PLANTS’ PUNCH
IF YOU HAD told me I could go nine days without eating meat or dairy, I would have said oh sure, maybe if I were stranded on a deserted island, but I wouldn’t have dreamed I could do so on a Caribbean island at an all-inclusive resort. How could any mere meatloving mortal resist the aromas wafting from restaurants and open-air grills? And then there is the you-onlylive-once mindset of such vacations, a mental passport to indulge.
But such was the challenge I faced when I joined a group – mostly boomers – who had signed up for a wholefood plant-based-diet immersion excursion in the Dominican Republic. Among the 45 of us, some were curious newcomers to the diet, a few were die-hards who had long since given up all animal-based foods, refined foods such as sugar and anything high in fat, including all oils, but most fell somewhere in between. Every day, we attended lectures and cooking demos and ate only the dishes specially prepared for us. Breakfasts included banana oat bars, breads and muffins, potato cakes and baked plantains, fresh tropical fruits, granola with almond milk, oatmeal and various puddings. For lunch and dinner, we feasted on a wide selection of salads, side dishes such as almond-creamed cauliflower and cilantro green beans, and mains that included all manner of beans and rice casseroles, veggie stews, stuffed wraps and cabbage rolls, curry concoctions and meat-lookalikes such as almond-encrusted eggplant “cutlets.” At both the beginning and end of our trip, our weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels were taken.
“We did the tests so everyone could see results in real numbers,” explains Dr. Shane Williams, the 43-year-old cardiologist from Bracebridge, Ont. ( www.williamscardiology.com), who orchestrated the event. “To get people to change what they eat, it’s not enough to tell them they’ll feel better.”
Williams has been making waves in Ontario’s cottage country by advocating nutrition over medicine. Rather than taking what he claims is the go-to approach of many physicians – writing prescriptions and/ or recommending surgeries – the affable Newfoundland native goes the extra step and introduces patients to the notion that food is health care, medicine is sick care and that nutrition alone can dramatically improve well-being. A radical position for any doctor perhaps, but certainly for