OMD: The Simple, Plant-Based Program to Save Your Health, Save Your Waistline, and Save the Planet - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Suzy Amis Cameron is an environmental advocate and mom of five. A former actor and model, she founded MUSE School in California, the first school in the country to offer a plant-based lunch program, with her sister Rebecca Amis. Suzy has founded several plant-based organizations, including Plant Power Task Force, Cameron Family Farms, and Verdient, with her husband, filmmaker James Cameron, as well as Red Carpet Green Dress, showcasing environmentally responsible fashion. As an actor, Suzy was featured in more than twenty-five films, including The Usual Suspects andTitanic. To learn more about the book and upcoming food products, please visit OMDForThePlanet.com.

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OMD

Introduction

The Simple, Elegant Solution

This book is a movement and a hopeful call to action. It is also a road map, a Swiss Army knife, and an emotional support system. It has to be all of these things—because that’s what most of us need to make the real, sustained changes that save our health and protect our planet. We see the evidence of climate change all around us: wildfires, catastrophic hurricanes, flooding, mudslides. We sense that we’ve reached a tipping point, that we have to make changes now if we hope to leave a habitable world to our children.

I’m particularly passionate about this because I’m a mom. Like most moms, I have wiped many a tear, runny nose, and dirty bottom. I’ve been peed on and barfed on, and I would take down anyone who tried to hurt my children. This fierce, mama-bear, protective love is locked into my DNA. It’s an instinct, a drive in all moms and dads. All humans! How would we have survived otherwise? Even if we don’t have kids, we feel this protective drive about our family, our pets, our friends. This fierce love drives me, every single day, to make the world a better place for all of our children to grow up in.

I’m also a multitasker, like so many of us in this fast world. I have five kids. I’m an entrepreneur, educator, and wrangler of dogs; a former model and actress; and a current daughter, sister, aunt, and mission-driven juggler of way too many things. I’ve spent many years channeling my fierce protective love into creating initiatives to help save the planet: Red Carpet Green Dress, an organization that challenges and helps the fashion industry to become more environmentally responsible; Plant Power Task Force, an advocacy organization focused on raising awareness and funding highly respected research into the effects of animal agriculture on the environment; MUSE School, an environmental educational organization spanning early childhood to twelfth grade that taps into the passions within each child and awakens their thirst for learning as well as their sense of deep responsibility for protecting the earth and all of its inhabitants, which is also the first plant-based school in the nation (and where OMD first began!); Food Forest Organics, the first completely plant-based market and café in New Zealand; and our newest endeavor, Cameron Family Farms, an exciting chance for us to bring all our philosophies about plant-based eating and environmentalism to life, giving people high-quality, widely available options that will make eating whole-food, plant-based meals more convenient and affordable for all. And for eighteen years, I’ve been married to an amazing father, husband, and partner, a turbo-charged filmmaker, deep-sea explorer, and Renaissance man, James Cameron. My Jim.

Now, I know my limitations. I’m most definitely not a doctor. And I’m not a scientist. Yet I’m a research and information junkie, and I spend a lot of my time trying to get the most credible, up-to-date information out there from real scientists, climatologists, doctors, and researchers. Every ounce of my being that’s not devoted to my family is in service to environmental advocacy, caring for our planet, and creating a better, healthier world.

I am fully aware that in so many ways, I’ve lived a charmed life. I still pinch myself every day, and I know that the big suffering and pain so pervasive in the world isn’t often part of my direct experience. Yet I still put my pants on one leg at a time. This year, my father died, my aunt Betsy died, and my mother broke her hip—all in one week. No amount of magic or money in the world can take away grieving and loss.

Along with extreme love and gratitude, I feel a great responsibility to make the world a better place for all our children and many generations to come. In fact, I can barely pass an infant or a kid on the street, or in a grocery store—anywhere—without being reminded of the seriousness and urgency of this commitment.

I WROTE THIS BOOK because I know how hard it can be to get through the day, hurtling from one meeting (or deadline, orthodontist appointment, parent teacher conference, errand, or after-school activity) to another.

I know how many competing demands we have in our lives, each one battling the other for our time, our attention, our energy. Sometimes simply getting through the day feels like a Herculean task.

And whether we’re parents or not, we all take care of so many people and problems all the time. Heaping one more consideration onto our shoulders may just be too much. Oh, great—now I have to take care of the planet too? Especially when it just seems so huge and unsolvable.

That’s the beauty of One Meal a Day for the Planet, or OMD: by switching one meat- or dairy-based meal to one plant-based meal a day, we can slash our personal water and carbon footprint of our diet by about 25 percent. If we go fully plant-based, we can slash it by 60 percent. With this one simple shift, we can cut our risk of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes; lose weight; and even improve our sex lives. With this one shift, we can also help protect the soil, water, and air for all of us. With OMD, we can check off many diverse to-do (or wish-to-do) boxes on our lists simultaneously. We can take care of everyone in our lives—our children, friends, partner, siblings, parents, and especially ourselves—while we take care of our community, the planet, and the future, all at the same time.

Talk about the ultimate life-changing hack.

With OMD, I never, ever want to guilt you into changing your behavior. We all know that “guilt” or “should” or “being right” doesn’t fuel meaningful and sustained change. My goal is to share how easy, fun, delicious, energizing, and gratifying plant-based eating can be. I also want to acknowledge that it can be seriously hard to change the way you’re used to eating, shopping, and cooking, so I want to help you gracefully handle the challenges of incorporating more plant-based meals into your life. I’m going to show you dozens of my family’s favorite recipes, strategies, and work-arounds that will help you radically boost the nutritional quality of your foods without sacrificing flavor or satisfaction. We’ll do this in a way that is at your pace, is to your taste, and fits right into your life, and I promise you’ll notice the impact almost immediately. I’m here to testify (occasionally with a bullhorn and pom-pom!) that the transformation can be nothing less than life-changing, and that’s my hope for you and for the planet.

That’s why we call OMD “the simple, elegant solution.” With this one tiny shift, you can:

Lose weight or maintain a healthy weight, easily and effortlessly, without feeling deprived or counting a single calorie

Help reverse fuzzy thinking, low energy, prediabetes, high cholesterol, muscle or joint pain—while you lengthen your life

Become one of those “glowy” people who radiate youth with their clear gorgeous skin, shiny hair, and sparkling eyes

Genetically program your kids for optimal health, setting them up to be lean and strong, with rock-star immunity, for life

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