Vegetarian diplomacy, cohousing and co-creating community - with guest Vesanto Melina, RD

In Episode #3 I interviewed Vesanto Melina, RD and discussed her experience in trailblazing plant-based diets in the world of dietetics, battling the dairy industry, “vegetarian diplomacy”, and so much more!

In this conversation we chat about:

- The dairy industry's retaliation to suggesting plant alternatives for milk. 

- Vegetarian diplomacy and tips for eating out with non-plant-based friends. 

- Sharing meals and co-creating a plant-based community. 

- Her experience with cohousing. 

- Client success stories whilst on a plant-based diet. 

- Vesanto’s quick tips on transitioning into a plant-based diet. 

- Vesanto’s favorite plant-based foods and some basic recipes. 

Resources: 

NutriSpeak - https://nutrispeak.ca/ 

Becoming Vegan Book -  https://becomingvegan.ca/

Kick Diabetes Cookbook -  https://kickdiabetescookbook.com/

The Cohousing Association of America - https://www.cohousing.org/

Plant-Based Docs - https://plantbaseddocs.com/

Besto Pesto Recipe - ​​https://minimalistbaker.com/easy-vegan-pesto-5-minutes/

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.”

                    Nelson Mandela

“Attitudes toward vegetarian diets have progressed from ridicule and skepticism to condescending tolerance, to gradual and sometimes grudging acceptance, and finally to acclaim.” 

                     Mervyn Hardinge, MD, Dr.PH, PhD

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About your host: Dr. Travis Cox - BA, DC, MSc is a Doctor of Chiropractic with a focus on Functional Medicine and plant-based nutrition. He is the creator of PBandHealthy.com and host of the Plant-Based and Healthy podcast. Connect with him on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @yourvegandoc #pbandhealthy. And remember, individuals inspire and communities create change!

Audio credit: Thank you @katetrajanmusic for your lovely voice on the intro/outro and @craigritchiemusic for the super catchy music track for the intro/outro... many thanks!

Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):

Living a plant-based lifestyle is a challenge for many vegans, vegetarians and aspiring flexitarians. It can be a roller coaster ride of enjoyment, ailment, exploration, and isolation. Here at plant-based and healthy, we make it easy to be a part of the plant-based community by having plant-based practitioners, experts, and advocates share their journeys and lessons learned. So, you can enjoy being plant-based and stay healthy too. And now here's your host, Dr. Travis Cox.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (00:35):

On today's episode of plant-based and healthy, we have a special guest, Vesanto Melina, who is a registered dietician and has co-authored books with Brenda Davis that have won awards internationally and proclaimed as go-to books on plant-based nutrition.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (00:48):

In our becoming vegetarian book, we had a whole chapter called, Vegetarian Diplomacy, going to the steakhouse with all your work colleagues. How do you manage that?

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (00:59):

We'll be discussing her journey in establishing plant-based diets in the dietetics and nutrition industry, as well as her viewpoints on vegetarian diplomacy. She's also the lead author of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, current position paper on vegetarian diets. Welcome Vesanto.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (01:21):

Thank you, Travis. Yes, it's a pleasure.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (01:23):

Yeah. Actually, I didn't mention this earlier in our pre-show chat, but I actually feel I know you a little bit because you were a guest lecturer for the plant-based diet course I took that Dr. Daniel Redwood taught me as a part of the-

Vesanto Melina (guest) (01:37):

Oh really?

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (01:38):

Yeah. UWS program. Yeah. I heard your lecture is great and I of course read, you becoming vegan book. So, kind of know you a little bit from that.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (01:47):

That's right. Oh, that's wonderful. Yeah. He was a pleasure to work with.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (01:52):

Yeah. He's a really good guy. Totally.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (01:53):

Yeah.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (02:00):

Pretend that we're in the plant-based and healthy time machine and bring yourself back to when you first decided to go plant based and just tell us about how that journey unfolded.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (02:10):

Okay. Well, I have been a dietician for a long time. I'm actually almost 80. I'll be 80 in March. And so, I've had a long history of seeing nutrition evolve and I became vegetarian in the late 1970s, early 1980s when I spent four years in India, which is a great place to learn how to be vegetarian because their cooking and their food preparation is quite evolved in that realm.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (02:46):

Absolutely.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (02:46):

And they also have their spiritual practices linked to being plant based. And so, I came back from India and I was really interested in helping other people that wanted to be vegetarian to do it in great, great health, in excellent health. And also I was aware that my profession didn't know about vegetarian nutrition. We'd touched on it in university. And I had taught university quite a lot and we didn't really know how to do it well, and we were rather dubious about it, but I realized it could work very, very well. And I also became aware of the animal rights issues. I was sensitive about things like boar bashing where pigs are smashed on the snow with a baseball bat or a crowbar, so they'll get into the truck for the slaughterhouse.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (03:47):

It's terrible.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (03:49):

I had hurt my nose when I was a little kid. So, that one really touched me.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (03:54):

Oh, I bet.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (03:55):

Oh, I thought those poor animals.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (03:58):

They empathize with them for sure.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (03:59):

Yeah. So anyway, I started doing workshops and the National News came and visited the workshops. It was just the right thing at the right time. And the dieticians were interested. "Okay, how do you do this?" So, it became an immediate success, the workshops that I did with magazine articles and national news coming. So, it was a very good start.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (04:29):

Yeah, it sounds that way. And of course, must have been a pretty eye opening experience going to India and vegetarian diet to being a big part of their culture. And then of course, the inverse in North America, it was probably a bit of a change for you to try to go through that process, to develop that mentality in the nutrition and dietitian world.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (04:51):

That's right. And so, it actually helped me now when I work with clients that I've had such an evolution. My parents had focused on healthy eating. My dad was a cancer and diabetes research physiologist. And my mother enjoyed teaching children like how to prepare food. And so, my nutrition was a good blend out of that, but what we thought was healthy, kept evolving. And so, I have learned over the years, and then I find when I'm working with clients, having all this long experience and different stages of learning about nutrition really helps me understand what will help other people.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (05:38):

Absolutely. It's such a wonderful thing to have that exposure in different ways as a young individual. And then of course learning from our culture, from our family about what's healthy, what's not, but then of course, there's a lot of misinformation out there or things that are different than what we expect to happen, right?

Vesanto Melina (guest) (05:58):

Well, actually my dad was, he was doing cancer research while he smoked three packs a day. Because they weren't really linking cancer and smoking. This is quite a long time ago when the doctors in ads were smoking and saying which brand was better than another. So, it's actually a fairly similar point to what we have now with the world health organization saying that cured meats are convincing carcinogens, and yet we're still subsidizing those products. We subsidize meat production. We subsidize slaughterhouses with our federal funds. And I guess in some future years that will stop hopefully soon. And because we're paying for it with the medical payments, when people get cancer, type two diabetes, heart disease, and we're subsidizing the foods that are so strongly linked to those diseases.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (07:04):

Yeah. It's so true.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (07:05):

[crosstalk 00:07:05] linked to them and cured meats, convincingly linked to cancer.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (07:10):

Yeah. It's so true that oftentimes that the evidence is there, but the industry standards are what's actual practice within given community or nation is that it's behind the evidence, right. And then of course, it takes that time to catch up, which is good that it does catch up, but it's the in between times that it's bit unfortunate.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (07:30):

That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (07:32):

So, that being said, stepping back, and you transitioning a lot of the diet and nutrition community into understanding the health benefits and dispelling some of the misinformation or myths, if you will, around eating a plant-based diet and still being able to be healthy, in fact healthier. What were some of the obstacles you had to overcome in transitioning the profession into welcoming or being more understanding of a plant-based diet being healthy?

Vesanto Melina (guest) (08:03):

Okay. Well, in the early nineties, I did a workshop for dieticians and I was so nervous. I worked six months preparing this for a national convention for dieticians. I wasn't sure if anybody would come. I wasn't sure if I even break even on it, let alone make any money. And I worked six months and I actually made $500.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (08:27):

Wow.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (08:27):

And 45 dieticians came. So, that was exciting.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (08:27):

That is exciting.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (08:32):

It was because it was the early nineties and it was such a new item at that time. I had another very important point where we published our first book, which came out in 1994 based on the workshops that I'd done with the public [inaudible 00:09:00] the publisher was interested in publishing it because-

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (09:03):

Was that the Becoming Vegetarian book?

Vesanto Melina (guest) (09:04):

Becoming Vegetarian.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (09:04):

Okay. Yeah.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (09:06):

And it included a chapter titled, Without Dairy. And that just told alternative sources for the nutrients that are in cows milk, if you didn't consume dairy. And we knew by then that about 70% of the world's population has some degree of lactose intolerance and indigenous people never use dairy. Lots of cultures never use dairy. So, it just told, "Okay, here's how you could get the nutrients." Well, the dairy farmers created a 45 page booklet against this book and gave it out for free to everyone who would take it, put ads against our book in the dietician's professional journal. So, my co-author Brenda Davis and I were devastated. We were just shocked.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (09:57):

No kidding. My goodness.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (09:59):

But as it turned out, this made our book an immediate best seller because our book was really well done and theirs booklet wasn't very well done.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (10:11):

Their response is probably just responding to their benefits of the dairy industry. I would imagine.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (10:18):

That's right. All we were saying too was saying, these are some reasons people don't use dairy and you can get the nutrients from other sources. It didn't say dairy was bad. It just said that here's some other ways. So, that was a shock, we went through that, but it worked. Yes.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (10:43):

Well, good. Thank you. Thank you for withstanding that criticism and that pressure because of course, we wouldn't be here today with the plant-based community and all the wonderful information we have without that ability to go through those obstacles. So thank you.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (10:56):

That's right. Yeah.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (11:05):

So in your experience with working with plant-based diets and individuals, what is your favorite health condition to work on or case type?

Vesanto Melina (guest) (11:18):

Well, because I've had such a wide range of experience, my son and daughter are in their early fifties and I have two grandchildren. And so, I've been through all their evolution as well as my own and my husband and I really can see things from a lot of different perspectives. So, I do quite often have people who are starting the childbearing phase of their life, they're wanting to get pregnant or they have a baby. And I often find that I'm talking to them when they have their next child. And you're saying, "Yeah, our first one is so healthy, so energetic."

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (12:03):

Totally.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (12:03):

Yeah. So, that's one very common thing. And the other type of person that I work with a lot is someone who is going more plant-based and just wants to get it exactly right, to fine tune it.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (12:17):

Totally.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (12:18):

But because of this broad experience, and also I find a lot of times when I'm working with people that I feel a real connection with them, almost like a friendship. I really want them to succeed in this and whatever stage they're at, like they don't have to be a hundred percent plant-based. And it's good to know they you don't, and people are moving in that direction, but wherever you are, you can be in excellent health and we fine tune it to get that work.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (12:52):

Yeah. I couldn't agree more. And in fact, that's in part why I'm doing this, plant-based and healthy podcast, is to be inclusive of the full spectrum of where individuals are at with their plant-based diets. Because of course, unless they're carnivore... Doing the carnivore diet, most people are going to eat some plants here and there, but to emphasize that more, I think is important. And of course, there's a lot of misunderstandings or misinformation out there about what micronutrients or macronutrients to look out for, what stage of life you're in, what nutrients might be more important to look for? So, I think that's great that you embrace that same mentality of welcoming anyone on the spectrum of the plant-based diets and of course, meet them where they're at.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (13:35):

That's right. Yeah, yeah and help them do it really well at that point.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (13:38):

Yeah, totally. So that being said, is there any client experience that you've had or a success story, if you will, that you really saw dramatic health improvement from an individual transition to a completely plant-based diet or emphasizing more plants in their daily intake of food?

Vesanto Melina (guest) (13:56):

Oh, I just had one that was almost opposite of that. It was someone who was so perfectionist that she wanted to be raw and a hundred percent vegan and she was about five foot seven, I think, and weighed 90 pounds.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (14:16):

Oh, my.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (14:16):

And was losing weight and was having heart issues. And so, I was very concerned about her and I knew a doctor she connected with as well. And she hadn't been convinced that she really needed some medical help at this point. And so, I did manage to get her trust, which was wonderful and eventually got her into eating disorder clinic because she was so perfectionist that she wasn't eating enough at all and was really afraid of a lot of food related things. So I'm not really an eating disorder specialist, but I'm good at connecting with where people are at. So, she's in a clinic right now, gaining weight.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (15:06):

Good.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (15:08):

We can work out later and I think she could do this on her own. And I'll certainly help her if that fits in, but just to do a really good, healthy diet and not worry too much about it being absolutely perfect.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (15:22):

Yeah. I think that's a good point to make is that sometimes when you are trying to do all the right things and eat all the right things all the time, it can sometimes be a little bit out of a disadvantage as far as being too, like you say, perfectionistic, and then of course, it causes more harm both, that's mental harm or physical harm than good.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (15:40):

That's right. I've had clients where their five year old couldn't go to a birthday party because they'd be eating things that had some dairy or eggs in them or something like that.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (15:54):

That's sad.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (15:55):

I like to work it out, so that the child can have a happy time. We could furnish some foods that will work at the party and look like everybody else's or do something that'll work with that particular family.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (16:10):

Do you have any advice for those individuals that struggle with, I'll call it the social pressure, when eating out or go into a friend or family's dinner event to try to avoid that, not eating the animal products or having that guilt to try to eat it? What do you recommend?

Vesanto Melina (guest) (16:30):

In our Becoming Vegetarian book, which is actually in a lot of libraries still, we had a whole chapter called Vegetarian Diplomacy and it was really fun to write. It was, what do you do when you go out at work with all the different, going to the steakhouse with all your work colleagues, how do you manage that? And of course, things have evolved so much in that in the almost 30 years, since I've been writing nutrition books. We have such an availability, you can hardly find a restaurant that won't offer vegan options now. So, that's good. You can call up the restaurant first and say, "What could I have?" We know one restaurant, for example, that has very good vegan options at lunch, but they don't offer them at supper. And so, we could call ahead and say, "Hey, we really want to come to your restaurant. Can we?" And so that's one.

We also are interested for holidays. How do you manage it? How do you deal with all the different options and have fun with that, to want to just have, "I don't want to have a Turkey at my house, but I'll have some wonderful other delicious items." Or, "If we have a Turkey, I'd like to have these other things as well." And there are a number of different possibilities, or you can just have like a skating party where people have snacks and then they don't even notice that they all happened to be vegan snacks.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (18:17):

That's true. Well, it's funny because recently, I couldn't agree more, I went to American Thanksgiving Celebration in Calgary a couple weeks ago and they of course served a Turkey. But we were all invited to bring a dish. So, I brought two vegan dishes and in fact one was a classic my mom used to make when I was a kid was green bean casserole and I made it vegetarian, a vegan option and everyone commented how it tasted like the best green bean casserole they've ever had, even though it was of course vegan and they didn't even know it.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (18:48):

Oh, that's wonderful example.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (18:50):

It was good. But getting back to what you were saying about vegetarian diplomacy, I think that's a good point because, at least where I live in Calgary, there are more and more vegetarian or vegan restaurant options or menus. But not as many as Vancouver. So, I often struggle when a friend recommends a particular restaurant, I have to look out for what do they have on the menu that I could eat or am I going to have to ask for a certain meal and then not eat certain parts of it, right?

Vesanto Melina (guest) (19:16):

Yeah. And it's the chef who's busy trying to pump out all this food if you call ahead and then they'll be warned, "Oh, we better have some tofu or something like that." They can plan it.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (19:31):

Totally.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (19:32):

Another area, I live in something called co-housing, it's a Danish concept and it's like a village and we have a courtyard, we have 31 units. We have a big common house and we have community dinners. We've just started again.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (19:48):

That's great.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (19:48):

Due to COVID, we stopped. And we've been very careful. Nobody's ended up getting COVID and we've followed guidelines, but this mix of people, is not all vegan and they're lovely group of people that wanted to form community. We've had lovely musical events all through COVID out in our courtyard. We've got some lot of good professional musicians. So anyway, I have been aware that if I tried to pressure them into being more vegan, it would not work.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (20:21):

Might get some backlash. Yeah.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (20:24):

Yeah. People would made that quite clear, but still living in co-housing was another really important feature for me because I wanted to learn how not to create wars in my head with other, and I've lived in co-housing for about 25 years now.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (20:40):

That's great. Seems quite popular in Vancouver to have the co-housing, the cooperative housing.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (20:46):

That's right. And there're one or two in Calgary. There's a cohousing.org shows the ones all over the United States and ours is called vancouvercohousing.com. If you want to look it up. But anyway, I found that our community meals that are created by team of three cooks and three clean up and we rotate and they choose what meal they want to put out and you choose where they want to go or not for three or four, five bucks, but these are becoming more and more plant-based and they always offer vegan options. And helping people know what's a good recipe. Oh, like tonight, actually we're going to have a taco dinner and you can easily make that a vegan taco meal. And people are so happy with that. Yeah. We've got good vegan cheeses and all sorts of things.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (21:39):

Yeah. It's so true. It's so great to have the dairy and meat alternatives because in my household, my partner and I we're both vegetarian or vegan and my youngest son is pescatarian, but my oldest son, he loves his meat. So, we'll often have a burrito night or taco night and we'll have our vegetarian option, but then we'll have the meat option for my oldest son. And it includes everyone and it doesn't exclude or make someone feel alienated or feel pressured to eat something that they don't want to eat.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (22:10):

That's right. And boy, when you have kids, you find out they got to do it. They want to do.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (22:15):

They have their preferences for sure. And they want to get their way for sure.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (22:19):

That's right. And over time they might evolve into a very similar view, but you got to go through all the stages.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (22:27):

Exactly. Yeah. We try to make mealtime fun, but also less stress free as best we can.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (22:32):

That's right. So, when my children were little, I think tacos was really a common one. My daughter was vegetarian before I was, and my son liked to have meat. And although, he's a really good vegetarian cook as well. But we found tacos would work really well and pasta dishes. And we had lots of, you don't need that many recipes. People often have 10 recipes that are like their lifelong favorites. And so, when there's a transition into new way of eating, you just need to find your new favorites. And that can happen with a bit of support, some good cookbooks. One of our really good books is called, Cooking Vegetarian in Canada and called Cooking Vegan in the United States. I did it with a chef from the Four Seasons and it's got really good recipes that are standbys and they taste good, they've got simple ingredients. They're like traditional recipes.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (23:34):

Well, I'll have to check that out. I'll put that in the show notes at the end for anyone else that wants to look at it as well as a resource because, yeah, there's definitely a lot of good recipes out there. And actually there's so many like vegan or vegetarian versions of classic comfort foods or classic dishes, right?

Vesanto Melina (guest) (23:50):

That's right. We put the nutritional analysis in, but that one, I look online all the time and find some really great resources.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (24:04):

What would you say is your favorite plant-based food?

Vesanto Melina (guest) (24:10):

Oh, Brenda Davis and I are working on a book on protein and I've really been impressed with how much it's important for us to have protein foods as we get older or of course, if you're wanting to be fit at a younger age and build muscle. So tofu is one of my real favorites. And of course, it's been a very much misunderstood food [crosstalk 00:24:39]

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (24:39):

Unfortunately. Yes.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (24:40):

But tofu takes up seasonings and flavorings and it can be marinated. So, I've pretty well, always got tofu in the fridge marinating one way or other, and I can put it in the air fryer, little pieces of it that have been marinated and have a delicious flavor or pan fry it or do it different ways. And you can have it like a snack or somebody had a potato chip, you could have a little piece of tofu. So that's [crosstalk 00:25:11].

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (25:11):

That's good. I've never tried that.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (25:13):

Yeah. It's good.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (25:14):

I've had tofu, but not as a snack kind of thing.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (25:18):

Yeah. It's funny, if you got it on the counter and that's a fun thing with kids. If you find they don't eat their vegetables at dinner or whatever at dinner and you just casually put out a tray of it on the counter, as they go by, they'll end up eating as many vegetables at dinner as you would've wanted them to. They'll eat it as a snack, just in passing.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (25:44):

It's a great little trick, little life hack for those with kids.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (25:47):

That's right.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (25:48):

So I understand you're a big fan of kale as well. Is there any favorite kale dishes that you enjoy?

Vesanto Melina (guest) (25:54):

I actually have one right here.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (25:56):

Oh really? This is my smoothie. What's in it other than kale?

Vesanto Melina (guest) (26:00):

It's got kale, orange juice, a banana and some hemp seeds.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (26:06):

Sounds delicious. Yeah.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (26:07):

Yeah, it's good. It's good.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (26:09):

I'll have to try that. If you have a recipe, let me know. We'll add that to the show notes as well.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (26:12):

Oh yeah.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (26:15):

Other than food, are there any plants that you ingest or recommend for medicinal purposes?

Vesanto Melina (guest) (26:22):

Another thing that we do a lot is grow pesto. In our co-hosing, we are in Vancouver, but we have two green houses, we have about 40 fruit trees. So, we have a lot of growing capacity here and people that are interested in plants and growing, so we grow quite a bit of basil in our greenhouse and outside the greenhouse. So pesto is one thing that we make and I really like basil. And there's also a Tulsi basil, that's good for asthma.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (26:58):

Hmm. I haven't tried that. That sounds interesting. How is it taste compared to the regular pesto?

Vesanto Melina (guest) (27:04):

Well, the pesto basil tastes better. The Tulsi basil is good for tea.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (27:11):

Oh, I see. I see. Got it.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (27:13):

And the other food I really like, or ingredient is ginger. I love ginger and use it in the tofu marinades quite often.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (27:23):

Oh, I love ginger too. It's so good.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (27:25):

Yeah.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (27:29):

What would you say for anyone that is considering being more plant-based potentially being vegetarian or vegan? What would you give them as a piece of advice when they're embarking on their plant-based diet journey?

Vesanto Melina (guest) (27:41):

I'm going to have a green mustache.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (27:44):

It's welcome.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (27:45):

Yeah.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (27:46):

The greener the better.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (27:48):

Okay. Well, one help is to check if there's a plant-based or vegan or vegetarian group in your area, because it really helps to get some support. Sometimes people live somewhere and they don't actually know that there are other people who are like-minded. I live in veg Vancouver as you know.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (28:13):

Totally.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (28:13):

We have meetup groups and I think there are some, once I checked and I think there were like 60 meetup groups. Some were for people that were raising children, some were for pregnancy. There're several that are about exploring different recipes together. There's all kinds of different things. So, in some other community, there might just be one group. There could be seniors groups. Anyway, to look at meetup or online search, whatever your city or town's name is and see who who's doing that.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (28:53):

Yeah. I know in Calgary we have vegetarian vegan Facebook group and I'm part of that. And there's often a lot of questions for people on various places and their journey. And there's lots of good resources there too. And everyone's pretty vocal. They like to chime in and share their input and their tips, which is great.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (29:12):

That is really helpful. Yeah. And that can help you also take a cooking class or something share with another person or two that you explore what recipes work because you don't want to go out and invest in all these ingredients and then you'll never use them again.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (29:12):

Absolutely.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (29:34):

So, sometimes class can really help. "Oh, I love that recipe. I'm going to use that one a lot. Or, "No, that's not my style."

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (29:41):

Yeah, totally.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (29:43):

There's another thing that is a new resource called plantbaseddocs.com.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (29:50):

Yes.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (29:50):

That people can look for health professionals in their area that are plant-based and this is helpful for an MD for dietician, for all kinds of different people.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (30:03):

Yeah. I'll actually put a link for that in the show notes as well, because I'm actually a member on that platform. And it is a great resource because I see a lot in our Facebook group is that there's a lot of people asking, "You know, who's the best [inaudible 00:30:16] or dietician or medical doctor that understands the unique need of a vegan or vegetarian?"

Vesanto Melina (guest) (30:23):

That's right. Because people haven't learned about plant-based nutrition in medical school or in dietetic school even. And so, it really makes a difference to have someone who has taken the time outside of their original training to learn these different skills and practical points. And there's many excellent webinars and medical groups going on that health professionals could have been taking. And so, the ones that have done that can be a really excellent resource whereas a traditional doctor might even say to you, "No, it's not wise to go through pregnancy on a vegan diet." They might not be aware that it's well established. That works extremely well.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (31:15):

Yeah. You still find that to be the case because I understand that, of course, there's a whole slew of new research showing that it's actually safe and totally okay for females being pregnant or for children to eat a vegan diet, as long as they look after those certain micronutrients that are of concern, but you still see medical doctors suggesting that one shouldn't consider eating vegan when they're pregnant or for kids.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (31:41):

Right. I actually was just asked this morning to have some input for a court case where-

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (31:49):

Oh wow.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (31:49):

The parents have got different views and one of them is quite convinced that vegan diet is not appropriate and has had some medical backup from a doctor that didn't really know that you could do it in excellent health.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (32:08):

Right.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (32:09):

Yeah.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (32:09):

Well that's unfortunate. And of course, it's in part why we are doing this podcast. So, people can be more well informed about the information out there and the evidence based approaches to be healthy and be plant-based at the same time, which kind of ironic to say, but being plant-based in general is quite easy to do as long as you look after those handful of micronutrients that might need to be like closely monitored or looked at.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (32:34):

So, Becoming Vegan Express Edition is a helpful book for the general public that want to get all the points there, but just be confident. "Oh yes. Here's how I do vitamin B12. Here are some options for iodine. Here are some tips about vitamin D or about protein points." Just all the different issues and then are Becoming Vegan Comprehensive Edition, which is twice as fat.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (33:06):

That's the one I have. Yeah.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (33:08):

Oh yeah. Yeah. This one is actually used as a textbook in universities, in the United States and in Taiwan, there's a Chinese book version. Our books are in 15 languages by the way.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (33:21):

Wow. That's amazing.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (33:23):

This is a big fat thing. It's pretty thick. It's all referenced. And then we have the express edition, which is just half as big and it's got the same practical points but it isn't written at quite the same level. So, it's helpful for people that are starting out and don't want to become nutrition scientists.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (33:48):

Totally. So, Vesanto, for any of our listeners that don't already have a copy of either of those books, where would be the best place to get a copy?

Vesanto Melina (guest) (33:57):

Well, you can get it at the local library a lot of times or ask your library to get it, but they do. And also they're online. They're available through bookstores. Our books are kind of the Bibles of vegetarian nutrition.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (34:13):

Yes.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (34:13):

Yeah.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (34:13):

Absolutely.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (34:14):

Really, they've had excellent reviews. The American Library Association called them the go-to books on vegan nutrition.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (34:24):

They really are. Yeah. You and Brenda Davis did such a great job with those books. And I use it almost weekly to refer back to for information when talking to my patients about plant-based diets and it is very thorough. Like you said, all reference and evidence based. So, it's really truly is like the go-to resource for plant-based diets. I was hoping you could leave an inspirational quote for our listeners.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (34:53):

Okay. Could I do two?

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (34:56):

You can do two. You can do three if you want.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (34:57):

I got it. Oh yeah. Well one is, this is from Nelson Mandela. I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. So, that was just one of his notes that I just thought was wonderful.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (35:20):

That's a great one too, for people that are wanting to embark on the plant-based journey and having any kind of fears or struggles because there's a lot of obstacles to overcome when embarking on that journey. So, I think that's a very good quote to take the heart for sure.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (35:34):

I used that one when I was doing a talk for Dieticians of Canada at a National Convention. I was asked to do a keynote address and I included that because that was when we were bringing forth these ideas and had some backlash from our profession when we started out, we went through that and ended up succeeding. In that presentation, I actually got a standing ovation and the director of nutrition for Health Canada was sitting at a nearby table and I gave him a copy of that becoming vegan comprehensive edition and I know it was used as one of their resources when they were developing the national food guide.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (36:26):

Right. That's great. That's well deserved standing ovation for sure.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (36:28):

Yeah. It was really amazing. I actually had to work really hard to get that talk just right, because I wanted to find, okay not to pressure people that they had to change, but to inspire them.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (36:42):

Absolutely.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (36:43):

The other one I like, this is from someone who had done early research at Harvard and Stanford, Melvin Harding, who was an MD and then went to Loma Linda University later, "Attitudes towards vegetarian diets have progressed from ridicule and skepticism to condescending tolerance, to gradual and sometimes grudging acceptance and finally to acclaim."

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (37:18):

Yes, absolutely. Well, in part, thanks to you. And of course, Brenda, and all the wonderful other trailblazers within the plant-based community. So that's, absolutely true and thank you very much for being a part of that movement.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (37:33):

Thank you. Well, I feel like there's this wonderful team of people and it includes people who are helping their aging parent and people who are starting a family and wanting to do it in excellent health. There's this wonderful team that are doing things in more flamboyant ways and little quiet ways that are moving towards environmental reasons or animal rights reasons, or health reasons to adopt a more plant-based diet.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (38:05):

Totally. And I love how you say, it's all about the community that you build with other like-minded people and people that aren't necessarily on the same page with you, but at least meet them where they're at and continue to build that community. And of course, remind ourselves that we're all on the same team trying to achieve the same or similar goals, right?

Vesanto Melina (guest) (38:22):

Oh, we are. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Travis Cox (host) (38:26):

Well, Vesanto, thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast. I really appreciate you spending the time with us.

Vesanto Melina (guest) (38:31):

Thank you very much, Travis.

Speaker 1 (38:34):

So you've heard the struggles, you've heard the successes and this episode is done. But there's still so much more to come and so much more to learn. Head on over to pbandhealthy.com and sign up for our newsletter where you'll receive free plant-based eating health tips and strategies. You can also submit a question for Dr. Travis Cox to answer in a future episode. Go online to pbandhealthy.com. Thanks for listening. And we'll talk to you next time on plant-based and healthy.