The other day, I impulse-bought a vegan cookbook at Whole Foods. Actually, it had crossed my mind to get a cookbook with a good variety of simple, healthy vegan recipes, and so I thought I would browse a few titles when I was there. I ended up with The Kind Diet, by Alicia Silverstone. The book is colorful and cheerful, and it does have a variety of recipes that look simple and tasty, though I haven't tried any of them yet. I hadn't heard of the author, but it turns out she's a well-known actress (her credits include Clueless); her writing style is friendly and breezy. But a large part of the book is devoted to a sketch of the health, environmental and ethical problems of conventional (omnivorous) diets, and the benefits of a plant-based diet in each of these areas. (This is buttressed by a forward by Neal Barnard MD; Paul McCartney also lends his support in a brief preface.) She describes foods that are "nasty" (meat, dairy and eggs), and foods that are "kind" (whole grains, legumes and veggies). She suggests beginning with modest version of a vegetarian or vegan diet, relying on processed vegan foods (fake meats, frozen pizzas and so forth), and a stricter macrobiotic diet that relies on rice and veggies. She refers to the easier diet as "flirting" with veganism, and the latter as a "superhero" diet, and she gives recipes for each category.
Not everything she says is accurate. She repeats the usual vegetarian claim that humans are naturally vegetarian as shown by our wimpy canine teeth and our lengthy gut. The problem with this claim is that humans have used fire for hundreds of thousands of years to cook food, and our teeth have atrophied as a result---not just our canines but also our plant-grinding molars. (The truth of the matter is that we are naturally omnivorous; our ancestors were hunters.)
But much more serious is her treatment of sugar. She correctly links sugar with cancer, obesity, insulin resistance and diabetes. But she distinguishes sugar (white, refined sugar) from other sweeteners such as maple syrup or rice syrup; she claims these other sweeteners are kind to your body. (She describes these other sweeteners as complex carbohydrates that do not bring the blood sugar up too quickly nor lead to the blood sugar crash that refined sugar does.) In fact, she includes sweets in her list of "kind" foods, and recommends enjoying sweets as a reward for staying on a vegan diet. This advice might be practical for someone trying to cope with cravings for meat or dairy, but hopefully readers who are diabetic will follow the dietary advice of their physicians.
Yet there is much in her book that is very sensible, indeed, compelling. She describes the truly objectionable treatment of animals in modern agriculture. And she sketches the strong scientific evidence that a low-fat diet with no meat and dairy is extremely healthy (lowering risk for cancer, diabetes and especially heart disease). In particular, she mentions the research of Dean Ornish, who demonstrated that a low-fat vegetarian diet can actually reverse heart disease. She also describes the research of T. Colin Campbell, who discovered that the milk protein casein promotes cancer. (But she refers to his research "subjects," without mentioning that they were lab rats, presumably to avoid troubling her readers with any mention of research on animals.) She refers the reader to books such as T. Colin Campbell's The China Study for more information. (That particular book is most compelling as it describes a massive epidemiological study in China that showed how strongly cancer and heart disease are linked to diet; regions where people ate traditional plant-based diets had much lower rates of these diseases.)
So in spite of its flaws, I appreciate the book, if only for the pictures on p. 88 of several "cute boys" who are all vegan ("eye candy for flirts"). However, I'm not sure I will go beyond flirting with veganism; I'm not convinced that it is necessary to give up all meat, dairy or eggs to be healthy. (Years ago, I read a book, The Paleolithic Prescription, which made a good case that an optimal diet and lifestyle is one similar to our prehistoric hunter-gatherer ancestors, which included plenty of low-fat game and lots of aerobic exercise. I haven't followed their diet exactly---it excludes alcohol and dairy---but I have kept up on my running.) But I do want to follow a much more vegan diet, and I hope that The Kind Diet does provide me with some good vegan recipes.