Rip Esselstyn
Rip Esselstyn, the son of famous vegan surgeon Dr Caldwell Esselstyn, is a former firefighter and triathlete turned plant-based advocate and author. Believing that a low-fat wholefood plant-based diet is optimal for health, Rip created the “plant strong” diet. Rip has written a number of books promoting a plant-strong diet, including: The Engine 2 Seven-day Rescue Diet, which was featured in the Netflix documentary The Game Changers, The Engine 2 Cookbook, and Plant-strong: Discover the World’s Healthiest Diet (previously called My Beef with Meat).
Rip has been featured in a number of documentaries including Forks Over Knives and The Game Changers.
Rip became vegan in 1987 and later used his knowledge of a plant-based diet to help his firefighting colleagues reduce their cholesterol and improve their heart health. This is where the name “Engine 2” comes from, as it was the fire station at which he worked.
“It’s not the plant-based foods that will make you ill, it’s the meat and the liquid meat (i.e.: dairy) that can lead to sickness and death. Consider this: If your food had a face or a mother (or comes from something that did), then it also has varying amounts of artery-clogging, plaque-plugging, and cholesterol-hiking animal protein, animal cholesterol, and animal fat. These substances are the building blocks of the chronic diseases that plague Western society.” – Rip Esselstyn, Plant-Strong
