WHEN MY YOUNGEST SON and collaborator on this book, Tom, was thirteen years old, our family was in the final stages of a slow shift to becoming vegetarian. One Sunday morning, Tom came home from a sleepover at a close friend's house and told us a story I still remember. The night before, Tom was being grilled, in a friendly way, on his eating habits. The sister of Tom's friend had asked him, rather incredu- lously, "You don't eat meat?" My son had never justified his eating hab- its; he had just gotten used to eating what was on the dinner table. As a consequence, Tom was not practiced at answering such a question. So he simply answered, "No, I don't," without offering any explanations. The girl probed a bit more, "So what do you eat?" My son answered, with a few shrugs, "I guess just . . . plants." She said, "Oh," and that was the end of that. The reason I enjoy this story is because my son's response, "plants," was so simple. It was a truthful answer, but couched in an entirely un- traditional manner. When someone asks for the glazed ham across the table, she doesn't say, "Pass the flesh of the pig's butt, please," and when someone tells his children to finish their peas and carrots, he doesn't say, "Finish your plants." But since my family and I changed our eating habits, I've come to enjoy thinking of food as either plants or animals. It fits well into my philosophy of keeping the information on food and health as simple as possible. Food and health are anything but simple in our country. I often mar- vel at the complexity of various weight-loss plans. Although the writers always advertise their plan's ease of use, in reality it's never easy. Follow- ers of these diets have to count calories, points, servings or nutrients or eat specific amounts of certain foods based on specific, mathematical ratios. There are tools to be used, supplements to be taken and work- sheets to be completed. It is no wonder that dieting seldom succeeds. Eating should be an enjoyable and worry-free experience, and shouldn't rely on deprivation. Keeping it simple is essential if we are to enjoy our food. One of the most fortunate findings from the mountain of nutritional research I've encountered is that good food and good health is simple. The biology of the relationship of food and health is exceptionally complex, but the message is still Simple. The recommendations coming from the published literature are so simple that I can state them in one sentence: eat a whole foods, plant-based diet, while minimizing the consumption of refined foods, added salt and added fats. (See table on page 243.) SUPPLEMENTS Daily supplements of vitamin B , and perhaps vitamin D for people 12 who spend most of their time indoors andlor live in the northern cli- mates are encouraged. For vitamin D, you shouldn't exceed RDA rec- ommendations. That's it. That's the diet science has found to be consistent with the greatest health and the lowest incidence of heart disease, cancer, obesity and many other Western diseases. WHAT DOES MINIMIZE MEAN? SHOULD YOU EUMINATE MEAT COMPLETELY? The findings from the China Study indicate that the lower the percent- age of animal-based foods that are consumed, the greater the health benefits-even when that percentage declines from 10% to 0% of calo- ries. So it's not unreasonable to assume that the optimum percentage of animal-based products is zero, at least for anyone with a predisposition for a degenerative disease. But this has not been absolutely proven. Certainly it is true that most of the health benefits are realized at very low but non-zero levels of animal-based foods. My advice is to try to eliminate all animal-based products from your diet, but not obsess over it. If a tasty vegetable soup has a chicken stock base, or if a hearty loaf of whole wheat bread includes a tiny amount of
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