Lucia

Welcome to the Expert Edge. This is the show where we bring on experts in their fields of health and wellness practice, and we hear their stories, and we learn what they see working in the field of diabetes reversal and prevention. So I'm happy to introduce today's expert, Vesanto Melina. Welcome.

Vesanto Melina

Thank you, Lucia.

Lucia

It's so good to have you here. Vesanto is a registered dietitian and co-author of books that have won awards internationally and received a star rating by the American Library Association as the go-to books on plant-based nutrition and are now translated into 10 languages. Her latest two books are the Kick Diabetes Cookbook and Plant-Powered Protein, both with Brenda Davis. She's taught nutrition at Seattle's Bastyr University, at University of British Columbia and been a consultant to the government. She is the lead author of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics last position paper on vegetarian diets and is internationally known speaker in more than 11 countries with a number of different websites, which we will be putting in the description below this video. So I just want to say I'm so happy to have you here with us today. And I would love to learn just a little bit about how did you get started with your interest in health and lifestyle?

Vesanto Melina

Okay. Well, actually, as you talk, I remember my father was a physiologist who managed to do his graduate work with Best and Banting.

Lucia

Interesting.

Vesanto Melina

At the University of Toronto, and they got a Nobel Prize. Well, Banting had died by then, but for using insulin in relation to type two diabetes. Well, type one diabetes and type two. Yes.

Lucia

That's so interesting.

Vesanto Melina

He was really interested in that. And so his whole life, he did cancer research and diabetes research and smoked at different universities we were in. England even for a while. And so that was on my dad's side and my mom's side. She liked working with children and she, one of the things that she was good at doing was having children cook together. So we, I really got to like cooking and it's one of the blessings. I see some people now that don't really enjoy cooking very much and maybe it was regarded as some unpleasant work in their family or their mom didn't like it, their dad didn't like it. And I had a really different experience. And so I find cooking fun and relaxing. I like it to be simple and easy and quick a lot of the time, but still I like the chopping and the little smells and all that kind of thing. So I had that good start. And then, when I was in actually the late seventies, I went to India for four years. I was at an ashram, and I learned how to meditate and that kind of stuff. But also the culture of India really oriented me towards plant-based eating because they were so good at it and they really knew how to manage making lentils and chickpeas and all these different beans taste good and make all the food taste good because they had a concept of, you know, not wanting to hurt cows, not wanting to hurt animals. So I had taught university before that, but when I came back, I started doing workshops for the public. And by the way, if anybody's got a situation where they're doing classes, I found it really good to have like several classes and then I'd have a potluck. Like say I was in a situation where I didn't have a kitchen. You know, I was just in a classroom at the university, but I'd have people bring food the last night or the third night or something, and everybody could sample each other's. And it really, really made it work very well. So then I started working with Brenda Davis, and we've been co-authors for 34 years. four years now. Wow. And we're still good friends and we still are having fun with this. It just became the thing I love doing. So anyway, that was just a real pleasure. And then our books just happened to be the right thing at the right time. And we were both fascinated with both the science and I was initially inspired by animal issues to some extent. And I just thought it was a tragedy what happens, boar bashing and all other stuff that happens. And then I started to learn about how that's also in relation to health, human health. And then more recently, I've learned about the impact on the planet, you know, global warming. And our latest book, The Plant-Powered Protein, got a number one rating on Amazon for sustainability, plant-powered protein. So, anyway, it just happened to be in this stream. That's the right thing at the right time. Yeah.

Lucia

That is so interesting. So you were kind of oriented in that direction of diabetes because of the work your dad was doing. And then I love how you said you grew up loving to cook because I was one of those fortunate people that also had a similar experience where my mother was an excellent cook. And from the time that I was very small, she was involved in teaching people how to cook vegetarian long before it was a thing, right? People weren't really talking about it that much, but I think that was one of the blessings of being born in a blue zone and my parents both being trained there. And, uh, so I, I love that we both love to cook because I think that healthy food should taste good. And that's really, yeah. You know, and, and I love how, you know, you've been on a journey in the learning around plant-based foods and many of the different reasons why people come to plant-based foods. And one of the reasons that we're talking here today is because now the science is showing us that there's such a close relationship between optimizing our body's function and feeding it whole plant-based foods. So I, you know, I want to dive into a little bit more of some of the things that you have to share with us today. And one of those is I want to talk about one of your cookbooks called the Kick Diabetes Cookbook. Oh yeah. And you can, you can find that at kickdiabetescookbook.com. By the way, here it is. And I'd love to know what are some of the features of the recipes in this book.

Vesanto Melina

Well, by the way, I want to tell you, Brenda Davis and I, who was a co-author on this Diabetes Cookbook, too, we got writing together after attending the Third International Congress on Vegetarian Nutrition, which happened to be back in Virginia and Washington, DC area that year. We went back, I guess, before we'd actually written a book and got really inspired. It was kind of fun. But that was like 1993.

Lucia

Wow.

Vesanto Melina

That's great. But it was wonderful what that did to get us launched. So our Kick Diabetes Cookbook, most of our books are nutrition and people can see on my Nutrispeak website, the books, all the different books. But this one combines recipes as well and as the expression of how to do it. So it has a strong nutrition section. and it also has a strong recipe section. And the recipes have absolutely no added sugar, like extracted sugar, and no added fats. So there are sweet things in it, like there are some black bean brownies, which are just wonderful, but they don't, they have dates in them. They don't have So I'll just show you a little picture of that.

Lucia

Oh, that does look yummy.

Vesanto Melina

Yeah, they were really, really, really good. And I keep things like that in the freezer sometimes as treats, but they don't have quite the sugar load or the glycemic load, you know, to smash in and raise your blood sugar so quickly. We also don't have any added oils or fats extracted. So important. Yeah, all plants have fats and oils in them, even lettuce. 10% of the calories are from fats and oils, but they're healthy fats and oils. So there's all kinds of like omega-3s in hemp seeds and flax seeds and chia seeds and walnuts. And so people can have very, very healthy things and they still get the fats. Fats are really important around a lot of our cells and for building our brain tissue, that kind of thing. So we need them, but we need these healthy fats, not the saturated fats and cholesterol, that kind of thing. We can make our own cholesterol, make enough that we need. Right. So we left those out and we also kept the sodium, the salt really low. Of course, sodium's an essential nutrient, but we don't need very much of it. So then the other thing was we've got a team of recipe testers. some of them in British Columbia, some of the one in San Francisco. And they test all our recipes and they don't let anything in our book unless it's a five star recipe. It has to taste good too. So I love that.

Lucia

I love that because it's something that I've actually found is a challenge you know if you just Google vegan or plant-based recipes um you can find probably millions of recipes but what I have found over and over is that I really believe people have just taken ordinary recipes and tried to do some substitute changes on them like instead of you know meat we'll use this substitute you know or instead of you know, this unhealthy thing, we'll put this healthy, but they don't, I really don't believe some of them ever like try their recipes because some of them are so tasteless. And just like every one of you, like I'd get something up there and it's like, oh, this one needs. more of this or need more of this. And it's like, I would never share it with somebody until I had tweaked it or modified it or, you know, something because the taste is actually a huge challenge.

Vesanto Melina

That's right. Wow. Good points. Yeah.

Lucia

Yeah. I'm glad you do that.

Vesanto Melina

And I also think when people are doing something like this, it's good to follow the recipe exactly the first time, of course, leaving out something you're allergic to, or if you can't, eat cilantro or something like that, you know, but follow it pretty exactly. And then you can adjust it to your tastes after that. So I like it to be, you know, how people like, but it can give them a really good start.

Lucia

Yes, absolutely. I, and I think that's true. We’ve all, you know, found that we like tweaking recipes. Um, but I love that you've done all this pre work to make it easy and much higher chance of people enjoying the recipe exactly the way it's written. So that's really great to know. That's a huge resource because I know when you're looking at both eliminating sugar and refined oils, that your choice of cookbooks and cook recipe collections is much smaller. Yeah. And I appreciate the fact that you don't completely, I'm assuming you don't completely cut the salt out of your recipes, or do you?

Vesanto Melina

No. And I actually went to True North a few times in Santa Rosa and got very interested because they do a really good job of turning around chronic disease. And I went down because Dr. Michael Clapper was there, who I thought, boy, if he's there, he's a friend, but. I was, he's going to be a good place. So I went down and people can lose a pound a day there and they have no salt added. Right. I found that that was, we do need 500 milligrams a day basic. And if you're out in the hot sun or you're, you're gardening, you're hitchhiking and you know, you're, you're out in heat, you're doing, you're an athlete sweating, you definitely need more salt. So we, we put it as an optional, but pretty low. So it's been very interesting. Yeah, to explore. And usually it takes people a while for they say 3 weeks for your taste buds to adapt.

Lucia

Yeah, about right.

Vesanto Melina

Yeah. Say you're interested in you know, usually eat these ultra processed foods where there's a wham sugar, wham fat, wham salt, you know, then it takes a while to get used to having lower levels and then you get to like it after a while you go, oh, this, this is really good. I had some Brussels sprouts and thought, these are good. You know, you get the taste of the real food.

Lucia

Yes, it makes a difference. It really does. So tell me about work that you've done related to hospital menus in New York City. So how did those kind of tie in here with your work you've been doing?

Vesanto Melina

Well, it was interesting. Last fall, I was on a book tour. And I started off in Philadelphia where there's the Vegan Society and did a tour of Philadelphia, did a little event there. And then I went up to New York and that was fascinating for me. And then I was at a New Jersey speaking at a medical conference where they gave me a lifetime achievement award. And there were doctors from all over the US, but particularly the New York group, I was quite fascinated. with their staff, their doctors, and they have changed things so that in seven of the hospitals, the first two items on every menu are vegan, plant-based. Interesting. You know how most hospitals, other than the Adventist ones, are, you know, they have really unhealthy food a lot of the time. It's kind of shocking. You could choose a vegan menu in many, many hospitals, but it isn't like a raised to your attention as a first priority, but there it was a first priority and people are liking it. So that was neat. And the reason that's happened is because the mayor was a policeman, a cop, then he became diabetic, then he turned it around by plant-based eating. He's a really good example of that. And then he became mayor of New York. So he was at that point thinking, I want, you know, health for the people in this whole area. And so he put this influence on the hospitals and it's turned out to be a huge success and is inspiring people in many other hospitals, although there's kind of slow moving on it. The other thing that was interesting when I was there, I got to talk to 345 school food administrators, and they serve food, get this number, to 800,000 meals a day for children wow and these are some children are in kind of a food desert like what's the only thing in their area is some little corner store that sells junk food and uh not you know produce not that kind of thing and so uh these meals were gradually moving towards more plant-based too. And they gave up hot dogs quite a few years ago. And I know in so many schools and kid events, we're still having hot dog sales and hot dogs given out because they're kind of easy. But those are class one carcinogens. They're in the same category as cigarette smoke. And we don't let people sell cigarettes on the school grounds, but we've got hot dogs and it's crazy. So they stopped the hot dogs and then they went to Friday's being vegan and all the chefs in the, you know, all these different schools all over the New York area, they had to learn how to cook falafels and, you know, little veggie balls and, you know, make, make things taste good and they succeeded. So the kids, don't dump it in the garbage. They actually like it. And so Fridays are plant-based and now they're moving to Mondays being plant-based.

Lucia

Wow, that's really cool.

Vesanto Melina

Isn't that inspiring? You know, these kids will grow up without the same predisposition to diabetes and the other chronic diseases, which is good.

Lucia

Yeah, I love that. So let's talk a little bit more about blood glucose levels and those with diabetes in the family or addictions like alcoholism. How does food kind of play into this? And you can share slides whenever you get.

Vesanto Melina

Yeah, I'll share some slides because. I got interested in this because um is that you see nutrition and or blood sugar there yes yeah yep that's good um the reason I got interested in this is I told you my family was um my dad was a physiologist and uh he were worked with diabetes. And there was also a lot of alcoholism in my family. And so I got interested in it and I read a book called Eating Right to Live Sober quite a while ago. This is in the 80s. And it really alerted me that our physiology can vary from one person to another and be um transmitted genetically, and some of the things that are interesting are how my food choices affect my blood sugar. So this was one I realized for myself was very important, and had things happen like my energy would drop it in midafternoon. Or, you know, at different times of the day, or for some people they eat and then feel really tired. It's a reactive hypoglycemia. And so, or some people are just desperate, like, I've got to have something now, you know, I've got to get this, even though I wasn't going to eat sugar, I'm going to grab this bar, junk food thing, have a Coke, you know, that kind of stuff. And whoops. It turned out from a book I read from a doctor in Seattle, Eating Right to Live Sober, that there were some Danish studies, Scandinavian studies about kids that were twins that were adopted into different families. So they had a different environment around them, but they carried this particular genetic predisposition to deal with blood glucose certain ways, you know? So that was just an interesting thing because I could see, like my family was all very creative, but also a lot of alcoholism or diabetes or both. Interesting. Yeah. So what was interesting to understand was about clues to drop drops in one's own blood sugar. And then how do I keep my blood glucose level? Because we think of sugar as bad, but it's actually what fuels our brain and keeps us going. Like we need some, even though it's, you know, thought of as a bad substance, we do definitely need some. It's better to get it from dates and fruit and stuff than from being loaded sugar pot. But yeah. So one of the items that happened to help me understand things was that people have a glucose tolerance test. And that is like having a big gulp. It's sugar, but it's what you can get at 711. You know, it's not an unusual amount of sugar in this culture. It's kind of a crazy amount, but it's still normal. And it's like pie and ice cream amount of sugar. And in this graph, which just shows it doesn't have numbers except for the hours, but it just shows that your blood sugar rises after you have some sugar. And then with a normal response, you'll have it back down to normal levels within an hour and it doesn't go up too high. But with a diabetic, it'll even go off the top of the screen. It goes really high. And then it can take hours and hours, even a day to come down to normal levels. So you've got all this sugar floating around and that triggers the plaque formation and, you know, causes health problems. So that's the diabetic response. And then for alcoholics, sometimes what happens is that the blood sugar doesn't go up as much, but it goes down below. It's like a hypoglycemia. And this doesn't seem that low down. But because of the bottom zero, your brain really knows that it's happening. And it'll go, hey, I want something done right now. I'm not kidding.

Lucia

Yeah.

Vesanto Melina

because glucose fuels our brain and your brain just that's running things says this is an emergency. And so some of the clients I've had have had really different responses. And when I learned a lot about this, I actually went down and talked to the dietitians at the Betty Ford Center because I was interested in the addiction side of it too, as well as the diabetes. But the responses could be like somebody just, you know, exhausted, can barely do anything, or they're ready to fight. Like it could be quite different directions. People get headaches, they get cold. One of them that I found interesting, 'cause I had this, well, after I had the glucose tolerance test, I was in a doctor's office waiting to get the different blood samples that they take in the glucose tolerance test, and I couldn't even read their magazines because my eyes wouldn't work properly. So I had this blurred vision. So it really made me aware of how much it can impact and have quite different responses. I've even had a couple of clients that were near suicidal when their blood sugar dropped.

Lucia

Interesting.

Vesanto Melina

Yeah, it was really interesting. So of course, what you want to do is not have this happen, you know.

Lucia

For sure.

Vesanto Melina

And when we have different kinds of foods, like if you have simple sugar, like glucose or what's in a soda pop or something like that, you can have the sugar goes in through the intestinal wall into the bloodstream, wham, gets all over the place, you know. But if you have plant foods that are in their whole form, you will have the glucose released from starch very gradually by enzymatic action. So these little six carbon, that could be sucrose when two are stuck together, two sugar molecules are stuck together, or it could be single ones. But it's a much more gradual process. So that is why the whole foods are a lot better. And then if we look at different kinds of foods, like if somebody has a hypoglycemic reaction, say in a hospital, you know, they just give them some orange juice, some fruit juice, or some sugar right away. And then that leads to a rise in blood sugar, but it'll drop again pretty fast. It doesn't stay up very long. And then if we have white rice or a refined grain product, it's up. But in about an hour and a half, they've called something Chinese restaurant syndrome. You know, you're hungry again, if you just had rice and some veggies, you know, after a while. But if you get more into whole foods that have fiber in them, there's this more gradual response to the food. And then legumes, beans, peas, lentils, they are the most helpful for this in the plant kingdom, for this gradual leveling of blood glucose. I've just got a few more slides here. And this is the same situation, but in time written in words. And the animal products also can do the leveling. But I think legumes are the real superstars of blood glucose leveling. And fats can make you full, add lots of calories, but they don't affect your blood sugar. So what legumes are, is things that grow in pods. So these are lentils, which I hadn't even seen on a plant. But anyway, peas are in little pods and peanuts are another thing that are in pods. So this is just some examples here. So there's just a few slides now about how our way of eating can affect our blood sugar. So if some people will have just fruit for breakfast, or a fruit smoothie that's just got fruit in it, and they sip away at it, your blood sugar can go up and down and up and down. It doesn't last very long with that sugar in it. Um! The fruit is a good choice, but it doesn't do leveling. And then you can have maybe a starchy lunch like pasta and a high protein, low carb supper. And so if we look at how these affect our blood glucose, it just starts you realizing then some people are on low carb type diets and those have, in some people's experience, helps them lose weight. But your brain is going, yikes, what's happening here? And they can be very difficult. And of course, because of the animal products, you get lots of cholesterol, new 5G that's linked with cancer, you know, foods that are linked to heart disease and type 2 diabetes. So they're not very advisable. Then some people don't eat any breakfast. You know, I don't have time for breakfast, you know. And then by lunch, you've got to have a Coke and some fries, something like that. And that can raise your blood sugar. And then in the afternoon, a candy bar, maybe a balanced dinner. So this is the last one. So people can have like a more complete breakfast if they have some whole grains, some peanut butter. That's a quick breakfast, but it's, you know, just toast and peanut butter, but it can gradually level you out. And some people, like myself, actually do better with a few snacks between just slightly smaller meals and some snacks. So that's the whole picture that I want to share about blood sugar.

Lucia

I think that's so interesting and really instructive because what we are looking for is not having the high spikes that drop out really quickly. So that's like the whole simple sugar thing, whether it's juice or candy or whatever.

Vesanto Melina

Yeah.

Lucia

We want, we want the curbs to last longer. Like we don't want to get low energy and get hungry before the next meal. So we need enough protein to keep that going, right? But I love how legumes really attack this blood sugar issue on so many fronts. And it does it without all of the side effects that animal protein does. And that's what I think is just such an advantage as we incorporate more legumes. We don't need the animal proteins to get the same sugar leveling, but we're also getting all this fiber of which you have zero, right, in the animal products. You are getting the leveling effect that can even last more than one meal. And all of this are one of the reasons why I think building meals around beans for people that are really struggling with blood sugar issues can be such a powerful idea. And just learning, like you said, when you went to India, you learned all these great ways to fix beans that tasted good. And beans are so versatile. There are so many things you can do with it. So yeah, I want to encourage our listeners to really think about how you incorporate that. When you're working with someone that has pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes, kind of what would you say are the top three things that you recommend they do to get started?

Vesanto Melina

Well, first of all, I do try and build in legumes for breakfast, lunch, and supper. And there are actually about 20 kinds of legumes. And it isn't just beans. It doesn't mean you sit down to a big bowl of beans for breakfast, although that can happen for some people. But people can have silk yogurts that have pea protein. They can put protein in their smoothie. They can have peanut butter on their toast, another legume. In India, people would have masala dosas in Hispanic food. I was just another place I was speaking was last year. Well, actually, January, February was Costa Rica, and they have Gallo Pinto. for breakfast. Yeah. And that's, that's a normal Costa Rican. I was on the Nicoya Peninsula, one of the other blue zones. And this was one of the places where people traditionally have had very long lives. Now, I won't say that they're still having them. Yeah, because they switched over to a lot of junk food in many cases, but it's been the situation there and still is for some people. So that was just the one of their favorite things and really tastes you good just rice and beans and a bit of seasonings yeah so there are many choices and what I try and do with people is have it work for them like we when I have clients which I have from all over the place um I help them get exactly what they like You know, we tweak it. Of course, if they liked a lot of junk food that we try and figure out things that will fill the bill in a similar way. And, you know, they've got goals where they want to get to, so they're motivated, but we find ways that they can build that in. So the breakfast is some of these different options that I mentioned. And then we find ways to build legumes, beans, peas, lentils into their lunches, their suppers. There are about 20 kinds. And I go, what do you think of, you know, for legumes? What are favorites? And for many people, they didn't grow up with eating legumes. or they grew up with one dish that their mother made and they hated it, you know, but.

Lucia

Chili beans and baked beans are probably the two really common ones that most people are acquainted with, but that there's so many other options. I agree with you. So many kinds of lentils and, you know, look at soy and edamame and soy curls and, you know, a lot of different ways to consume beans, hummus,

Vesanto Melina

Oh yeah, we've got in our plant carb protein, we've got different kinds of hummus and that's one of the things. Yeah, they're, you know, just different ways you could make it. That was one of the things that I found was very helpful for snacks. You put that out on the table with a bunch of veggies around it or whole grain crackers and people will munch away on it and not even think this is a perfect vegan It could be part of a meal or it could be a snack. Yeah.

Lucia

Yeah. Lots of ways to use it. So if you're looking for some more ways to use it, you might want to check out some of the Santo's cookbooks, look at her different websites, because there's a lot of resources there that can be really helpful as you look to include more of these really powerful high fiber, high nutrient plant foods in your diet as you're looking to level off your blood sugars and avoid those long-term complications that cause disability and pain and shorten your life. So I really want to say thank you so much for being with us here today. Is there any like word of wisdom, some really important takeaway that you want to make sure that everyone who's listening today takes with them?

Vesanto Melina

Oh, well, I guess, I guess when we were talking about making food enjoyable, that's something I'd really wish for many, many people that it becomes kind of a pleasure to go through the produce aisles and see some different things, and maybe try something different to make sure you've got some good cooking knives and, you know, a cutting board. And when you're having to chop things up, experience the aromas, the, you know, little nibble that you'll get while you're cutting up a red pepper, that kind of thing. And it can be really, really an enjoyable time. You might put on, one of the things I like doing is listening to audio tapes sometimes with libbyapp.com. which are free audio books, you know, or listen to your favorite program or do it with a partner or a friend. And also find groups in your neighborhood that are exploring food, you know, like veggie meeting groups. So to move into making it really much more of a pleasure.

Lucia

Oh, I love that because I think that social support aspect is really important for sustainability. We have to not only enjoy doing it but have some people to do it with. So thank you so much for that tip. I really, really appreciate it. You'll see information on how to reach out and make contact with Vesanto Melina. If you have questions, you want to follow up, you want to check out her websites, all of that's going to be in the description under this video. And I just want to say, remember that health is wealth and it comes by choice, not by chance. Thank you for being here with us today.

Vesanto Melina

Thank you.