The Science of a Plant-Based Diet | Brenda Davis, RD

Intro

[Music] welcome everybody to another episode today i'm absolutely delighted for our guests who it's fascinating every once in a while i get an opportunity to talk to somebody that i've literally been following who's been doing stuff long before i ever even got into medicine so it's amazing to have pioneers and you know the the roads that these pioneers travel are so difficult their stories are so inspiring and this show is all about hope hope is the most important concept when you talk about self principle sleep.

Exercise love and food you know a lot of times we're talking about food but we forget people want hope and with hope they're able to make better choices and they're able to do stuff so the goal here is to bring on people who inspire us whose journeys are amazing who are trailblazers in their own right so i'm delighted today to present brenda davis brenda i am so excited just to have the opportunity the privilege to have you on the show today well thank you very much.

Dr hashmi it's really a privilege to be with you and thank you for your kind words oh abs absolutely you know i'm a kidney.

Brendas journey

Specialist and one of the hardest things that i see in kidney disease is the majority of patients that i take care of are due to causes that are entirely preventable by lifestyle and the majority of that lifestyle component is diet and i know before the show started you and i were talking about some of your struggles i'm going through a similar journey in terms of trying to convince even our dietitians that a whole foods plant-based diet is ideal for kidney patients but let me ask you.

Tell us a little bit about your journey what was it like when you were first starting out what inspired you how did you overcome some of your obstacles.

Plantbased diet

Well you know i started in the late 80s um and to be really honest i started in the late 70s moving towards a more plant-based diet i was it was back in well in early well even in high school i would say in the mid 70s i was interested but i had never really met a real live vegetarian except for one in my life and that was my grade 8 science teacher and he was a hippie with long hair and and that was the only vegetarian.

I've ever met but i was so pulled in the direction of eating plants it i was convinced because of all of the wonderful components in plants that are so health promoting i was convinced i don't know if you recall i'm just going to pull this out i i don't know if you recall well 1990 there was a the world health organization actually wrote this paper called um diet nutrition and the prevention of chronic diseases and in that paper in the and it was a little book.

Really uh they basically came out and said uh that we we need to determine the strength of the link.

World Health Organization

Between diet and disease and and they ended up saying that the link is so strong uh that governments need to make nutrition a national priority and they went on to say that governments also need to be very careful because the industries that are producing foods that promote these diseases have a lot of say in national nutrition policy and and they warned governments against allowing that because it would come at the cost of the health of their populations and so uh i thought it was just fascinating.

And i read that document from cover to cover several times it it was so inspiring to me that they took the stand they did and they identified two categories of foods as being largely responsible for the epidemic of chronic disease that we were starting to see back then and the two categories of foods were processed foods especially highly processed foods and animal products and they pointed out that a number of foods were protective and those were legumes and vegetables and fruits and whole grains and nuts.

And seeds and all of these wonderful plant foods and that had a great impact on me and then i i you know i must admit that the the for me the biggest factor here i was i was actually a public health nutritionist i was teaching almost all of my nutritional education materials were based on canada's food guide and at that time canada's food guide had four groups two of which were animal products you know we have the meat group and we have the dairy group and.

Uh i have to tell you today canada's food guide is very different so our food guide is a plate with um three sections of the big half the plate is fruits and vegetables a quarter of the plate is grains with a big emphasis on whole grains and then a quarter of the plate is protein foods which includes meat and dairy products but it emphasizes plant protein first so plant protein is listed first in all of the guidelines and and they tell people that they should be.

Emphasizing plant choices over animal uh protein choices and so that's legumes and and you know like lentils and beans and and split peas and nuts and seeds and all of those things are included in that group and then there's a little a glass of water beside the plate and they encourage water to be the main beverage that people consume there is no longer a dairy group uh there's no exclusive meat group so we've come a long way but i can tell you back in those days.

When i was a public health nutritionist and i decided i wanted to go plant-based for me it was an ethical choice i just i wanted to contribute as little to pain suffering and death as i could possibly do in my lifetime and so i i just felt really strongly that that i didn't want to contribute to a system a food system that caused so much suffering and so i i decided that i needed to be eating more plant foods and i can remember at the time.

Saying to my husband we had two young children this is you know 30-plus years ago and and i said to him would you be willing um to become a vegetarian and really i was saying a vegan but we barely even knew that word back then and and he looked at me and he smiled and he said i thought you'd never ask he said i'd love to be a vegetarian because the biggest most important thing for me is to leave a softer footprint on the planet he.

Said i can't think of a better way of doing that than to become a vegetarian and so off we went and and our parents were just terrified we were gonna stunt our children or you know uh in those days and and here i was a public health nutritionist i really didn't know if i could stay in that profession because everything was based on these food groups which included all of these animal products and i thought how can i stay and what will my peers think of.

Me and will i be ousted from my profession um i always wanted to be viewed as being you know a reliable source of information i was often interviewed by peter zoski on cbc i i was i was respected by my peers and i was so afraid that i would lose that respect going in this direction and so i had that internal struggle like what do i do and then i i remember the lecture i gave to myself i i basically said if you don't stay and.

Try to change the system from within who will you know you've got to have the courage to stand up for what you believe in and and and so i i made the decision to stay but i also made the decision to be very evidence-based in everything i said and and to be providing my peers with the information that they would need to help people who had made the same decision about their food choices as i did and so to my great relief um my peers didn't.

Oust me and in fact they started inviting me to speak on this topic at their national nutrition conferences and within a few years i wrote my first book which i wrote with santo molina and victoria harrison and we we it was a guidebook for it was called becoming vegetarian but it was really a vegan book in disguise we had a whole chapter called without dairy in the dairy industry in canada took us to task and wrote a 45-page rebuttal to our book and took a full-page.

Ad in our professional journal to try to discredit our work and so it was uh you know a little bit of a battle in that regard but our peers actually stood um by us more than we ever imagined they would and i i can remember uh being at the academy of nutrition and dietetics back then it was the american dietetic association but in a room speaking to you know uh 900 what there was room for 900 people but having 300 people sitting on the floor listening.

To this lecture because they wanted the information um and at dietitians of canada and international dietetic conferences and so i i feel um so fortunate that uh that it all worked in the end but it wasn't without um you know we definitely had uh those who were not very keen on what we were saying as you can imagine you know what's what's fascinating about your journey is is.

Healthy Plate Model

If it wasn't for people like yourself we wouldn't have been able to make the necessary steps now when when i got into the field and part of my role that i have as my day job is i work for a large organization where we oversee about four and a half million people and my job is to create the clinical nutrition programs and even there the challenges that i faced was there were sort of things that were decided on this is how we've always done it right.

So dairy was a staple as part of our plates and you know one of the first things that we focused on was stealing your ideas we adopted what we call the healthy plate model which is exactly your model and that's exactly how we frame it and then trying to convince people to move away and some of the criticisms that we would get and this is you know about eight nine ten years ago was well everything is based on population studies but what's fascinating in the nutrition.

Field now is we have randomized control studies that have come out that say exactly the same thing but not only do they say the same thing they're even more convincing we have head-to-head trials against the ketogenic diet against the mediterranean diet to be able to show what makes this powerful people like yourself people like neil barnard who are putting the research out it's fascinating so let me let me ask you because i know you've written a number of books and i'm really curious about your latest.

Book nourish tell me a little bit what inspired you to write it and what's really the message in that book well um i you know nourish was a book.

Nourish

That that came about because of a need i felt um i met uh it was funny i was speaking at the plantricion project conference and and in the airplane on the way over a lady sat beside me and her name was dr reishma shaw and she was a pediatrician and we just started talking and and we became friends at the conference we kept in touch she did a lecture at her hospital and i gave her some tips and and she said you know i just i.

Want to do more i need to do more in this community and i said well what we really need is we need a book for families and children i said you know we have general guide books like becoming vegan for example but we don't have anything specific for families that really dives deeply into the guidelines that are needed for children at various stages and she said well i'll tell you what i'll do that if you'll do it with me and uh and so that project began.

And this is the result it's um it's nourish and and nourish uh we you know our our goal here was really um to i i'm gonna read you um uh what david katz you know who david katz is of course uh wrote the foreword and this is what he says in his forward at the end he said in the end what sets nourish apart is not that it is expert it is not that is it is insightful it is not that it is wise compassionate or.

Evidence-based it is all of that what sets nourish apart is that it is all about food for love embrace this book and it literally embraces you back is it a book or a hug maybe both lean in and let this beautiful book nourish your understanding your motivation and your willpower and skill power alike lean in and taste the love and so what we were really trying to provide families with we were trying to provide families with a really comprehensive guidebook that touched on all of the.

Issues that parents might have the book is actually divided into four parts so we have the consideration at the beginning where we talk about why people are shifting towards plant-based diets and it's about health it's about what we call home and which is our our planet the environment and it's about heart and about the consequences our food choices have for animals and then the the second part is about care and it's about making sure we are careful in meeting all of our nutritional requirements and so.

We go through all the macronutrients the micronutrients uh you know the how did how to put together a healthy diet and then pregnancy and lactation and all the stages of childhood and then we have a section called confidence which really are about principles of feeding family meals uh you know the dinner table and and what happens around the dinner table and all the issues around underweight and overweight and raising a family in a in in this kind of a world and then the last part is.

All about connection and so you know shopping and planning and menus and recipes and all of that so it's it's the four parts consideration care confidence and connection and so that's you know kind of summarizes uh this new book and and we tried to really make it um not just for plant exclusive eaters but even for plant curious eaters or or uh people that are just you know in the in the process of making that shift and how to do so effectively and safely so that's.

What that's all about so let me ask you a question that's probably on a lot of people's minds you know a lot of parents will say they have really finicky eaters what are some things that you would say to the audience out there to help them to start having their kids start making better choices well you know it depends a lot on when you are making the shift to plant-based so if you've got a child who's been raised on a standard american diet and they're 10.

Or 11 or 12 years old that's a very different challenge than if you're raising a plant-based child from the get-go so if you're raising a child from birth on a on a you know plant predominant or plant exclusive diet it's much easier the you know to because you know i can remember when my children were little um it there wasn't a choice between white bread and brown bread or white rice and brown rice all he ever saw was whole grains uh and and legumes and and.

Fruits and vegetables and you know i can remember when my son was three years old uh he said to me mommy i we were driving in the car and we drove by mcdonald's i'd really like to have a mcdonald's hamburger so i thought at that point i needed to tell him that we don't you know we don't what what those burgers really were and i said you know honey i said we don't eat mcdonald's hamburgers even though i knew he had seen the commercials of the.

Hamburglars stealing hamburgers off the trees so i decided to tell them that you know those those hamburgers are made of cows and we don't we you know we just ours are made of beans and and nuts and those kinds of things and he looked at me and he said mommy people do not eat cows like it was the stupidest thing he had ever heard in his life it just it was just absurd to him and then when i told him that they do he said you.

Know but mommy them have eyes don't they know that cows are people too it was just so he just so got it and and i think you know when you think about little children they tend to be compassionate they tend to be open i can remember um you know the foods that we would provide i would involve them and i think that's so important for for parents to bring your children to the market let them pick some of the food grow a little garden if you.

Don't have a yard you only have a balcony grow some pots teach children where foods come from and and maybe grow some sprouts grow a few herbs whatever you can do but involve them get them in the kitchen chopping cutting pouring whatever is age appropriate for them involve them in food preparation and be excited yourself about delicious fruits and vegetables when you get excited they'll get excited too and i can remember my son when i he was two years old and i took out a head.

Of broccoli i think broccoli was one of his favorite foods but i turned around to to prepare something and my broccoli had disappeared from the from and i couldn't find it anyway i went back to the fridge to and finally i found him hiding behind a couch eating the entire head of broccoli and you know they loved all vegetables i i remember being in an asian restaurant and and and you know my kids were eating this this stir fry they were just so excited they were.

So excited by the food they were having and there was a lady next to me and her kids were eating grilled cheese sandwiches and french fries and she said to me how do you get your kids to eat those kinds of foods and i thought well i mean i i guess just introducing them to these foods not they don't have grilled cheese sandwiches or french fries i mean that wasn't even food to them i think and so but it's it's hard when you have raised your.

Children on a standard american diet and and and they're 10 or 11 or 9 or whatever it is and all of a sudden you're asking them to eat differently what we have to remember is i think it's important to be really compassionate to listen to what they say and and to hear them and and and to involve them in the transition to let them know why you're wanting to make the transition and ask them how can we make this easier for you are you well i.

Can remember when we first made the transition my daughter was four years old and she wanted to continue to eat salmon sandwiches so i kept buying some little tins of salmon and and in about a year she decided she didn't want that anymore because she could feel the hook in her mouth she said i could just feel that hook in my mouth i didn't want to herd fish anymore and so she came to that herself and i think that's important too and so if your children.

Are quite ready to go all the way that's okay um see what kind of compromise you can come to and maybe you can do some of these veggie burgers and and veggie hot dogs or whatever it is to make the transition easier for them uh and and you don't have to be perfect um and and where vegetables if they're not used to having vegetables again get them to help prepare them and teach them about those vegetables and why they're so wonderful and and and then get.

Them to prepare i mean maybe it takes preparing them in the oven with a little bit of extra seasoning or whatever that will make them crispy or whatever it is just be flexible and and uh be kind be loving and and and and don't think you have to do it all overnight you don't um and if your children uh still want to eat meat for example um i have i know so i know uh dr shaw uh my my writing partner when she and her daughter.

Went plant-based her son and her husband were not ready to go there and they agreed to eat plant-based in the house but whenever they went out to the restaurant well they were ordering their meat and it took a while for them to decide they didn't want to do that anymore and so every family's different and and you just need to be patient loving and i think the other thing is to really go the extra distance to make the food wonderful make it flavorful honor um different.

Cultures at different nights and and and i think i i think sometimes you can do a mexican night or a you know a japanese night or an you know um ethiopian night and and and teach the children about those cultures and and and and about the foods that are traditionally consumed within those cultures and make it fun that way and get them to even do some of the research about what people in different countries are eating and there are lots of ways of engaging children where.

Food is concerned and and i think you know really one of the greatest gifts you can give your children as a parent is um you know healthy eating habits that will last them a lifetime and will protect them against disease and will will make them um enjoy a more optimal health but also uh will um open their palettes to a variety of options and and i and and and also the ability to prepare food healthfully and and and happily uh is a great gift because i.

Know so many children grow up not barely knowing how to boil water and i think that's really sad so as a parent we want our children to have those skills those are essential life skills in my view.

Importance of example

You know i i love your message and it's such an important one that i actually want to highlight some of these things you know what what you're saying is so powerful involved listen explain the why respect different cultures for the longest time i used to talk about how food is medicine but i also talk about how food is culture and finding ways to respect people where they're at makes such a huge difference and for people watching i think one thing that we always forget is especially.

For children they look for heroes and it's our job to serve in those roles which means we have to model the behavior how we care for others how we eat how we respect the environment all of those things they're going to watch they're going to model and they're going to build those behaviors off and that's going to be a lifetime of learning that we're teaching them without even knowing so just because we say it is not the same thing as we do it i couldn't agree.

With you more i i think generally in life our example is probably the most powerful tool we have to impact change in others and and we are our children's greatest teacher [Music] our our example is just so powerful our example in physical activity in in how we eat how we sleep in our joyfulness in all of those things and it's really important.

Food addiction

So you know switching topics a little bit one of the things that i don't think gets talked about enough so part of what i do is i'm a kidney specialist the other part is i'm a bariatrician and part of that role involves seeing people for bariatric surgery what what fascinates me in both of those fields and what saddens me is this concept of food addiction you started the conversation talking a little bit about processed foods and we know that the best way for foods to have.

An addictive personality are the ones that are highly processed which means the sugar content the fat content the faster it gets absorbed in the brain the faster it lights up the brain the same places where drugs do but one of the things we don't talk about is how difficult it is to change you know i've had patients where we've had to this is graphic but we've had to amputate their arms they've gone blind but they can't give up their fast food they know the consequences and.

You know the definition of addiction is continuing to do the same thing despite knowing the consequences and it's a topic that as we talk about all of these important ideas it doesn't get addressed it's not a dsm-5 or dsm-4 diagnosis so it's not something that's out there but food addiction is real and i see it every day so my question for you given your vast amount of experiences for people who really say look i get it you know i i understand that sodas are not good.

For me i understand that all of these french fries and you know the hamburgers and the pizzas are not good but i can't stop what are some things people can start that can help them on this you know it's interesting when you think about foods in nature the fat and sugar and salt is so dilute in those foods and when we extract them and concentrate them it really messes up our appetite control and it it just we can't stop eating them because we're drawn to foods.

With those components in them so when we concentrate those components it just it really messes with our minds and and so it's not an easy thing to overcome any addiction and food is is not much different um but i think the most powerful tool that i've seen uh are you familiar with true north health center uh they they do something that that really helps to retrain the taste buds and that is fasting people so they will put people on a water fast uh for you know.

Sometimes two or three weeks and then they will reintroduce foods and i can tell you those foods taste much different to the person after fasting and their their whole bodies are able to readjust this isn't something you do on your own but i think um i'm giving a plug for true north because i am so impressed with um as sort of their fees and their structures how they do this is really commendable because it's so affordable it's ridiculously affordable you get the medical care they have.

You know medical doctors there who are very skilled and so for people that have extreme challenge i think something like that is i would consider and then for other people that that may be able to manage more on their own it's one step at a time think about people back you know think about people back when they were all switching from whole milk to skim milk and you would go from whole to two percent and then if you went back to whole it would taste like.

Cream um and then from two to one and then from one to skim and how your taste buds kind of readjust to the lower fat levels in these foods and or in the in the fluid milk it's the same for other things and so what i would suggest is step one getting rid of the absolute worst culprits so you know stop eating deep fried foods stop drinking soda and and so but you need replacements and so uh for a lot of people so one of the.

Things i would say if you're addicted to sodas for example you could start by diluting um with soda water and eventually getting to the point where your soda is mainly soda water with a few slices of fruit to flavor or even um you know you fill an ice cube tray with a pure blueberry juice or pure grape juice or pure pure pomegranate juice and you drop an ice cube in your soda water to flavor it a juice cube you can do something like that to still.

Have that fizzy drink that satisfies that that need but you slowly make it less and less sweet and then when you go back to tasting a full sweet soda it's disgusting you just can't believe you would have ever wanted to drink something not sickeningly sweet and so it's the same with your fried foods you might start by using an air fryer for example to produce some crispy you know foods that fulfill that need and then gradually you can shift to more wet cooking methods um but.

So i think it's all step by step and one of the things that i think is important to us is not you know working at the the issue by adding healthy foods as opposed to just removing foods and making the healthy foods crowd out the unhealthy foods and and so you know aim you know start by aiming to add four or five servings of fruits and vegetables a day and gradually build up to that 10 or 12 serving goal that you might have and and figure.

Out you know unique ways for you to add those foods in and and so you know and and make a goal of having at least one serving of legumes a day beans or lentils and and that will crowd out foods and so slowly um you're you're just filling your your world with healthier foods in your body it's so interesting how your body gets used to these flavors and and those concentrated sweet foods or concentrated fatty foods actually taste disgusting once you're you've trained your palate to.

Enjoy whole plant foods you the flavors of whole plant foods are amazing the textures are amazing and and your body feels so much better that it starts to crave these things i know when i go away from home the thing i crave the most is greens i can never get enough greens it seems and for me a meal isn't a meal without some greens so um your body really does adjust and and so but you do need to give yourself time and and be compassionate with.

Yourself during that transition phase you know what the concept that you're describing we call it habit stacking and so it's.

Habit stacking

This concept of you've built up all of these bad habits and it may be you know you're addicted to french fries or you're addicted to soda and what you're describing is adding on a little bit of something that's healthier little by little you start to reduce the bad you start to increase the good and you're building these habits and as you build those habits habits are sustainable willpower on the other hand we know what happens on january 1st every single year people get all excited they're.

Going to change and it never lasts because they never try to build those habits so i love this concept for air fryers i'll i'll tell you you know i had chef aj on and we were talking about this i love my air fryer one of the things i really like is i take sweet potatoes i cut them up and i put them in the airfryer because i love that that little bit of crunchy texture that comes out and i found it's delicious but i'm not a.

Chef i have no idea how to cook but it's these little tricks that make me feel like i'm still having my pleasure foods yes and you know it's so interesting because a lot of you know a lot of people say um it's crazy that many doctors call plant-based diets extreme when you know going on medication that could have harmful side effects for the rest of your life or having your chest cracked open is somehow not extreme but but the way that i look at it is.

That going on medications well popping a pill doesn't seem so hard getting your chest cracked open well it it ends so then you can continue on with your life but when you're asking someone to change their food food is our connection to people it's how we express our love for our families it's our it's our social life it's our you know it's our joy in life and and so for a lot of people it is scary it is extreme for them to have to make those.

Kinds of changes and so we need to approach that with such compassion and we need to provide support systems that will provide a you know a tribe for them a group that will be going through this with them we need to provide amazing food because i think one of the biggest things that i recognize is that you know when you go plant-based and you you've slowly built this plant-based um cuisine for yourself you don't enjoy your food any less than you did when you were eating.

Burgers and fries in fact you may even enjoy it more um because your body enjoys it so much and and and this is what we need to help people to understand it is no sacrifice at all once you've been introduced people just want to feel satisfied they want to eat delicious food and they want it to be enough you know what you think about a person who's eating a standard american diet and you just say to them well you need to go plant-based well what do.

They picture they picture the tomato and lettuce on their burger and the rest of the burger's gone uh i mean that's their idea of what you know plants are they they they are not used to having a filling meal that's plant-based and so that gradual introduction to the most amazing foods you know i can remember one time i had to tell this story because my husband asked called me and said could i invite some out of town guests for dinner they were at his workplace and.

I said well sure no problem so they came over and i made a really nice meal and the next day at work some of my husband's colleagues were teasing them saying so you guys had vegetarian last night kind of thing and and they looked at each other and they said well no we didn't we did not what are you talking about we had the most amazing meal we had lasagna we had these stuffed bread things with all of these amazing stuffings we had this unbelievable cream.

Soup well they didn't know it was cashew cream they didn't know the lasagna was you know completely vegan they had no idea about any of that and then they started to think and they looked then they said did we have any meat and then they said i guess we didn't have any meat but it never dawned on them that there was no meat in the meal because they had so much fabulous food they were so satisfied and they enjoyed it so much it didn't even dawn.

On them and that's our goal we want people to to love the food enjoy the food and enjoy preparing the food enjoy buying the food or growing the food so all of those things but that doesn't happen overnight and so it we need to be patient and we need to be kind uh with people making this transition i love that.

Marshall Islands project

Now switching topics i'm really curious you know you had a project on diabetes in the marshall islands tell us a little bit about what that project was all about well for those of you that aren't familiar with the marshall islands um i actually just did a lecture not too long ago i think was in january john mcdougall has a mastermind climate change summit and and i that you could look up that it's free on youtube uh but uh if you type in climate change brenda davis.

Marshall islands or something that will come up and i explain what we did there but but the marshall islands are extremely remote so they're about 2 300 miles southwest of hawaii and about 3 500 miles directly north of new zealand they're just above the equator about five to seven degrees above the equator but it's about 1200 islands over a lot of distance the islands are tiny and most of them are many they have many atolls and these atolls are really just coral reefs uh and so.

The main island that houses about half the population which is about 30 000 people it's not huge but it's 30 miles long and 3.7 miles um in in area so it's this long skinny strip of land they have the highest rates are among the highest rates of diabetes on the planet and and over half the surgeries on the island are amputations due to diabetes so diabetes is rampant there and and one of the things that's really interesting is that you know 80 or 100 years ago.

There was virtually no diabetes at all because these people lived off the land so they they were essentially consuming um plants that grew on the islands uh plants that grew in the ocean and fish that was the very bulk of their diet um and their carbohydrate was breadfruit um they had some pandanus as a vitamin a source some taro they had lots of coconut a lot of coconut in their diet and all the various parts of the coconut and and that was their diet and then.

They went from that to having so many people on an island that they couldn't produce enough food for themselves so they would have to import food but they didn't have a lot of industry so people were very poor and they would import the cheapest processed foods they could get so they it was white sticky rice ramen noodles spam and this um their main beverage is luau and and luau is just high fructose corn syrup and food color essentially and and so it's white rice with some.

Fatty meat um often processed meat and luau and that you know you can't design a diet to induce diabetes any um more efficiently than the diet they adopted the children i was so stunned that the favorite snack of the children was raw ramen noodles with kool-aid powder sprinkled on top if you can imagine and sometimes they would put a little white stuff on top of that which was something called the cinemato which is pure msg so just shocking um it just shocking and and uh and.

So we you know um there was a a group of um seventh-day adventists called um canvasback missions that had been traveling to provide medical teams so oncology teams ent teams um all sorts of teams to the to the marshall islands and micronesia generally to help um the people to provide free surgeries and and medical care for the people and they've been doing this for probably 25 years they essentially watched the diabetes epidemic unfold and they said we've got to try to do something to help these.

People and if you know about seventh-day adventists a lot of seventh-day adventists are vegetarian are very plant-based in their orientation and they have been real pioneers since the 40s or 50s in in plant-based nutrition as well with loma linda university and all of their research and so they decided to put in a for a grant from the us department of defense to do some sort of work to help the marshallese people and they were awarded a grant to do research and so they partnered with dr.

John kelly from loma linda university and i have written a book and i'll just show you it was called um defeating diabetes and it's.

Defeating Diabetes

This book right here and the medical director of the program had just purchased the book and he said i think we need to use this book for our program for these people and so they called me and said would you be willing to literally design the program in terms of what we would be doing with the participants and the nutrition set it all up set up a kitchen train cooks uh do all the powerpoint presentations and and plan the activities with the participants and so on.

And i literally put my life on hold i had to cancel all sorts of things and put my life on hold and i went over for eight months my husband and son came over for about five months my daughter was already in university this was back in 2006 and we did a randomized control trial where we had um everybody that came into the program was either randomized to the intervention group or a control group and the people that were put in the control group were devastated.

They wanted to be part of the intervention and so we allowed them after the fact to go through the intervention so they could experience it as well um so it was and it was a fascinating project because we were given the tb and leprosy clinic to take over and it was oh it was so rat and cockroach infested um the stainless steel medical cabinets had two inches of rat droppings on all the shelves and we literally had to rebuild it and and to create a diabetes.

Wellness facility and then and then we put uh five uh um cohorts through the the program and so the program was intense so for four days a week they would be with us for eight hours a day uh literally going through the training to learn about food and nutrition to learn to cook healthy foods and to do exercise and to learn uh you know how to grow foods all of these things were part of the program and and so we did that and then after our.

Money ran out because the government funding ran out we just continued to go back and and every couple of years we would do more uh interventions for we did interventions for the nitta gela which is the politicians we did them for the police department we did them for the teachers and then the last time i i was there which was actually in 2017 i created a nutrition education um curriculum for the schools and so just continuing to go back and and i was so touched i.

Just received an email from um from one of our people that still is on ground in in madrid at the wellness center and he said that the somebody from the president's office had just come to him and asked for my mailing address because the president was so excited about the presentation i did for the climate change conference he was showing it all over and he wanted to send me a letter of thanks for doing that presentation so i feel like we're still i'm still there i.

Love the marshallese people i have never i guess one of the the the stories i'll just to give you a flavor of what it's like every time you're there and you leave the island they throw you a yakwe party and they bring you things that they've made out of the seashells and the pandanus leaves and and they sing to you songs to show their love and appreciation and i can remember a doctor who came to help out at the program he was walking home on one.

Of the side streets and and he was from new york and he saw a big gang of teenage young men and uh yeah i guess teenage boys i would say and he said this fear just went through his heart it was 11 o'clock at night and there's this gang of boys coming down the street of teenage boys and he said he was so scared because he would have been terrified if he were in that situation in new york and he said as the boys got closer.

They had their arms around one another and they were singing and and he said they were so friendly and loving to them they just hey where are you from and welcome to marjorie and he said i knew instantly i was in a very different place these people have the most amazing laugh they're the happiest people i think it's the happiest people i've ever been with in my life just joy-filled and the little kids they they play baseball making cardboard gloves and a bat out of a.

Piece of wood and they're just laughing and joyful all the time and they have almost nothing and so i felt very privileged to be there and to work there and and we did see people reverse their diabetes and we saw drops average drops of blood sugar of about 75 milligrams per deciliter in the first two weeks uh we saw drops of a1c in the first you know three months of or yeah the first uh three months of about two points uh so we we saw some.

Really wonderful changes in the people and what i was really stunned um it just shocked me is some people that have had health issues for 20 years they were gone in a week or two i can remember a lady saying to me my joints have been sore for 20 years i could hardly lift my arms up i could hardly walk and she said i just can't believe that eating these foods in a week or two weeks my pain is gone i can't believe my pain is.

Gone i can walk again and so many people told me their brain fog was gone that they their heads were fuzzy for for years and and it just disappeared because their blood sugars were normalizing and we saw and of course constipation well they uh we had people that hadn't had a bowel movement in a week and a half you know they would go a week or 10 days without a bowel movement and all of a sudden they went from eating five grams of fiber a day.

To eating 50 or 60 or 70. and i'll tell you they were having bowel movements every day and and for some of them it was scary they they didn't know that was normal um but it just incredible changes in in how they felt and how they were able to uh manage their diabetes or in some cases overcome their diabetes wow such an amazing inspiring story oh thank you and i have to tell you that the story is actually in this is one of my latest books.

Called kit diabetes essentials and it provides people with sort of a step-by-step guide to how you do this and and and then we have a whole cookbook that goes along with kick diabetes essentials both books have recipes but this one is more completely recipes and so i really tried some of the favorite recipes that i've i've done myself are in these books and many of the recipes we even adapted from what we used in the marshall islands so so brenda how can people learn more about.

You i know you have a website yes brendadavisrd.com perfect and how about um any other places to look your stuff up i'll have the links for amazon.com so people can check out your books yeah and then and then we actually have a website for nourish as well uh nourishthebook.com and then raishman and i are fairly well raised very active on instagram i'm not just a beginner and i'm just learning but we do these instagram lives every so often you can find out at uh at dr.

Reshma shaw and then i'm on facebook and and very happy to connect with people that way as well fantastic you know i i was really looking forward to this interview because i knew it was going to be inspirational it was going to create hope and everything about you just resonates with people it just has this thing where people get excited they have hope so i'm so delighted and i think the work you're doing is just phenomenal i want to thank you for coming on the show.

With us it's been an honor and a pleasure well thank you dr hashni it's been my privilege and my honor and i i just want to i you know just remind people that um you know changing your lifestyle is is really the most powerful you can thing that you can do to change the course of not just your life sometimes i think it's so encouraging to know that when we make choices that are truly good for ourselves the benefits extend far beyond ourselves and and so.

There's no diet that you can consume that is better for this planet um no diet that will produce a softer carbon footprint than a plant-based diet there's no diet that's kinder for animals the benefits just extend far beyond ourselves and we need to remember that as well what a great way to close you know always thinking about others and making this little small journey of life that we have on this planet to make the planet a little bit better thank you brenda davis for everything you.

Do thank you so much dr hashmi thank you for having me you.