(upbeat music)
- Hi, welcome to Between The Lines,
I'm your host Lea Woodford,
and with me today is award winning author Nancy Addison.
Nancy! Welcome to the show.
- Thank you so much for having me.
- Oh, it's my pleasure.
So your book "How To Be A Healthy Vegetarian",
that's an interesting title, tell me about that.
- Well I became a vegetarian thirty-three years ago
and I raised my children that way.
And what I've found over the years
researching nutrition and different things
is that a lot of people think that
they're eating healthy just because
they're cutting out animal foods or proteins,
like meat, or pork, or things like that.
And that's not necessarily the case,
because there are a lot of white refined foods
that have no nutrition in them,
maybe they have trans fats in them
and unhealthy sugars like high-fructose corn syrup.
And they can be eating a lot of those
that are vegetarian, but it's not necessarily
making them healthy.
And so as people started asking me
how to eat a vegetarian diet to be healthier,
I realized that, just there were certain guidelines
that if people would follow,
that they really could be a healthy vegetarian.
And I had met so many people who'd say,
"Oh I used to be a vegetarian, but
I had to go back to eating meat
because I didn't feel like I was getting enough protein."
And so, I'm an O blood type and so is my daughter
and you look at blood types, they would say
that I should be a meat-eater.
And what I found is that I very effectively
thrive on a vegetarian diet and so does my daughter.
And I have figured out quite a lot of things
about how to prepare food,
and different vegetarian plant foods that,
actually make them more digestible and healthier.
And, so anyway I just put that in my book
and since I'm a chef, it's a half cook book as well.
- I noticed that!
- It helps people implement what they're learning,
and so they can put it in steps
in their life to being a healthier vegetarian. (laughs)
- Now what was your inspiration for writing the book, Nancy?
- I had two children in college.
And they hadn't gained a lot of weight,
like their friends had,
and they also weren't getting sick, as often.
And there friends were trying to eat vegetarian like them
so they could lose the weight and get healthier,
because a lot of times kids go to college
and they'll put on twenty pounds!
So I thought, I was gonna write a guidebook
for kids in college, but then when I was in Greece
studying Mediterranean cooking and I saw this teacher
using unhealthy ingredients, and I thought
I know more than this teacher who written
three or four books. And my roommate, she's like,
"Nancy write about what you know,
you know how to be a healthy vegetarian, write about that."
So, that's what I decided to do.
So it's pretty much for anybody
who wants to add more vegetables
or healthy foods to their diet.
- What's the underlining message in this book,
to our readers, what is the one takeaway
that you want them to get? Because lets face it,
there is so much conflicting information
out there about nutrition.
- [Nancy] Oh isn't that the truth, it's a jungle out there.
We have been bombarded in the last fifty years
with misinformation, false information.
And I'd like to think this book
cuts through all of that,
and really sets the record straight
on how do you prepare carbohydrates
so they are healthy for you and they don't cause
indigestion or intestinal problems.
And I think really just adding more quality vegetables
and fruits to your diet in a whole real form,
without all the chemicals and processing,
can really make all the difference in the world
to someone's health and I think most people
just don't eat enough fresh whole vegetables.
And I explain why that's important,
and how that can really benefit your health.
- Now you've had some health challenges,
can you tell me about how this diet has,
can we talk about your health issues?
- Oh absolutely!
It started when I was two and I received an
overdose penicillin from my pediatrician
and I almost died, and after multiple blood transfusions,
bone marrow, tests and things I, obviously, survived.
But I had a acute anemia and so during my childhood,
I craved anything that would give me energy.
And so I became a sugar addict,
and by the time I was in high school,
I was pre-diabetic and I had been told
by my eye doctor that I had macular degeneration,
and I was gonna go blind.
- Wow
- So as I got into my twenties,
my health kept deteriorating, I put on weight,
I had acid reflux very badly, I got terrible headaches.
I had carpal tunnel so bad I had to wear
braces on both of my wrists.
- Wow.
- Then I got diagnosed scoliosis,
- One thing after another!
- (laughs)
- Oh my!
- It was culminating!
And I got married, I had two children,
I was watching people in my family
die of heart disease and cancer.
And we were doing everything we were told to do,
that our doctors we're prescribing,
we were going regularity.
And then when my father got diagnosed
and died of cancer when my son was one,
that was my light bulb moment.
I realized he wasn't gonna see his grandchildren grow up,
and I, it was just a turning point in my life.
And at that point my own personal doctor died of cancer.
- Wow.
- And so I hired a new doctor, I just decided I was
going to raise my kids as healthy as I could,
I was gonna research nutrition,
I was going to use food as my medicine.
I studied at Cordon Bleu in London
when I was in college, I knew a lot about cooking,
but I didn't know about healthy cooking.
So, I hired a new doctor, I told her I was gonna
use food as my medicine and that I just wanted her
to take my blood once a year and tell me where I was,
- Right.
- Cause I didn't know what I was doing,
and over that next, literally one year,
I got rid of my pre-diabetes, my anemia,
my weight just came off without even trying.
And all of these other things, like the carpal tunnel,
the acid reflux, the headaches, they just went away.
And I realized that I was on a really good path here,
and that the foods that I was eating,
and I had switched to a vegetarian diet.
- Now before, can you tell our viewing audience
what the difference between vegetarian and vegan is?
- Right, and that's a common question.
A vegetarian will eat eggs, and butter and dairy.
Things like that.
- Thank goodness!
I don't think I could give up my cheese!
- And I have to admit I do eat some eggs and butter,
but I believe in getting ones that are high quality,
and from animals that raised healthy, humane environments.
One of the reasons I'd become vegetarian,
is I had read a very extensive article
in Life Magazine that was describing and talking about
the new farming practices, so the big corporate farms
that were raising animals without fresh air,
without sunshine, without ability to move,
and pumping them full of hormones to make them
bigger, fatter, faster.
And then they were having to give them
huge amounts of antibiotics just to
keep them alive until they killed them,
because the inhumane way they were raising them,
they couldn't survive normally.
I'm an animal lover, and I read that article,
and it had graphic pictures in it
of the inhumane ways they were treating these animals,
and I just, I told my husband,
I said "I can't participate in this anymore," and
"we're gonna be a vegetarian family now."
and he was like "Okay". (laughs)
- So what kind of protein do you recommend,
since were not gonna have meats and fish,
what kind of healthy proteins would you recommend?
- That's actually really easy,
it's the beans, it's the seeds, it's the nuts.
The things that, really actually will grow a plant.
And I talk about how to prepare those properly,
so they don't cause gas or indigestion.
Most of these things that will grow a plant
have phytic acid in it.
Which is an enzyme inhibitor, which prevents
you from actually digesting it.
- Oh my!
- And it will preventing you from
absorbing the nutrition as well and so
with my recipes I talk about how to
take out the phytic acid, how to prepare properly
so that you can absorb the proteins effectively.
But also leafy greens have a lot of proteins in them.
Forty-five percent of spinach is protein!
And what we need is the complex amino acids,
not really the protein.
So your body uses those complex amino acids
in order to create the proteins that your body uses.
So it's actually a much healthier way of getting protein
and it's more absorbable and easier on the body,
so it's, (laughs)
It's really easier than people think,
and I probably eat vegan, which is no animal protein.
So no eggs, nothing from an animal.
So that will even cut out honey, because
bees create the honey and they don't want to
take advantage of any kind of creature.
So that's kind of the difference, and in my book
I give people the ways to instead of using dairy,
how to make a vegan version.
So I have, baby step everybody over, you know
how extreme or less extreme do you want to be,
or strict do you want to be.
- That's one of the things that I enjoyed about the book,
is you give people options and I think people like that.
I know I do!
What piece of advice would you give somebody
that is just entering the vegetarian,
they just made the decision to become a vegetarian?
- I would say the most important thing about
being a vegetarian is to buy quality food.
Try to go to your local farmers market
and buy from an organic farmer,
that is using environmentally sound practices.
And buy fresh food that's fine ripened and tree ripened,
and try to avoid eating processed foods,
or foods that are packaged, cause a lot of times
you don't really know what's in there.
The FDA allows certain ingredients in foods
under a certain amount, that they don't even have to
list them on the ingredient list.
- That's terrifying!
- (laughs) It is.
And I just, I teach people, mostly, know what your food is.
'Cause I think that's important,
and I think quality is really important.
So eat whole, real, fresh food.
And I really think your health will benefit in so many ways.
- Well, you're beautiful!
Obviously, there's some anti-aging benefits as well.
- (laughs) I'm sixty-four
- Wow!
- And I have been doing this thiry-three years,
and in fact my doctor retired,
I'm trying to remember, it was eighteen,
twenty years ago and I never bothered to get
another doctor, because I never get sick.
(laughs)
- That's amazing!
- I use food as my medicine!
So that is something that I really believe
the body will do amazing things
if you give it the right tools.
- Thank you so much Nancy, for being on the show.
This has been Lea Woodford with Between the Lines,
thanks for watching.