B00AG0VMTC EBOK (14 page)

I
live in Texas. As far as we’re concerned, there are few better things to do in this world than barbecue. Where else in the world do you find teams that actually compete in BBQ contests on the weekends?

But if you don’t eat meat, “grilling” used to limit you to grazing on a hamburger bun with a slice of tomato, some iceberg lettuce, and a smear of ketchup. All of that has changed, thanks to two separate discoveries. First, people have realized that vegetables taste amazing when roasted over an open flame. Second, it turns out that there’s a lot of research showing eating grilled meat can cause cancer.

That’s right: When you grill any kind of meat, including chicken, beef, pork, and fish, what you are really doing is growing carcinogens on it. There are two that appear only in grilled meat: heterocyclic amines (HCAs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).

HCAs are what you get when the natural amino acids, sugars, and creatine in meat react at high temperatures. You know those tasty char marks that backyard barbecuers always try to get on their burgers and steaks? Those are really carcinogen marks, where all the HCAs accumulate.

PAHs are created when fat drips onto an open flame, causing a flash of fire and sizzle that sears the chemical into the surface of the meat, adding another layer of carcinogen. The longer and hotter you cook the meat, the more carcinogens you get. Boiling creates comparatively few PAHs, baking creates a few more, and grilling, with its high temperatures and long cooking times, practically breeds the nasty little things.

HCAs and PAHs are no joke: They’re linked to higher rates of colorectal, pancreatic, breast, and prostate cancer. PAHs are linked to
stomach cancer. A recent analysis of thirty separate studies found that 80 percent showed a strong correlation between consumption of well-done meat and cancer in different areas of the body.

According to the scientists who study HCAs, the five worst meats to grill, in order from bad to the drop-dead worst, are: hamburger, salmon, pork, steak, and the humble chicken breast. Even without the skin, chicken produces almost twice the level of HCAs as steak and over one hundred times that of hamburger!

Plants aren’t on that list because they don’t contain the raw materials for HCAs. Creatine, one of the carcinogen’s key ingredients, isn’t found in plants no matter how much you burn them, so the HCA-producing chemical reactions can’t take place. Plants also contain cancer-fighting agents like carotenoids and beta-carotene.

But don’t grill just any vegetable. If you’ve ever eaten one of those generic grilled veggie plates served at a lot of restaurants, you know that not all plants are even made for the flames. For the best grilling, first choose plants that contain a lot of water so they won’t dry out. Most veggies have a high liquid content, but you’ll want to avoid carrots and potatoes because they do more shriveling than actual cooking on the grill unless you wrap them in a bit of foil.

Next, choose plants whose bold flavors will complement the smoky goodness of the open flames: bell peppers, corn on the cob, onions, squash, mushrooms, and pineapple are among my favorites.

Finally, have some non-oil salad dressing or marinade on hand to keep your veggies moist if they start looking a little parched. “Grilled” shouldn’t mean “withered.”

Don’t forget about the fungi and the grains either. Mushrooms sizzle like few other foods. A good portobello mushroom brushed with barbecue sauce, a pinch of salt, and plenty of black pepper makes one heck of a great “burger.” Also, a simple dough of whole wheat flour, salt, water, and yeast, like the recipe for Jill’s Maple Whole Wheat Bread Dough
here
, can be grilled to make an awesome flatbread.

Remember, just because veggies contain no HCAs and non-cancer-causing levels of PAHs doesn’t mean you should eat nothing but grilled veggies. When you put any food over an open flame, it soaks up carcinogens that may be present in charcoal, propane, and/or lighter fluid. Ovens and stoves were invented for a reason.

Of course, carnivores offer a slew of feeble solutions to the whole “eating grilled meat gives you cancer” problem: Cook your meat in the microwave before finishing it on the grill, use lots of marinade, or—my personal favorite—don’t char your meat. If you don’t char, you may as well not barbecue.

We’ve made entire salads at the firehouse with grilled vegetables, and managed to get perfect char marks on everything: tomatoes, potatoes, bell peppers, carrots, yellow squash, mushrooms, even the romaine lettuce! The recipes
here
and
here
are specifically made for the grill.

I don’t know about you, but I like to have my tofu and eat it too. That’s why I grill veggies—all char, no carcinogens.

S
tudy after study after study has proven the benefits of eating more fruits and vegetables, and every day more and more people are adding them to their diet. Unfortunately, lots of food companies are taking advantage of these healthy decisions by pedaling alleged plant-based products that claim to offer the same benefits as real plants.

For the grand Poobah of deceptive advertising, look no further than public enemy number 1: vegetable oil.

Now, vegetable oil may sound as though it’s good for you. After all, it has the word “vegetable” in it, and the container says “heart healthy.” Not only that, everyone is always saying how good olive oil is for you.

Well, like many lies, this fallacy ultimately boils down to money. Back in the 1950s, the seed oil industry found itself in crisis mode after traditional paint and plastic production switched to cheaper petroleum-based sources. In desperate need of a new market, seed oil producers began touting the “heart protective” benefits of vegetable oils. The “lipid hypothesis,” as it became known, argued that polyunsaturated fats in the blood helped reduce cholesterol levels.

Until now, the lipid hypothesis enjoyed widespread consensus, even though the science backing it was suspect. (Some of the rather dubious early experiments involved rabbits and a Russian researcher who never conducted any clinical trials with humans.) But the truth is that while moderate, natural amounts of polyunsaturated fats found in nuts and other whole foods
do
promote heart health, the processed oils derived from them most certainly
do not
.

Now the more astute of your oil-guzzlin’ friends may, like mine, say something like: “Hey, Rip, vegetable oil is liquid, so that means it’s unsaturated fat, which is found in nuts and other good things.” Well they’re right—sort of. Moderate amounts of unsaturated fats can
be found in olives, peanuts, avocados, and many more excellent plant-based products. But imagine taking a million olives, peanuts, and avocados and then squeezing and chemically processing the heck out of them until all that’s left is a plastic jug full of liquid fat.

Vegetable oil manufacturers would like you to think that this freakish chemical concoction is healthy and great for cooking. But here’s what they don’t tell you: The manufacturers add hydrogen atoms to a liquid veggie oil under heat and pressure to “hydrogenate” it. These oils are then more stable and can be used in high-heat situations. This increases the shelf life of the products, but it doesn’t increase your shelf life—these man-made fats have no health benefits, raise total cholesterol, and contribute to coronary artery disease.

You may know another Frankenstein fat: trans fat, aka trans-fatty acids. They are a by-product of the hydrogenation process. Trans fat increases the risk of heart disease. You’ll often see food packaging saying “no trans fat,” and many cities have banned the use of these in restaurants, with good reason—they increase total cholesterol levels and LDL, aka lethal-cholesterol levels; they reduce HDL, aka healthy-cholesterol levels; and they even seem to interfere with the body’s optimum use of omega-3 fatty acids.

But what about at restaurants, you ask? What about all that lovely olive oil that I dip my healthy, whole-grain bread into? I’m not cooking with it, so I don’t have to worry about the whole trans fat business, right?

Unfortunately, the truth is that all oils—cooked and uncooked—are unhealthy. As I said, oils are simply liquid fat. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far, away, they may have been part of delicious vegetables or nuts, but to get into their current bottled form they’ve had to be endlessly squeezed and extracted and processed until they bear no resemblance to their former selves.

If you’ve ever put some leftovers in the fridge, you’ve probably noticed that the next day they have a slightly stale taste. You see, vegetable oils are composed of long-chain fatty acids that are highly unstable. Even if refrigerated for only a few hours, such oils can rapidly oxidize and turn rancid. When mixed with your stomach’s digestive enzymes, these polyunsaturated oils decompose into a toxic, trans-fatty cocktail that wreaks havoc on your body.

As noted physiologist Dr. Ray Peat notes: “All oils, even if they’re organic, cold-pressed, unprocessed, bottled in glass, and stored away
from heat and light, are damaging. These oils have no shelf life at all… and when they’re warmed to body temperature, they disintegrate even faster. Once ingested, they bind with cells and interfere with every chemical reaction in the body. The results are hormone imbalances, inflammation, and all kinds of illness.”

Sound bad? Well look at this: In 2000, Dr. Robert Vogel of the University of Maryland conducted a study in which he measured otherwise healthy participants’ arterial blood flow before and after consumption of olive oil and bread. Afterward, Dr. Vogel determined that olive oil had constricted blood flow in the subjects’ vessels by 31 percent! He discovered that oils damage the fragile endothelial lining in our blood vessels by causing arteries to constrict, promoting the buildup of plaque.

Then there’s the so-called latest and greatest of all the hot new oils, coconut oil. Specifically, people are hooting and hollering about the healthy medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs) that supposedly make coconut oil and its accompanying coconut products superfoods. Stop the presses! The reality is that coconut oil is 92 percent saturated fat (see chart below)! About 65 percent of that comes from MCTs, but the rest comes from LCTs (long-chain triglycerides), the same type of artery-clogging, cancer-promoting, and diabetes-enhancing saturated fats that are in red meat, chicken, and pork.

One tablespoon of coconut oil

So instead of getting your fat from an extracted third-class poser, why not get it from whole-food sources that offer all of the good falsely associated with oils and none of the bad: olives, oats, leafy greens (9 to 11 percent fat), fruit (yes, even fruit has fat), whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds.

My father, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn Jr., likes to tell a story about his good friend Reverend William Valentine, who, in 1990, underwent quintuple bypass surgery. After the procedure, the good reverend adhered to a strict plant-based diet, during which his weight dropped from 210 to 156 pounds. But after fourteen healthy, plant-based years, Reverend Valentine developed a recurrence of angina. After assuring my father that he ate only whole grains, fruit, vegetables, and legumes, he also mentioned the ample amounts of “heart-healthy” olive oil he’d started to consume with most meals. My father immediately instructed his friend to cut out the olive oil. Within two months, the reverend was angina-free and praising whole plants and the Lord!