Kris: Hi this is Kris Costello and I’ve teamed up with Michael Senoff to bring you the world’s best wellness related interviews. So if you know anyone struggling with their weight, with cancer, diabetes, ADHD, autism, heart disease or other health challenges please send them to Michael Senoff’s www.HardToFindSeminars.com. Thanks so much for being with us today Rip.

Rip: My pleasure I’m happy to be with you.

Kris: You have written an amazing new book called “The Engine 2 Diet” and you are actually a firefighter and somehow you’ve translated that firefighting into a book on health. Can you kind of tell our listeners what motivated you to create this book?

Rip: Well as firefighters our whole goal is to help people and save lives, that’s what we do every day and that’s the oath that we took when we graduated from the academy, and this is basically just taking that to a whole other level. But I’m able to do this without wearing my firefighting boots I get to do this just by writing – I shouldn’t say just – but I get to do this by writing a book that if you follow the challenge of the book will make you healthy in ways that you never, ever imagined. And I think its important maybe to note that this is not a fool’s errand but this diet that I espouse in “The Engine 2 Book” it’s a diet of truth and everything about it is science based and what allowed the great civilizations around the world have insisted on for the best health possible.

Kris: And what are the things that really struck us was that you have some descriptions in there of being a firefighter and going into homes where you’ve been called for emergencies and trying to deal with people that are really, really large, and can you kind of describe for our listeners what that’s like because that was so moving in the book?

Rip: You know America is we’re over fat and we’re under nourished and as firefighters we see this every shift we see the really almost a pandemic of obesity. And occasionally we’re called on a listing assistance call where we have to help somebody that weighs anywhere between 400 and 600, 700 pounds to get into an ambulance. And it’s quite an impressive feat where you have to get eight people, we have to roll the person over onto their side, then we have to kind of scurry a sheet underneath them, we roll them back on their back and then we all roll up a little portion of the sheet and we make sure the coast clear on the count of three as a team, we pick them up and we take them out to the ambulance. And it’s incredibly sad but unfortunately it’s the reality of where we are right now in America.

Kris: And I would imagine is that part of your inspiration for bringing this book out to the public just to go through that kind of experience where you see people that are in such a state of suffering.

Rip: Oh yeah one of the things about being a firefighter is every shift it’s in our faces the heart disease, the Type 2 diabetes, the incredible amounts of obesity, Alzheimer’s, the major cancers, stroke, all of these are manifestations of really the same underlining thing which is people are eating the wrong foods. They’re eating foods that are causing these diseases that don’t need to be.

Kris: Really your book is pretty simple as far as what it’s telling people and can you kind of explain to people what you’re talking about? You have two different types of eating plans that you put in there.

Rip: That’s the thing when you get down to it it’s the simplest way of eating on the planet and it’s very, very black and white. I am just really on a mission on a crusade to get Americans to eat more whole food nutrient rich plant based foods like whole grains, fruits, vegetables and beans and then some nuts and seeds. And I offer two plans in the book, one is the Fire Cadet and the other is the Firefighter and both of those plans get you to the same end point which is to where you’re eating plant perfect by the end of the four weeks. The Firefighter you jump right in at the very beginning and you’re eliminating all animal based products and all refined foods. Whereas the Fire Cadet it is more of a slower kind of flexitarian approach where we eliminate dairy and then meat and then all extracted oils. We are so programmed in this culture to think that we need meats and we need chicken and we need flesh and dairy to build strong bodies and bones and nothing can be further from the truth. In actuality those are the things that are tearing us down and crippling us. And so what I have found at my firehouse and other firehouse’s throughout Austin, Texas where I work is that people start eating this way and they thrive. They find their perfect, their find their ideal health, everything gets better from their gastrointestinal tract to their blood workup to their skin, weight, migraine headaches, IBS, thyberticulitis, it’s just absolutely incredible how you can blossom when you eat this way. And it takes just a very short period of time for you to notice the profound results if you are diligent and you do this right.

Kris: And you’ve had some amazing stories about fellow firefighters that were having health problems and really turn their lives around with this. Can you kind of tell our listeners about some of those stories?

Rip: Absolutely I’ll tell you about two. The first is actually how the name of the diet came about “The Engine 2 Diet” was born in Station 2 because one of my fellow firefighting brothers after a routine bet to see who had the worse cholesterol his came back at a an astounding 344 and he was 33-years-old and had a horrendous family history of heart disease. And so he was so floored and blown away by that reading that he was all ears and the fact that my father of all the fathers to have on the face of the planet I had the one that had the most powerful evidence based research to show that you could not only prevent this disease but also reverse it. And then this is diet that I had been thriving off of and fueling myself with for 11 years as a professional pro athlete and then as a firefighter. So he knew by looking at me that he wasn’t going to shrivel up any time soon. And so all the guys at the station we rallied around J.R. to basically save his life and to keep him from falling into the same destiny that his other side of the family had thrown into. So anyway so J.R. did the diet and three weeks later his cholesterol was 196 it had come down almost 150 points. He had lost his great grandfather, his grandfather all before the age of 52 and then his father had a triple bypass at the age of 52. And then another captain in the fire department came to me because he was just sick and tired of being sick and tired, he had Type 2 Diabetes that he’d had for eight years, had fats and glucose into the 200s, was taking insulin, all kinds of oil medications, and within one week of eating “The Engine 2 Diet” he had to go off his insulin, his fats and glucose came down below 100 and his A1C, which is a marker of how much sugar is hanging onto your red blood cells, in three months came down from 12.5 to 6.5 and his endocrinologist said that he’d never seen anything like it. And that’s purely through eating, plants, healthy foods.

Kris: Amazing. Now there’s a lot of crazy myths out there about food and you go over those very well in “The Engine 2 Diet”. Can you share some of your favorite myths about food with our listeners?

Rip: Absolutely. Well the first one that you’re going to get repeatedly when you switch to this kind of a diet is well how in the world do you get enough proteins? And what people don’t realize is that every food out there has protein and as long as you’re consuming enough calories you’re getting ample amounts of protein. And we, as human beings we only need between 5% to 8% of our calories from protein and most of us are choking down upwards of 20%. We don’t store protein. If you consume more than 12% protein you’re just either storing it as fat calories or you’re dumping it. For more interviews on health, mind, body and spirit go to Michael Senoff’s www.HardToFindSeminars.com.

Kris: So why are all these bodybuilders, you know, they’re always pumping up on protein drinks and all that stuff.

Rip: I think that’s just about a big misconception that they need it, they don’t. I mean if that was the case with the amount of protein that America’s are consuming we would have everybody walking around like Arnold Schwarzenegger. If you want to build muscle you just have to work the muscle you have to tax it and then you have to give it time to recover and as long as you’re consuming enough calories you’ll be fine. Just to give people an example, green leafies are the best source of protein on the planet, calorie- for-calorie at anywhere between 40% to 51% protein. And mushrooms are about 35% protein. Your average whole grain anywhere between 16% and 20% and then your average bean, and there’s lots of beans out there, anywhere between 20% to 25% protein. And so you don’t have to worry about the protein not in the least.

Kris: So many people are confused about this. I know there’s people that just have no clue that vegetables actually have protein.

Rip: It’s been so indoctrinated into us that we need meat, we need dairy for protein, and we just need to blow that myth apart and we need to blow it to smithereens. And there’s also this huge myth that proteins aren’t complete and in reality they are complete some may be a little bit lower in some of the essential amino acids and others, but at the end of the day your amino acid pool fills everything up to where it needs to be, and then if you have any success you dump it in a very, very healthy way. Another myth that I love dispelling is that you can’t be a competitive athlete and eat this way and nothing can be further from the truth. Some of the best enduring athletes on the planet eat this way including Dave Scott six time winner of the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon. Scott Jurek seven time winner of the 100 Mile Western States Endurance Run, Brandon Brasher one of the best endurance athletes in Canada. Then you have people like Tony Gonzales a record setting tight end football player for the Kansas City Chiefs. Carl Lewis when he broke the World Record in the 100 Meter Dash and the Long Jump in 1991 had been eating plant based for the previous year and a half. The list goes on and on. And then there’s also some really wonderful bodybuilders, Andreas Collins whose all plant based as well. Another one is that real men don’t eat plants and I just want to let you know and your listeners know that real men eat plants and it’s the boys that aren’t really educated on the topic of eating meat.

Kris: Oh that sounds like a challenge.

Rip: Yeah it is a challenge. It’s almost like men feel like they need to eat their meat in order to be manly and I really have to wonder if they’re not trying to compensate for something by doing that. And so my challenge is if you don’t want to take the blue pill, meaning Viagra or Cialis or anything like that and develop what’s called Peripheral Arterial Disease, which lacks blood flow down to your penis and makes you impotent then start hammering and I mean hammering down the green leafies, the fruits, the vegetables, the whole grain and you can actually reverse it and you will be, as I say in the book, your erections will be like blue steel.

Kris: Oh well that’s definitely going to be popular out there.

Rip: Well it should be. I hope so.

Kris: Yeah that’s a really serious problem. I mean we see these commercials for all these, like you said, Viagra.

Rip: Well yeah and they don’t need it, it’s a billion dollar industry and it’s also ED, Erectile Dysfunction, is one of the first signs of heart disease. And of course the Number 1 killer of Americans is heart disease, 51% percent of Americans will die from either heart disease or stroke, so the beef and the dairy aren’t doing it.

Kris: So what are some more myths?

Rip: Well that your energy will be low when you eat this way. What I have found and other people have found when they eat this way is that in actuality your energy levels will never be greater and they’ll be more constant than ever because you’re not consuming refined and processed foods, you don’t have the huge sugar spikes followed by insulin spikes and sugar lows. All these wonderful plant based foods are filled with fiber it’s a great time release capsule and so these foods and the complex carbohydrates you’re consuming will be released at a steady stream over the course of several hours. Like big logs in your fireplace they’ll burn nice and slow, unlike a couple of wads of newspapers that will go up in a flesh and then leave you yearning for more fuel and it’s just kind of this reckless cycle. Know that by eating this way your energy will be very consistent. Now I do like to let people know that for the first two weeks they may have to go through some withdrawal systems just like when you wean yourself off of caffeine or coffee you get headaches, sometimes you have to feel worse before you feel better, so be patient the first two weeks. A lot of people say “God this is such a sacrifice” and I’m like you know what it’s not a sacrifice it is empowering, it’s empowering and you will gain 1000 fold on the back end by eating this way and you will not be sacrificing much whatsoever. It’s a simple thing, you know, it’s not about pills or procedures it’s simply about eating real food. Real food for real health and it’s that simple. And the reason I think in part that message has not been pounded home is because nobody makes any money. Nobody makes any money from you eating whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and beans. There’s nobody making money off of a pill, cardiologists are making money off of $44,000 dollar angioplasty or their $99,000 bypass procedure, the pharmaceuticals won’t get their $2000 a month on you taking your daily 10 milligram prescription of Lipitor, but it doesn’t need to be that way. The more the people can stay away from package and canned goods the better. However, there is a time and a place for packaged and can goods and that’s why I have a whole chapter in the book on label reading and what you want to look for.

Kris: Great. Can you share that with people that are listening today?

Rip: I’d be happy to. There’s really two rules that I write about in the book that people want to follow. The Number 1 Rule is never, ever believe the claims on the outside of the package or box and then the second is always read the nutritional information box and then follow that up by reading the ingredient list. And I’ll just give you an example about why you want to never believe the claim on the outside of the package or box. Like milk, for example, so many people out there think that when they’re drinking 2% milk or even 1% milk that it says “2% fat that that is actually 2% fat. Well the reality of it is that they’re claiming is 2% and they’re going off of the weight of the product and if you go off the weight yes it is 2% but if you go off calories, which is what we do in our food system, 2% milk is actually 35% fat and 1% is actually 29% fat, and whole milk is actually closer to 50% fat. So you really need to read those labels. The other is you have to be careful about claims like zero Trans fat. A lot of times if you actually read the fine print it says per serving and in there they have hydrogenated soy bean oils or something else that’s hydrogenated, which is a dead giveaway with that product as Trans fat. The other is you want to make sure when you’re doing breads and pastas that it’s a whole grain product. A lot of these companies they say multigrain, cracked wheat, stone ground, 100% wheat or unbleached, those are all refined products. So you want to look for the word whole followed by the grain, whether it’s wheat, whether it’s rye, whether it’s semolina. Also be really careful when you see the words natural or healthy on the cover. And then the other thing is when you’re actually looking at the nutritional facts label I want you to try and focus on four things. The first is the number of servings per container. A lot of times companies get really sneaky so you have to look at how many services there are. For example, you wouldn’t drink this hopefully on “The Engine 2 Diet”, but if you’re having a 20 ounce can of Coke the reality is that has two and a half servings, each servings ahs close to 100 calories, that’s 250 calories that you’re getting in that one 20 ounce bottle and it’s the same thing for soups and stuff like that; be careful. And then the second thing is fat content. I want people to start trying to keep their fat content down to 2.5 grams or less per 100 calories, that means that that product has 25 calories from fat or less and the easiest way to determine that is to take that however many grams of fat, multiply that by 10 then kind of divide that into the total calories per servings. Once you get it down pat it’ll take you three seconds it’s really easy. And then you also want to look for added no-no’s like sodium and sugar and fats. You want to keep your sodium down to the number of calories per servings. So if the calories per serving are 150 try and keep that sodium down to 150 milligrams per servings as well. And you won’t believe it when you look at some of those cans in your cupboard and you see that they have 500 to 700 milligrams of sodium per serving. So if you eat one can, one little measly can of soup, sometimes you’re taking in close to 1500 milligrams, which is a day’s supply. I’ll just go into one more for your listeners and that’s sugar. Know that there’s four grams of sugar per teaspoon. I’ll kind of give you a tangible number to work off of. So for example, a can of Coke has 39 grams of sugar which is the equivalent of almost 10 teaspoons of sugar. So there are some things that you want to be looking for. For more interviews like this go to Michael Senoff’s www.HardToFindSeminars.com.

Kris: What about artificial sweeteners? I know some people really drink a lot of the diet sodas and that kind of thing thinking they’re doing a good thing for themselves.

Rip: Yeah I think that there’s enough research out there that shows that these sweeteners are deleterious to your health. I just don’t think it’s a good call. If you want to do sweeteners I recommend the more natural sweeteners such as honey, agave nectar, maple syrup, things like that. I’d stay away from those packaged stuff.

Kris: You also have a great list of disease prevention tips Rip in “Engine 2”. Can you tell us what those tips are?

Rip: Oh yeah I’d love to. I have eight tips that will help you prevent some of the chronic western disease that is running rampant right now. The Number 1 is eat your green leafy vegetables like broccoli and bok choy and mustard greens, collard greens, kale, spinach, romaine lettuce, Brussels sprouts, cilantro, these are the most nutrient dense, most nutrient rich calories in food on the planet and they will totally help restore what’s called your Endothelial Cells and they produce something called Nitric Oxide which keeps your blood slippery, it keeps the inside of your vessels smooth like Teflon and it will prevent those LGS the lethal cholesterol from embedding and forming plaque formations. The next thing Number 2 is eat plant based foods from all the colors of the rainbow and that way it will ensure that you’re getting all of the wonderful 12,000 different photo chemicals that are out there that exists only in vegetables, you’ll be getting all of the anti- oxidants that want to go to work for you to help zap all of the free radicals that help age us and cost disease. The next thing Number 3 is man tone down the fiber and just by eating these great fruit, vegetables, whole grains and beans, you’ll be getting anywhere between 40 to 80 grams of fiber a day which is just awesome. Most Americans consume a measly 10 to 15 grams of fiber a day and this will help scrub out your arteries and it will keep you as regular as a Swiss Commuter Train, which is a good thing for a lot of people out there that are constipated and have gastrointestinal issues. The fourth thing get the junk food out of the house which was there, you’re going to be drawn to it I don’t care who you are even myself, so don’t torture yourself and get rid of it. Number 5 is always carry food with you. Hunger makes cowards out of all of us. So whether its whole grain crackers, fruits, and vegetables that carry well plan ahead just with a little bag and it will help save your health. The other thing is if you smoke stop if you can, it’s not cool, it’s not smart and it’s not worth it. Number 7 if you drink a lot of alcohol try to minimize or eliminate it it’s not healthy and it does not enhance your life. And then the last thing I’m a big advocate of exercise. The only thing that you can do is eat this way eat a plant based diet then you’re going to be living great, but if you want to take it to another level then I’d recommend exercise to make your life excellent. So when I get exercise in my day it makes everyday incredibly excellent if I don’t it’s just a great thing. So one of the things I’m hoping to get started here shortly is to try to create Engine 2 support groups in communities throughout the country. We’re looking for locations right now. We might be teaming up with Whole Foods so everybody has kind of a nice central meeting point.

Kris: Great. How about at the firehouses?

Rip: Firehouses even better. Yeah that’s a great idea and I’ll have to look into that. I know firehouses are everywhere. I like that Kris.

Kris: Yeah okay. So one thing I really loved about “Engine 2 Diet” was, one jus the straightforward real way that it was written, you know, obviously coming from yourself real honest. A lot of these books sometimes they get, they’re very scientific, they’re hard for your regular person to access. So that just was great and also just how simply things were laid out for people it’s real easy to go to this section of the book and just get a huge amount of information and start using it in your life. One of those sections in “Engine 2” was what are some of the approved foods on the E2 Diet?

Rip: Well approved foods to me, knock yourself out with the four new food groups that you’re going to be eating this way. And let me backtrack just for a second Kris because the four major food groups at the fire station are steak, chicken fried steak, cheeseburgers and Blue Bell ice cream. If you can deep fry it it’s even better. Oh yeah, I mean you go to most firehouses around the country and what they’re cooking up is going to give you a heart attack just about quicker than anything. It’s sad. Yeah the four major food groups when you eat Engine 2 are going to be whole grains, whether it’s pasta, whether it’s breads, whether it’s your rices, your millets, your keinwas, your wheat berries, your pearl barley. There’s a smorgasbord of whole grains out there people need to understand that. The same thing with fruits and vegetables most people they think they’re going to be walking through this narrow gate but in reality you walk through this gate and it opens your eyes. So a whole cornucopia of foods in the produce section that you never looked at. I know a lot of people they only use to have bananas, oranges and that was really it, but there are literally 50 to 100 fruits in just about every produce section. The same thing with vegetables whether it’s the leafy grains, whether it’s the five different types of bell peppers, all the wonderful tomatoes, 30 different types of potatoes whether it’s sweet potatoes or Russets or Golden Yukon. And then with the beans whether it’s a weight or a butter bean or a black bean or a pinto bean, beans rule, they rock. And then, of course, we compliment the diet with some nuts and seeds for sauces and dips. So those are some of the “Engine 2” approved foods. In the book I have the “Engine 2 Easy Weekly Planner” and I want people to know you can do this and you don’t have to cook hardly at all. Breakfast I know people are busy and they want to get out the door, healthy cereal molds whether it’s toast and fruit, Monday through Friday everything only takes two to three minutes to make up. Lunches are usually, it’s either a sandwich so you’re not cooking anything or it’s leftovers from the night before which you give them time to mandate and then throw them on top of a bed romaine lettuce or over some brown rice or in between a pita pocket your lunch is done in one minute. And then the only time you really have to cook are dinners and most of the dinners take less than 20 minutes to prepare some even less than that. So you can do this and you don’t have to be intimidated by all the cooking you’re going to have to do. It’s a cinch.

Kris: That’s great. So you’ve made it really simple for people. And now we talked a little bit about the approved foods, you also have a list in “Engine 2” of what foods are not approved.

Rip: What we’re going to be avoiding is we’re going to be avoiding all flesh so we’re going to be avoiding meats, be avoiding foul, chicken, fish, basically anything that flaps a wing, wiggles a fin, claws a hoof, has muscles, has cholesterol, it has saturated fat in it. And so we’re going to be removing those things, the three building blocks of American disease that are only found in animal based products are reclogging saturated fat, fat promoting dietary cholesterol and ascetic and tumor promoting animal protein. So we’re removing those. The same thing with dairy, dairy contains all the things that we’re eliminating more, we’re eliminating more, we’re eliminating butters and creams, sour creams, ice cream, cottage cheese, even no fat variety of skim milk and of cheeses and yogurts because once again your fat free varieties are still loaded to the gills with animal proteins, which not only does it raise your cholesterol levels it inflames the arteries, it’s a tumor and cancer promoter and it leaches calcium from the bone. There’s your list of animal based products. We also remove eggs there’s only two things wrong with eggs, the yolk and the white. The yolk has over 200 milligrams of cholesterol and the white once again loaded to the gills with animal proteins, so we’re staying away from the eggs as well. And then we really want to be careful about the process that refine foods that are just empty calories, they’ve had most of their vitamins and minerals and micro nutrients stripped of them and so we’re going for whole grains instead of refined and processed grains, like white rice, white pasta, white breads, cakes, cookies, creams, soda pops, chips, stuff like that. And then lastly, I can’t believe I’ve forgot to talk about this, your extracted oils that everybody thinks is a health food like your olive oils and in reality it’s the most concentrated source of calories on the planet it’s close to 120 calories per tablespoon and there’s zero vitamins, zero minerals, zero fiber, all the good has been thrown out with the olives and you’re left with all the bad. So you’re staying away from olive oil that’s 15% of your calories are coming from saturated fat.

Kris: What do people use instead of oils?

Rip: Good question. When I stir fry I use orange juice or I use carrot juice or I use veggie broth or a little bit of beer or red wine. When you bake there’s some great substitutes you can use bananas, applesauce. There’s a product out there called Energy Egg Replacer it’s kind of like a potato starch. You can do prunes. There’s a lot of great substitutes for oils.

Kris: Now another great thing in “Engine 2” is you’ve got some wonderful recipes. The recipes look really fantastic. What are some of your favorite recipes Rip?

Rip: Well let me start by saying it’s the first recipe in the book under “Engine 2 Hearty Cereal Bowls” it’s Rip’s Big Bow”. This is what I’ve been having for breakfast for over 20 years now and the heart of the bowl, believe it or not it’s raw old fashioned – if you can I like to get the extra mixed with some bite size shredded wheat also usually some grape nuts, some ground flaxy meal, and then on top of that I throw some raisins, some walnuts, and then usually one or two pieces of fruit like a banana or a kiwi or a grapefruit and then some milk substitute. That’s my favorite. Whenever I’ve done pilot studies, and I’ve done several over the last two years, people always come away saying their favorite breakfast was Rip’s Big Bowl. One of the sandwiches that I really love is the kale, lemon and cilantro sandwich. It’s a great way to get kale which is a great leafy green into your diet. I want people to know Kris that we eat foods that are not weird and strange on the Engine 2 Diet there are foods that people are very, very familiar with. We have a burger night, a pizza night, we have a soup night we have a comfort food night that has stuff like lasagnas and meatloaves and other casseroles. We have stir fry night, we have Tex Mex night. I’m looking right now at the New York Times Veggie Burger that is made with black beans and oats and carrots and cilantro and onions that is just phenomenal on a whole grain bun with all the condiment. We’ve got a linguini with a creamy alfredo sauce that will steal the eye right out of your head. We have pizza night, we’ve got a bird’s barbecue pizza, and it’s got barbecue sauce and some tomato paste. It’s amazing how you don’t miss the cheese on these pizzas. And then we load it up with oregano and bell peppers, fresh spinach, pineapple chunks and then some ground cashews that should really give it a nice touch on the very, very end. The salads, at the firehouse we always make big, and pardon the term, big meaty salads like Rip’s Roasted Salad. We go to town with all kinds of beans and we roast Brussels sprouts and mandarin oranges and bell peppers and baked onions with one of the Engine 2 great oil free salad dressings. I’m looking at a soup right now savory lintels and greens that is wonderful. In there we have two heads of Swiss charts. And then I’ll just talk about one desert that’s an Engine 2 favorite and that’s a fruit pie with a date nut crust and the date nut crust is comprised of dates, walnuts, cashews and almonds that are ground up in a blender, a little bit of vanilla extra, and then we throw in there some sliced bananas, some strawberries that are blended into a puree, and then some normal strawberries, some raspberries and then we top it off with some mandarin oranges. And then we also have a chocolate icebox pie variety of that one with the same crust but with Engine 2 chocolate mousse that’s thrown in there with some raspberries on top. So I’m telling you, you are going to dig it.

Kris: It’s amazing you can still have your favorite types of foods but it just sounds like you just tweak the ingredients a little and you end up getting the benefits of having it really be health building. That’s really exciting because it’s not about having a wheat grass shake every day.

Rip: No it’s not. And it’s not about eating carrots and too food and wheat grass shake its real food that’s really delicious and with just a familiar twist.

Kris: That’s great. Now another thing I loved in the book was you mentioned that growing up you hated vegetables and you’d only eat peas and corn. I loved that what did your mother do about that?

Rip: She got very frustrated with me and like we would always do BLT’s, bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches and I would throw off the tomato and the lettuce on white bread I would do like six pieces of bacon and I’d like double up on the mayonnaise. My point is that there’s hope for everyone. None of us likes the taste of cigarettes or coffee or alcohol I don’t think. It’s incredible what you can get use to and adapt to and eating these foods it’s no big stretch your pallet will adjust to these healthy nutritious foods and to the extent that you also understand how it would be totally enhancing your health. It also helps you to give it a try, do the 28 days and then tell me that your taste buds don’t come to life, your pallet doesn’t change, and you don’t want to go back eating the foods that you thought you couldn’t live without and that were taking your health down at the same time.

Kris: So now how do all of these firehouses get a hold of you if they want to take the great Engine 2 Diet Challenge?

Rip: Oh man I would love it. I would love it if we could get, not only all the firehouses, as many houses in America to pick up the hose line and help us just start spraying fruits, vegetables, whole grains and beans into everyone’s refrigerators across the country and not only will everybody’s health be winning but America’s health. But if anybody wants to get in touch go to www.theengine2diet.com and email me Rip@theenginediet2.com.

Kris: Great. That’s R-I-P at the engine2diet.com if you want to get a hold of Rip Esselstyn author of the “Engine 2 Diet” and putting forth a wonderful challenge to America to get healthy and take the simple steps to regain their health. Well Rip, thank you so much for joining us and we wish you the best and look forward to talking with you again soon.

Rip: Kris thanks so much for having me and thanks for all you do.

Kris: You’re welcome. I love it.

Rip: I love it too.

Kris: That’s the end of our interview and I hope you’ve enjoyed it. For more great health related interviews go to Michael Senoff’s www.HardToFindSeminars.com.