Karina Inkster: You're listening to the No-Bullsh!t Vegan Podcast, episode 134. The Esselstyn family changed how we look at food as medicine. Ann and Jane Esselstyn are on the show to talk about preventing and reversing heart disease, their new book, and the physical, cardiovascular, mental, sexual, and hormonal benefits of a plant-powered diet.

Hey, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Karina, your go-to, no-BS vegan fitness and nutrition coach. We at KI Health and Fitness just published our official approach to fitness, nutrition, and coaching. You can check it out at KarinaInkster.com/coachingphilosophy.

In case you haven't noticed yet, we do things a little bit differently than what you might see in the so-called mainstream fitness industry. For example, you will not see us strutting around in bikinis as a marketing ploy or telling you that you need a body transformation. Fitness doesn't have a look. Strength doesn't have a look, and there's no one correct way to incorporate fitness into your life. We celebrate all bodies and all forms of movement. We're also tired of bro culture, which we talked about on the podcast recently, and its roots in toxic masculinity and white supremacy. We're working to dismantle the fitness industrial complex. And if you want to learn more about that, check out episode 133 with Justice Roe Williams. We also don't use client progress photos anywhere in our marketing. So head to KarinaInkster.com/coachingphilosophy to learn more about how we approach fitness, nutrition and working with our clients.

Most folks who have been vegan for more than two minutes recognize the last name of our special guests today, Ann and Jane Esselstyn. Ann Crile Esselstyn has frequently been referred to as the "Julia Child of plant-based cooking." She's a graduate of Smith College with a master's in education. She taught English and history for 27 years while raising four children and figuring out plant-based, oil-free ways to cook that are delicious and appealing.

Since 2000, she's focused on creating recipes to prevent and reverse heart disease and counselling patients on how to prepare and eat plant-based foods. 

Jane Esselstyn, RN is a wellness instructor and a PLANTSTRONG presenter and cook, as well as a married mother of three. She loves presenting about disease prevention through nutrition, and like the rest of her family, has been plant-strong for more than 25 years. She's been a sex education teacher for more than two decades and helps her students learn about the amazing benefits of plant-based foods. Ann and Jane's favourite vegan meal is Ann's savory oats. Hope you enjoy our conversation.

Hi Ann and Jane, thank you so much for joining me on the show today.

Jane Esselstyn: Thank you.

Ann Esselstyn: Thank you for having us.

Karina Inkster: I'm so happy you're here. Let's jump right in. I'm sure everyone who listens to this show knows the last name Esselstyn. Everyone who's been vegan for more than four minutes knows what the deal is. But on the off chance, since we have some listeners who are vegan-curious, since we have some listeners who are completely new to the plant-based world, in case there's someone who doesn't know the background... Maybe Ann, can you start with a quick background of the research that Caldwell has done and how that's affected what you two do?

Ann Esselstyn: Well, in the early '80s, my husband, who is a general surgeon, decided that he wasn't making much headway with breast cancer, but he decided he would go to heart disease because it might be quicker. Because he had seen that people who move from Japan to this country suddenly had a complete increase in heart disease, nothing in Japan. So this led him to do this research and he ended up getting patients and we changed how we ate. And back then in the early '80s, there was no internet. In the West Coast McDougall was doing this a bit...

Jane Esselstyn: Ornish was doing his research...

Ann Esselstyn: Oh, well, we didn't know about Ornish. There was no internet. So we knew about McDougall. And Dean Ornish and my husband were at the same time doing the same thing. But my husband said, "Okay, we're doing this." And so we changed and we had to change how we ate. Fortunately, back then, there no was no vegan junk food, so we just had to figure it out without the interference of all the unhealthy vegan food that exists today, that is such a trap for people changing how they ate. But we did it.

Karina Inkster: Wow, that's amazing. Your family changed the face of how we look at food and how we look at food as medicine. So, super general background... Preventing and reversing chronic disease like heart disease with a plant-based diet, with plant-based nutrition.

Jane Esselstyn: Whole food plant-based, because plant-based is being sort of hijacked these days with some other products that are not part of the program that we initially...

Ann Esselstyn: Our son Rip wrote some books and when he wrote his book first and he wanted... An Engine 2 Diet, he wanted to differentiate between my husband's program and his.

Jane Esselstyn: For heart disease patients and for other fellow firefighters.

Ann Esselstyn: No meat, no oil, no dairy for everybody. And so for my husband, no nuts, no avocado. So he called his program PLANTSTRONG and my husband's Plant Perfect, so... I personally tend to move toward the Plant Perfect idea. Whereas the PLANTSTRONG is where our kids are...

Jane Esselstyn: And I did all the recipes for Rip's books and so we had the same guidelines as she mentioned. No meat, no dairy, no added oil. And we would use nuts sometimes in sauces and avocado sometimes here and there. But as you know, as a vegan, nuts and avocado... It's a world of difference when it comes to options and flavors and tastes and things and especially when... oil.

Karina Inkster: So is it extra important for folks who already have heart disease, then? Is this Plant Perfect concept kind of in-line with the chronic disease aspect of things?

Ann Esselstyn: It totally makes a difference. The tighter you are to the program...

Jane Esselstyn: Compliant, yeah.

Ann Esselstyn: The more compliant, the more successful. And obviously for kids, for healthy people, nuts and avocado are fine.

Karina Inkster: That makes sense. I think for folks who are not on that track, it can be a little bit scary or even extra limiting, especially when someone's a new vegan being like, "Oh wait, there's more things I can't eat?"

Jane Esselstyn: But you get to eat all these things that you weren't eating. Your body is so thrilled by every new different kind of plant and berry and green and grain and vegetable you're popping in there.

Ann Esselstyn: As you begin to change how you eat, your taste changes. I'm sure that it happened to you and things that before you liked, you suddenly find, "Oh, that's too salty, that's too sweet. I can't eat that, oil on it, is 'ugh'." It's crazy.

Karina Inkster: Yeah, for sure.

Jane Esselstyn: We're talking history right now, and we're really excited and have high energy about what we did. So we're not talking necessarily about only heart disease, we're not talking about pretending to be a firefighter. We're talking about the way that we've eaten and this is the tip of the hat, an ode to my mom, this book, and it is to Be a Plant-Based Woman Warrior: Live Fierce, Stay Bold, Eat Delicious.

Ann Esselstyn: Be a Plant-Based Woman Warrior: Live Fierce, Stay Bold, Eat Delicious.

Karina Inkster: Oh, I love that.

Jane Esselstyn: It's high energy, it's fun, it's good. It's so good for women from head to toe, front of back here and there and everywhere. And as I said, it's a tip of the hat to my mom who did this. She picked up this mantle of plant-based eating in the '80s when she had four kids at home, full-time teaching, my dad full-time at the hospital. And made it happen.

And also a tip of the hat to all the women in the world. I'd say the majority of people in the world who are doing the mental labor of eating and feeding people are women. They're thinking about, "Okay, what am I going to plant? What am I going to buy? What am I going to get? What am I going to prepare? How am I going to prepare it? Who am I going to feed it to? Who's going to eat it?" How do you figure this whole thing out every day? It's a non-optional task. We have to feed the world and our community and ourselves.

And the majority is women, not everybody. I get it. My husband's a better cook than I am for sure. It's a nudge to all them to follow her lead. Like my mom's my daily dose of "Hell, yeah." She's just up and out and doing everything all day, every day, nonstop. Go-get-it, Energizer bunny. She ran this hat in the house 30 seconds before we were on. I'm like, "Sit down, where have you been?" She's like, "I'm doing this and that. I just got a banana.” I'm like, "We have to go." So I want to be like her and I want everybody to feed their loved ones food that's going to make them live like her, on no medication. Feeling supple and energetic and able. And that's my jam. I'm sticking to it.

Karina Inkster: It's a good jam to have. I love it. Well, let's talk about the book a little bit. So what inspired the women focus? This is a book particularly for females. We are also going to talk about how the plant-based diet may benefit women in particular. But what's the deal with the book itself? Where did the idea come from?

Jane Esselstyn: Well, because I feel like... Be a plant-based woman warrior, be like her. She was given this crazy theory and ran with it and made a difference in our whole family. There's four of us in my family, siblings, six total. And we all have spouses and we all have kids. So there's 20 of us now in our family who are all plant-based because she was this woman warrior and she made things taste delicious. And she was just bold with this message and fiercely sticking to it, and it stuck. And for all women out there who are part of, or anybody, women, men, non-binary, however you identify, please pick up the mantle as well. Pick up the book if it helps you, and eat more plants. As they say in Ireland, these great twins, say "Eat more veg!" And you're only going to feel better. It’s going to feel better.

And not just veg, but plants, grains, greens, beans. So yes for women, for all those reasons, but it can be just for anybody for those reasons. But specifically for women, when I'm not doing cookbooks, this is my fifth one, her third one.

Ann Esselstyn: You're about to have the most amazing few minutes from Jane because her real love is sex ed. She was...

Jane Esselstyn: I teach middle school sex ed a little bit and I'm not a full-time health teacher. I don't teach drugs and alcohol prevention and stuff like that. I just do sex ed. Surgically inserted to just do the sex ed unit.

Karina Inkster: Nice.

Ann Esselstyn: I wish all kids could have Jane.

Jane Esselstyn: Well hold on, hold on. So the reason...

Ann Esselstyn: Wait til you hear.

Jane Esselstyn: Mommy, you're building it up too much. But my point is that I want this also for women because plants do powerfully support women. And I say this from head to toe and here to there because... I know you're a Canadian, but I know that anyone born maybe in North America, maybe even, but as a woman, I was a nationally ranked swimmer. My brothers all were as well. We all swam for our colleges, universities on scholarship, University of Michigan. A lot of Canadians were on my team actually with me. It was great.

We were all just crazy fit and strong. But I was struggling with the curves I was getting in my body and I was filling out and I'm thinking, "I got to keep eating and swimming and training and performing." But I also went to identifying with my body and it was just this awful food head identity, mucky, messy, "Oh gosh, where is this going?" And then my parents went plant-based. So things took a like a... And I started eating plant-based and it made me feel a little better and more in touch with my body, my power and my this, my that.

Anyway, so I'm so thankful that it landed on me then and there because I know my brothers, for example, had not spent a minute thinking about their food and their body and their identity and how it was all tying together and what should they eat that day? What could they eat that day? What do they want to eat that day? I'm so glad for this lack of food head every waking minute. So that's from head to toe how it helps. But from front to back, I want to talk about how it powerfully supports women's breasts to eat plant-based. Because Dr. Kristi Funk, I don't know if you have heard of her, read her stuff. She is a force around breast cancer and how to prevent it. And if you have it, how to get it going in the right direction. She's out of California and...

Ann Esselstyn: She's fabulous.

Jane Esselstyn: She writes a book, it's called Breasts: The Owner's Manual. And the first hundred pages are: eat this... And eat this, it's all plants. Don't eat that, it's just meat and dairy, and greasy. So if you need to have another person on your show, Kristi Funk's the one. But she talks how plants powerfully support our breasts, keeping them healthy and reducing the risk of tumor growth with plants. And then what I really want to talk about is below the belt. So do you mind if I go below the belt?

Karina Inkster: Go for it.

Jane Esselstyn: I don't know how you feel about that.

Karina Inkster: Go for it.

Jane Esselstyn: Are you...

Karina Inkster: Totally into it.

Jane Esselstyn: So my father's research is a lot around blood flow in the heart and the vessels in the body. And blood flow is what we need everywhere and every single cell of our body at every moment of the day. Obviously, we all know, especially I'm talking... this is what I teach my middle school kids. Middle school kids all know about the male anatomy and what's going on down there, the twigs and the berries, the bat and the balls. They know all that stuff and they know how it all works and they're taught to it by the time they're in 7th grade, at least.

But I think what people really need to understand is the female anatomy is a, it looks like, if you look at the front view of it, looks like some sort of insect weightlifting contest. This really is confusing to women. Where, what's so fun about this? The boys were laughing when we talked about their stuff a minute ago. What's so funny about this? They just don't know what it is. So I truly wish that we would turn the lesson sideways because if we do that and turn the woman's body sideways and look at her from back to front, front to the back, it's totally different.

And it's different because in the back everybody has a hole and it's starts with an A: anus. Everybody has an anus, we need it. And being plant-based, well it supports the A back there. No constipation, no diverticulitis, no hemorrhoids, because everything's just flowing through there. There's no pressure build up with the diverticulitis or with the hemorrhoids blooming out like a bunch of grapes. Just doesn't happen. Won't happen. Thank you. You're going to have babies. Please eat plants. Your bowels will thank you so much. And then in front of the U, there's a V. The V is the vaginal opening, the vaginal space. And above there is the vagina, which is like a tube, a canal of a lobby. And the seventh-grade boys love hearing, "It's a lobby. They want to be the bellhop, they want to meet you in the lobby." So the lobby space of the vagina, I'll talk about how it ties in in a second.

But above the vagina is the cervix. And the endometrium, uterus, and everything above there. Which also hugely benefits from being on a plant-based diet and not having the hormonal messages coming in from eggs, from dairy, from meat, which all are these just hormones that are not one's own. And it's just whacka-whacka-wacky doodle trying to follow all that. Anyway, some women respond from eating dairy and meat and they get these fibroids inside their uterus. The endometrial lining comes down like stalagtites in the cave or stalagmites, whichever one it's called. And they drip blood sometimes. So some women who are getting anemic from blood loss, from having fibroids, from eating meat or dairy.

So we've had so many people let us know that when they've gone on a plant-based diet, the fibroids clear up and instead of having had their uterus remove, they've gotten pregnant. So don't have a hysterectomy, have a baby, if that's what you want. And on and on and on health in the V zone there, I'm going to get back to the vagina in a second.

But the urethra also. The urethra above there is the bladder, the kidneys, the ureters. This is hugely beneficial on a plant-based diet, you cannot overburden yourself with protein, which is a huge burden on the kidneys when you're on a plant-based diet. But also, Dr. Michael Greger talks a lot about how the research around and surrounding chicken. I'm sure you've heard that with all the... UTI risk just plummets because chicken has this reservoir of antibiotic resistant bacteria and it seems to just not go away. You can wash your hands, you can wash your kitchen, you can wash yourself, and it's still in you on your kitchen. And I can't help but thinking if you're muckling around with a partner who, he/she/them is also eating chicken... Yikes, you're never going to get rid of this stuff. And in the front there's this C, the clitoris, clitoris, the clit, whatever you want to call it. So it looks like C-U-V-A. Yes. We have T-shirts that say "CUVA."

Karina Inkster: I love it.

Jane Esselstyn: So the C in the front here, now. Because the clitoris, it's got tissue. It’s the exact same tissue as the head of the penis, which is the glans, the G-L-A-N-S. It's a different tissue than the shaft, but the head of the clitoris, it's the same tissue. And it engorges with blood with the endothelial cells, engorging because the capillaries are open and not clogged up. But the shaft of the penis, we also have the same tissue in our bodies as women, biological women. And that's on our undercarriage. It's right above our pelvic floor.

And it goes from the clitoris zone right back to the vagina. And it engorges the more that we're aroused, the more foreplay. And when the vessels wrap around the vagina like a hippie hugging a tree, so all this blood flow interacts outside the vaginal space and makes lubrication from the plasma and lady chemicals, showing her sign for readiness. His sign for readiness is an erection, all blood flow. Her sign for readiness lubrication, which is also blood flow. So C-U-V-A, "CUVA," completely benefits us. So from head to toe, front to back, go women, go plants. Maybe that's more than they wanted to know, but...

Karina Inkster: No, no, it's never more than I bargained for. Don't worry. What about hormonal benefits? So you mentioned not consuming things like meat, dairy, which I know can affect hormones. Is that basically it? Or are there other kind of areas in hormonal health? Does a plant-based diet itself support hormone health, or is it mostly just not including animal products?

Jane Esselstyn: Hormone means a blood messenger and your brain sends out all the messages from your thyroid, to your adrenals, to your ovary, everything, everywhere, whole body. Even insulin's a hormone. It's designed to regulate us by dealing with us. So to give these other hormones in there, what message are they carrying? Are they blocking out? Are they interrupting, mimicking? It just simplifies the whole show. So you know what you're dealing with, you know what I mean? People eat animals in any sorts, dairy or flesh of an animal, they're eating the cholesterol, the cell of another animal, so just stop eating that. And your own cholesterol number that you make is really going to be what your body's... That's your own genuine number. Eating a lot of coconut oil and stuff like that, greasy, greasy stuff, you're giving yourself all these bricks to that you can make a lot of cholesterol with, but just dial it down and eat clean and you'll know what you're made of. So it completely quiets some of the over messaging and stuff with other hormones. But I won't go into specifics. Dr. Neal Barnard has a great book about it. We just were talking about it. Your Body In Balance I think it's called…?

Anne Esselstyn: Your Body In Balance.

Karina Inkster: Right.

Jane Esselstyn: He's all about the hormones and it is beautifully written and well done. I love everything he does.

Karina Inkster: That's awesome. Very cool. So given all these benefits and it's so well rounded... A lot of people don't really make the connection between the plant-based diet and sexual health or even the plant-based diet and general health, honestly. There's a lot of education still needs to be done here.

But if someone is intrigued at this point... So we've got a lot of listeners who are veg-curious or who are new to this whole world. We also have lots of long-term folks who just want to keep up with the research. But for new folks, and you're like the recipe developer, I know that you've been called the "Julia Child of plant-based cooking," which is pretty awesome. How do people keep it interesting? What if someone just went plant-based and they're like, "I don't even know what to eat." Where do they start and how do they keep it interesting?

Jane Esselstyn: You're already doing a good job, probably. People have heard of oatmeal, they've heard of hummus and they've heard of spaghetti. You're already there.

Ann Esselstyn: Start with the things you like. And you just have to start and make it really simple. And then as you move along, you can get more complicated, but eat simple things that you like. Or one of the things that is really wonderful in this book, and Jane is the master on sauces. So you can almost eat anything with a good sauce.

Karina Inkster: I'm with you on that.

Jane Esselstyn: Vegan's favourite food: sauce.

Karina Inkster: It's own food group. That’s kind of how it works. It's kind of like hummus is its own food group too, right?

Jane Esselstyn: Oh yeah.

Ann Esselstyn: And the sauce could be hummus or I mean salsa, but there are wonderful peanut... there must be how many sauces in here? I have no idea.

Jane Esselstyn: There’s just so many other cool recipes. We make our great crackers and we make biscuits and we have a bunch of BS in here, which is the...

Ann Esselstyn: Brussels sprouts.

Jane Esselstyn: The Brussels sprouts section.

Karina Inkster: Nice.

Jane Esselstyn: And how to cook tofu and tempeh. How we've really made it be a winning way to go forward in our house and the kind of salads we truly eat. We don't eat salads every meal every day. No way.

Ann Esselstyn: I do.

Jane Esselstyn: Every meal every day?

Ann Esselstyn: Oh, not every meal every day. No, no.

Karina Inkster: But still they're a staple. They're classic vegan options.

Jane Esselstyn: It's in everything. We have a bowl almost every night, and in that bowl it's kale on the bottom, or this or that. And you've got edamame here and carrot shreds there. Any other person would have a little side salad of that. But we're having it thrown in with the tornado of everything else, and...

Ann Esselstyn: To get greens into the open-face sandwich, into the soup, into the pasta, everything.

Jane Esselstyn: Yeah.

Karina Inkster: Yep. I can see that. That's awesome. What's your favourite right now, both of you? What's the dish that you're super into?

Jane Esselstyn: That's an illegal question.

Ann Esselstyn: Well, Jane.

Jane Esselstyn: Oh it is. Everybody asks and you can't answer it.

Ann Esselstyn: But Jane, you could answer it in the terms of just general bowls. Describe a bowl that you like.

Jane Esselstyn: I love every recipe in here, which is so hard. It’s like have three kids and not one is the favourite. The breakfast section I love because it's such a variety. Raw, cooked, to-go, sit down, the works. A bazaar...

Ann Esselstyn: Even possible in your pocket breakfast.

Karina Inkster: Ooh, I like the sound of that.

Jane Esselstyn: Yeah. And then our editor said, "The next section really after breakfast has to be sauces." And we're like, "What?" They're like, "Listen, you guys. You called them your secret weapons. They're essential. They're part of everything. The book cannot go forward until we get the sauces in there." So we're like, "Okay," because that makes sense. We love the sauces. And I can't say, "I like the Thai peanut better than the lemon Tahini, better than the spicy almond, better than the ginger walnut, better than the corn tangy... They're all fantastic.

Ann Esselstyn: Well, I actually have a favourite, and that's my breakfast. Because I feel that I would like to start the day with power, with something that... If something happens for the rest of the day, I know that I have done myself something powerful.

Jane Esselstyn: Ann's Warrior Oats is what it's called.

Ann Esselstyn: And so it's steel cuts oats...

Jane Esselstyn: It's kale...

Ann Esselstyn: It's kale, shiitake mushrooms, turmeric, nutritional yeast, and maybe a little sriracha hot sauce...

Jane Esselstyn: And chia and flax.

Ann Esselstyn: And chia and flax. And then I really feel I've done something right. I chewed it. I haven't had to drink it like a smoothie, like so many people are doing. I think it's way better to chew your food than to drink your calories.

Karina Inkster: That sounds awesome. It's kind of like how we approach when someone is just generally changing their diet to be a little more in line with their health goals. We all know, we've touched on this, where vegan is different from whole food, plant-based. Vegan is no animal products. Whole food plant-based is much more specific.

So we have clients, for example, who come to us who are vegan, whose diets are not currently in line with their fitness goals, maybe even with the fitness that they're currently doing, with their health goals, with their physique goals. So some of what we do is, "Okay, how can we make your existing nutrition plan more in line with these goals?" Which, by the way, always includes more whole foods, every single time. And breakfast is one of the things that's a huge focus because of exactly what you just said, Ann.

It's the beginning of your day. It sets the tone for the rest of your day. It's kind of like when you work out in the morning, you don't have to worry about it for the rest of the day. It's off your mind. You've checked it off. Not that there's anything better about doing it in the morning, but it does set the tone, doesn't it? It's kind of like, "Yeah, I've done something, I've checked something positive off the list. I've nourished myself in a really awesome way." I think that's awesome.

Ann Esselstyn: I think really important is to figure out a breakfast that you like and then eat it every day. Don't fool around with lots of different things. Just find something you do like and make it every day, for the breakfast thing. Because most people are in and out of the house, or want to be quick.

Jane Esselstyn: They're off to work, yeah.

Karina Inkster: That makes sense. Hey Ann, when you first were incorporating some of the research and changes in the plant-based world, back in the day when you were raising four kids, did you have a lot of resistance from people who were outside of your family? Was it like people not understanding why you were doing this?

Ann Esselstyn: Oh yeah. Jane, you grew up with being made fun of because... Didn't people kind of say... My husband was like "Dr. Twigs." It was definitely...

Jane Esselstyn: I don't remember being too made fun of.

Ann Esselstyn: Well, no, no, no. Not you made fun of, but you would hear people making fun of your father, of Essie. Anyway...

Jane Esselstyn: Not a lot of dinner invitations.

Karina Inkster: Yeah, I could see that.

Ann Esselstyn: That's just the way it is. But I think what you can't forget, and I'm sure you have discovered this, is that whenever somebody changes, people are noticing, people observe. You can't unlearn what you've learned. You can't forget when you see this person that has changed his or her health. Oh my goodness. So when something maybe happens with you, you're told that you're hitting 40 and your cholesterol's high and your doctor says you need statins, suddenly you think, "I don't want statins. But there is another something that I remember."

Karina Inkster: That's a great point. Sometimes even just doing your own thing and doing what you know is right for yourself and your family, that's enough a lot of times to really affect other people. And I'm sure that there are so many hundreds and probably thousands of people who just see you doing your thing, who then don't necessarily contact you. You might not even know about them, but they're changing, even if it's something small, they're making steps, they're being affected positively.

Ann Esselstyn: Karina, you have to see that in the people you're working with that they will, "Oh, I'm so frustrated. Nobody in my family, I'm the only one who's eating this way." But, wait a minute, because your kids... They may be terrible right now, but suddenly something's going to happen. And they may just suddenly, "Oh my goodness, you were right. This is where I want..."

Karina Inkster: Yep. So I think it's three generations now of your family, isn't it?

Jane Esselstyn: Yep. Again, part of the reason why I wanted to do this is just, it's... We are three generations deep into whole food, plant-based nutrition, and we're a family of 20. And it only makes us sort of stronger. We all are bringing in different recipes and trying different things, and...

Ann Esselstyn: One of the things that I got to do in this book was interview all our grandchildren, 10 of them.

Karina Inkster: Oh, that's pretty cool. I love the sound of that.

Ann Esselstyn: Ages from 7 to 27 as to what they felt about being plant-based.

Jane Esselstyn: Yeah, it's on page 13 of the book.

Ann Esselstyn: Let me just read you a couple. Sophie was at the time 11. "Whenever I eat good food, I feel good. And whenever I eat unhealthy food, something in my stomach just feels wrong. I'm lucky because it's been easy for me since I've been plant-strong my whole life." Her father is Rip. "Being plant-based doesn't mean just eating salads all the time. It means so many fun unique things, like a kale cake with raspberry frosting. Not just vanilla frosting with pink dye in it, but lemons and raspberries and it's just really fun and tasty."

Karina Inkster: I love that.

Ann Esselstyn: And then something like Zeb, Jane's 6'7" son: "It checks every box: not killing anything, great for the planet, not burdened by being sick. You feel good. It's the future.” Hope, age seven: "If you eat meat, you die."

Karina Inkster: Well, that's pretty much the most succinct definition or explanation I've ever heard. Brilliant. She's not wrong. She's not wrong. That's well said. That's amazing. Well, Jane and Ann, is there anything that we have missed as we're closing up here? Any points that you want to leave our listeners with?

Jane Esselstyn: Be plant-based women warriors or be plant warriors, however you identify. And help the planet, help yourself, help each other.

Ann Esselstyn: I think it's attitude. When people go in and they're fighting it and they're thinking, "I can't... Have to have my yogurt. I have to have this." Those people who are able to suddenly understand.... and I think understanding the education, education is so key in this. What you're doing is so important, that suddenly they can open up and be open to new things and to not feeling they have to have their chicken breast and get urinary tract infections.

Karina Inkster: I like that. Mindset is so important to this whole situation. Whether you're starting a new fitness venture, whether you're going plant-based for the first time. It's something that a lot of folks don't really talk about, the mental health piece and the mindset piece. I think it's super important. So I'm glad you brought that up.

Ann Esselstyn: And the mindset and also the exercise, which it sounds like you're big on, and that makes a difference. And I love the fact you eat that good breakfast every morning and you get that exercise out of the way, maybe first thing. So you, it's not...

Karina Inkster: Check it off the list. You don't have to worry about it.

Ann Esselstyn: I tell you, I have spent so many days from morning till night in the same clothes that I was going to go run...

Jane Esselstyn: Thinking that we were going to go for a run.

Ann Esselstyn: Thinking that I was going to...

Karina Inkster: I hear you.

Ann Esselstyn: Be a Plant-Based Woman Warrior: Live Fierce, Stay Bold, Eat Delicious.

Jane Esselstyn: Be a Plant-Based Woman Warrior: Live Fierce, Stay Bold, Eat Delicious.

Karina Inkster: Amazing. Thank you so much Jane and Ann for coming on the show. You two are absolute legends in your own right and also just in the vegan world. So I'm so happy I got to speak with you today. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Ann Esselstyn: Thank you so much.

Jane Esselstyn: Thank you so much.

Ann Esselstyn: You're doing great things.

Jane Esselstyn: Keep it up. Keep it up. Thank you.

Ann Esselstyn: Bye.

Karina Inkster: Ann and Jane, thank you again for speaking with me. I'm glad I and our listeners got the chance to learn from you. Our show notes are available at nobullshitvegan.com/134. Connect with Ann and Jane there and get your hands on their new book. That's nobullshitvegan.com/134. Thanks for tuning in.