New Adventist Review wellness columnist Dr. Wesley Youngberg was recently interview by AR editor bill Knott. Look for Youngberg's column, 'Healthy Choices,' each month
You’ve spent the past 20 years as a lifestyle medicine specialist helping people understand the impact of diet on health. What have you learned about the traditional Adventist endorsement of vegetarianism?
Having grown up as a third-generation Adventist, I grew up vegetarian. It was only at age 24 when I just happened to have my cholesterol profile done that I discovered that—Whoa!—I didn’t have such a low cholesterol! It popped my Adventist bubble: “Hey, I’m Mr. Fitness! I’m running marathons; I’m a gymnast; I’ve been a vegetarian all my life. Look at me—I’m so healthy!” That lab report forced me to stop and recognize that just because I was doing all the things that I thought were right, they weren’t necessarily adequate to optimize my personal health. I began to understand that many of the foods harmful to us are actually vegetarian foods. I had always contrasted a good diet versus an unhealthy diet mainly in the context of vegetarianism.
Don’t misunderstand me: I’m a devout vegetarian. I’m loving it, and do not feel deprived in the least. A vegetarian diet can be one of the healthiest lifestyle strategies in our quest for optimal wellness. But it can also become unhealthy, because health isn’t defined by what you don’t eat. At least half of all truly harmful foods are purely vegetarian. Now that could be a new revelation for Adventist Christians! For instance, sodas, regular or diet, are purely vegetarian and simply without any redeeming qualities. Potato chips, french fries, are purely vegetarian. There are all kinds of foods that would meet the technical standard of being vegetarian but certainly wouldn’t meet the standard of a healthy diet. Staring at that lab sheet documenting my heart risk changed me; it woke me up. Simply relying on my vegetarianism clearly wasn’t sufficient for me to reach my God-given health potential!
Would it be better to express the real goal of a healthy diet not as vegetarianism per se, but as continuing to make healthy choices in what we eat?
There’s great value in avoiding certain foods that have potential to harm us, but first we need to eat abundantly of the varied foods God designed to enable the healing process in our bodies. Disease is often caused by an inability of the body to heal itself according to God-given genetic factors. Healing can occur only if you give your body the building blocks for healing to take place. So we could avoid all the obviously unhealthful foods yet not receive healing because of the lack of sufficient healing foods!
I’ve heard you say that eating abundantly of healthful foods is fully as important as avoiding unhealthful foods.
I’d even say it’s more important. From a nutritional perspective, I like to use the term “first-class foods,” which is a qualitative way of saying, “Let’s eat foods that will bring on first-class health.” If you’re getting an average of 80 percent of your diet from whole plant, unprocessed foods, then you’re well on the road to giving the body what it needs to heal itself. Secondarily, if you also choose to avoid foods that, based on medical research, have potential to harm the body—that promote inflammation or contain toxins or are more likely to promote cancer—you’ve accomplished two key elements of improving your health.
The principle behind your counsel seems to be an ongoing process of choosing what’s best, not primarily putting things into categories of “I don’t touch this” or “I don’t taste that.”
What I tell my patients as I lead seminars to help them build healthy eating strategies is this: “Friends, this isn’t about vegetarianism; this is about helping you find the very best diet for reaching your goal.” I’ve determined for myself that as I bring in first-class foods—these whole, unprocessed, plant-based foods—as the core of my diet, I’ll begin to experience the optimum health for which God designed my body. Yes, I’m a dedicated vegetarian, but not for vegetarianism’s sake. It’s just that healthful vegetarian foods are the best foods for us.
You’re defining a healthy Adventist diet by the things eaten, not the things uneaten.
Yes, I guess that’s true! There are too many things in life that are negative. Our health message is not a negative message; it’s a message of hope. It is a message that says, “Hey, here’s a blessing! God is trying to bless us as a people, so that we can be a blessing to the world.” If we’re defined only as the nonmeat eaters, what blessing is that to the world? It’s a negative message for what’s supposed to be good news about enjoying abundant life. We need to change that perception, and people will better appreciate us—and our health message—as a result.
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Wesley Youngberg, Dr. P.H., directs the Lifestyle Medical Clinic (www.myranchowellness.com) at the Rancho Family Medical group in Temecula, California, and is coauthor and speaker for Win! Wellness (www.winwellness.org), a leading health evangelism resource available in multiple languages. He joins Karen Houghten in Naturally Gourmet, a health-related cooking show airing in April on the Hope Channel. This article was published February 25, 2010.
