I didn’t expect to improve my health at age 80, but that’s what happened. It started in 2018, when my daughter became convinced that she should follow a whole-food, plant-based (WFPB) diet. Since we live and eat together, I agreed, reluctantly, that when it was my turn to cook, I would try to make those kinds of meals for her. I didn’t promise not to eat what I wanted when away from our dinner table. I was never fond of vegetables: When I was a child, my own mother despaired that the only ones I would eat were corn and peas, and as an adult, my tastes hadn’t changed much.
On my 80th birthday, I was dealing with a host of medical problems. I had been a Type 2 diabetic for over 20 years, and I’d had high blood pressure since I was 35. One doctor called it “resistant” high blood pressure, because the standard…