— Madlena Schulman

I'm gonna speak from, before I turn this over to Dr. Short, from a personal experience that 20 plus years ago I was in the fast lane at the McDonald's drive in, and when I became plant-based, um, and having experienced a whole change in my, uh, biometrics and other things like that, uh, I just jumped into the deep end of the pool and thought, I'm just gonna do this. I'm just gonna do this. And when personally for me, looking at the family medical history of both of my parents and my siblings as well, I was kind of like, I don't think I wanna walk down that lane. So, um, it is possible and it is doable, but I'm gonna let Dr. Shah take it because I'm sure she's got a couple of really good steps to share. Yeah, and I think, you know, for children it can be incredibly challenging. 'cause as, as adults we can see the downstream benefits. We can see our, you know, improving our cardiometabolic profile and you know, just feeling overall healthy. But for a young child, 5, 6, 7 years of age, it's really hard to convince them that, you know, these foods are better for them because of those potential benefits. Um, and so one of the things, and we sort of alluded to this in the last question, is this idea of, uh, there are two concepts, um, in feeding that can be helpful with kids. They're called fading and linking. So fading is this idea that, um, one, a great way to sort of share this example is with pasta. So, um, if your kids are really used to eating white pasta, um, and you're trying to introduce either more of a whole grain pasta or of a lentil based pasta, you start with um, a large amount of white pasta and a smaller amount of the whole grain option or whatever you're trying to do. And you gradually sort of increase the ratio. So at first it might be three-fourths regular pasta, one fourth of the alternate pasta, and then you go half and half. And then of course, so it's a way of sort of fading the food in to get them acclimated to the taste. Um, so that's one technique. And then the second one is, um, chaining or kind of linking the foods. So it goes back to the thing about the fries that I mentioned. So they're used to eating McDonald's french fries. So the next step might be that you make french fries at home, uh, and with regular potatoes. And then you might try to make those same potatoes but bake them and then you might make them with sweet potatoes. And so this idea that when you take a food that's accepted and they already like, and gradually slowly modify it so that you're introducing, um, you know, the more healthful nutrient dense options. So fading and linking or chaining are two techniques that can be really helpful with kids. That's wonderful information and uh, I think that would be extremely helpful to anyone. Um, let's see. Our next question. Oh, one last thing from Madelena. If you have ever read the Jane Essel book, it came out in 2022. It's called, uh, be a Plant-Based Woman Warrior. Uh, my own account of becoming plant-based appears in that book. And I just wanted to add to this, and Dr. Shah, uh, spoke about it for adults that all of a sudden you start to feel better. But after being plant-based for 10 days, when I woke up in the morning, it was for the first time in my adult life ever that I didn't have any severe osteoarthritic pain. And I made that, it was like a lightning bolt in my brain that said, food is medicine. This is what you're gonna do, keep doing this, never go back. So I think reading a lot and then also focusing on your own wellbeing, especially for an adult, I think I'm really appreciating all of the, the insights that Dr. Shah is sharing with us today. 'cause they all seem very practical and doable.