If I'd known it was half recipes...

Prevent and reverse heart disease
by Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr

I was curious, okay?  And it took a long time for it to be available in the library--always checked out.  So I waited.

Sigh.  Or as Westley would say, "Get used to disappointment."  It's a good case study followed by a lot of (possibly) bad recipes.  I don't mistrust his science, although it would be great to see a 7-year followup, right about now.  I just mistrust some of his logic and (possibly) his wife's cooking.

Here are the ingredients for Dahl:  onions, garlic, fresh ginger, and yellow peas.  That, is Dahl?  There's another one that at least includes a little turmeric and chili peppers, but I wouldn't bother.  It doesn't look like Dahl to me.  Can I help it if I like spices?  But--and this is a big but--if you're not a highly adventurous eater, these recipes may be right up your alley.

One other tiny gripe about the recipes--they seem very impracticable for the very people who need them most--men.  Times may be a changing, but I still know too many men, old and young, who don't have a handle on a kitchen.  Calling a recipe "easy" when it requires zesting an orange; purchasing curry powder, cumin, rice, raisins, orange juice and vegetable broth; chopping bell pepper, onion, parsley and a mango...well....  I have all of those ingredients in my kitchen right now.  Making this "easy, easy" recipe would take me about 45 minutes, not including shopping--and I'm used to it.  I'm not fast, but not exceptionally slow, either.

For a husband and wife team who like to cook, the recipes are fine.  But for older people, economically challenged folks, single moms with full-time jobs, etc., they're totally off base.  Especially for people on a budget--no way.  Last time I looked, portobello mushrooms cost more than pork chops.

I was puzzled by his recommendation that you take a daily multivitamin to ensure you get enough folic acid, Vitamins B6 and B12.  B12, I understand.  But anyone following his diet and getting enough calories should be getting plenty of folic acid and probably B6, too.  Throwing in a chemical cocktail of lethal megadoses of vitamins to address a possible deficiency of two or three?  I just looked at a typical vitamin+mineral supplement--it has 100% or more of the daily RDA of 12 of its 22 ingredients.  Why not just recommend a B-complex supplement with folic acid?

My last quibble is a little more personal.  He keeps alluding to the plant-based diets of the rural Chinese, the Okinawans, the Tarahumara, the Papua Highlanders, and some native Africans.  In those populations, heart disease was rare or unknown.  I don't doubt that their diets were plant-based or that they were low fat, getting less than 10% of total calories from fat.  And I completely agree that it makes no sense to do studies that consider a "low fat" diet to be a modified American diet that still has 20-35% of total calories from fat. I noticed that the 2015 Dietary Guidelines  disparaged low-fat diets, but I didn't see what they considered low fat.  Of course, the Guidelines appeared to be mostly authored by the American Dairy Council--I wonder how much money they spent to get so much milk product in there?  I shudder.

Anyway, in regards to comparing his recipes to the example diets, what I don't see is the missing 9% and the vital ingredients that might be lost on account of it.  Let me do the numbers:  taking a typical breakfast (oats+fruit), lunch (soup &salad), dinner (entree & vegetable), and dessert, I got 1321 calories and 7.3% fat.  Not bad, but a little lean.  I'll add a cucumber sandwich, a roasted sweet potato, and increase the soup a little.  Now I'm up to 1579 and 6.5% fat.  So, okay.  That's closer to 10% than not.  So now I'm convinced that his diet contains adequate fat, but I don't see the harm in adding an occasional sprinkling of pine nuts, pumpkin seeds, an egg or a chunk of fish.  Plus I believe it is unlikely that the diets he mentions contain no meat products at all.  Rural Chinese eat meat and fish in small portions.  Okinawans: fish or shrimp in Miso broth.  Tarahumarans: fish, chicken and squirrels.  Papua HIghlanders: special occasion meat and the sago grub (raw, yum!)  No luck on the African diets--I'm not sure where to look.

So I guess I'm okay with it.  I just wish they'd do a followup recipe book for the cooking-impaired.