COURIER LIFE, OCT. 16-22, 2020 39
OUR ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE BOROUGH OF KINGS
BY JESSICA PARKS
Call him Brooklyn’s commanderin
chef!
Borough President and mayoral
hopeful Eric Adams is adding “health
food guru” to his resume with the release
of his plant-based cookbook.
“It’s really not a diet,
it’s a lifestyle change,”
Adams told Brooklyn
Paper ahead of his
book’s Oct. 13 release.
“Going from how we
were taught culturally
within America to
eat has impacted our
health crisis. We are
feeding our health crisis
with self-infl icted
wounds.”
“Healthy at Last:
A Plant-Based Approach
to Preventing
and Reversing
Diabetes and Other
Chronic Illnesses,” released today,
details Adams’ health journey as
he struggled with type 2 diabetes and
how transitioning to a plant-based diet
reversed his ailments despite his doctor’s
prescribed life sentence.
“Doctors talk about living with
heart disease, living with chronic disease
and I am talking about disease
reversal,” Adams said. “People don’t
have to have a lifetime of insulin, pills,
going to dialysis. You can actually reverse
your condition.”
Adams, who was a regular patron
of fast-food restaurants, turned away
from meat and switched to meals comprised
completely of plants in 2016 after
he woke up one day with severe vision
loss and knew he needed to make
a change.
“A countless number of people every
day get prescriptions fi lled thinking
they are addressing their illness and
they’re not,” Adams said. “All they are
doing is covering up the symptoms.”
After making the switch he
noticed differences
almost immediately,
Adams recounted,
and within three
months he restored
his vision while also
losing 35 pounds, balancing
his cholesterol
and expelling his diabetes.
The former police
offi cer was not the only
member of the city’s
Black community to suffer
from chronic disease
as a symptom of poor nutrition,
poverty and unequal
access to food — a
central theme to his book and a growing
statistic he hopes to help reverse by
spreading awareness of a plant-based
diet’s benefi ts.
“No matter where you live, what
neighborhood, what accessibility
you have to food, you can still live a
healthy lifestyle free from chronic disease,”
said Adams, who hopes to show
readers eating healthy is attainable to
anyone who eats — including families
on a tight budget, and picky eaters —
while dispelling beliefs of plant-based
food’s perceived lack of fl avor.
“We wanted to show eating healthy
isn’t walking around with grass in
your pocket all the time,” he said. “I
wanted to show people how you can
still satisfy your taste buds and do it in
a very nutritionally sound way.”
Adams’ cookbook includes 50 plantbased
recipes handcrafted by celebrities
and well-known health experts,
such as Paul McCartney and herbalist
Queen Afua — and features some soulfood
inspired dishes meant to reimagine
a cuisine the borough president
said is rooted in slavery.
“Soul food was the food introduced
to slaves and the recipes were handed
down from plantations and were used
for survival,” Adams said. “We are
now using them as some form of delicacy
and taking pride in a food that is
poisonous.”
Vegging out
Borough prez shares transition to
plant-based eating in new cookbook
CUTTING VEG: Borough President Eric Adams switched to a plant-based diet in 2016 after
experiencing severe vision loss due to diabetes. Photo by Tommy Thomas