This book is a simple guide with top tips and common mistakes people make (including the mental traps) when considering or transitioning to a plant-based diet.  It also includes a separate recipe booklet with all super easy, or what I call SASSY~Super Affordable, Simple, Satisfying & Yummy~recipes to get you started.

My husband first co-authored The Garden of Eating: A Produce-Dominated Diet & Cookbook with his now late first wife back in 2004.  It was among the earlier books published that focused on what became known as a 'paleo diet' which centers around animal products and veggies, limited amounts of starches or fruit and eschews whole grains, beans and legumes altogether.

Don began to have reservations about this book mid-way through upon reading The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, PhD.  In September 2011, just 4 months after getting married, we gave up the paleo diet. He later requested as a copyright holder that The Garden of Eating no longer be published.

Among the many symptoms that I experienced including weight gain, constipation, tension and stiffness, it was the painful fibrocystic breast tenderness, and the obvious change in my breast size that was the final straw that prompted us to forgo animal foods once and for all.  Don was also having urinary difficulties, and has a family history of prostate cancer.

Since then, I not only lost weight and reversed the diseased breast condition, but I feel better, and am slimmer and more flexible now in my 50's than I have been in decades.  In truth, I'm much healthier now than I have been most of my life growing up in the midwest eating a standard American diet centered around animal foods including meats, poultry, eggs, and dairy.

Despite being a life long 'health nut' I learned it isn't so much what good things you add to your diet, but also what you take out that makes the difference.

Sadly, we lost three people to cancer recently, including Don's first wife, who had just turned 50.  None of these three adopted a fully plant-based diet.  We believe their fate could have possibly been far different if they had.  And the bulk of the true, peer-reviewed science exists that can back up this claim.  

Studies show how with every extra serving of red meat women eat, their risk for breast cancer rises dramatically.  But it isn't just red meat that is a problem.  Contrarily, consumption of soy~which has become the food everyone loves to hate~has been shown to have many protective benefits for both men and women from certain cancers including prostate and breast cancers.

Many studies exist showing the abundant health benefits of eating a predominantly plant-based diet.  The cultures that live in the Blue Zones eat this way too, and live a long, health life, free of our debilitating dis-eases.

You can live a far healthier life too.  It isn't that extreme, or difficult either.  What is extreme are the expensive and invasive procedures we have come to rely upon to tend to our sick.  There is an ancient Chinese proverb that says, "He who takes medicine but does not improve his diet wastes his doctors time."

I want to share this message as I believe that in a way, I owe my life to Rachel, Don's late first wife.  Her diagnosis and process woke me up in a big way, and helped me see where I had been living in denial with major blinders on.  

With Don's permission, I have dedicated this revised version of an earlier e-book sharing top tips and common mistakes to adopting and thriving on a healthy, produce-rich, plant-based diet to the three people we recently lost due to cancer, including Rachel.  This book is called The True Garden of Eating as it is a produce-rich diet centering around the bounty of foods grown from the earth that best support human life.  More than that, it is a way of eating the best supports the sustainability of all life, and our precious resources on this planet.

The closer the masses come to eating a predominantly plant-based diet, the sooner we all return to the Garden of Eden as well.

Enjoy the recipes, and be sure to check out our other books, Make Every Bite Count, and Powered By Plants available on Amazon and in Kindle format.