Kassam Shireen - Eating Plant-Based: Scientific Answers to Your Nutrition Questions

Eating Plant-Based

Scientific answers to your nutrition questions

This book is dedicated to our beloved family and loved ones, who continually inspire and support us. We are so blessed to walk our journey with you.

Dr Zahra and Dr Shireen Kassam are sisters and cancer doctors who between them have nearly 40 years of clinical experience in treating patients with cancer on both sides of the Atlantic. In recent years they have developed a shared interest in and appreciation of the power of lifestyle medicine to improve the quality of life and outcomes for their patients. This has culminated in board certification as Lifestyle Medicine Physicians from the International Board of Lifestyle Medicine. They have co-authored a book chapter on food and health in Rethinking Food and Agriculture: New Ways Forward and are together editing the forthcoming Plant-Based Nutrition in Clinical Practice.

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Dr Shireen Kassam MB BS, FRCPATH, PHD, DIPIBLM is a Consultant Haematologist and Honorary Senior Lecturer at Kings College Hospital, London with a specialist interest in the treatment of patients with lymphoma (cancer of the lymphatic system). She is also passionate about promoting plant-based nutrition for the prevention and reversal of chronic diseases and for maintaining optimal health after treatment for cancer.

Shireen qualified as a medical doctor in 2000, initially training in general medicine, and gaining Membership of the Royal College of Physicians (MRCP) in 2003. She then specialised in Haematology and achieved Fellowship of the Royal College of Pathologists (FRCPath) in 2008. During training, she took time out to undertake a PhD (University of London, 2011). Her research investigated the role of selenium, an essential micronutrient, in sensitising cancer cells to chemotherapy. She was able to show that supra-nutritional doses of selenium could enhance the action of chemotherapy in the laboratory. She has published a number of peer-reviewed papers in the field of lymphoma.

She discovered the power of nutrition for the prevention and treatment of disease in 2013 and since then has been following a whole-food plant-based diet. She has immersed herself in the science of nutrition and health and completed the eCornell certification in plant-based nutrition. In 2019 she became certified as a Lifestyle Medicine Physician by the International Board of Lifestyle Medicine. She is also a certified CHIP (Complete Health Improvement Program) practitioner.

Shireen founded Plant-Based Health Professionals UK in 2018, a community interest company whose mission is to provide evidence-based education and advocacy on plant-based nutrition. Since then, she has been appointed as Visiting Professor of Plant-Based Nutrition at Winchester University where she developed and facilitates the UKs only university-based CPD-accredited course on plant-based nutrition for healthcare professionals. In January 2021, she co-founded and launched the UKs first CQC (Care Quality Commission) registered, online, multi-disciplinary, plant-based lifestyle medicine healthcare service, Plant Based Health Online. She is also a member of the Research Advisory Committee for the Vegan Society. Her work has been published by The Times, Mail Online, The Mirror, Metro, Vice, Plant Based News and BBC Food. She is an acclaimed national and international speaker and is featured in the 2021 documentary Eating Our Way to Extinction.

Dr Zahra Kassam MB BS, FRCPC, MSC, DIPABLM is a Radiation Oncologist at the Stronach Regional Cancer Centre in Ontario, Canada, and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Toronto. Zahra received her medical degree from the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in 1995, completed her specialist training in Clinical Oncology in the UK, followed by three years of clinical and research fellowship training at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Canada, with a Masters in Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Toronto.

Her areas of clinical practice are in gastrointestinal and breast cancers. She has published a number of peer-reviewed papers on these malignancies, as well as in education and mentorship.

A few years ago, Zahra discovered the significant body of evidence demonstrating the benefits of nutrition in the prevention and management of chronic diseases, not taught at any stage of her medical training. She is a certified Lifestyle Medicine Physician with the American Board of Lifestyle Medicine and has completed the eCornell certification in plant-based nutrition and the Plant-Based Nutrition course at the University of Winchester. Zahra co-founded Plant-Based Canada, a non-profit organisation, in 2019, with the goal of educating the public and health professionals on the evidence-based benefits of plant-based whole food nutrition for individual and planetary health. Their inaugural event was held in 2019, the first Canadian Plant-Based Nutrition conference in Toronto.

We wish to express our sincere gratitude to all who have made this book possible. Special thanks to Rohini Bajekal, who took the time to read the book and provided invaluable insights; to Kate Strong, for writing the foreword and sharing her inspiring plant-based journey; and of course to Georgina Bentliff, director of Hammersmith Health Books, for her support, expertise, care and realisation of this book.

Even after being World Triathlon Champion in long-distance triathlon and breaking three world records in static cycling, covering 433.09 miles in 24 hours, I still get asked, Where do you get your protein? I wonder if meat-eating athletes get asked the same because, isnt protein required for every person?

I do appreciate why Im asked this question, and typically its because we, as a society, rarely question what we are told and presented as facts, such as meat being the best source of protein, an essential macronutrient for a balanced diet.

Growing up, I believed my mother and teachers at school when they said that eating a little bit of everything was a balanced diet. I didnt question the validity of this statement, nor explore the moral or ethical aspects of what was on my plate at dinner time. It was not until I went through a personal trauma that I started to see my actions, and what I ate, from a different angle.

In 2012, my partner of nine years left me just six days before our wedding. On the one hand, I was immensely relieved because, over time, our relationship had deteriorated from a supportive environment into a controlling and toxic place for me. My phone was tracked and I was unable to move freely without his permission, friends were squeezed out of my life and I was afraid to say No to him and express my opinions for fear of his reaction. Yet, on the other hand, I felt overwhelmed. Living alone in Australia, trying to run a hospitality business single-handed and also manage the debt he had left me with after his departure seemed too big for me to manage. I turned to alcohol to help me suppress the anxiety building up in me and also to give me courage to keep moving through the days and numbing the lonesome nights.