Eric Adams - Healthy at last : a plant-based approach to preventing and reversing diabetes and other chronic illnesses

Praise for

HEALTHY AT LAST

I can personally attest to the truth Eric shares within the pages of Healthy at Last. This book exposes the injustices within our current food system and the evolution from slave food to soul food. It explains how what we eat is killing us and plaguing us with chronic illness, but not without offering a clear path forward toward eating to live and providing you with the tools necessary to take it. Erics book will empower you to change your life and the lives of those around you.

Rev. Al Sharpton

Heart disease, type 2 diabetes, early-stage prostate cancer, hypertension, and other chronic diseases may often be reversed and prevented by changing diet and lifestyle. In this important and compelling book, Eric Adams describes how. Highly recommended.

Dean Ornish, M.D., the father of lifestyle medicine and author of five New York Times bestsellers including UnDo It

Eric Adams is living proof of the power that a plant-based diet has on the prevention, effective treatment, and even the reversal of type 2 diabetes. In Healthy at Last he delivers practical, life-changing, life-saving recipes for good health.

Dexter W. Shurney, M.D., M.P.H., president of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine

Erics powerful story is so important and contains a message we all need to hear. Healthy at Last will motivate you and give you the tools you need to transform your relationship with food into one that is healing. I full-heartedly recommend this book. Never stop learning.

Papoose, lyricist, entrepreneur, owner of Black Love clothing, and television star

Healthy at Last furthered my appreciation of the power of plants and their ability to prevent and reverse chronic illnesses. The easy, healthy recipes included are amazing! Thank you, Eric, for this gift.

Remy Ma, award-wining rapper

To be healthy, we must educate ourselves on whats harming us and whats not harming us. Healthy at Last will educate and inspire you to take control of your health and change your life.

Fat Joe, rapper and actor

This book will inspire anyone who refuses to surrender to battling diabetes and high blood pressure. Eric is a true example that you can conquer disease with plant-based cooking.

June Ambrose, creative director and author of Effortless Style

Copyright 2020 by Eric Adams

Published in the United States by: Hay House, Inc.: www.hayhouse.com

Indexer: Joan Shapiro

Cover design: Jordon Wannemacher

Interior design: Nick C. Welch

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private useother than for fair use as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviewswithout prior written permission of the publisher.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Adams, Eric, author.

Title: Healthy at last : a plant-based approach to preventing and reversing diabetes and other chronic illnesses / Eric Adams.

Description: 1st edition. | Carlsbad, California : Hay House, Inc., 2020. | Identifiers: LCCN 2020026112 | ISBN 9781401960568 (hardback) | ISBN 9781401960575 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: DiabetesPopular works. | DiabetesDiet therapyPopular works. | DiabetesExercise therapyPopular works. | African AmericansHealth and hygiene. | African AmericansDiseases.

Classification: LCC RC662 .A32 2020 | DDC 616.4/62dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020026112

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4019-6056-8

Audiobook ISBN: 978-1-4019-6073-5

E-book ISBN: 978-1-4019-6057-5

To my mother, Dorothy Adams.
You gave me the gift of life, and
then I gave you the gift of health.

I grew up in Chicagos South Side during the 1960s, a time when most of my friends and family ate what today we call soul food. Think barbequed ribs, pickled pigs feet, macaroni and cheese, fried chicken, and other foods that are deeply rooted in African American culture. These recipes have been passed down from generation to generation since slavery, and have been with us during the best and worst moments in our history. But the origins of soul food are more complicated: On the plantation, these foods were the scraps that white families refused to eat. Our ancestors were forced to make do with food like chitlins (pig intestines), ham hocks, and oxtail. It was up to ingenious Black slaves to find a way to survive.

I was fortunate enough to have a mother who came to see another problematic trait of soul food. When I was 11, she decided to enroll at the local junior college, where she took a biology class that would change our lives. Her professor had read about cholesterol and heart disease and their ties to diet. No one should be eating animal food, he explained, if they want to be healthy. My mom came home from class and announced that we were now vegetarians.

Thanks to that biology class, she learned what we all should have known: soul food is extremely harmful. And not just pork ribs and fried chicken, but all animal products. This is the source of so many African Americans developing premature heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and other chronic diseases.

I embraced my mothers beliefs while learning the rudiments of cardiac pathology in medical school during the 1970s, and then cardiology training in the 1980s. As I discovered the innerworkings of the heart, I learned just how right my mother was all those years ago. Cooking and eating animalsespecially in the unhealthy ways of the soul-food traditionhas helped African Americans become the sickest demographic in the country.

By the early 2000s there was extensive medical literature about both nutrition-induced mortality and about health-care inequities and poor outcomes in African Americans, but little about the intersection of the two. In the United States, Black people have a 21 percent higher rate of cardiovascular death compared to white people. Thats due to several glaring underlying disparities: poorer access to care, lower levels of higher education and health literacy, and the implicit bias of some physicians and medical centers, to name just a few.

However, the usual diet of the African American community has become a nearly insurmountable burden on our health. Fried foods, refined grains, sweets, and animal products laden with saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium all contribute to the pandemic of hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol, and obesity, which in turn lead to heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, heart failure, and premature death. When combined with a lack of quality health care access, these underlying health problems also mean that African Americans are more than twice as likely to die from COVID-19 than white Americans.

After decades of diagnosing and treating heart disease, Ive devoted much of my medical practice, leadership, and advocacy to helping people reverse their chronic diseases through plant-based nutrition. Im proud to work alongside champions like Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, who wasnt as fortunate as I was to understand the dangers of animal products at an early age. He grew up eating soul food, and later, as a police officer, he ate its modern day incarnation: fast food. At the ripe old age of 56, he was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.