#139: Chris Wark - Beat Cancer in the Kitchen
We're thrilled to welcome author, cancer survivor, and healthy-eating coach, Chris Wark, back for his second appearance on the PLANTSTRONG Podcast.
In 2003 at the age of 26, Chris was diagnosed with Stage 3 colon cancer. After surgery, he opted OUT of chemotherapy for treatment and, instead, turned to nutrition to promote his healing.
Instead of pumping chemo drugs into his body, he pumped in as many anti-cancer foods as he could and turned his body into a nutritional powerhouse. It’s been almost 20 years, Chris and his family are doing great, and he's written three books about his journey and life's work.
Today, Chris discuss the science, background, and some of those life-saving recipes from his latest book, Beat Cancer Kitchen, co-written with his wife, Micah.
This gorgeous book features whole-food, plant-based recipes that appeal to the whole family, whether you are healing from cancer, are actively trying to prevent it, or just simply seeking a healthy lifestyle for you and your loved ones.
You’ll learn:
The dangers and carcinogenic effects of meat and animal products
The lack of evidence and results for experimental diets, like the carnivore, paleo, and keto diets
Why weight loss is conflated with health
Any foods in the plant-based space to avoid?
Highlights of some of his cancer-fighting recipes
As you'll hear, Chris’s life work is to:
Inspire you to believe you can get well
Provide the evidence and science to support it
Give you the confidence to take action on sustainable change.
You have so much personal power over your health and it starts in the kitchen.
Episode Resources
Chris Beat Cancer Website and Resources
Join the Free PLANTSTRONG Community with over 26,000 members
PLANTSTRONG Foods - shop our official plantstrong foods including our new multigrain flakes, cereal that is going to knock your socks off. You know I love Rip’s Big Bowl for breakfast, but this new cereal is so crunchy and so satisfying, it just might steal the show! Go check it out - we’re offering two packs for a limited time
Our PLANTSTRONG Sedona Retreat from October 10th-15th, has just been approved and accredited for 21.25 Continuing Medical Education hours for Physicians and Physician Assistants, AND 21.25 Nursing Contact Hours for nurses! Jointly provided by PLANTSTRONG and the Mountain Area Health Education Center - we are thrilled to offer these CMEs and CEUs as part of our October registration fees. If you are a healthcare provider, please join us in Sedona this fall and learn how you can level up with your nutrition both personally and professionally.
Visit plantstrong.com for all PLANTSTRONG Resources, including books, retreats, recipes, foods and the PLANTSTRONG Coaching Programs
Promo Music: Your Love by Atch
License: Creative Commons License - Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)
Full YouTube Transcript
Chris Wark:
The great thing about plants is there are no studies showing that plants are going to increase your cancer risk, right? There's no study showing that beets or carrots are going to increase your cancer or heart disease or diabetes risk, right? So, you don't have to be afraid of plants. They are only good.
Rip Esselstyn:
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.
Rip Esselstyn:
We welcome you wherever you are on your plant-strong journey, and I hope that you enjoy this shelf. Hello, my plant-strong sweet potatoes. My name is Rip Esselstyn. Welcome to another episode of the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. Today, I invite one of the most positive and inspirational people back to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. His name is Chris Wark. I first met Chris in March of 2020, right before the pandemic hit. And we met on the Holistic Holiday at Sea cruise ship. We were both speakers there.
Rip Esselstyn:
I interviewed him on the ship and I was immediately struck by not only his knowledge base and his passion, but also his charisma and his faith. What we talked about was how back in 2003, Chris was diagnosed with stage three colon cancer at the tender age of 26. After his surgery, he opted out of chemotherapy, and instead turned to nutrition. And instead of pumping chemo drugs into his body, he decided that he would pump as many anti-cancer foods as he could. And he turned his body into this nutritional powerhouse.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's now been almost 20 years and Chris and his family are doing fantastic. And today, we are going to talk about some of these lifesaving recipes from his latest book, Beat Cancer Kitchen, that he co-wrote with his wife. It is a absolutely gorgeous book that features all kinds of whole food plant-based recipes that will appeal to the whole family. Doesn't matter if you're healing from cancer, if you're actively trying to prevent it, or just simply seeking a healthy lifestyle for you and your loved ones.
Rip Esselstyn:
Chris's work, his life work is to inspire as many people as he can to believe that you can get well, to provide the evidence and science that supports this, and then give you the confidence to take action on sustainable change. You have so much personal power with your health. So, let's unleash some of that with my guest, Chris Wark. All right, PLANTSTRONG gang, here we are with Chris Wark. This is Chris's second appearance on the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. I actually had Chris on, gosh, it was just almost two years ago, where I kind of bumped into Chris on this Holistic Holiday at Sea cruise.
Rip Esselstyn:
And he had me on his podcast. Then I said, "Would you return the favor?" He did so. If you want to go back and listen to that interview, we really go deep into Chris's story and his survival story with cancer. But what I'd really like to talk about today is Chris, hello.
Chris Wark:
Hello, Rip. Greetings.
Rip Esselstyn:
Greetings, and salutations. You and your wife have come out with a new book. It's your third book, Beat Cancer Kitchen. Here it is right here. It is in insanely gorgeous. I want to talk about that and the byline is Deliciously Simple Plant-Based Anti-Cancer Recipes. So, I want to really dive into what it means to eat like in an anti-cancer way. But before we do, I would love it if you could give the PLANTSTRONG audience, just the reader's digest version of your fight and survival story with cancer.
Chris Wark:
Yeah. Happy to do it. It is weird that it's been almost two years since we did that interview, which was like the last cruise before everything shut down.
Rip Esselstyn:
Before the world shut down with COVID. Yeah.
Chris Wark:
Yeah. I haven't been on a cruise since. Hopefully they come back, because that was a super fun event. And we had a lot of folks from our community come, and I know from yours too, it was really fun. The story is I was diagnosed with stage three colon cancer at 26-years-old, and that was in December, 2003. I had surgery, but when it came time to do chemotherapy, I decided not to do it. What happened in that interim between surgery and when I was supposed to start chemo was I discovered information about nutrition, the power of nutrition to support your body's ability to heal.
Chris Wark:
I had read multiple survivor stories, people who had healed advanced cancers with a radical change of their diet and their lifestyle, and I was encouraged and inspired and excited. I felt like I got my power back. I got a sense of control back over my life. Everything started to make sense to me because typically when you're diagnosed with cancer, you're just like, why did I get cancer? How'd this happen to me? I mean, you're looking for answers. You want to understand your predicament, because it is definitely a predicament, right?
Chris Wark:
It is a dilemma. I started to connect the dots, and I realized that the way I was living was killing me. I adopted a whole food plant-based diet right away in early January, 2004, and was just so excited about the process of changing my life and rebuilding my body and restoring my health in ways that were sustainable and not destructive. Anyway, I opted out of chemo and I just went hardcore, hardcore fruits and vegetables.
Rip Esselstyn:
You like to say that you basically overdosed on nutrition.
Chris Wark:
I do say that. That was sort of this funny idea in my mind, right? Because I knew the stakes, the stakes were very high. I was like, okay, if I'm saying no to chemotherapy, which is ... These treatments are highly toxic and they're destructive and they can cause a lot of harm. I knew, okay, if I'm not going to do that, I need to overdose on nutrition. I need to pump as much vital nutrients into my body every day, all day, so that they're circulating in my blood, they're getting to my cells, they're doing what they do.
Chris Wark:
What do they do? Well, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, enzymes, and thousands of phytonutrients, these are molecules found in plants, do all kinds of things in your body. But the things that we understand are they're anti-inflammatory, they are antioxidants. There are compounds in plant food that directly kill cancer cells. They cause apoptosis. There are compounds that prevent tumors from growing. There are compounds that prevent tumors from spreading. There are compounds that enhance your immune cells, like your natural killer cells to fight and kill cancer, to identify and kill cancer cells. That's their job.
Chris Wark:
As I started to learn all this stuff, I was like, wow, this is amazing. So, a lot of people just think about nutrition as like, well, I just need vitamins and minerals just to be healthy in this sort of generic way. But the reality is, is there are very specific things that plant compounds are doing in your body, and we don't even fully understand all of it. It's so complex. It's so complex, doctors and scientists are still learning and making new discoveries. But I had no scientific background, no medical degree. But I had enough common sense and intuition, and a strong enough will to live that I was willing to do whatever it took to survive. That meant radically changing my diet. I started pumping-
Rip Esselstyn:
Including eating your giant cancer fighting salad twice a day.
Chris Wark:
Yeah. The giant cancer fighting salad, which you showed on the cover of the book. That photo made the cover. It should be because that salad was my core meal because I sort of, after a lot of thinking, and some reading, and looking at plant recipe books, and raw food recipe books, and all this kind of stuff, I just realized, okay, I need to eat the most nutritious, most diverse, most potent anti-cancer meal every day. If I'm going to eat it every day, I might as well eat it twice a day for lunch and dinner. Then it sort of became this default thing. Well, it's a giant salad. It's broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage, onions, mushrooms, sauerkraut, some type of legumes was sprouted like sprouted mung beans or lentils, or garbanzo beans.
Chris Wark:
Or they could just be cooked and put on the salad or canned or whatever. Then like delicious spices, like oregano, and cayenne pepper, and curry powder, and a little splash of apple cider vinegar, and little olive oil. Don't hate on me, but that's what I did. That's what I did. Yeah, and it was delicious. It was so good. It was so delicious. I loved it and I began to crave it, and I realized, this is great. I can just do this every day. What I learned a few years later, once I started reading the science, once I'd gotten my health back and then I started, wanting to share what I had been through, what I had learned with others, I realized, well, maybe I'm just lucky. Maybe this is just a fluke.
Chris Wark:
Is there any evidence actually that nutrition can help your body heal cancer or prevent cancer? Then I started looking at the scientific literature and it just blew my mind, how many studies are published. I mean, you can't even read them. You have to read like meta summaries of studies because there's just too many. But I went down that rabbit hole and was so excited, and I still am, to find studies that are identifying these anti-cancer compounds in food. What I learned was that the most potent anti-cancer foods were the ones that I was eating in the giant salad.
Chris Wark:
It's really the cruciferous vegetables and the allium vegetables, that's garlic, onions, and leaks. And then cruciferous, for anybody that doesn't know, that's broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage, bok choy, Brussels sprouts, and even condiments like horseradish and wasabi. I didn't know that. I didn't know about the horseradish and wasabi. I would've eaten more of that too, if I had known. But anyways, so that's what I did, and I found an integrative oncologist who worked with me and supported me and ordered studies, blood work, and CT scans along the way, and I found a naturopathic doctor, and he had me taking lots of supplements and herbs and things like that.
Chris Wark:
My attitude was, I'm just going to do everything in my power to help myself. If there's no risk of harm, I'll do it. If it's a supplement, if it's a food, and it has no risk of harm, I will take it, I'll do it. I don't have any way of measuring what's working and what's not working, but I'm just going to trust the process and believe that my body's going to use what it needs. It's going to use what it needs, and I'm okay with consuming a lot of stuff that it doesn't need and peeing it out, or whatever. Right?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Chris Wark:
I'm fine with that. Because I'd rather have an abundance than a deficit. That's the short version. I got well. I just created this simple daily routine that was to maximize my nutrition and maximize my health and minimize my stress. I talk about a lot of this in my first book, Chris Beat Cancer. But yeah, and then I just repeated that day, every day. It was like Groundhog day. Just doing the same things every day, eating the same thing every day. And just doing the best I could to survive and thrive.
Chris Wark:
My wife, she, in the beginning, thought I was insane, but she came around ,and it was definitely easier once she got on board.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, it sounds like, and she's been all in for how long now?
Chris Wark:
Yeah. I mean, that was 18 years ago. It really just took a few months of her seeing me do this. I just want to say this to folks that are listening, that when you decide to change your life in a big way, even just your diet, people around you are not going to understand, and you may be excited about it, and you may be evangelizing to those people, and just expect that they're not going to be very receptive. And it's okay. It's okay. Time changes things. The people that thought I was insane now think I'm a genius.
Chris Wark:
So, you have that to look forward to, but just focus on you, take care of yourself. What you'll find is that, as you improve your life and your health, people will come to you. They'll come to you and ask, "What are you do doing?" Then you have the opportunity to share what you've learned and you get so much joy and fulfillment from doing that, versus trying to convince everyone you know to do what you're doing and they don't want to.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. No, that's exactly true. And that's a really important message for everyone to hear. In fact, we had a gentleman who came to one of our medical immersions in Sedona, in October, and he was probably 160 pounds, overweight, diabetic, hypertensive, a slew of medications. And he went to the VA after attending, and he let them know, "Listen, I'm trying to get off my meds and I'm trying to do this and this, and I'm trying to do it with a whole food plant-based." And they kind of laughed at him and said, "Listen, you're going to be on these meds for the rest of your life. This is not going to happen."
Rip Esselstyn:
Like you, he just did his daily routines. He ate whole food plant-based. At his next appointment, two months later, the nurse who checked him in was like, "Okay, you need to tell me exactly everything that you're doing, because I've never seen anything like this, and it's obviously working. The doctor's on board now." It is spectacular how sometimes you, with the power of your reversal, or health, can influence even medical physicians, nurses, stuff like that.
Chris Wark:
Yeah. That's especially gratifying, right? To have, and it's happened many times. It's not a brag. I'm just saying it's many times doctors and nurses and scientists have come to me, written me, approached me in public, and just said, "I really appreciate what you're doing, keep doing it. You're doing really good things." Or even paid me for coaching. I've had doctors pay me to help them get healthy. And I'm like, "It's great. That's a really good feeling." They know that, I mean, obviously they can tell I've invested 18 years of my life in knowledge, in growing my knowledge. If you spend a whole lot of time studying and learning, eventually you develop some level of expertise. That feels good.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yep.
Chris Wark:
That feels good.
Rip Esselstyn:
And as we all know, most of these physicians, most of these nurses, they're pretty, for the most part, ignorant when it comes to nutrition. So, they have the same maladies that everybody else does. If they haven't read the literature, then they're not aware of really what's going on here, so we can teach them pretty great stuff.
Chris Wark:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
We'll be right back with Chris, but first I want to reach into my email bag here and read a nice letter that I got just the other day from a woman named Mary. "I lost 70 pounds after reading Eat to Live by Dr. Fuhrman and watching the Forks Over Knives movie. I love Jane and Ann's YouTube channel and your podcast, Rip. I don't know where I be without the Esselstyns. Rip, I wanted you to know that I kept the weight off seven years, but then during COVID, I got into processed vegan meats, cheeses, and desserts. I gained 30 pounds."
Rip Esselstyn:
"When I started straying to non-vegan baked goods, fried food, and putting honey in my tea and coffee, I knew I was in trouble and would soon gain it all back. The biggest help has been listening to your podcast and using approved recipes. This morning, I'm enjoying overnight steel cut oats that one of your podcast guests described. It came out perfectly and will make my mornings so much easier. Thank you for re-energizing my whole food plant-based lifestyle. You and your family are amazing and are doing the world a great service."
Rip Esselstyn:
"I'm 61-years-old, take no medications and no longer suffer from IBS, seasonal allergies, or joint and foot pain. I love doing long distance canoe and bicycle touring adventures. Last spring, I bicycled the Erie Canal trail from Buffalo to Albany with my dog. I think this would've been very hard, if not impossible, when I weighed 235 pounds. Thanks again, for all that you do to get everyone living plant-strong. It really does work."
Rip Esselstyn:
Mary, thank you. Huge congratulations on knowing that you needed to step on the break and you were able to turn things around at just the right moment. I am so glad that you have found inspiration from the PLANTSTRONG show, and I'm thrilled that you've recommitted yourself to the world's strongest eating plan. Way to get after it. I want you to know that I also have bicycled the Erie Canal. I did it from Pittsburgh into Washington, DC, and it was epic. The whole way, it was, there was this beautiful canopy, so we were out of the sun. Highly recommended for anyone that's wanted to do something like that.
Rip Esselstyn:
All right. I have two exciting announcements that I want to share with you today before we jump back into the show. First, if you haven't heard yet, we have just launched a brand new multi-grain flake cereal that is going to knock your socks off. You know that I love the Rip's Big Bowl Cereal breakfast more than anything, but I want you to know that this new iteration is so crunchy and so satisfying that it just might become your new favorite. So, just check it out. We're off freeing two packs for a limited time at plantstrongfoods.com. My second announcement, and this is big, our Sedona retreat has just been approved and accredited for 21.25 continuing medical education hours for physicians and physician assistants, and 21.25 nursing contact hours for nurses.
Rip Esselstyn:
These are jointly provided by PLANTSTRONG and the Mountain Area Health Education Center. And we are thrilled to offer these CMEs and CEUs as part of our October registration fees. If you are a healthcare provider, please join us in Sedona this fall and learn how you can level up with your nutrition, both personally and professionally. Visit plantstrong.com/sedona for more information, or to ask us any questions.
Chris Wark:
It's funny. I got this message on Facebook today. I want to share this because this is just so cool. It's just one example of many, but this guy named Jeff, and he said, "I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in August, and I found you in September, and I started your lifestyle changes and following your diet. And within one month, I'm no longer a migraine sufferer." He said he was getting headaches four to five to times a week, and he hasn't had one. That's for 19 years he's been getting these headaches, and they've stopped since he changed his diet. Then he said his A1C has dropped from 6.5 to 5.5.
Rip Esselstyn:
Huh. No longer technically diabetic then.
Chris Wark:
Yeah. I mean, again, it's not me. It's the food. I just get to say, I told you so.
Rip Esselstyn:
I want to jump into this new cookbook. Before I jump into recipes, I want to ask you a couple questions. The first is you have a confession that you make in the beginning of the book. And that is that you say you're a terrible cook and you're very much a creature of habit and you can easily eat the same basically foods over and over, over again, like the giant cancer fighting salad, and that your wife, Micah, loves to cook. The deal is she cooks, you do the dishes, right?
Chris Wark:
That's the deal.
Rip Esselstyn:
Which is, I think that sounds pretty fair to me. It's great doing the dishes when you're doing whole food plant based, because you don't have all that grease and all that nonsense. Dishes can be a lot of fun. The second confession that you make is that you really didn't have an interest in writing a cookbook. Just like you say, you really weren't planning on coming down with cancer, but you did. And here it is, and it's out into the universe. Before we jump into these recipes, because to me, Chris, one of the things that you do so well is you explain things in layman's terms.
Rip Esselstyn:
I'd love for you to talk about, I'm going to throw out a couple different things that are in animal products. Then, if you could just give us like this kind of short summation on why they're cancer promoting. Does that sound good?
Chris Wark:
Yeah. There's a section in the intro, which obviously you know about where I explain the animal protein cancer connection in the beginning of the book, so just for folks that have never heard these things, but yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. I'd love to. Let's start there. The animal protein cancer connection.
Chris Wark:
Well, so there are a number of ways that animal protein can either cause or contribute to cancer growth. We'll start with the causes. The International Agency for Cancer Research has identified processed meat as a group one carcinogen. Group one is the highest level of evidence. What else is in group one? Cigarettes, asbestos from aldehyde, right? Known to cause cancer. There's no question.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, we're in that same group.
Chris Wark:
Right. Processed meat, same group. But what's processed meat? Well, hot dogs, deli meats like Turkey and ham, beef jerky, Vienna sausages, Spam, right? That's processed meat. Bacon, I should mention that. Now, the next level down is group two, which are probable carcinogens, and red meat is in that category. So, there's a fair amount of evidence that it's a probable human carcinogen. Those are direct causes. Those are animal foods that can directly cause cancer, and colon cancer is one of the biggest correlations, but also pancreatic cancer.
Chris Wark:
Now, in terms of contributing to cancer growth, there's a number of compounds in animal food that contribute to cancer growth. I'll touch on a few of them. One of them is a saturated fat, right? Cancer cells love saturated fat, and they also love cholesterol. They use it for fuel. You may have heard this sort of notion that cancer loves sugar. That's only partially true. Cancer cells use protein, fat, and sugar. So, they really like cholesterol and they really like saturated fat. Heme iron, which is very a form of iron that's in red meat, promotes cancer growth. So, you want to be very careful about iron infusions, iron supplements, and iron from red meat because cancer cells love iron.
Chris Wark:
There is a molecule in animal food called Nau5Gc. And it's this weird sugar molecule that comes from animal meat. It also is related to cancer growth and progression. Then there is IGF-1. This is insulin-like growth factor. And what happens when you eat a lot of animal food or a lot of processed sugar? Your body raises IGF-1, and that is a hormone that promotes cancer growth. So, there's a number of ways that animal food promotes cancer growth. There's one more I'll mention, methionine. This is an amino acid that's very high in animal food and it's pretty low in plant food.
Chris Wark:
Many cancer cells are dependent on methionine to survive. So, when you eat a plant-based diet, you're naturally eating, consuming much less methionine than you would be if you were eating animal protein, animal meat and fat. Yeah, there isn't just one thing. There's a multiple ways that animal foods can contribute to cancer growth. That's important. No, they're not talking about this on the nightly news. There's a whole lot of health influencers who are pushing a very meat, heavy diet. A paleo diet or a primal diet or a whole diet, right?
Chris Wark:
But there's a lot of animal protein in that diet. I just believe they're either unaware of the science or they don't want to look at it in terms of promoting cancer, animal products promoting cancer. Probably the most pervasive bias, right? We're full of bias. We all have biases. The most pervasive bias in science and medicine, in my opinion, is meat lovers' bias. It's meat lovers' bias, right? These are people they like to eat meat. They like it. They don't want to hear bad news about it. They don't want to research and find out. They don't want to be objective. They like burgers and bacon and fried chicken.
Rip Esselstyn:
Since the cruise that we were on in beginning of 2020, really two of the new diets that are out there have really taken a foothold in society. I would say one is the keto and the other is the carnivore. It's nutty to me. And every one of those is just loaded with everything you just mentioned about. The other thing that I'd love for you to touch upon, when people are cooked cooking and grilling their favorite chicken breast or steaks, what are they getting on those meats?
Chris Wark:
So, when you cook animal protein and fat, so there's two, basically, if you want to be very simplistic, there's, you're cooking the meat and you're cooking fat. Well, when you cook the meat on high heat grilling, you're creating heterocyclic amines. Those are cancerous compounds from cooking muscle meat. Then when you cook the fat, it produces polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are also cancerous. Both of those types of compounds are produced when you're cooking meat.
Chris Wark:
Again, so not only is certain types of meat can cause cancer, animal protein and fat can contribute to cancer growth, and then the way you cook it makes it even more cancerous. Yeah, there's sufficient evidence for any person to take a critical look at what they're eating and reduce their consumption of animal protein or eliminate it altogether.
Rip Esselstyn:
You mentioned polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. I just want to say, I read an article, God, it must have been in the last couple months, that basically talked about how it's almost like secondhand smoke, these PAHs, and that they can get on your skin and actually burrow down into your skin, and actually contribute to cancer causation, which I mean, who would've thought that standing next to a barbecue pit would be dangerous, right?
Chris Wark:
Oh man. Wow. I see. I haven't heard that. This is news to me, but I'll tell you a story. When I was 17, 16, 17, I worked at a barbecue restaurant. Yeah, and I was a dishwasher. I was a busser and a dish dishwasher. I was back in the back with the smoker, back in the kitchen, where they're smoking all this barbecue all day long. Every day I would leave and my skin would be just covered in grease just from the greasy smoke. These compounds you're talking about, they were all over my skin every day.
Chris Wark:
Some of the guys would get ... They would break out because it was so much grease and their skin would break out. This grease rash they would get. I didn't stay there too long, but anyway, yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Doesn't sound very habit forming.
Chris Wark:
Right. And it definitely turned me off to that whole process. There's sufficient evidence. A lot of people don't want to give up their bad habits or their favorite foods. And I get it. I understand that animal protein meat, it tastes good in different preparations, right? Doesn't taste great raw. And it certainly doesn't taste great without a bunch of salt on it typically.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Chris Wark:
But anyway, the carnivore and the keto thing, I mean, I think it's important to point out, and I know I'm preaching to the choir, and most of your audience probably is not eating these diets, if they're following you, but it's important to point out that these are experimental fad diets. They have no proof. They have no evidence. The same goes for the paleo thing. The paleo, primal, and carnivore diets are based on this hypothesis, that all humans in the stone age were eating this way. But there's no real human test subjects that they could follow and say, and they had no disease, no chronic disease, no heart disease, no cancer. And they had a exceptionally long lifespan. There's no evidence to connect that with the results that we all want.
Chris Wark:
The same with keto, right? These are very new and experimental fad diets. Sure. Will you lose weight? Yeah. You can lose weight doing that. You can lose weight doing lots of things. You can lose weight smoking crystal meth, doesn't mean it's great for you in the long-term. It's not even great in the short-term in that case. But this is often conflated with health, which is like, oh, I lost weight doing this. Therefore, it's healthy.
Chris Wark:
To be fair, if you're overweight, when you lose weight, you do get healthier. Just reducing body fat improves your cardiovascular health and improves your immune function. So, those benefits that are attributed to just weight loss from any method are often, I would say misassociated with a specific weight loss diet, like carnivore or paleo or keto or something. The bigger problem with those diets is they're unsustainable. Anybody can do a crash diet and lose some weight for some period of time, usually a short of time a month, a few months, maybe a year.
Chris Wark:
But you're not going to be able to keep that up for the rest of your life. I think you're going to develop some serious problems down the road. That's my soapbox on this.
Rip Esselstyn:
No, not a long-term solution whatsoever. Let me ask you this. When you were writing this cookbook, were there any foods in the plant-based kingdom that you are not a fan of because of how it relates to cancer? Let me just give you an example. With our audience, you know we're not a fan of processed oils. We're not a fan of coconut because it's so high in saturated fat. And we're not a fan of too many nuts, just because it's so high in fat. They're so calorie dense and also about 80% fat. So, we really want to limit those things. Anything that in your research or that you have found in the plant-based kingdom that you want to avoid or reduce?
Chris Wark:
Well, there wasn't anything that we wanted to avoid. My opinion on nuts is not as strict as maybe yours. There are studies on tree nut consumption reducing risk of colon cancer, for example, and things like that. We do consume oils, but they're sparing amounts, or well, they're small amounts, right? Not in the large amounts that you see in processed food and at restaurants. They're just ... Everything's-
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, or on the Rachel ratio.
Chris Wark:
Sure. So, small amounts of olive oil, especially if it's fresh pressed, if it's fresh, because olive are a wonderful food, and olive oil has this compound called oleocanthal, which is an anti-cancer compound. But anyway, so a little oil here and there, but we were very deliberate about using as little oil as possible and as little salt as possible. I mean, a little goes a long way, especially once you change your diet and your palette changes, your taste buds change, and you just realize you don't need much salt, just a tiny little bit, really can make a huge pop in a dish.
Chris Wark:
Those were the basic principles that we were adhering to as we followed this, I mean, as we were developing these recipes. And going back to what you said earlier, yeah, I'm not a cook. I'm not a good cook. I don't really like cooking. I don't like spending time in the kitchen and I am a creature of habit. So, I'm perfectly content eating the same thing every day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner with very little variety. I'm okay with it. Because to me, I eat for vitality and for energy and I don't necessarily eat for pleasure like I used to.
Chris Wark:
And healthy food tastes good to me, so that, it's easy. But for years, my audience has been asking for recipes. I mean, over for 10 years, I've been a public figure for almost 11 years. Or no, almost 12 years. And yeah, I'm constantly, do you have any recipes? Can you give me some recipes? Recipes, recipes. I'm just, back of my mind, I'm like, yeah, I eat the same thing every day. Here's three recipes. But my wife typically, pretty much every night, almost every night of the week, she's making dinner, and she does enjoy it. I'd say some nights, but she has become an incredible cook and has ... We mix it up at dinnertime.
Chris Wark:
I decided, in early 2020, maybe late 2019, I was like, this would be a fun project. Let's put together a whole food plant-based cookbook and get our favorite recipes in there. Then we had a dear friend of ours work with us on, a super creative friend of mine, on developing some of the other recipes. They just turned out beautifully. I mean, everything in there we love. I think, the great thing about plants is there are no studies showing that plants are going to increase your cancer risk. There's no study showing that beets or carrots are going to increase your cancer or heart disease or diabetes risk. So, you don't have to be afraid of plants. They are only good. Unless you have an allergy, but you know what I mean?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. The book is broken up into two parts. I really, I'd love to spend just a second on each one of the kind of sections, because I am smitten with this book. I went through it. I haven't made all the recipes, but I can tell you, by reading the headers, looking at the ingredients, the amazing photography that is done here, this is a absolute jewel and winner of a cookbook. Well, part one is kind of, it's your hardcore anti-cancer kind of recipes for healing. We already talked about the giant cancer fighting salad, which is on the front of the book, but you also have some things that really intrigue me like this anti-cancer sprinkle. Can you tell me about that sprinkle?
Chris Wark:
Yeah. The sprinkle, so this was ... Originally, it was just all of the spices that I was putting on my giant salad. Right. Because I was trying to make it taste good and I was also learning about the anti-cancer antioxidant value of many of spices. So, I'm like, well, shoot, I'm going to put that on there. I want to put this on there. So, it's like curry powder, curcumin, garlic powder, nutritional yeast, oregano, pretty much all spices. All spices. The sprinkle came together as a way for someone to premix all of these spices that I would put on my salad.
Chris Wark:
It's just delicious to put on any vegetables. That's how that kind of came together, but it's, yeah, it's nutritional yeast and a whole bunch of other stuff just mixed together, and then you can store it in a little jar.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Then you also have in here, on page 20, broccoli sprouts. I would imagine that's because of the sulforaphane in the broccoli sprouts. I'm just, literally in the last two years, after I first met you, have learned about the power of sprouting and just like, wow, you talk about some nutritional oomph and power. Were you doing sprouting back when you started this?
Chris Wark:
Yeah. The very first week I adopted a plant-based diet, it was all raw. And the books that I was reading at the time were espousing the virtues of sprouts and how nutritionally dense they were and how wonderful they were. And that's when I started sprouting legumes, like mung beans, garbanzo beans, lentils, and then of course, discovered broccoli sprouts later. Yeah, sprouts are amazing. And we made a ... In this book, one of my most, this is a very simple recipe, but I'm probably almost, I want to say one of my most accomplished recipes in the book is broccoli sprout pesto.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, yeah.
Chris Wark:
Because people love pesto, and broccoli sprouts started this incredible anti-cancer food, detoxification food, rich in sulforaphane, which is a liver detoxifier, and indole-3-carbinol, which is an anti-cancer compound. Yeah, it's just a really cool thing we came up with, and it's delicious.
Rip Esselstyn:
And are you sprouting yourself, you and Micah?
Chris Wark:
We do. Yeah. It's easy to sprout. All you need is a jar and some seeds and a little water.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, you do spend some time in the kitchen.
Chris Wark:
Yeah. I mean, prepping sprouts, anybody can do that. Running the juicer. I can do that.
Rip Esselstyn:
All right. Tell me about your cancer fighting soup.
Chris Wark:
Yeah. One sort of challenge for the book, and you mentioned this earlier, but I'll expound on it, this cookbook has two sections. The first section is like the hardcore anti-cancer diet, right? So, it's like, if you have active cancer or you're trying to prevent a recurrence, just focus on eating these meals, these recipes, because you need to keep your life simple, right? You don't need to be trying to experiment with a new recipe every day or several times a day, and worrying, do I have this ingredient or that ingredient?
Chris Wark:
Just focus on these hardcore recipes in the first section. The second section of the book are the recipes for prevention, and there's a whole bunch of fun stuff in there too. And they're all whole food plant-based and they're all healthy. But as a coach, as a survivor, as a patient advocate, I know how hard it is to change your life. The changes that you make have to be big changes, but they also have to be sustainable. You have to be able to repeat, rinse and eat every day. That's where you get the momentum, right?
Chris Wark:
So, there's this healing momentum that happens. Easiest example is like, hey, you eat a giant salad? That's great. That's great. You will get benefit from that salad. And the benefits you get from that giant salad will be for a few hours, right? Maybe some benefit for 24 hours, maybe a little bit of lingering benefit into the next day from some of those nutrients, but then it's over. No more benefit. But if you eat the giant salad twice a day, and then you do it again the next day, and then you do it the next day, and the next day, you're compounding the benefits.
Chris Wark:
And it doesn't have to be the giant salad. It can just be plant food, fruits and vegetables, right? As you continually put them into your body, the benefits compound. Again, it has to be sustainable. Because you don't want to treat this like a crash diet because it's only going to benefit you while you're doing it. Then when you get off of it and go back to your old ways, you've lost the benefit. It's that lifestyle change and that sort of long tail focus, having a long time horizon, and thinking about, I'm eating healthy today because I want to be healthy tomorrow and next week and next year. I want to perpetuate that. This is a really long answer to your question, but the soup was a way ... Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
You remembered. You remembered the question.
Chris Wark:
Yeah. The soup was taking the ingredients of the giant cancer fighting salad, because I'm sensitive to the fact that some people, that really is hard for them to eat the same thing every day. Maybe I had as stronger motivation than other people, but for me, it was like, I don't care. I'll just eat this every day. I mean, if I was convinced that tree bark would cure my cancer, I would just eat tree bark. You know what I mean?
Rip Esselstyn:
But the reality is, but look at that photo and look at all the different things that are in there, and between your anti-cancer vinegarette dressing and your sprinkles, I mean, it's what I do every morning with my Big Bowl Cereal. I do it, and I've been doing it for 30 something years, and I never get tired of it.
Chris Wark:
Right. The soup, again, back to the soup, is that salad, it's like almost all of those salad ingredients are lightly cooked in a special, fresh, homemade vegetable broth. The recipe is in the cookbook as well. It's really great in the winter months. It's just lightly cooked to preserve the nutrients and warmed up in this delicious broth, and so you're getting all that food in, but it's warm. It's not a cold salad in January.
Rip Esselstyn:
Nice, nice. Let's jump into part two, and these are recipes for prevention. I just want to call out some ones that I'm looking at and I'm going, oh my gosh. You have this jalapeno strawberry avocado toast.
Chris Wark:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
I've never, ever considered that combination before. And I look at it, and I'm like, I want some of that right this second.
Chris Wark:
Yep. That was a very fun one to come up with. It's for the foodies. Jalapenos and strawberry on avocado toast with hummus. Yeah, it's awesome. It's so good. I mean, it's just different and delicious and it lights you up, lights up your taste buds. It's got that, the sweetness and the tart, and then the spice of the jalapenos. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
It lights you right up. Then of course, the foodie in me, and I love pancakes. You got to carrot cake pancake with a cashew maple syrup. I mean, your daughters must go crazy over that on Sundays and Saturdays.
Chris Wark:
The carrot cake pancakes were awesome too. This was inspired by the fact that I get asked for again, a decade, people are asking, what do you do with all the pulp from your juicer? We figured out that you can take the pulp, if you just juice carrots, you take the carrot pulp and you can make these insanely delicious pancakes with the carrot pulp. Then if you're okay with having a little cashews, now and again, having some nuts. Yeah, there we go is a picture of it. Yeah. cashew butter and maple syrup together is kind of just knock your socks off topping for the carrot cake pancakes.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Then you have a whole section on salads. I'm wondering, I mean, there must be at least 12 of these salads in there. Do you ever deviate from your giant cancer fighting salad and do one of these prevention style salads?
Chris Wark:
Yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I'm not as hardcore now, so I don't eat the giant cancer fighting salad twice a day, every day anymore. I think my approach was when I was in hardcore healing mode, that's basically all I ate. Then as I got well, it's like, okay, cool. We can lighten up a little bit. We can have fun with plant food and not be obsessively focused with having every single anti-cancer nutrient in every meal. But yeah, there are some delicious. I mean, we got this-
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, look at this one. This is the pear and pomegranate one right here.
Chris Wark:
Yeah. Pear and pomegranate and salad with arugula and pomegranate arils. That's really good. We've got a dandelion apple goji salad, so with dandelion greens.
Rip Esselstyn:
There it is right here. There it is right there.
Chris Wark:
Yeah. Dandelion greens, which are a super nutritious green. It's a weed, right? It's growing in your yard and you can ... This is an edible green, and they're a little bit bitter, and so we paired that with the apple and goji berries, and it just makes this perfect, sort of synergy of sweet and a little bitterness. It's really cool.
Rip Esselstyn:
Then you got soups and sides. This time of year, I'm a huge fan of soups. In fact, we just launched a line of chilies and stews. And one of them is, we call it a Khichari, it's an Indian lentil stew, but that's your first recipe in this section, is a Indian stew. What really caught me was you talk about how it's got sweetness, spices, it's savory, and you even got the option to add dried cherries in there.
Chris Wark:
Yeah. That stew, with the cherries, oh man, the cherries make it. Just make it ... Yeah, thanks for holding it up. We just call it the Indian stew, but yeah. I love cuisine from around the world, and my wife does too. We love Thai and Asian cuisine. We love Indian cuisine. We love South American, Costa Rican cuisine, and Ethiopian. So, there are definitely a lot of recipes in there that are inspired by some of the staple dishes from those parts of the world that are so good. The spices are really what make a dish so unique, and fun, and flavorful. Yeah, it's great.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. For example, on this collared and cashew sweet potato, how do you pronounce that?
Chris Wark:
Tagine.
Rip Esselstyn:
Tagine.
Chris Wark:
That's a North African stew.
Rip Esselstyn:
I feel so uncultured not being able to pronounce that correctly.
Chris Wark:
The Tagine, the Tagine. Yeah, that's a North African sweet potato stew that we kind of added our own twist to. That's been a staple in our house for a long time. We've been eating that, that sweet potatoes stew. It's so good.
Rip Esselstyn:
And you've got a harissa in here, which you say is a Moroccan spice mixture, typically consisting of garlic, cumin, paprika, and coriander. I mean, ah, that just ... You had me at, well, you had me at garlic, but ...
Chris Wark:
Yeah. I ask a hundred people if know what harissa tastes like.
Rip Esselstyn:
We actually have-
Chris Wark:
I think we're going to get a hundred nos.
Rip Esselstyn:
I know. Then like this tempeh black bean chili, I'm actually right now looking for new chili recipes. So, I'm going to definitely have fun making this one.
Chris Wark:
That's a fun one. Yep. We substituted, obviously tempeh was our substitution for ground beef. Because you can make chili with just a bunch of beans, and it can be great, but we were also trying to get a little bit more texture in it. Yeah, the tempeh worked really well.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yep. I think one of the most popular vegetables these days, because it's so versatile and it is a cruciferous vegetable, which you mentioned at the top of the show is cauliflower. Here's a curried cauliflower soup that, oh my gosh, it looks so incredible.
Chris Wark:
Love curries. That soup's got some raisins in it that give it a little sweetness. Yeah, it's good.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Now, I'm going to move on to the mains, and I'm going to go here. I want to go to page 128, because you got in here, you've got, I mean, everything, but you did something here that I can't wait to try. It's jerk pineapple steaks.
Chris Wark:
Oh yeah. Yeah, buddy.
Rip Esselstyn:
Pineapple. So, your steaks are your pineapples, right?
Chris Wark:
Yeah. You got the beans and rice, and then you got pineapple steaks in there. Again, that's our nod to Jamaican cuisine, and it's got the jerk spicing and yeah, it's tasty. That's a fan favorite.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yep. Your chili peppers, garlic, allspice, nutmeg, ginger. I mean, to me, I'm just reading this going, this is how you beat cancer.
Chris Wark:
Yeah. I mean, nutrient dense food, fruits and vegetables, and then loaded with spices. I mean, that's really the secret formula. Because spices are so potent, they're so concentrated with antioxidants and anti-cancer compounds, and you pair those, and they're delicious, and they make food fun. When you pair those with whole plant foods, especially the ones, and all fruits and vegetables are wonderful. Right? They're all wonderful. But especially the ones that have higher levels of the known anti-cancer compounds. Yeah, that's the formula. For every recipe, that's what we were thinking about and making sure that it wasn't just something that had no value.
Chris Wark:
You can't even say that, I mean, an apple has a tremendous value. It doesn't need anything else. I could just make a recipe book, and each page is just like apples, blueberries. That would be sufficient, but anyway, this is a little more fun.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, it is. And one of the things that I haven't had in a long time that I'm craving, now that I'm looking at it in this form, is cabbage roast.
Chris Wark:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
I don't eat enough cabbage. And the way this is prepared with the baby, I mean, yeah, the baby cold potatoes, the onions, the cremini mushrooms has just got me wanting to go home and make this tonight.
Chris Wark:
That's good. It's got this really good sort of Au jus that makes it very, very savory and delicious.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Then I'm looking at tamale pie here, but one of the things we did, just two nights ago, is we made do it yourself. That's what DIY stands for, right? Do it yourself.
Chris Wark:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Rip Esselstyn:
Do it yourself sushi tacos. I love the way you have laid out all the different ingredients and then people can customize it, which is brilliant. The asparagus and the kimchi.
Chris Wark:
Yeah. Well, the sushi tacos was cool. Because we did ... We're using Nori sheets instead of ... So, sushi's rolled up in Nori. But you can take the Nori and just cut it into small sheets, and then just fold it up like a little taco, put your rice and your stuff in it. Yeah, so they're like little Nori tacos.
Rip Esselstyn:
I love that as opposed to rolling the whole thing, then cutting it up.
Chris Wark:
Yeah. It's just quick. I should say this, but it really was important to me, because I'm not a cook, and that the recipes were easy, that they didn't take long to make. Now, they may have a lot of ingredients, and a lot of spices and different vegetable combinations, but they had to be very easy to make and quick to make. Because look, I understand, life's busy. It's hard to find time to cook healthy meals. So, there's nothing complicated. There's nothing elaborate in the book. I'm not trying to show off. If we show off, it's in spicing and in that kind of stuff, but we're not showing off in complicated master chef level cooking skills.
Rip Esselstyn:
Have you tried, or I should say, are you a fan of the world's best mushroom oat burger? Because I love burgers and I'm always looking for a really good one, and this looks extraordinary.
Chris Wark:
I really want to hear your feedback on this, because everyone that makes it is like, whoa, this thing is great. Mushroom and oats, because you think, okay, a plant based burger, are we going to use like black beans? That's the sort typical, and it's good, and there's a lot of bean type burgers. But yeah, this one, we actually use mushrooms and oats to make the patty. It's amazing. And mushrooms and oats are both really potent immune supporting and immune boosting foods, because they're rich in beta-glucans. Yeah, it was just really cool to come up with that.
Rip Esselstyn:
You also mentioned here aromatase, which is an enzyme that converts testosterone into estrogen in the body and how white mushrooms can suppress that.
Chris Wark:
That's right. Mushrooms are incredible for women's health, especially endometrial health, because they are natural aromatase inhibitors. So, if you have an estrogen driven cancer, like breast cancer, for example, mushrooms are incredible to help get your estrogen down. In fact, just one story. There's a woman who works for me who found me years ago, and in following my protocol, in a one year period, her estrogen went from 80, her blood work estrogen, 80, which is crazy high, down to three in a year. That's just from eating whole plant foods, tons of vegetables, fresh fruit, and yes, lots of mushrooms.
Rip Esselstyn:
And she probably dropped all the dairy while she was doing that.
Chris Wark:
Oh for sure. Oh yeah. No, she cut out all the animal food. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Which is loaded with estrogens. But that's one of the things that I'm adoring about your book, is how, on each recipe, you also, when it makes sense, you support how this ingredient or this spice actually helps beat cancer, like you did with the aromatase there. This bean bread pesto pizza, I want you to know that you had me when you said chickpeas and rice are put together to make the crust. For those that like gluten free, this is a great gluten free. Then look at that. There's no cheese. You don't even have the fake diet cheese on there, which I am ... this is the kind of pizza that attracts my attention.
Chris Wark:
Yeah. It's delicious. The crust is a homemade crust with ... We call it bean bread, but it's made with chickpeas and rice, and it's delicious. You can make that. There's another recipe in the book, just to make the bread, because it's a really tasty, flat, breaded by itself. So, you can just make it as a flat bread that's a legume-based flat bread, or you can use it as the crust for the pizza.
Rip Esselstyn:
And you have a whole section on, and this has been one of my foundational meals, veggie bowls, and veggie bowl staples. You have a whole section on that. The thing that you did that I've never seen before in a cookbook was the way you did these bowls with these clear ceramic bowls so you can see everything that's inside of it, not just what's on top of it. Brilliant, brilliant move.
Chris Wark:
Credit goes to Justin Fox Burks, our photographer. That was his idea.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's spectacular.
Chris Wark:
Yep. He's a brilliant photographer. And he made all the recipes look amazing.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. Well, I'm moving on to the sweets, one of my weaknesses. I got to tell you, my all time, number one dessert in the whole wide world is mango with sticky rice. Your first recipe in this section was your mango and forbidden rice. I'm like, oh my gosh.
Chris Wark:
We did the forbidden rice, which if folks don't know, this is also called black rice. Black rice is the highest antioxidant rice because of its color, the anthocyanins that determine the color of the rice. So, there are these little simple shifts and substitutions that you can make and that we make in a lot of the recipes, where it's like, how can we up the game on this? So, you could do white rice, but black rice, more nutrition.
Rip Esselstyn:
And you actually suggest making this with the maple ginger lime drizzle.
Chris Wark:
Yeah. The forbidden rice, call it mango with the maple. Yeah, that maple ginger lime drizzle is unbelievable. It's really good.
Rip Esselstyn:
Now, in talking about super antioxidants, like you're going to get with the black rice, you turn the next page and you get the purple. Not like normal orange, but purple sweet potato pies with an almond date crumble. I mean, ah, I need to come over to your house for a month and you need to serve me.
Chris Wark:
It makes me so happy to see how excited you are about these.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, I am.
Chris Wark:
These are right up your alley obviously.
Rip Esselstyn:
No, they are. They all are. Then this one, this Mexican chocolate hummus that's made with chickpeas, dates, the zest of, I think an orange or lime, and then you got cayenne pepper in there as well. I love the creativity and how everything is combined here. It's nutty. I'm not done. Then you have the last section in the book is plant-based basics. For example, you have this super sofrito, it's almost like a salsa of sorts.
Chris Wark:
That's right.
Rip Esselstyn:
Let me see if I can find it here, but what I love oh, guac of the ages,
Chris Wark:
Guac of ages.
Rip Esselstyn:
Who doesn't love guac, right?
Chris Wark:
Yep.
Rip Esselstyn:
But the super sofrito, you refer to how there was a Puerto Rican study with women and it showed there was a 67% less risk of breast cancer, I think because of the garlic and the onions, and the anti-cancer effect that they had as opposed to the women that weren't eating this regularly. Again, you give all these great little studies and stats and things.
Chris Wark:
Yeah. That study, when I came across, it really was ... It was exciting, kind of blew my mind that they had even thought to study this. But they looked at women. Obviously you had a team of researchers that knew that garlic and onions are very potent anti-cancer foods. They came into it with that knowledge. Then they identified that sofrito is this Latin American, Puerto Rican condiment that is basically garlic and onions with some other little stuff in there, and it can vary, but it's lots of garlic and onions.
Chris Wark:
Yeah, they decided, well, why don't we see if there's any difference in the risk of breast cancer for women that consume the most sofrito and women who don't consume it. Yeah, it was like 67% decreased risk of breast cancer in the women that consumed the most sofrito, like several times a week, I think. And like, hello, this is an incredible anti-cancer condiment that you can make up and you can add to all sorts of vegetable dishes. It's like a salsa. It's like a salsa.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Then piggyback on that study, you also referenced a Chinese study that show 79% decreased in colorectal cancer with women that did this regularly because of the garlic, the onions, and the leeks.
Chris Wark:
Garlic, onions, and leeks. Again, those are the three, as far as we know, as far as I know, and as far as I've seen in the scientific literature, those are the three most potent anti-cancer foods. Garlic, onions, and leeks. None of those foods constitute a meal. You know what I mean? Like, a potato, that could be a meal, but a garlic, I don't think so. Onion, yeah, maybe you could snack on an onion. They do in some countries.
Rip Esselstyn:
We just made an onion soup the other day that was outstanding.
Chris Wark:
Yeah. Okay. Onion soup, you can pull that off, but those are really, they're almost condiment vegetables. And they can be added to so many recipes to increase this anti-cancer potential. These are foods that Americans just aren't consuming enough of. We don't consume enough anti-cancer vegetables and spices. When you look around the world, the countries with the lowest rates of cancer have several things in common. One, typically much lower animal protein consumption, and two, much higher spice consumption.
Chris Wark:
Those spicy vegetables, so the garlic, the wasabi, the onions, and then all of the cayenne peppers, all the peppers, right? The hot peppers and curries, and ginger, right? All of these really rich and spicy condiments and spicy vegetable, along with the cruciferous vegetables, and not eating a bunch of processed food, junk food, meat, and dairy. Those are very strong correlators to low rates of cancer. Again, that's what I was doing to help myself heal. We were very deliberate about injecting as much anti-cancer potential into every recipe in this book.
Rip Esselstyn:
How long did it take you guys to kind of, from start to finish, to finish the book?
Chris Wark:
It was about a year. It was about a year and I had two books going at the same time. We could have made it happen a lot faster, but I wrote ... I started two books in 2020, and the first one, this one here is called Beat Cancer Daily.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, nice.
Chris Wark:
This is like a daily reader, like a daily, and so it's one page per day for 365. I wrote that just as a way for a person who's going through the cancer journey to get daily encouragement and inspiration and practical tips from me, just reminding them, stay on the path. Reminding them to forgive, reminding them to pay attention to stress in their life, reminding them to keep their focus in the right place. Anyway, that was a really fun book to write, but I started them at the same time. And then I was like, I can't do both of these books at the same time. But anyway, Beat Cancer Daily came out the end of 2020, and then Beat Cancer Kitchen came out in November.
Rip Esselstyn:
What did you do with all the ... I know, from doing four books and every one of them having a lot of recipes in them, that you ... What do you do with all the leftovers, the batches that don't work out well? Do you feed them to Gus, or Cash, or your daughter?
Chris Wark:
Yeah. I would say there's 125 recipes in this book, and there were probably a hundred and maybe yeah, between 140 to 150 recipes total. There's, yeah, I don't know, 20 or so recipes that didn't make the cut. So, we ate them. We ate them, but it was just like, yeah, no, this is not good enough. Not good enough for the book, but they were all edible.
Rip Esselstyn:
Is Gus your hound dog. Does he eat scrap?
Chris Wark:
Yeah. Is he what?
Rip Esselstyn:
Does he eat some of the scraps from your-
Chris Wark:
He eats food pretty much every day. I mean, my wife literally puts vegetables. She just feeds him vegetables a lot, and she does feed him ground beef, I mean, he is a dog, and then sometimes dog food. But yeah, he eats a lot of vegetables. He eats more vegetables than I think anybody else's dog I know.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, Chris, this cookbook is doing really, really well as well. I mean, you've got over 254 stars on Amazon, five star reviews. It's like number one in breast cancer books, number one in cancer cookbooks. So, it's obviously ... Listen, I don't do this very often where I go through a book like this and call out the recipes in as detail as I have. But it just goes to show you this is resonating with people. And as soon as I took a look at it, I was like, I want to have you on the show again, because it is such a strong piece of work, and there's so much love and thought that went into it. Man, huge congratulations on what you and your wife have pulled off here.
Chris Wark:
Thank you, Rip. That really means a lot coming from you. I'm obviously a huge fan of you and all your work and your books. Yeah, we put a lot of love into it and a lot of thought. As you mentioned, throughout the book, we have sprinkled in anti-cancer factoids about different foods and different spices. I had to scratch that like educational itch that I have, where I was like, I can't just do a cookbook. I have to be sharing something interesting along with ... Because that's really what gets my juices going, like developing recipes and making cookbook, to me, it was harder than writing my other books. You think, it was just recipes, but it was harder.
Chris Wark:
Because I love to teach, and a recipe is not really teaching. You know what I mean? I like to learn and research and then share that. Anyway, so, we were able to do both with this book, like combine, bring in the research that makes it kind of fun and interesting and reinforces the evidence behind eating this way. So, a person really can ... they don't have to just ... Well, I guess it's healthy. No, no, look, there's research, there's science, there's studies.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, it is deep.
Chris Wark:
The hardest thing, and I'll just say, and I know we're probably running out of time or over time, but, and this is mainly for folks in your audience that have cancer, or maybe they're trying to heal a chronic health challenge, the biggest thing is believing you can get well. That is the biggest thing. It's the number one thing in your journey. If you're going to change your life, I mean, the very first thing is you have to believe that healing is possible. For me, my mission is obviously to inspire people and get them to that place of belief.
Chris Wark:
That's not just my story. I know my story helps, but also it's bringing in the evidence, the science, the research, the studies on the power of nutrition, right? So, you can couple that with, hey, here are some survivors that I've interviewed in my story and lots of others who have healed, and hey, here's the science and the evidence that supports that food can help you heal, that changing your life can help you radically reverse disease. Everything I do is to that end, right? It's just to inspire that one belief that a person can get well, and then from there, give them the confidence to take action.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. I'm just looking behind you right now at your books, like Chris Beat Cancer, Beat Cancer Daily, Beat Cancer Kitchen. And if I'm not mistaken, cancer is pretty darn close right now to overtaking heart disease, and it's like the number one killer in this country. Man, there's never been a better time for people to embrace your message, your books, your podcast, everything that you got going on right now, because I think that you have, in some ways, found a really powerful tool that people can latch onto, and beat this thing. So, man, way to go.
Chris Wark:
Power is the operating word, I think, because so many people feel powerless. They feel, they've been led to believe that they're just a victim of disease, and that they're powerless, that there's nothing they can do to help themselves. Like the story you told earlier where the person's doctor said, "Oh, that won't work. There's nothing you can do. You need medication for the rest of your life, or whatever." Restoring a person's power is ... That's the ultimate goal. Their belief system, like I said earlier, I mean, it just dovetails right into that.
Chris Wark:
Because once a person realizes they have the power to change their life and that their choices matter, and that the choices they make today can change their future, can improve their life and their health. Man, I mean, you've got this explosive synergy of all those things coming together in somebody's life. So, I know that's what you're all about too. It's like you're restoring hope and faith and confidence and power to people, and that they don't have to be a victim of disease, that they can actually improve their life.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, and just to continue with that theme a little bit, in your first book, you address the limitations right now of conventional medicine. And that's the thing that, to me, is so really upsetting, is that most people, they go to their traditional doctors, and whether it's your heart doctor, or your cancer doctor, or your diabetes doctor, and most of these doctors are not giving you the correct prescription so that these patients of theirs can get to the root causation of what's going on.
Rip Esselstyn:
What I love that you just said is, what you're doing, what I'm doing, what I learned from my father, Dean Ornish, John McDougall, every one of us, is we're giving people hope, right? Because this is not a death sentence. This doesn't mean that you can't actually halt this, prevent this, or in some cases, reverse this, what's been going on. I love what you said there.
Chris Wark:
Well, the ultimate hope is that spark, what I call the spark of hope is believing you can get well. When they get that little spark of hope, and they say, "Wait a minute, if that person healed, maybe I can heal." Then from there again, I'm just trying to feed that ... Fan those flames. Just fan those flames of hope and get them fired up so that they'll actually start changing their life, they'll change their diet, they'll start exercising, they'll to look inside and address their fears, and their flaws, and their failures.
Chris Wark:
They'll forgive people who've hurt them and let go of that anger and bitterness. These are things that are so powerful, not just for cancer patients, for humans. If you're willing to be honest with yourself and if you're willing to look in the mirror and say, "Okay, my life and my health is my responsibility. The buck stops here." If you're willing to do that, then, I mean, you have unlimited potential to improve your life. to me, that's an exciting message. I do have great empathy for doctors because they're trapped in a system that's so terrible and it gives them very little ... It's so rigid that it has become a prison.
Chris Wark:
The parameters of medicine are so rigid that doctors don't have freedom to practice. They're just stuck in a set of rules that are unfortunately, mostly created to drive pharmaceutical sales. They're not trained in lifestyle medicine and nutrition. The heroes, as you mentioned, my heroes are the medical doctors who have taken, on their own time, have taken the big, dive into the scientific literature and educated themselves, and then started changing their patient's lives through diet, through lifestyle intervention, and then reporting back to people like me.
Chris Wark:
I mean, that's who taught me everything I know. I'm just listening to doctors and scientists and researchers. Obviously I learned things from my life experience, but most of what I've learned that supports what I did, it came from doctors. Dr. McDougall, like you said, Dr. Bernie Siegel, what an amazing guy that he is. Dean Ornish, your father. Joel Kahn. I mean, just it's a huge list, right? Huge list of MDs that I'm so thankful for. And I think, even better than me, I'm constantly interviewing doctors like that, and pointing people to them.
Chris Wark:
It's just, here's more evidence. Here are people, if you don't think I have enough credentials, which I have zero, let's go listen to these people. You don't have to listen to me. Listen to these doctors and scientists. If you need credentials, they will tell you the same things I'm telling you. So anyway.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, but you do it in a really engaging, very fun way. For people that want to know more about you and everything you're doing, where can they go?
Chris Wark:
Well, chrisbeatcancer.com is where you can find me. And I've interviewed dozens and dozens of doctors and PhD researchers on nutrition and health and longevity. I've interviewed dozens and dozens of long-term cancer survivors who've healed against the odds doing basically the same things I did, taking a holistic approach to health. There's a lot of articles and videos and stuff on there. I mean, it's just, it's a free resource, and it's been going for over 11 years. That's the best place to find me. And again, thanks for having me on. Thanks for the shout out, mentioning my books and taking time to share some of the recipes, talk about some of the recipes in the cookbook. I mean, I appreciate you so much. You're doing such awesome work and you've impacted the lives of countless people in such a positive way. Yeah. It's great to be on the same team.
Rip Esselstyn:
It is. Well, Chris, it's been two years. Well, it hasn't really been two years, because I think ...
Chris Wark:
That was in February.
Rip Esselstyn:
It was in February, but I also-
Chris Wark:
Close enough.
Rip Esselstyn:
But I also saw you, not in person, but I saw you in this kind of virtual world, because you were part of Plant-Stock in 2020, I believe it was.
Chris Wark:
Yep. I think that was ... Yeah, I have the t-shirt, so yeah, it was 2020. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Exactly.
Chris Wark:
Any plans for a ...
Rip Esselstyn:
For what?
Chris Wark:
For another Plant-Stock, another live in-person?
Rip Esselstyn:
We're figuring that one out. Right now, this year, 2022 ...
Chris Wark:
Still tricky.
Rip Esselstyn:
You know what? We're just taking it a day at a time right now. But the thing that is so terrific, now that you mentioned it, about doing a virtual Plant-Stock, is that now we have the ability to reach literally 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 people, whereas when we do the live event, we were kind of limited to about 700, unless we figure out a way to do the live event and then also broadcast that out.
Chris Wark:
Yeah, totally. I think the hybrid is the way to go. Because it's just great to be in person. I mean, it's just, it's great to be able to connect and meet with people in person and have that personal interaction. That's so, as you know, I mean, you've done it, you know how that is.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well-
Chris Wark:
Then also to be able to reach so many more people that can't make it in person. I think that's the secret sauce, man, is ...
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, you're exactly right. I mean, we hadn't done one of our smaller, more intimate medical immersions, where we usually have 70 to 90 people in almost two years. And we did one in October, in Sedona, and it was magical. Everybody was just so ready to bust loose and to meet live with like-minded people. So, we've started those again, actually.
Chris Wark:
Humans are starving for connection, man.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Chris Wark:
We need it. We need connection. We need each other. We can't all live in bubbles on the internet.
Rip Esselstyn:
No.
Chris Wark:
As fun as this is, it's great. I love hanging with you over Zoom, but yeah, we need .... It's one of those things that I think they're just figuring this out, right? It's like, because of all this stuff that's happened, researchers are starting to pay more attention, psychologists. Like, okay we can't live this way. It's making people crazy, and depressed, and discouraged, and hopeless. We got to get through this, and we need each other.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, it was absolutely wonderful connecting you today, Chris, and thank you for the spark that you've brought to the world around beating cancer. It is important, and you're doing it in a wonderful way.
Chris Wark:
Thank you, Rip.
Rip Esselstyn:
All right, Chris Beat Cancer. Yes, indeed. All right. Hey, I will see you soon, my PLANTSTRONG brother.
Chris Wark:
Thank you, Rip. This was fun.
Rip Esselstyn:
You have to believe that healing is possible. I love that quote from Chris and I hope that after today's interview, you believe it as well. For more information on today's episode, visit the episode page at plantstrongpodcast.com. We'll see y'all next week. And until then, keep it PLANTSTRONG. 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 true 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. Cadlwell B. Esselstyn, Jr. and Ann Crile Esselstyn Thanks for listening.
