought this whatever casserole, and it's gonna be gone by the end of the workday and people are gonna ask you for the recipe, and then you can expose them to plant-based foods. as well.

Vesanto Melina

Good point.

Dr. Yami

I would love to know, what do you wish more people knew?

Vesanto Melina

I think it would be good if people knew the strong impact of climate change on climate change of our dietary choice. I think that's the big one right now, because people really are concerned. And I know in my areas of British Columbia, both of my, both my son and my daughter had to evacuate this summer because of fires. They had to move into, they were around Shuswap Lake and they had to move into Kamloops. And actually my 11-year-old grandson thought it was really fun because they were at a hotel for a while, but they didn't lose their house. But my son didn't lose his home either, but 300 houses around them were burned. And that's tragic. And then at the same time, I was back in Manhattan, and there was so much flooding, so much water, and I was in an Airbnb on the fifth floor, and the roof started coming down. I had pieces of plaster on my suitcase, and it was because there was so much water that the drain on the roof couldn't handle it. And so pieces of plaster were falling down. And earlier in the spring in Manhattan, a woman drowned. I mean, just in areas where people were driving. So we're really finding the impact of climate change. And one of the things we did in our Plant Powered Protein book, and people can look at that at plant-poweredprotein.com, but we find that the impact on carbon dioxide emissions, on land use, on land acidification, like all the seepage that comes from manure lagoons. And you're like in the Carolinas where there are a lot of pig farms, the land acidification. And in Manitoba, we have that in many, many places, Cargill, Alberta, a lot around feedstock places in California, the land is getting acidified. And then there's water use because it takes a huge amounts more water, and that includes growing products that are made into cheeses and water pollution. So, and in some parts of the world, that's a huge impact. I mean, people are dying because they don't have enough water. And so these impacts are really important. And if you find in our plant-powered protein book, we have a whole section on that exactly how it works out and some of the very strong research that's been done at Oxford, World Health Organization, the United Nations, and only apparently 7% of the media stories talk about food choices at this point. There's a lot about transportation, you know, get an electric car, don't fly so much, this kind of thing. But there's not a lot about dietary choice. And I think it's because some of the people writing the articles haven't quite got their mind around that we as individuals need to change like we do. We could make a choice for our breakfast or lunch or supper to move towards more plant-based.

Dr. Yami

Yes, thank you for that. Climate change is having such a huge impact, making everything so extreme. I'm also on the west coast as you are. And so we know that there's just fire season now. Like it's, you just expect it. It's like part of our world. It's part of our lives. And there's going to be places where the snow is extreme and the rain is extreme and the droughts are extreme. Like, it's just, it's almost like pick your favorite natural disaster and move to that part of the country. You know, like, are you going to be a fire person? Are you going to be a snow person? You know, like, pick your favorite, just move to that part of the country or the world. But, um, but yeah, we're definitely seeing, seeing a very strong impact. And I agree with you in that it seems like I'll want to watch these documentaries about climate change. And, you know, they're showing all these gruesome images of like all these animals dying everywhere and everything drying up and everything flooding. And it'll be like this two hour long thing. And then at the end, they'll say one sentence about eating more plant-based foods, you know? So I think there is almost like this fear that if you tell people, Hey, like this can make a big difference, that people are going to get offended or they're going to react strongly because food can be such a personal and touchy subject. But at least now we get one line in the documentary, which before I think it wasn't even mentioned at all. So maybe we're making some progress, but hopefully over time we'll see more people, especially more of the people that are leaders in this world saying that, hey, this really can make a difference. Think about what you eat and how it's impacting the environment.

Vesanto Melina

Good points. It's interesting watching, if people have Netflix, the Blue Zone series from Dan Buettner, because he's made the point that one of the foods that is used by people in all the different Blue Zones, are legumes, and that means beans, peas, lentils, soy foods. Those are used by all of the people in the Nicoya Peninsula, and you know, they have Hispanic people are using a lot of, you know, certain types of beans. And in the Mediterranean, they use white beans. So in all these different areas, the Seventh Day Adventists in California, another blue zone. So it's interesting watching those. And so people can learn how to make them taste really good, but they also extend your life and give you years of good health at the end instead of the pain and devastation of chronic disease for a decade or so.

Dr. Yami

I just love how you threw in a plug for beans. beans because I'm always trying to promote beans. And I don't know, I don't know too much about the Canadian diet, but I feel like in the States, People are not familiar with beans. So it does take a lot of convincing. Just this is how you can use them. This is how you can incorporate them, really reminding people, okay, have you tried to add any more legumes to your weekly diet? But I agree. I am definitely a bean pusher. I'm always trying to get people to eat more beans, but also, I'm in love with beans. I just think they're so tasty and so yummy and so versatile, and you can use it for everything. You can use them in breakfast, lunch, dinner, desserts, snacks, every single eating opportunity can include beans.

Vesanto Melina

That's right. And one of the interesting things, the US dietary guidelines, I looked it up on page 13, they tell you to vary your protein sources. But what they mean by that is that you have 87% meat, fish, poultry, eggs, dairy, cheese. And 13%, now this is amazing to me, seeds, nuts, and soy foods. They do not even mention legumes, beans, peas, lentils, except for soy foods as protein sources. They have them on another page as vegetables. But it's shocking to me, and I think the US Dietary Guidelines, they're just up for a new revision, but this latest revision kind of went backwards, and it doesn't emphasize the plant foods enough. And I think there's very, very strong lobbies in the government that influence how the wording So not to include the legumes, which are really the protein powerhouses of the plant foods, that's kind of shocking to me. And there are about 20 types of beans, peas, lentils. You think of all the different colors. So people go, Yeah, I had this recipe when I was a kid that my mom used to make. I didn't like it. Well, don't stop there. Like there's really a lot of options. and uh so people can explore and try some of the things you know all the different kinds of lentils and red lentils cook in 15 minutes and there's canned lentils and legumes are fine to use and there's really a lot of options and their thought now is a longevity food. So there's a big plus here.

Dr. Yami

Yeah, I love how we go full circle and things, right? Like you think of beans and they're so inexpensive. They just seem so humble, you know? And then to be like highlighting them as a food that's so health promoting and can promote longevity, it's just ironic because I think in our societies, we've gone from like having to create foods in a lab that are, quote, good for you to It's just the humble bean, okay? Eat more beans. I love it. Well, Vesanto, this has been fantastic. It's been so lovely getting to know you some more, and I'm just so grateful for everything that you do. I'd love for you to tell us how we can connect with you, where we can find your books and all of those important details.

Vesanto Melina

Okay. Well, my website is nutrispeak.com, like it would be the first part of nutrition, N-U-T-R-I, and then speak.com. So, and that's about consultations, and our books are on there, and also a lot of podcasts. And then there's the plant-powered protein. plant on the website it's plant-powered protein.com and I and my co-authors Brenda Davis and Corey who's an environmentalist and agrologist he's got lots of information on there and then there's another one um kick diabetes cookbook.com so this one has no added sugar no added oil and it's um You know, no added fat and it's still, all the recipes really taste good because they went through our tasters. So those are our main websites. Oh, also I've got becomingvegan.ca, I think it is. Yeah. And those are textbooks that they use in the US, China, Taiwan and Canada.

Dr. Yami

Wow, amazing. What a legacy, Vesanto. You have just done some amazing work. I'm so grateful for you, your beautiful energy, your compassion, and how you continue to teach us how to be healthy vegan. So I really appreciate that very much. So thank you so much for all that you do, and I hope that you have a very plan-tastic day.

Vesanto Melina

Oh, thank you, Dr. Yami. It was fun talking with you.

Dr. Yami

Hey, veggie lover. I hope that you loved today's episode. Will you take a second and do me a huge favor? Please subscribe to my podcast so that you never miss an episode. You're the reason I'm here and I want to share it all with you. Thank you for listening and have a plan-tastic day.