#120: Rip Esselstyn Talks Food and Family with Julieanna Hever on the "Choose You Now" Podcast
Rip Esselstyn and Julieanna Hever - Today, we revisit Rip’s interview on the “Choose You Now” podcast
It truly is a wonderful time to celebrate and give thanks with friends and family. Speaking of friends, today is a special episode because we're actually replaying an interview that Rip did earlier this year on Julieanna Hever’s podcast “Choose You Now.” If you don’t know, Julieanna is the original plant-based dietitian and her new book “The Choose You Now Diet” is coming out in early December. You’ll want to check that out for sure.
In this bite-sized episode, Rip shares his personal journey with plants and how he makes this lifestyle simple and fun so that it not only works for him, but also for his entire family, including three young children.
You'll learn:
Rip's favorite salad dressing recipe
Rip's Sunday meal ritual that the entire family loves
His go-to simple meals that ANYONE can assemble in no time
This Thanksgiving, let's express gratitude for PLANTS…I hope you enjoy this special episode.
About Julieanna Hever
Known as The Plant-Based Dietitian, Julieanna has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre from UCLA and a Master of Science degree in Nutrition from Cal State Northridge, bridging her three biggest passions for food, performing, and helping people.
As a Registered Dietitian, Julieanna has authored six books, including The Healthspan Solution, Plant-Based Nutrition (Idiots Guide), Vegiterranean Diet, and two peer-reviewed journal articles on plant-based nutrition for healthcare professionals (in Journal of Geriatric Cardiology and Permanente Journal). Julieanna is the host of The Choose You Now Podcast and her new book, The Choose You Now Diet, will be published in December 2021.
Past projects have included being the host of What Would Julieanna Do?; giving a TEDx talk; writing as the nutrition columnist for VegNews Magazine, and teaching the eCornell Plant-Based Nutrition Certification Program. She recently co-hosted Science and Saucery and Facebook Watch’s Home Sweat Home, and has appeared on Harry, The Dr. Oz Show, The Steve Harvey Show, Reluctantly Healthy, The Marie Osmond Show, and E! News.
New adventures include speaking, presenting, traveling, helping a wide variety of clients achieve their goals, and sharing her passion for healing and happiness eating a whole-food, plant-based diet.
Episode and PLANTSTRONG Resources:
It's our Biggest Meal Planner Sale of the Year! Between now and Cyber Monday, Save $30 off our annual meal planner membership with the code YAMS -and then you’ll enjoy twelve months of delicious recipes, custom menus, adaptive grocery lists, and many more time-saving features! Visit mealplanner.plantstrong.com today for all of the details. PLUS - we’ve added a BRAND NEW benefit for our annual members. PLANTSTRONG PERKS are exclusive discounts on other resources and partner brands, available only for meal planner members. See mealplanner.plantstrong.com for all the great details.
Download our Free PLANTSTRONG Holiday Meal Guide
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Full Transcript
Rip Esselstyn:
You know as a mother with children, there's nothing like having your whole family together rallying behind a meal and partaking in it. I'm Rip Esselstyn, and welcome to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. The mission at PLANTSTRONG is to further the advancement of all things within the plant-based movement. We advocate for the scientifically proven benefits of plant-based living and envision a world that universally understands, promotes, and prescribes plants as a solution to empowering your health, enhancing your performance, restoring the environment, and becoming better guardians to the animals we share this planet with. We welcome you wherever you are on your plant-strong journey, and I hope that you enjoy the show.
Rip Esselstyn:
I want to wish each and every one of you a happy, wonderful plant-strong Thanksgiving. I'm actually in Cleveland this week spending time with my parents, Ann and Esse, and my sister Jane and her family. Nothing is quite as comfortable as being back in the midwest with the crisp fall air, in fact, we've had some snow as of recently, and spending the week cooking, doing all kinds of casseroles, sauces, salsas, soups, hearty salads, kick butt plant-based desserts. Loving it, but it's a great time to celebrate with friends and family. Speaking of friends, today is a special episode because I'm actually replaying an episode, or I should say an interview, that I did earlier this year with my friend, Julieanna Hever, on her podcast called Choose You Now.
Rip Esselstyn:
If you don't know, she is the original plant-based dietician. Her new book, The Choose You Now Diet, is coming out in early December. You'll want to check that out for sure. In this bite sized episode, I share a little bit of my personal journey with plants and how I make this lifestyle simple and fun, so that it not only works for me, but for my entire family, including our three young children. Julieanna, as I've said, has been a friend of mine for a long time, so what better way to spend this holiday than celebrating our friendship and expressing gratitude for plants? I hope you enjoy.
Rip Esselstyn:
Hey, PLANTSTRONG gang. It's our biggest meal planner sale of the year. Between now and cyber Monday, you can save 30 bucks off our annual meal planner membership with the code YAMS. You get to enjoy 12 months of delicious recipes, custom menus, adaptive grocery lists, and many more time saving features. Simply visit Mealplanner.plantstrong.com for all the details. Plus, we've added a brand new benefit for our annual members, PLANTSTRONG perks, our exclusive discounts and other resources and partner brands available only for meal planner members. Again, see Mealplanner.plantstrong.com for all the great details.
Julieanna Hever:
Welcome to The Choose You Now podcast. I'm your host, Julieanna Hever. Rip Esselstyn spent a decade as one of the premier triathletes in the world. He then joined the Austin Fire Department, where he introduced his passion for a whole food plant-based diet to Austin's Engine 2 Firehouse in order to rescue a firefighting brother's health. To document his success, he wrote the national bestselling book The Engine 2 Diet. He is not only featured in the documentary Forks Over Knives, but he's also the founder of PLANTSTRONG, where he develops and implements a range of programs and events geared toward education, inspiring and nurturing plant-strong living for people everywhere. This episode is so full of deliciousness it will make your mouth water. In fact, I challenge you to listen to any other podcast that makes your mouth water more, because Rip is going to do just that. Rip Esselstyn, thank you so much for joining me today.
Rip Esselstyn:
Hey, absolutely, Julieanna. It's a pleasure to be here.
Julieanna Hever:
It's so fun, because we didn't really see each other since the whole pandemic. The last we saw each other was when we were leaving Miami at the airport. I saw the entire Esselstyn family. It was really fun, but we did recently speak on your amazing podcast, The PLANTSTRONG Podcast. I love how you framed it, of us being part of that OG team in the plant-based world. We have had so many extraordinary adventures in our own work. We've had several opportunities to collaborate over the years, but wow, more and more people have adopted this lifestyle over the past decade. It's been quite extraordinary to witness, but one of the, I would say, myriad reasons that so many people are inspired by you is that you make eating this healthy diet super fun and easy and accessible and very, very friendly. I would love to focus a little bit more today on your personal evolution and your journey. A little bit different than what we're used to talking about.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, what's interesting, Julieanna, just growing up I couldn't stand vegetables. The only thing I ate were peas, that was it. Maybe French fries, but I was truly, back in the day, more of a carnivore type eater. That all abruptly changed in 1984. I saw my father in his research at the Cleveland Clinic start to really take shape, and because I had a grandfather that had his first heart attack at 42.
Julieanna Hever:
Wow.
Rip Esselstyn:
Ended up dying from Type 2 diabetes, complications from Type 2 diabetes, at the age of 20, 21. I wasn't so aloof to think that I was bulletproof from these diseases. I had so much admiration and respect for my father my whole life, and his work and his work ethic, that when he was like, "Wow, we have this angiogram, which is where you actually go in and you can see a person's artery. We've actually been able to show, you can reverse these blockages." I was like, "Oh, my God, that is so fantastic. I want in on that." For me, this eating style, it's always been about taking more of the foods that I love and plant-strong-ifying them. I like to say that's how I got a bunch of Texas male firefighters to do this as well. Where we to took the four major food groups of the Texas firefighter, which is Blue Bell ice cream, it's beef fajitas, it is cheeseburgers with all the fixings, and cheese pepperoni pizza, and we just took those things and we did really healthy plant-based versions of those.
Rip Esselstyn:
We do a pizza. Literally, luckily the guys at Fire Station 2 that I work with, these guys, they all were foodies and they were really good cooks. We would roll out our own whole grain pizza dough. Then on top of it, some days we'd do a nice clean red sauce. Some days we'd do a pesto sauce. Some days we'd do a spinach hummus on top of it. Then we'd go crazy with the fixings. We would do black beans. We would do really finely cut broccoli, spinach, caramelized onion, mushrooms, pineapples, bell peppers, mushrooms. We'd have all these different bowls and everybody would customize their own pizza.
Julieanna Hever:
Wait. Rip, my mouth is watering, but I want to back up a little. How did you learn how to cook? How did you learn how to change your palette and start to love vegetables? What was that journey like for you, because a lot of people can relate to that?
Rip Esselstyn:
It's funny, I had to learn how to cook. I didn't know how to cook. I can remember when I graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1986, and I was no longer eating at the athletic dining room facility. It was amazing food, but it was super unhealthy. I was like, okay, I'm done. I was staying in Austin because I wanted to be a professional triathlete. I can remember just starting with the basics, boiling water and putting in noodles, making different grains. I used to love making chilies, three bean chilies. I can remember, probably once a week I would make a split pea soup with just the basics like potato, split peas, onions, garlic. This is before I even knew what broths were. I just used water.
Rip Esselstyn:
I've always been a big open-faced sandwich guy. I think I've learned a lot of that from my mom. Keep in mind, my parents started their voyage with this in 1984. Even though I didn't really start mine in earnest until 1987, whenever I was home, whether it was for spring break or parts of the summer or Christmas and holidays, I would see my mom and just her crazy, carefree, courageous, just efforts in the kitchen, and just be stunned and amazed. I can remember I was home, I think I was 20 or 21. This is going to sound crazy to you, but it was the first time that I ever tasted a sweet potato.
Julieanna Hever:
I get it. Oh, explain that. I get that.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, it wasn't a thing. It wasn't a thing back then, especially up in the Northeast. I can remember my mom was like, "Yeah, we just discovered these sweet potatoes. You don't even have to put sugar on them." She had them in the oven, and they came out and they were just oozing all this ooey gooey-ness. I can remember diving into one, just I think with a fork. Not knowing, do I eat the skin or not eat the skin? Just being stunned and amazed. I remember, I think my dad saying, "Yeah, they have polyphenols and all these wonderful things. The Okinawans do sweet potatoes all the time." I was like, "Okay, sounds good."
Julieanna Hever:
Did that rock your world and make you think, oh, my gosh, there's a whole world here? All that passion in your family for food and health, it was everywhere.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, it definitely helped ignite the fire for that, but it's different when you're home and you're being served all this stuff, and then when you go back and then you got to do it yourself.
Julieanna Hever:
Right, so how was that process for you?
Rip Esselstyn:
I've been doing this for a long time now, 30 plus years. For the most part, I keep it simple. I don't spread my wings and get too, too crazy. Obviously, when I'm doing the cookbooks and putting out a book I try everything and I'm making everything, but the reality is that day to day I'm doing oats or the big bowl of cereal in the morning for breakfast. I'm doing leftovers typically for dinner on a bed of greens or on some rice, or in a pita bread sandwich or something like that for lunch. Then dinner, it's whatever it is, whether it's pizza, pasta, soup. Last night, we had a great mulligatawny soup.
Julieanna Hever:
You guys have so many great recipes in all of your different books and there's so many of them. Well, okay, so that cuts to what I was going to ask you at the end, but we'll just go there right now because we're talking about it. Of all of those recipes ... You sound like a creature of habit, like me. I tend to eat the same things for years. We've been talking about this for years. What right now is your favorite plant-strong meal?
Rip Esselstyn:
Right this second, it would be ...
Julieanna Hever:
It's a tough choice.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's embarrassing to say, but it is, it's my cereal every morning. It's my cereal. Every morning I can't wait to spring out of bed and eat my cereal. You've probably heard me say this a jillion times, and every time it's different depending upon the fresh fruit that I have in the house or the frozen fruit that I have. The combination of the walnuts, the ground flaxseed meal, or the chia seeds, or the hemp seeds. It's just always so full and vibrant. Every bite has a little bit different flavor profile. That is the thing, I rally behind that thing every single day.
Julieanna Hever:
Wow. Do you-
Rip Esselstyn:
If I was my mother, I'd be like, "Oh, my God. I just found these radishes. They've blown my mind and I have them every day now on my kale sandwiches. I slice them like this," but that's not me. I'm trying to think, because we grew a garden during the whole COVID period. God, I think we had bad soil because we had a really tough time growing stuff, but it was really exciting to grow our own broccoli and kale and these little pitiful golden Yukon potatoes. That was always exciting, and then to be able to make a salad from your garden was awesome. One of the dressings that is my go-to dressing that your listeners might love, because it's so easy, is just a third, a third and a third depending upon how many people you're making it for, but it's a third of balsamic vinegar, it's a third maple syrup and a third spicy golden mustard.
Julieanna Hever:
Oh, okay. Yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
Brown mustard, rather. I just love that. It makes any salad just go down so easily.
Julieanna Hever:
Rip, I didn't know you had this talent that on audio only you could make a person visualize an entire meal, mouth water. You're so good at describing this food. I'm getting really, really hungry.
Rip Esselstyn:
I don't feel like I've really even started yet.
Julieanna Hever:
Oh, keep going, bring it on. I'm listening. Inspire the people that are afraid of vegetables, or scared of the kitchen. You just make it sound so easy. Just keep going. It's inspiring.
Rip Esselstyn:
When I had you on the podcast not too long ago, I love what you said when you weren't a huge cook in the beginning.
Julieanna Hever:
No.
Rip Esselstyn:
Then you had a young kid, and you totally went to town for when you were writing that book and all the recipes. Now it's something that you love, you adore, it relaxes you, right?
Julieanna Hever:
Yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
There's something about the whole just routine of cooking. One of the things that I absolutely love and adore, and I do this every Sunday, is either making pancakes or waffles for my family. It's just the most simple recipe. It's from the Plant-Strong Cookbook and the base is just oats. You just put them in the Vitamix and you blend them up. Then to that you add a little bit of ground flaxseed meal. I add a banana, I add some crushed walnuts, a little bit of vanilla extract, orange zest. Then I squeeze the orange in there as well to just give it a little bit of orange flavor.
Rip Esselstyn:
Then I usually use a whole 32 ounces of oat milk and then mix that up. Then each kid, I customize it. Some like the dark chocolate chips in there. Some like banana slices. Some like fresh raspberries. Some like frozen blueberries. It's an hour and 15 minutes on a Sunday morning, usually when I get back from swim practice. We play music and we eat pancakes, and it's divine. You know, as a mother with children, there's nothing like having your whole family together rallying behind a meal and partaking in it.
Julieanna Hever:
No, it's magic. That's actually the most effective way to inspire your children for the rest of their lives. That just sounds like the most amazing ... When am I invited, Rip? I'll put in my order for my pancakes.
Rip Esselstyn:
Then the other thing that we love doing as a family, so we've gotten a little lazy, we don't make our own pizza crust as much anymore.
Julieanna Hever:
Why?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, I know. I know. That's one of the things about having your own food line is we do make a very clean pizza crust. We take the pizza crust and then with that just right there, then we add our sauce. Again, it's like the guys at the firehouse, we have all the different bowls and then everybody makes their own pizza. Cole, my son, who just turned 14, he makes the most amazing grilled tofu, broccoli barbecue pizza ever.
Julieanna Hever:
What?
Rip Esselstyn:
It wins pizza contests.
Julieanna Hever:
Wait a second. Well, wait, Rip. I have to ask, my son just turned 14 the other day. When did your son turn 14? That's crazy.
Rip Esselstyn:
My son turned 14, well, it's August now. It's almost August, July. He, late March.
Julieanna Hever:
Oh, my gosh, so we have the same aged boys. That sounds incredible that he could do that at 14.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, he's seen us do it. He's had a lot of practice. Hey, I've got a seven-year-old daughter that is doing, she makes ... Her favorite thing in the world is avocado toasts in the morning. I think every morning, she's working that avocado. She's putting in the spices. She gets it whipped just perfectly. Whenever we need guacamole, it's like, "Hope, can you get us some guacamole?" She is the guacamole kid.
Julieanna Hever:
That's impressive at seven, mind blowing-ly.
Rip Esselstyn:
We don't help her with anything. She gets it, she cuts the avocados in half. She spoons them out. She crushes them up. She puts in spices. Personally, I find making guacamole is a little bit of a pain. To have somebody on your team that loves that, that you can call from the reserve unit and say, "Hey." She's all over it. You know that I'm not a huge fan of drinking your calories, but our kids are so active. We give them a little bit of a break. She loves making her smoothies in the morning in the Vitamix. It's not every morning, but it's a couple mornings a week she'll make a great smoothie. She's very, very precocious for seven, especially in the kitchen.
Julieanna Hever:
I'm very impressed. Your entire family is incredibly inspiring. Back to you, because I could talk to you about this all day, but I would love to know, you were an athlete, a triathlete. You were a successful athlete. How has that evolved now? It's been a while. I don't know what you're doing in terms of your athletics. Can you fill us in on that?
Rip Esselstyn:
It's interesting how your life evolves and goes through different stages because for the longest time, the most important thing to me was competition and wanting to do well at these competitions. As you've just said, I competed in triathlons really exclusively. That's all I did for almost a decade at a world class level. Then I became a firefighter. When I was a firefighter, I still was competing at a world class level in triathlons for another probably seven years when I was a firefighter because on my off days, that's what I would do. I would train. Then I got married all of a sudden, and also I'm 44 now.
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm like, you know what? I don't have the same burning desire to go out and crush it every day. The good thing is that I still train every day. This morning I went to an hour long swim practice and did a little bike. It's just in my blood, I have to train a little something every day. As far as the competition, the competition now, it's in life. It's in what I'm doing now with the podcast and the food line, and just keeping a really solid relationship with my wife and my kids and my family. Being there for them, as opposed to going out on a hundred mile ride and then being exhausted for the next couple hours and not being available to them. My priorities have shifted dramatically in the last 15 years, but I still love to compete.
Rip Esselstyn:
In 2008, I decided to swim in the Master's Nationals. I got the American record in the 200 yard backstroke. Then I didn't compete in swimming forever. Then in 2019, I decided that I'd go for the world record in the 200 meter backstroke. That's in a 50 meter pool. If you want to get a world record, it has to be in a 50 meter pool like they swim at the Olympics. It took me three tries that summer, but I was able to get it. Now, I'm good, but sometimes I have a little spark, or a little itch that needs to be scratched. Then I go for it, but I don't have any intention of competing anytime soon.
Julieanna Hever:
It's all encompassing, but that is exactly the whole concept behind this podcast, is choose you now. It's choosing you now in each moment, in each part of your life. That's just a good example.
Rip Esselstyn:
No, I like that a lot. It's a really good topic for your podcast, kudos to you on that.
Julieanna Hever:
Thank you. We always talk about helping other people, especially in the work that we do. Really, it's the people that learn to decide to prioritize their health and their wellbeing that makes them better at everything else that they do. You're a walking role model for that.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, thank you very much. Like everybody else, as we get older we're trying to figure it out. You realize how much you really don't know. Every day, I'm just trying to be the best dad and the best husband and the best plant-based advocate that I can be.
Julieanna Hever:
Well, kudos to. You're doing an extraordinary job, you have for so many years. I can't thank you enough for sharing your wisdom and your deliciousness with us today. I literally am going to go run and eat as soon as we hang up. I just wish you could cook for me.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, hey, it was a pleasure. Thank you for having me on, and all the best
Julieanna Hever:
Just on record, I think everyone needs to add that delicious dressing recipe to their menu. It's one third balsamic, one third mustard and one third maple syrup. Yes, please. If you are inspired and enjoy the Choose You Now Podcast, please subscribe to the show, rate and review us on iTunes, and send us an email with questions and comments at ChooseYouNowPodcast@gmail.com. For nutrition services and more information, visit me at plantbaseddietician.com. I invite you to choose yourself now, and I'm signing off with lots of leafy green love.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wasn't that a fun episode? Sometimes it's really nice to be interviewed as opposed to being the interviewee, so thanks Julieanna. Okay, my kale cousins, I hope you have a wonderful holiday weekend wherever you happen to be. For all your PLANTSTRONG resources and links to the details from today's episode, visit PLANTSTRONGPodcast.com. We'll see you all next week. The PLANTSTRONG Podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Laurie Kortowich, Ami Mackey, Patrick Gavin, and Wade Clark. This season is dedicated to all of those courageous truth seekers, who weren't afraid to look through the lens with clear vision and hold firm to a higher truth. Most notably, my parents, Dr. Caldwell D. Esselstyn Jr. and Ann Crile Esselstyn. Thanks for listening.
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