Jessica Newman has heard it all.
When patients tell her that adding more plants to their diets is too difficult, she’s got a ready retort. As a physician assistant with Novant Health Davie Medical Associates in Mocksville, North Carolina, and a certified lifestyle medicine professional, she’s gentle about it.
“We all have food choices to make, and they should be informed choices,” Newman said. “People deserve to know how food impacts their health, and I feel that’s my job.”
She’s a persuasive ambassador for eating a plant-based diet, although she’s not out to convert anyone.
“Getting patients to become fully plant-based isn’t my goal,” she said. “Any movement toward getting more plants in your diet will have tremendous health impacts. The more plants you eat, the greater the health benefits. Whether you completely stop eating animal products is not the primary goal of our food discussions.”
Plants – vegetables, fruits, beans, lentils, nuts, seeds and whole grains – are dense in nutrients. Their reds, yellows, greens and browns correspond to vitamins, minerals and antioxidants in the food. By eating a wide diversity of color, you’re getting a wide diversity of nutrients.
There’s a laundry list of health conditions that a plant-based diet may help you avoid. “Beefing up” your plant intake may reduce your risk for dementia, anxiety, depression and mood disorders, chronic fatigue, arthritis, joint pain, skin disorders, the list goes on.
Antioxidants, which plants have in spades, help reduce inflammation. That, in turn, helps prevent cancer, diverticulosis, hypertension, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, heart attacks, strokes.
Good health starts with a visit to a primary care physician for a checkup.
Newman is never preachy; she aims to educate – both overtly and subtly. Below her email signature are these words: “Eat Plants. Keep Moving. Sleep Well. Be Present. Stay Calm. Love People.”
Her focus on lifestyle medicine brings an added dimension to her practice. She described that as “a specialty that uses evidence-based research to promote the six pillars of lifestyle medicine to prevent, treat and, if used intensively, even reverse chronic diseases.”
Too often, people are overly concerned about genetics, Newman said, adding that the focus is misplaced. “Our health outcomes are only about 10% attributable to genetics,” she said. Lifestyle medicine emphasizes areas of our health we can control: nutrition, physical activity, stress management, social connections/relationships, restorative sleep and avoiding risky substances.
You can’t ignore the evidence
Newman grew up on Southern cuisine, but when she went through lifestyle medicine training and saw the numerous studies on the health benefits of eating a plant-based diet, she altered her diet. “I haven’t had meat in three years,” she said. “I still have eggs, cheese and dairy, on occasion, but I limit that. I try to avoid overly processed food, but I’m a busy working mom, so I don’t have a perfectionist attitude around my nutrition plan.”
When the family chef eliminated meat from her diet, everyone followed suit. “When I started cooking this way, my husband and our kids – who are 6 and 9 now – really enjoyed these new recipes,” she said. “I don’t restrict my children. My son eats what he wants at school, and when we go to restaurants, he picks what he eats. If he wants a cheeseburger, I don't make it a thing.”
When patients tell Newman – as they often do – that eating more plants poses too big a burden, they cite five main reasons. All are myths, Newman said. The misconceptions – and her counterarguments – are below.
5 misconceptions about a plant-based diet
1. If I’m talking to you about eating more plants, I’m trying to convert you to veganism or vegetarianism.
Not so. Let’s ditch the labels; they’re not helpful. Any move away from the standard American diet – which we call the SAD diet, for good reason – is beneficial. The SAD diet is high in fat, sugar and ultra-processed foods, and Americans have some of the worst health outcomes in the world. If you can add veggies to lunch and dinner and you weren’t doing that before, that’s a win.
2. It’s not convenient.
You grab a honey bun for breakfast, a pack of crackers for lunch – our culture has conditioned us to believe these ultra-processed foods are convenient. But you know what’s not convenient? Feeling tired and run down. Having joint pain and losing your endurance for day-to-day activities. Developing a chronic disease that sends you to a doctor every three months. Taking 10 medications. We must shift from the idea of short-term convenience and think long-term.
Eating more plants can be convenient:
- When you buy grapes or berries, pick a day of the week for meal prep and wash them all. Pull the grapes off their stems and stick them in a Tupperware. Now they’re grab-and-go. Same with your berries.
- Roast a large tray of broccoli, and now it’s grab-and-go for lunches.
- Instead of making one instant brown rice, make three and refrigerate them. Now, you can make burrito bowls all at once.
- Make your own veggie trays: Wash bell peppers, carrots, celery, cucumbers and radishes, for example, cut them up and have them ready to go for snacks with dips or salad bowls.
When patients tell me they’re too busy, I tell them it’s worth the time investment. If there are time barriers, then give up something – binge-watching TV, scrolling on your phone – to prioritize your health.
3. It’s more expensive.
Best doctors. Amazing nurses. Remarkable care.
I hear this one daily. But studies have shown that plant-based diets are typically about 25% less expensive than a typical omnivore diet. It’s totally doable to eat well on a budget. Meat, cheese and dairy are very expensive now, as are ultra-processed foods. A family-sized bag of Doritos is about $7, but organic spinach is about $3 at certain stores.
There isn’t a huge nutritional difference among fresh, canned and frozen fruits and vegetables. You can mix and match fresh produce for the week, cans for the pantry and bags of frozen veggies and fruits to stay on budget. If we lived on a compound and grew our own organic vegetables and fruits, that’d be one thing. But we live in the real world.
A few ways to eat healthfully without busting your budget:
- Buy the amount of fresh produce your family can eat in a week so it doesn’t go bad.
- Stock your pantry with inexpensive power foods – canned black beans, garbanzo beans, butter beans, diced tomatoes, instant bags of brown rice or quinoa, old-fashioned oatmeal. These are some of the healthiest foods on the planet – and among the most inexpensive.
- When you buy canned, look for low-sodium options. If you can’t find them, rinse the veggies or beans to get rid of extra salt.
- Buy steamable bags of veggies and frozen fruit. Because they were flash frozen, they retain a lot of nutrients. When it comes to the nutrient value of food, fresh is always best. The sooner you buy it after picking, the better.
- Shop at your local farmers market for what’s in season.
- Choose whole grain bread and pasta.
- Nuts and seeds are a little pricier, so look for sales and stock up when you find them. You can freeze nuts and seeds for up to 12 months.
4. It doesn’t taste as good.
Eating a largely plant-based diet doesn’t mean you’re only eating salads. Veggies, fruits, legumes, lentils, whole grains, nuts and seeds, give you a world of variety. There are so many ways to eat plants. Get creative and think bigger! Think: veggie lasagna, black bean burrito bowls, polenta crostini with chickpea pesto and tomatoes. If it’s been some time since you ate some of those, you may have forgotten how enjoyable it is to have all those colors, flavors and textures in your diet. She often hears from her patients, “Well, I used to really enjoy eating that way.”
5. I don’t know how.
When you break it down, people realize it’s easier than they thought. It shouldn’t be a burden. I tell patients: I’m not here to restrict your diet; I’m here to expand it. When people get into a fast-food rut, they’re consuming soda, French fries and burgers; that’s a very restricted diet. I want to add foods to your diet – not take them away.
She makes it sound simple. And it is, she promised: “You can make little swaps to power up your plate without changing much about your routine.”
Newman cited three meals many families enjoy regularly – taco night, Sunday breakfast and a spaghetti supper – and shared ways each one can be powered up with plants with minimal effort.
Make “Taco Tuesday” plant-powered by:
- Going meatless. Try sauteed onions, bell peppers, spinach, zucchini and beans instead of ground meat.
- Using whole wheat or corn tortillas.
- Using avocado instead of sour cream or cheese. (Do you really need all three fats?)
- Trying scrambled, sauteed tofu with taco seasoning. Tofu is soybeans. It feels exotic to many of us in the South, but soybeans are grown in North Carolina. I recommend organic extra-firm tofu; it’s about $3.
- Chopping or grating add-ons like lettuce, roasted corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, radishes, mangoes, pineapple, pickled onion, purple cabbage and more.
- Experimenting with different salsas to add flavor.
A classic Sunday breakfast is pancakes with butter and syrup, scrambled eggs with cheese and pork sausage. You can make it plant-powered by:
- Adding fruit salad.
- Replacing the pork sausage with sliced tomato or zucchini fritters.
- Adding onions, peppers, spinach and black beans to your eggs.
- Adding fiber by having whole wheat – not white – toast.
- Making whole-grain waffles or pancakes. Extra fiber is a win for your health.
For a plant-powered spaghetti supper, consider:
- Powering up your plate with a side salad or roasted veggies such as Brussels sprouts or asparagus.
- Making a veggie Bolognese. Blend onions, bell peppers, mushrooms and spinach in a food processor. Cook them down in a pot, add a jar of tomato sauce and you’ve now hidden four extra veggies in your spaghetti sauce. It is a delicious, rich, textured sauce packed with flavor!
- Trying your spaghetti sauce over zucchini noodles or spaghetti squash for added flavor, texture and fiber.
Lastly, pay attention to portion sizes. A serving of lean protein should be palm-sized, and half your plate should contain veggies or fruit. Round it out with a fist size of a fiber-filled carbohydrate like brown rice, quinoa or potatoes.
Class is in session
For Jessica Newman, patient education is a key part of the job
Jessica Newman tells her patients, “There are no moral characterizations around food; it’s neither good nor bad.”
“Just because someone chooses not to eat animals doesn’t mean they’re a good person,” she added. “I try to take the moral context out of our food choices.”
She does encourage patients to eat fewer processed foods. And she educates them on why that’s smart.
There are different levels of processing, and Newman advocates focusing on limiting – or eliminating – ultra-processed foods from our diets.
“That’s a scientific term referring to foods conjured up by food scientists and mass produced in a factory,” she said. “These are foods you couldn’t reproduce in your own kitchen – Oreos, Cheetos, sodas, Pop-Tarts. They tend to be dense in calories, salt, fat and sugar, and very low, or even null, in nutrient value. You could live off Cheetos, but there’d be health consequences to that choice.”
There are loads of misconceptions Newman addresses with patients.
- Avoiding fruit is one of them. “People will tell me they didn’t think they were ‘allowed’ to eat fruit because it has sugar,” she said. “No! They’ve been given terrible advice. You can never go wrong when you eat fruit packaged by nature.”
- Some people think carbs are taboo. But, as our body’s primary fuel source, carbs are essential.
- Potatoes, in particular, have been vilified, but they’re an excellent source of vitamins, minerals, fiber, protein and a good source of carbohydrates. They should be eaten in moderation.
- Our culture is obsessed with protein. “It’s an important macronutrient, but Americans don’t have a protein deficiency problem,” Newman said. “We have a fiber deficiency problem. Fully 93% of Americans aren’t getting the recommended daily fiber intake, which leads to loads of health issues from constipation to colon cancer. Plant-forward diets increase your fiber, which helps your body eliminate toxins and function properly.”
Newman doesn’t just recommend examining our diets to see where there’s room for improvement; she explains the science behind her recommendations.
When she advises patients to eat whole foods, she tells them why that’s a good idea. Whole foods are as close to nature as you can get, and they offer the most nutritional impact. Newman uses the analogy of an apple, which is a whole food.
“I can pick an apple off a tree, eat it and get fiber, antioxidants, carbohydrates for energy, vitamins and minerals,” she said. “I can cook that apple and turn it into applesauce but still trace it back to its origin.
“But if I take that applesauce, squeeze the pulp out of it, strain it, add water and sugar, I’ve got apple juice. Most people think juice is another form of fruit, but I maintain it’s sugar. Apple Jacks cereal has apple in the name, but it’s a manufactured food with apple flavoring added. This shows how we can strip the power of nature from our food when we send it down the processing chain.”
She’s a realist. She knows no one’s likely to eat a perfect whole-food, plant-forward diet. And that’s OK. “If 80% of the time you try to eat foods as close to nature as possible, that seems a doable balance,” she said.
Newman empowers people to take charge of their health and their diets. “We all have more control over our health than we often think,” she said. “You don’t always have to turn to medication. Good-for-you food is good medicine.”
