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"  A whole-food, plant-based diet is not vegan. Or raw. But recent research shows that it just might be the antidote to heart disease, cancer, and, yes, the last five pounds\u2014for good. And while its biggest claim to fame came just a few months ago when Jay Z and Beyonc\u00E9 announced they&amp;#039;d be eating plant-based for 22 days, it&amp;#039;s fast becoming the diet strategy du jour. But what exactly does &amp;quot;whole-food, plant-based&amp;quot; mean? &amp;quot;Whole food is just that\u2014whole,&amp;quot; says Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr., director of the Cardiovascular Disease Prevention and Reversal program at the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute. Along with fellow researcher T. Colin Campbell, a professor emeritus of nutritional biochemistry at Cornell University, Esselstyn has spent years touting the diet as the cure to a long list of ailments, from heart disease (the number-one killer of women) to diabetes and high blood pressure. It may even help autoimmune diseases and chronic pain\u2014not to mention its ability to boost energy and produce effortless weight loss. Campbell is best known for his 2005 book, The China Study, a nearly 50-year look at the predominantly plant-based eating habits of rural Chinese. &amp;quot;Breast cancer and colon cancer\u2014and heart disease\u2014were almost nonexistent,&amp;quot; says Campbell, whose latest book, Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition, came out last May.  Those who have seen the acclaimed 2011 documentary Forks Over Knives (check it out on Netflix) will recognize both Campbell and Esselstyn. One of the film&amp;#039;s focal points is Esselstyn&amp;#039;s nutritional study, for which he recruited a small group of patients with advanced coronary artery disease\u2014including five who had been given less than a year to live\u2014and put them on a plant-based diet. Twelve years later, not only were the 17 subjects who stuck to the diet still alive, but they all had no further cardiac events and were symptom-free. &amp;quot;Heart disease is a completely benign, food-borne illness,&amp;quot; Esselstyn says. But back to why you&amp;#039;ll lose weight: &amp;quot;Once you start eating out of a box, bag, or can, the food is processed and may have unhealthy additions like sugar, salt, and oil,&amp;quot; he adds. And it&amp;#039;s this key aspect that differentiates this diet from its cousin veganism, which also eschews all animal by-products. If you think about it, vegans\u2014and vegetarians, for that matter\u2014can live on heaps of pasta, oil-drenched veggies, and rolls of Oreos. Then there&amp;#039;s the plant-based part. &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s absolutely on the top of the list is green leafy vegetables,&amp;quot; says Esselstyn, who recommends eating a fistful (&amp;quot;anointed with a few drops of balsamic vinegar&amp;quot;) with every meal. But that also means beans, legumes, whole grains, and every vegetable under the sun. What&amp;#039;s verboten? Anything that has a mother or a face: red meat, poultry, and fish; as well as all dairy\u2014milk, cream, butter, cheese, ice cream, and yogurt. Skeptics of a plant-based diet tend to focus more on what&amp;#039;s potentially lacking in nutrition, not on what it can offer. The most notable is what Campbell calls our &amp;quot;reverence for protein.&amp;quot; He adds, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a very important nutrient, but almost everyone overconsumes it and gets it from animal-based foods, so they end up decreasing their consumption of plant-based foods, antioxidants, and complex carbohydrates too.&amp;quot; Meanwhile, there are plenty of protein-packed plant-based sources\u2014beans, lentils, chia seeds, quinoa, and even spinach and mushrooms. As for getting calcium without dairy? Kale, broccoli, butternut squash, carrots, and cauliflower are all natural sources of the necessary nutrient. Dietitian Stephanie Middleberg, founder of Middleberg Nutrition, a nutritional counseling service in New York, says, &amp;quot;It comes down to the fact that the majority of plant-based foods are &amp;#039;cleaner,&amp;#039; meaning they have only one ingredient, and are easier to digest than dairy, meat, and even in some cases fish,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Eating them gets people back to the basics of good solid nutrition, which is to load up on what is seasonal and whole-food-based, plus it allows them to be more focused when eating out.&amp;quot; The other immediate pros of ditching cheese, added sugar, and red meat, and processed foods: Less bloat. Better digestion. More energy. And a thinner you. We asked Amanda Chantal Bacon, a former chef who founded Moon Juice, a plant-based juice-and-super-food snack shop in Los Angeles, to design a nine-day food plan. If you also drink two or more liters of water a day, avoid alcohol, and commit to at least three workouts, you could drop five pounds or more, all while eating real food. So ask yourself, WWBD? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.harpersbazaar.com/beauty/diet-fitness/advice/a2034/whole-food-plant-based-diet-0514/>