Leslie

Hey there, and welcome to the Healthy Teen Life Podcast, where we dive into health and wellness topics for teens and college-age young adults. I'm your host, Leslie, and my goal is to provide you with direct access to the latest facts, experts, and information that are relevant to your phase in life so you can live your healthiest and happiest life. And parents, if you'd like more information on the signs of disordered eating and what to do about it, you can get my free guide, on my website at LeslieRoseCoaching.com, or use the link in the show description. Now let's get started.

Leslie

Hey there. All right, today I'm joined by Vesanto Melina, who shares her tips on how we can live a plant-based or vegan lifestyle beyond just our diet. And what I mean by that is how the food choices we make also impact the world around us. Many of you are likely aware of the animal concerns that come with eating animal products, but what's talked about much less are the growing health harms from consuming diets high in animal products and the environment these animals and fish are farmed in and processed in, all of which has greater impact on air, water, land, and climate change than many people realize. It's a big topic and that sadly, the news is barely covering and Vesanto is trying to share with more people. As you'll hear, she's done considerable research on the topic and has some eye-opening information that she reviews with us today. But before we dive in, let me give you a quick overview of who Vesanto is. Vesanto Melina is a registered dietitian who has taught nutrition at Seattle's Bastar University. at the University of British Columbia, and she served as a government consultant. She's the lead author of the Academy of Nutrition Dietetics' most recent position paper on vegetarian diets. She is a co-author of numerous award-winning books, which have become the go-to books on plant-based nutrition. And she is an internationally known speaker in 11 countries and works with websites like nutraspeak.com, plantpoweredprotein.com, kickdiabetescookbook.com, and becomingvegan.ca. So she's got extensive experience in vegan and vegetarianism and plant-based eating and living. But where she's focusing her attention right now is on plant-based living or the lifestyle and the impact that animal products and the typical, the standard American diet, which a lot of people call SAD or the Canadian diet that is more animal product based and what its impact is on our world for us today, for our health and wellness, as well as for future generations in our planet. So I think you'll really enjoy today. So let's dive in. Ms. Santo, thank you so much for joining me today on the Healthy Teen Life Podcast. I'm very excited to have you share all of your knowledge and wisdom with everyone today and all the young people that are listening and their families and parents. So today we're talking about how living the plant-based life is more than just a diet. It's about the impact our food has on the planet, on climate change, anything from animals to nature and the environment we all live in. But before we do that, I would love to talk a little bit or hear a little bit from you about how you made your switch from vegetarian to veganism, how and why, and what led you there.

Vesanto

Okay, thank you.

Leslie

Yeah.

Vesanto

Yeah, well, I grew up on a. kind of meat and potatoes and veggies diet. My mom thought it was the healthy diet, but I started teaching university a long time ago. I was teaching nutrition and I gradually moved towards more and more plant-based. What got me started on vegetarian was actually going to India. And in India, people have a lot of respect for cows traditionally. It's a very long, long tradition. And their religious practices support not harming animals. And so I learned that the food could be really good, like really tasty over there. And it was vegetarian, included dairy. And then when I came back to Canada, where I live now, I started doing courses again through the university, for the public, for dietitians. I am a dietitian. And I found that gradually, even what happens to animals from the animal products that are taken from them is quite tragic for the animals. And so I became vegan at that point. Actually, when I wrote our first book, which was called Becoming Vegetarian, But I had a chapter in it called Without Dairy. And I realized that you could get along perfectly well with the calcium from all kinds of plant foods. now there's fortified soy milk, there's tofu that's set with calcium. All of the greens are actually twice as well absorbed, calcium from them, twice as well absorbed as that from dairy products. And so it was just gradual transition, but I realized that I could do it. And so I've been vegan for about 30 years now. And I am author of a number of books, which are, I think we've sold about a million copies in English, and our book books are in 10 languages now with Brenda Davis, my co-author, but I've, I really found it a really amazing journey. I've gotten to go to Iceland and Dresden, Germany, and many, many states in the US and all across Canada and Hawaii, and just because people are becoming more and more interested in eating plant-based and having it taste good. Our latest book, which is called Plant Powered Protein, is centered on eating more plant foods, but getting the protein from them because people often think that protein comes from meat or comes from cheese, things like that. Those could actually more be called fat foods because most of the calories are actually from fat. There's no carbohydrates and we need carbohydrates to run our brain. But anyway, we've got some real misconceptions about protein. So that was one of the things that made our plant-powered protein book a bestseller on Amazon. So I can show you some different slides about climate change.

Leslie

Yeah, because a big part of choosing to lead a vegan lifestyle has traditionally been about animal welfare, right? But over the years, you've probably seen it changing where it's increasingly also becoming about the environment. So yeah, I'd love to dive into that and talk about how our dietary choices are affecting climate change.

Vesanto

So what we find is that people were interested for animal rights reasons and increasingly they got interested for health reasons. That's usually when we get a bit older because you lower your risk of heart disease and type two diabetes and are less likely to be overweight and obese. All kinds of health advantages. I mean, huge advantages. when and less risk of cancer, especially colon cancer. But now people are going, hey, climate change is really important. And we find that the media are talking a lot about transportation, but not about how dietary choices affect climate change. So one of the things that's happened over the last years was that the overall temperature of the world, and also like globally, and also across the US, many, many places, things were just getting hotter. And for some places, this seems like a real advantage. Hey, good, it's warm, thank goodness. But for many, many places, it's just devastating. It's leading to deaths from heat. People have to buy air conditioners that never had to before. And if we look at this NASA chart that shows changes in temperature from 1880 up to, this was done in 2022, you can see that there's just been a steady, steady, steady increase, and it's just keeping going.

Leslie

Yeah, in a short amount of time, relatively speaking, in terms of the Earth, right? Yeah, that's it.

Vesanto

That's right, yeah. So there was an interesting article done by a man, Joseph Poor, who's at Oxford, and Nemasek, who's in Switzerland, and it was published. But he took, Poor took five years to write this paper along with Nemasek, and he actually took a year completely off from Oxford. And they looked at the impact of food on the environment. And they looked at all kinds of aspects in farms all over the world, thousands and thousands of farms, processors, packagers, retailers. And they looked, for example, say a crop is grown with pesticides. They'd look at, okay, how does it get to the farm? You know, what environmental impact is there? And What's the packaging like? You know, how does that affect the environment? Just every single stage. Okay, so then that crop's grown wheat or soy or something, and then it's fed to chickens or fed to beef. And of course the rainforest, which we thought was being. destroyed for beef, at least I thought that, but it's actually being destroyed a lot for chickens. So people thought was chicken was a better choice, but it's actually proving to be environmental, very damaging too. Right. And of course there are some farmers that are really trying their best to be environmentally conscious, but there's still higher in their environmental impact than the plant foods. And so you can see Joseph Poor website and his talk he does and link to his paper. So the indicators of environmental impact that he uses are looking at land use. And our habitable land is half of it is for food and agriculture, and most of that is for animal products. You think of, well, yeah, cows are out there on land that's not being used, but actually that land's been cleared. It doesn't have trees, so that affects our greenhouse gas emissions. The fodder that's used is a huge, huge area. You find, for example, in California, you know, there's big, big areas that are growing crops that are fed to animals. And as I mentioned, the Amazon rainforest is another example. I was in Costa Rica a while ago and they were clearing land, clearing land so they could grow cattle. on what was, you know, farm forest areas were turning into farms. When there's greenhouse gas emissions, carbon dioxide and methane, methane from little cow farts and all kinds of, it's surprising, you'd think that wouldn't be much, but when you've got the number of cattle that we have, whether they're in a factory farming or they're out on the range, and we find that the... of free range livestock are just as damaging. Then water pollution. So, you know, the Gulf of Mexico has these dead zones now. And all down the Mississippi, we've got water pollution that comes from growing corn that turns into fructose for soda pop. And it's also water pollution from the huge factory farming areas that there are all over many, many states. And then land acidification. For example, in the Carolinas, in Winnipeg area, they have these huge hog farms, huge ones. And of course there's a lot of manure produced and those go into big lagoons and then the lagoons crack and that comes out onto the surrounding area. Of course, it's very difficult for the people that are living here by too, because the air is affected and that's not even included here. And then water use. We find that in some areas this is just devastating. I know that. along I-5 in California, on one side of the highway, I've seen just a lot of dead trees that were fruit producer trees, and on the other side of the highway, they allowed them to keep getting water. Like, it's very strange, but some parts of the world, I mean, this is just devastating because people are dying of thirst.

Leslie

Yeah, well, California will be cutting back on water for growers, which is getting more problematic.

Vesanto

It really is. And so we've had this way of doing things that was kind of based on some myths or historical things that were the case when it was just a few ranchers in their little place, you know, have taken land from Indigenous people, but, you know, not these huge, huge operations.

Leslie

Right.

Vesanto

So if we look at the actual numbers, so this is again from Pura Nemasek, we find that the greenhouse gas emissions from beef, though the red lines are animal flesh, and the yellow lines are our dairy products and eggs, you know, the products of animal farming, and the green are plant foods. We find, for example, that beef from a herd that's grown to be beef produces 31 times more greenhouse gas emissions compared to tofu. And on this chart, they also have pulses listed pretty close, just below tofu, a couple lines down. And in Britain, because this man's at Oxford, legumes are called pulses. So you can see that the greenhouse gas emissions, which are, of course, one of the huge impacts on climate change and global warming, They're huge. And even the dairy herds, which is the third line down, they have over 10 times the greenhouse gas emissions compared to tofu and a lot more compared to the pulses. So that was one of the indicators of climate change.

Leslie

Yeah. So Vesanto, what you're showing is like, if you can go back to there, the first, what, four or five categories or, yeah, categories, you know, it's beef, lamb, beef in terms of dairy herd, prawns, so farmed shrimp, and then cheese. Those first ones are where the greatest amount of greenhouse gases are coming from, according to...

Vesanto

That's right.

Leslie

Yeah.

Vesanto

People thought that fish and seafood were, you know, a good, healthy idea. But much of that crop is farmed, and They feed those again with these crops, which had to be grown somewhere, watered somewhere, trucked to where the fish farm or the, the seafood farm is all along the east coast or in different parts of the world. So we thought a fish is a healthy thing, but I think things are really, really changing. And then of course the fish farming, they managed to toxify or, or affect the wild salmon, the wild sea food. So we're really doing some creating some big problems here.

Leslie

Yeah. And, you know, I think there's some documentaries out there between the pork farming and the fish farming. There's some very good documentaries people can watch.

Vesanto

Which documentaries are you?

Leslie

I can't think of the names offhand, but I know there's a couple on Netflix and one is in regards to all of the chicken and the pork farming and specifically about the damage that the pork farmers are doing to the local. That's right.

Vesanto

I'll maybe put it in a note.

Leslie

Yeah, I'll put it in the show notes so that people can refer to those. But yeah, I think the, an important thing with this slide that you're showing is the greenhouse gas emissions. I mean, the first plant-based product that shows up is like 10th on the list, which is rice. And you know, prior to that, everything is animal product.

Vesanto

Yeah, that's right.

Leslie

Yeah. Yeah.

Vesanto

So it's, it's really causing some huge problems. And yet the media is not recognizing this.

Leslie

Right.

Vesanto

And we're doing some pretty crazy things. We're subsidizing these very damaging food items. The government taxation, taxes for all the families that pay taxes, is going towards these products that have the huge greenhouse gas emissions and other damaging effects on the environment. So this one is about land use, pretty similar kind of picture. Cheese is up there too, because this is per kilogram of food. Now people eat relatively small little pieces of food, but the almonds that are grown, know, also nuts can be up there. And so the land use is again a very similar picture. And if you look for where pulses are down below pigs. And then tofu's way down again. So you get really good value. If you're going to have tofu, you got to figure out some good ways to make it taste good, like marinating it and so on. But that would be the same. Like nobody just bites into a piece of raw chicken flesh. They make it taste good. You don't look at certain ways.

Leslie

So right. Exactly.

Vesanto

Yeah.

Leslie

Yeah. Yeah. So again, this shows that the animal products are all at the top in terms of the amount of land use that's being occupied or utilized for this farming versus the plant-based products, which are lower in land use and less on an environmental impact.

Vesanto

That's right. Yeah.

Leslie

Yeah.

Vesanto

Okay. Then the next is about water pollution. And we talked about how damaging that is. Again, you get just the same picture. Here are the pulses down here and the tofu pulses being the legumes, tofu, and all the other plant foods way, way, way down. And water use. So this very precious substance you can see, and nuts come up high on this as well. But again, the farmed fish, you think, That's crazy, farmed fish, you know, but it's because they're fed all these animal products to keep them going in their cages where they are. And the last one is acidifying emissions. And this is a really damaging one in the Carolinas, but in many parts of the states where there are the pig farming effect just is bad there. But also the dairy herds, I know it goes into the water with rivers run through when they're out being inherited. And it's also damaging from the operations. So same picture. Now this is our plant powered protein book. And just to show you, one of the things that we really liked about it was that it keeps you healthy through life when you go more plant based. For example, I'm old, 82. Brenda Davis, shown here is 65, just became a senior citizen.

Leslie

And she's doing a handstand for people who.

Vesanto

Who can't see this. Yeah. She's a, she's and her son Corey is 35 and he is a government agrologist. So we've all been vegan for decades. And what I'm wanting is that people go through life, you know, without having to get cancer. If you eat soy products, by the way, you lower your risk of breast and prostate cancer when you're an old codger. So that's been established for teens and children that eat soy is a really good thing. soy milk, tofu.

Leslie

Yeah, there's a lingering myth around it, which is damaging, but in fact, it's super healthy.

Vesanto

Yeah, it was damaging because two guys ate way too much. One ate 12 servings a day and one ate 20 servings a day, and then they got into trouble. But you're not supposed to eat 12 or 20 servings of any single food, even the real healthy ones.

Leslie

Right. Yeah.

Vesanto

So for teens, one of the things that happens is that, you want to have food that, you know, looks kind of normal, but you can. And interestingly, in New York, they've switched to having school foods that are plant-based on Fridays, and now they're moving into plant-based on Mondays, all vegan foods. And they serve, this is amazing number, 800,000 school meals a day. Yikes. to students and everybody can have some and they're really good, like kids like them. And so they've done a very, very good job. And this happened because the person who's in charge of mayor of New York was a cop, first of all, policeman. He got diabetes. Then he became plant-based in his diet, became vegan and turned around his diabetes. and was so happy with that, that he wanted the kids to be healthy, like to grow up healthy and to have really good, healthy food. So he put that in place and also in the hospitals. So that was a big plus.

Leslie

Huge. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, that's a good point too, is that, you know, even a couple days a week, it's a great introduction to children, to teenagers, so that even if you're not living a plant-based lifestyle or diet right now, easing into it and a couple days a week and starting out that way and slowly transitioning is the best way to do it because it then becomes manageable, it becomes sustainable. And that's what I really like about that is that it gives you, you know, exposure to it. And it's like, oh my gosh, this food is normal and it is good and I can eat this.

Vesanto

That's right. Yeah. And if people want to be really fit, there's top athletes in every sport. You can just do a search on the internet and say vegan athletes or plant-based athletes, and you'll find way, way wider range. And in the Olympics recently in Paris, there were plenty of vegan athletes, some that got gold medals and also the different environment in Paris. They had a lot of plant-based foods at the Olympics. So things are really changing. So then to complete this, we wanted to look at some different options. But just to make this point right now, some of the biggest, strongest animals there are, are plant-based. They just go around and nibble leaves and vegetation. And it's quite amazing how many there are. And yet we've still had this belief that meat should be the protein source, flesh of some of these animals.

Leslie

Right. Yeah. And you've got, you know, some strong animals here, gorilla and elephant and, you know, I mean, they're all, you know, very strong animals and big and are able to build muscle mass on purely vegetarian, vegan, well, vegan, plant-based dyes, just grass or whatever it is that they eat, leaves, plants.

Vesanto

That's right. Yeah. They might get the occasional bug in their biochemistry.

Leslie

Yeah. Maybe some berries?

Vesanto

Basically plant-based.

Leslie

Yeah.

Vesanto

So this is just a picture of what a day's intake could look like if you piled it all on a big platter. So, you know, about half your plate would be vegetables and fruit. Some grains, preferably whole grains, some nuts and seeds. and some legumes, beans, peas, lentils, tofu, soy milk, that kind of thing. Peanuts are part of the legumes too. Those are all things that grow in pods. So it's not very hard to get this kind of a pattern. And then we'll look at how the meals actually turn out in a minute. And then when you're really going plant-based, you should have some vitamin B12. And for many areas where people aren't out in the sun very much, vitamin D is a help. Yeah, for sure. So if we think of breakfast, then people go, yeah, what would I have for breakfast? I wouldn't have scrambled eggs. I wouldn't have bacon, which is a class one carcinogen, just leads you down the road to cancer. But one of the things that people often have is an easy start is just peanut butter on whole wheat toast. And people have in some places bean burritos. When we were in Costa Rica, people were having gallo pinto. Did I say that right? I can never remember if it's gallo pinto or pinto gallo.

Leslie

Oh, I'm not sure.

Vesanto

Yeah. Anyway, it's just rice and black beans and it's so good.

Leslie

So arroyo. Yeah. Yeah.

Vesanto

Yeah. So Hispanic people have lots of choices. And then in India, the masala dosas are good with those crunchy outer crusts. scrambled tofu, there's soy milk, there's increasing amounts of plant-based yogurts that really taste good. Silk's come out with a good one that was lime-based. Or you can have chia pudding made with soy milk. So there's lots of different options.

Leslie

Yeah, and it definitely is. And I love what you're showing here or you're talking about also is that a lot of these are foods that teens do enjoy, like peanut butter and toast, and you can throw bananas on there like you have or beans and rice or a bean burrito. Those are great. All this scrambled tofu is great. I have it for breakfast and I'll put in veggies in it. And it's a quick, easy, just like doing scrambled eggs, there's really very little difference in terms of the prep time and the cooking and so forth. And it's super delicious. So using spices using different ingredients to, adding some vegetables here and there on your yogurts, putting berries on there, things like that. This just makes it even more delicious and healthy and well-rounded. So these are great suggestions.

Vesanto

And people have cereal or muesli or so on. And it really makes a difference for protein to use soy milk. Or there are some milks that are blends. They have way more protein, like 6, 7, 8 grams of protein per cup compared to like rice milk or some of the oat milks that are way lower, which tastes good, but they're not protein sources. Makes a difference which you choose.

Leslie

And I like also that what you're presenting is balanced too, that they're getting a balance of good carbohydrates, which you mentioned earlier are necessary for our brain, right?

Vesanto

Yeah.

Leslie

And then protein. So they're getting that intake and they're not missing out on protein. And then also, you know, healthy fats that are in these foods.

Vesanto

Then if we go to lunch and supper, Well, there are a lot of options, and this is one that some people here might like to think. There's actually 20 different legumes that people eat, and these are eaten around the world. So can you think of some that you or people you know like legumes, beans, peas, lentils, all that kind of stuff?

Leslie

Yeah. What about that?

Vesanto

Think of the colors. There's white beans, black beans, red beans, pinto beans, Anasazi beans. They're just all kinds. There's lentils that are red or green. There are things like chickpeas that are made into different items. There's soybeans. There's just really a lot of different options.

Leslie

Yeah, it's so much more versatile now and easily available at grocery stores too, to find these ingredients in these foods and incorporate them into your daily diet. Yeah.

Vesanto

And there's all kinds of veggie burgers. There's some that are quite whole foodsy that where they just put a bunch of plant foods together and people go, why would they make it? it into a meat when it's vegetarian. But actually, people don't go and bite the end of a cow. It's made into a human friendly form. And you can make these plant foods into a similar shape, you know, that fits your hand and it's human friendly. And so that's why there are these burgers and there's sausages too. Sausages are actually a class one carcinogen. So.

Leslie

Animal product sausages, yeah.

Vesanto

Yeah, animal product sausages. But bacon is a class one carcinogen as well, bleeding right down the road to cancer. But if you use plant-based sausages or the veggie meats, this kind of thing, you won't have those damaging components that are in the animal products. So, and so you can make a lot of alternatives, you know, the things that we like. I know when my kids were growing up, They had, we had, we had lasagna sometimes that took a bit of time to work to do, but we'd also have tacos and you'd put all these different ingredients out in the table, including some beans and salsa and chopped up veggies and avocados and people could choose what they wanted. And what are some favorites that you know of?

Leslie

Oh, in terms of different main dishes?

Vesanto

Yeah.

Leslie

Well, we definitely do the veggie burgers for sure. And then a lot of bowls. I love, you know, different veggie bowls. vegetables and being creative with that and putting different grains in them as well as different veggies and just even some fruit in there too. So just having fun with it and creating variety and then doing it seasonally too. It's just using seasonal vegetables. We do that often is bringing in more squash in the fall and the winter and then bringing in more of the fresh fruits and things like that during the summer. So we, I know for our family, we try to keep it, keep variety. So it's always interesting. And just experimenting with new things. But definitely veggie burgers are always popular. And a lot of the, like I said, the veggie bowls, veggie and green bowls that we do.

Vesanto

Nice.

Leslie

Yeah.

Vesanto

So this is. I just wanted to make sure we got to the end, you know, within our timeframe. But these are some of our books that have been really popular, the Plant Powered Protein, and they're all on Amazon and so on. And then Kick Diabetes was good because it's for people that have any type of diabetes, type one or type two, but there's no added sugar and no added oil because these just add calories, but they don't have a lot of nutrition. And then our becoming vegan was a textbook in the US, Canada, and Taiwan. So we've just really wanted to help people get to a healthy old age.

Leslie

Yeah, well, and get access to that information. So the Becoming Vegan series is great because if someone is interested in starting out and making that transition, you've provided some great resources and information as well as like recipes and things like that. Yeah, that's awesome.

Vesanto

Yeah, we sure wanted to because I wanted, you know, people to really enjoy it. And I think that's what can happen, when people just find that it's actually pretty, it tastes pretty good. One of the things when my kids were getting home from school, we always did was have a big platter with hummus on it and some raw veggies and some different kind of whole grain crackers. And people could eat a really healthy snack after school. And unfortunately, a lot of what people are eating these days is highly processed. And we're finding that that is linked to both overweight and also different chronic diseases.

Leslie

Exactly. Yeah. And, and they start young, you know, they start in your body. at a young age, you just don't know what's going on and it shows up later in life. But even cancers we're seeing are starting earlier. It's hitting people at a younger age in their adulthood. And so it is, again, high blood pressure is happening with children. Type 2 diabetes is happening with children. So it is a concern that a lot of young people should be putting on their radar and thinking about. And going vegan and plant-based is a great way to not only for your health and wellness, both today and long-term, but also for the environment, which is what we're talking about today and how that you can just every meal, every vegan plant-based meal that you add to your life is taking away from some of those animal source products that are causing damage. So I think the more we do, the more it and improve things, hopefully. And that's the goal.

Vesanto

It is. Well, it's certainly been a pleasure talking with you.

Leslie

Yeah, thank you so much, Vesanto. This is enlightening, very helpful. And I hope people have had an opportunity to just get exposed to new information. I'll include a lot of your, you know, like the books and your resources and some of the documentaries that I mentioned in the show notes so that if anyone wants to reference that, they can.

Vesanto

Good. Yeah, we've been very specific, like in the Becoming Vegan Comprehensive about what's needed in the teen years, the growing years, you know, that kind of thing. Right. Yeah, to really reach those. And then in our different books, the Plant-Powered Protein, there's very good recipes. And we had recipe testers in Canada and in the San Francisco area. that wouldn't let any recipe in our book unless it got five stars. So.

Leslie

Awesome.

Vesanto

And it tastes good.

Leslie

And one other book is Nourish, which is Nourish, which is for families. So that's another great one too.

Vesanto

That's right. Oh, thank you. Yeah.

Leslie

All right. Well, thank you so much for being on the show today. I really appreciate all of your information and I think there's a lot for people to learn here. So that's awesome.

Vesanto

Thank you.

Leslie

Yeah.

Vesanto

Thank you. Okay.

Leslie

Thank you so much for listening and giving yourself the gift of greater health and wellness. If you love today's show, then make sure to follow the podcast so you don't miss an episode. And if you want to say hi on Instagram, ask me a question, or request a specific topic for a future episode, you can reach me at Leslie Rose Coaching on Instagram. I'd really love to hear from you. And if you're a parent listening, you can check out the show notes for my freebie I'm giving away to help you and your teen live healthier in 2024. Now make it a great day Stay and start living your healthy teen life.