“It’s the Food” with Dr. Michael Klaper
Dr. Michael Klaper is a client who we love! Since we first met him, we’ve been inspired by his compassion for the health of humans, animals and the planet. His combination of expertise and empathy provide the perfect balance that you look for in a doctor.
In 2017, Dr. Klaper was awarded the The Plantrician Project Luminary Award in recognition of his dedication to the advancement of whole food, plant-based nutrition as the foundation of disease prevention. He has been a gifted clinician, internationally-recognized teacher, and sought-after speaker for the past 40 years – and he doesn’t plan to retire any time soon.
Today, he is a passionate and devoted educator of physicians and other healthcare professionals about the importance of including nutrition in clinical practice. We recently talked with him about the boom in plant-based products and his grassroots effort to change how nutrition is taught in medical schools.
The general public became more aware of the health benefits of plant-based during the pandemic. Have you seen more interest in adoption of plant-based lifestyle?
Oh my. That has to be one of the brighter features that came out of this whole COVID catastrophe. Granted, from where I’m sitting, I am tuned in to the plant-based world, so maybe small changes seem very big to me.
I’ve also got my finger on the pulse of the medical world, and we’re seeing more and more plant-based conferences, more plant-based courses being offered, more and more physicians are expressing interest in it. So, it’s certainly happening on the medical front, as well.
And for consumers, just look at the products you see when you go to the stores, the menu items that are showing up in restaurants – there’s no question that there’s a plant-based awakening happening, and for me it can’t come soon enough. It’s certainly a positive trend and I’m very grateful for it.
If it helps Joe Meat-and-Potato-Guy put down the real beef burger and go for a plant-based burger and say, “Ooh, I could eat that,” then it has a big impact. It changes his life, and it changes the life of everything from animals to the planet itself.
Plant-based is now a buzzword, we see it used as a descriptor on products and in the media.
Yesterday my wife and I walked past a case of Starbucks products, and noticed that they have an energy drink with “plant-based” really prominent on their label, whatever that is. It just shows what a buzzword it’s become. You’re absolutely right.
These types of products — like burgers and plant-based snacks — are not whole foods, but do you see them as a good stepping stone?
For decades food manufacturers have used their vast arsenal of food technology to seduce us to eat more salt and sugar and fat. Finally, they took that technology and turned it into the plant-based products we’re seeing now, and I’m very grateful for them. I certainly acknowledge what you say, they are not whole foods, and some are high in fat and salt.
But, if it helps Joe Meat-and-Potato-Guy put down the real beef burger and go for a plant-based burger and say, “Ooh, I could eat that,” then it has a big impact. It changes his life, and it changes the life of everything from animals to our planet itself.
It also will likely reduce the workload of doctors, because they’ll probably see fewer heart attacks and less colon cancer. While I’m grateful for these products and they’re a positive sign of the times, I do make it very clear to my patients that these are transition foods. The goal is to focus on whole plant foods – on whole beans and greens and fruits and vegetables.
“Of course I ask my patients what they’re eating. That’s the major reason they’re coming to see me.” Those are the magical words we’re trying to get into the heads of the medical students. And school by school, lecture by lecture, it’s happening.
With your Moving Medicine Forward initiative, you’ve been teaching medical students the ideas of disease reversal through plant-based nutrition. How is that going?
The momentum is building! Since we launched, I’ve given 50 medical school presentations in-person and online. On my website, doctorklaper.com, we offer the lecture that I give to medical students, “What I Wish I Learned in Medical School about Nutrition.” I invite med students and everyone who would like to learn, to watch that on their own schedule.
We participate in pre-medical shadowing services, where high school students with an interest in biological and health sciences are able to shadow a doctor for a day, even virtually. I’ve been asked to provide a plant-based primary care lecture to these students with very positive responses.
Right now, our online presentations are growing. But I’m looking forward to getting back in front of a live audience of medical students and residents, because there’s nothing like in-person contact.
I’m also working with the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) on an important mission – I want to see nutrition and lifestyle medicine questions included on National Board of Medical Examiners exams.
I use this analogy for the importance of teaching nutrition in medical school. Schopenhauer, the philosopher, said “All truth passes through three stages.” First, it’s ridiculed, and heaven knows nutrition in general, and especially plant-based nutrition, have been ridiculed. Then, it’s violently opposed because it threatens the status quo. But finally, in the third stage, it’s accepted as self-evident. That’s where we’re trying to get.
We want graduating medical students to think, “Of course I ask my patients what they’re eating. That’s the major reason they’re coming to see me.” Those are the magical words we’re trying to get into the heads of the medical students. And school by school, lecture by lecture, it’s happening.
With Moving Medicine Forward we’ve done a lot, but we have much more to do. I so appreciate the support everyone’s giving us – and Enrich especially for creating this platform that I can show people with pride. Enrich’s work has really been a key factor in the success of Moving Medicine Forward, and I look forward to many more years of that. I know that was an unsolicited commercial, but, you’ve turned out to be a real key factor in our success, and we really appreciate it.
Thank you, thank you. It’s good to hear.
I didn’t know about the high school student shadowing opportunities. That’s exciting — get them on board even younger.
Absolutely. Kids and high school students are aware of the environmental, vegan and animal issues. Many of them already have the plant-based light turned on in their heads and hearts. So, when it comes time for a career, they get pulled into the helping professions, like medicine, nursing or pharmacy. They need to take that plant-based awareness with them, and that’s what we’re really trying to solidify in their heads.
You’re also offering a clinical nutrition masterclass and forum. Can you talk a little bit more about shifting online in the past year?
When we had to go online due to COVID, I was thinking to myself, “I’m trying to get my colleagues to become aware that they can use plant-based nutrition in daily medical practice for people with high blood pressure, diabetes and autoimmune disease, but how do we do it? How can we make it work?”
So, I took my body of knowledge and created 12 sessions called the “Masterclass in Plant-Based Clinical Nutrition.” That entire course is now online; people can purchase all of it or individual lessons and it’s proven to be very popular. Very quickly, we built a community of 1,000 people taking the course.
To continue the dialogue and momentum, we meet once a month with our “Plant-Based Clinical Forum” to explore a topic in clinical plant-based nutrition and consider how to use the information in clinical practice to help our patients become healthier. The forum is directed at healthcare professions of any type – doesn’t matter if you’re a nurse or a podiatrist or a physical therapist – but if you’re a layperson with an interest in this subject, you’re welcome to join us. They’re free of charge although we appreciate a $10 donation for people who participate.
We’re getting people from Ireland, India and Indonesia, it’s wonderful! I’m really enjoying these clinical forums, they’re really lively enterprises!
What information do you want your medical colleagues to hear?
Our cutting edge medical science allows us to see amazing molecular machinations, create vaccines and devise tests that can detect a genetic mismatch on gene 821 on chromosome 13. Yet, the thought that cheeseburgers and pepperoni pizzas might be clogging up the arteries of our patients, somehow this seems to be too abstruse a concept for many of my colleagues to understand. This has to stop.
I have two messages for my medical colleagues:
One, what your patient is eating is likely the main reason they’re sitting in front of you, overweight, diabetic, hypertensive, clogged up and inflamed. It’s the food! It’s been the food all along. Let that into your head here. It’s not “etiology unknown.”
Second, a whole food, plant-based diet promptly improves and usually reverses the main diseases you spend the majority of your professional life treating. When you get folks on whole plant foods, they get leaner. Their arteries relax and dilate. Their high blood pressure starts to come down. Their joints start working. Their diabetes improves and usually resolves. Their psoriatic skin starts to clears up. They turn into normal, healthy people right before your eyes. And isn’t that why we went into healing? What greater gift could we give our patients than the gift of health? And it starts with the food on their plate.
In this post-pandemic world that’s now more interconnected than ever, it’s important to get the plant-based message out. It’s beyond your cholesterol level, it’s your children’s future that we’re talking about.
How has this pandemic reshaped your vision for the future?
The environmental consequences of our current meat-based diet are so dire. It’s where most of our water is going, it’s driving the droughts and the increased hurricanes. And we’re cutting down the forests. We need to let the forests come back because as trees grow, they take carbon dioxide out of the air, they stabilize the soils and they purify the water. The only way to let forests come back is to adopt a whole food, plant-based diet as a species. We would need so much less land to grow plants and eat the plants directly rather than feeding the plants to animals and then eating the animals. I urge everyone to visit a website called Climate Healers and see the wonderful work they’re doing on this subject. I also strongly recommend that everyone read the small but powerful book, Food Is Climate by Glen Merzer. In fact, that book will be the topic of discussion for this month’s Clinical Forum on Plant-Based Nutrition on September 26th, and Glen Merzer will be my interview guest for the event.
Getting this word out to as many people as possible is critical. COVID has shown us that whatever’s happening anywhere, affects all of us. It affects our travel, our commerce, everything. So, in this post-pandemic world that’s now more interconnected than ever, it’s important to get the plant-based message out. It’s beyond your cholesterol level, it’s your children’s future that we’re talking about.
The urgency that’s creeping into everything I do is driving more creativity and I’m working on a new video about environmental stability.
The more we continue to eat meat, the more those growing, future-saving forests are held back. We’ve cut nature back so severely that we’re now feeling the consequences. A more forested, green world, would start to reverse these dreadful droughts because the forests bring the clouds, which generate the rain and snow to makes the rivers run. So now it’s time to let Mother Nature return, and with it she’ll bring the waters and a stable climate and brighter future for us all.
That’s beautiful. What’s next and what are you looking forward to?
Well, it’s not retirement. I have way too much to do! I recently turned 74 and I feel great. I feel like I did when I was 40. Hopefully I’ll have many more years to work. We’ve got to find more ways to reach the medical students and the young doctors. I’m certainly going to be getting back on the lecture trail as the opportunities present themselves. We’ve got a big plate with lots on it, but bite by bite, we’ll get through it and build a better world along the way.
