Tonight might be the last time I ever eat out...

[KittyMcKnitty]

I guess I have a hard time believing that oil - especially from plant sources - can be as detrimental as Esselstyn maintains. Certainly, it's fattening at 130 calories a tbs. But it still comes from a plant. Avocado oil is from avocados; coconut oil from coconuts. Yes, it's processed, but how, specifically, does it damage the endothelial cells? Is it just because it's FAT? If so, why doesn't the whole food cause damage?

From my understanding, the fat in whole foods doesn't cause damage because it's mitigated by the fiber in whole foods. You would have to eat a thousands of olives or avocados to get the amount of fat in a tablespoon of the respective oils, and it would come with the concomitant amount of fiber. Without the fiber, you end up with the fat roaming around in your blood.

It's like the difference between drinking a soda and eating the same amount of sugar from whole oranges. The sugar in soda hits your liver quickly and does very bad things.

[f1jim]

It's possible for this discussion to take place in a civil, respectful manner. When issues get heated it's possible to take a breath and think through your response before typing. We have a wide spectrum of people following this program to a varying degree of compliance. All feel they represent McDougalling in their own eyes. If you are following the program in a way you feel is best for you, congratulations.
Let's set some things on the table.
People the follow the program less than 100% have a variety of reasons for that decision. Whatever the reason it needs to be respected. We can argue whether the reason is good bad or otherwise but it's their decision. They have a right to be respected for their personal choices. Same with those that follow the program to the letter. They are not freaks or mentally ill. I believe Dr. McDougall follows the program rather vigorously. He seems rather well balanced to me.
He has this website designed to advocate, teach, and motivate us to eat as healthy as we can. If they believe they are doing that then there is little reason to fight. I have good friends that have little use for those that eat off plan. I have good friends that eat 98% off plan. I have high hopes that both of them make changes in their outlook. The goal here is to eat healthy and find ways to eat healthier every day. That is the reason for this website. If you have made significant changes that is wonderful. Perhaps you will eat even healthier next year. If you utterly eat nothing off plan make the effort to peaceably encourage others to improve their diet with suggestions, not implications. There is room for many under this tent and I really believe we are all here to get healthy, trim, and live out our years free of chronic disease. Hopefully that is the majority of us. We live in a culture where 50% of mens first awareness of heart disease is a fatal cardiac event. We all need to be moving away from that reality in the best possible way for all of us. I trust that we are doing what we can at this moment to achieve that. If you are not then perhaps this moment is not your moment for that. It took 51 years for that moment to arrive for me. No one could make that moment arrive faster with lectures or fear. Knowledge and the switch flipping was what I needed. How about you? If you are comfortable with your dietary efforts than I am too.
Let's all be comfortable with where we are and show some respect, both for those that choose to go no farther and for those that are willing to help show us better ways to get to the next level.
f1jim

[TerriT]

I guess I have a hard time believing that oil - especially from plant sources - can be as detrimental as Esselstyn maintains. Certainly, it's fattening at 130 calories a tbs. But it still comes from a plant. Avocado oil is from avocados; coconut oil from coconuts. Yes, it's processed, but how, specifically, does it damage the endothelial cells? Is it just because it's FAT? If so, why doesn't the whole food cause damage?

My understanding is that it's mainly to due with how oil affects the endothelium's ability to produce nitric oxide, which facilities blood flow to the heart and other organs. This is explained on pgs 38-44 of Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease.

And as Dr McDougall explains in this article, free oils removed from the whole foods they came from display pharmacological effects.

http://drmcdougall.com/misc/2007nl/aug/oils.htm

[patty]

Dr. McDougall shares the biological metabolic dollar is fat/oil, meaning it goes directly to the cell. In his MS online video, he explains how the fat wraps itself around the cell, creating a sticky substance where the cell no longer repels from the other cells creating a sludge in the blood vessel, breaking the brain barrier.

We have over 60 thousand miles of blood vessels, 100 trillion cells. Dr. Bruce Lipton shares the brain of the cell is on the surface of the cell. Each cell is like person and hosts a complex city. I knew someone who had their gall bladder out and reacted to eating a piece of avocado the same way she ate a rib.

This is from Dr. Esselstyn's "Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease" I did a search on nitric oxide:

Twenty years ago, when I started my research, our major focus was on reducing total blood cholesterol levels to below 150 mg/dL and cutting LDL levels to 80 mg/dL or less. But today, it is clear to me that in achieving those goals through plant-based nutrition, we also achieved a corollary result: we restored the body’s own powerful capacity to resist and reverse vascular disease. Plant-based nutrition, it turns out, has a mighty beneficial effect on endothelial cells, those metabolic and biochemical dynamos that produce nitric oxide (see Figure 5).




And nitric oxide, as I have noted, is absolutely essential to vascular health—a finding that won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1998.8

1. It relaxes blood vessels, selectively boosting blood flow to the organs that need it.
2. It prevents white blood cells and platelets from becoming sticky, and thus starting the buildup of
vascular plaque.
3. It keeps the smooth muscle cells of arteries from growing into plaques.
4. It may even help to diminish vascular plaques once they are in place.

To understand how plant-based nutrition facilitates nitric oxide production, you need to have a sense of the biochemistry at play. The essential building block for nitric oxide production is a substance called L-arginine, an amino acid that is in rich supply in a variety of plant foods, especially legumes, beans, soy, and nuts. Figure 6 shows, schematically, how L-arginine fits neatly into the enzymatic action of nitric oxide synthase, which then produces nitric oxide from the arginine and oxygen.



However, as you can also see in Figure 6, there is a competitor for nitric oxide synthase: asymmetric dimethyl arginine, or ADMA, which is manufactured by our bodies in the course of normal protein metabolism. When we have too much ADMA, then L-arginine is edged out for a position in nitric oxide synthase, and the production of nitric oxide fails. There is another delicate enzyme with a formidable name—dimethyl arginine dimethyl amino hydrolase, or DDAH—that destroys ADMA, in order to favor production of nitric oxide. But the usual cardiovascular risk factors (high cholesterol, high triglycerides, high homocysteine, insulin resistance, hypertension, and tobacco use) all impair the ability of that delicate enzyme to destroy ADMA.

Aloha, patty

[TerriT]

We went out for an impromptu lunch today at a Thai restaurant. Usually I would consider this a feast meal, but inspired by this thread I asked for boiled rice and steamed vegetables – no oil, no sauce. The waitress was surprised and repeated my order back to me twice to be sure that was what I wanted. I was worried it would be too bland – they don't even have soy sauce on the table to add to your food – but it was great. I concentrated on the flavors of the unadorned veggies and rice! And I didn't get that after-lunch slump I used to get when I would have a vegan Thai meal with their normal sauces.

I don't normally eat out that often, maybe once a month or two, and usually I just consider it a feast meal and don't ask for the oil to be left out. But I'm practicing speaking up more. I think those who've commented that restaurants won't learn to accommodate plant-based eaters unless we start asking for what we want have a good point.

[SecondHalf]

We went out for an impromptu lunch today at a Thai restaurant. Usually I would consider this a feast meal, but inspired by this thread I asked for boiled rice and steamed vegetables – no oil, no sauce. The waitress was surprised and repeated my order back to me twice to be sure that was what I wanted. I was worried it would be too bland – they don't even have soy sauce on the table to add to your food – but it was great. I concentrated on the flavors of the unadorned veggies and rice! And I didn't get that after-lunch slump I used to get when I would have a vegan Thai meal with their normal sauces.

I don't normally eat out that often, maybe once a month or two, and usually I just consider it a feast meal and don't ask for the oil to be left out. But I'm practicing speaking up more. I think those who've commented that restaurants won't learn to accommodate plant-based eaters unless we start asking for what we want have a good point.

That's great. I totally agree that we must start speaking up (at least the ones of us who enjoy eating out). Nothing will change unless we demand it. Nicely, of course. Very nicely.

(My son is a waiter - and a full-time college student - so I'm a little sensitive about people taking their frustrations out on waiters, who often have little to do with how food is prepared. I'm glad your server repeated your order back to you and made sure she had the right information.)

[ruupyet]

We went out for an impromptu lunch today at a Thai restaurant. Usually I would consider this a feast meal, but inspired by this thread I asked for boiled rice and steamed vegetables – no oil, no sauce. The waitress was surprised and repeated my order back to me twice to be sure that was what I wanted. I was worried it would be too bland – they don't even have soy sauce on the table to add to your food – but it was great. I concentrated on the flavors of the unadorned veggies and rice! And I didn't get that after-lunch slump I used to get when I would have a vegan Thai meal with their normal sauces.

I don't normally eat out that often, maybe once a month or two, and usually I just consider it a feast meal and don't ask for the oil to be left out. But I'm practicing speaking up more. I think those who've commented that restaurants won't learn to accommodate plant-based eaters unless we start asking for what we want have a good point.

That is great that you were so successful!!! All the Thai places around me make their rice in advance and they add oil to it so it doesn't stick. Sucks! They will steam the veggies, though.

[ETeSelle]

I've never yet been successful getting steamed veggies at a Thai or Chinese place (except for PF Chang's which isn't really Chinese ). It's great that some places will do it! Wish they were near me LOL! The ones around here hire employees w/out sufficient English to be able to understand an unusual order.