As you may know, it was my honour and privilege to have been invited to be a presenter on The Whole Connection plant-based cruise event – the first of its kind in Australia.
The event’s creator, Paige Renshaw, had a vision to create an event which would bring together a diverse group of health professionals and culinary educators, all of whom understand the power of a plant-based diet, to lead participants through a journey of discovery about the root causes of both health and disease, and how to nurture the self-healing potential that lies within every body.
What better vehicle for this inward journey than an outward journey to some of the most beautiful, tranquil locations in the South Pacific?
The Whole Connection cruise departed Sydney on October 20. Sydney gave us a rousing farewell with a spectacular electrical storm that sent us scurrying off the helipad at the Celebrity Solstice’s prow from which we were watching the city slip away – after we’d snapped some pictures, of course.
After a quick meeting to introduce all the presenters – myself, intensive care unit doctor Andrew Davies, nutritionist Sandra Kimler, macrobiotic chef and wellness coach Kimberly Ashton and kitchen coach Ashley Jubinville – to all the guests, we headed to the Celebrity Solstice’s dining room for our first dinner from the specially-prepared plant-based menu.
Paige had worked intensively for months with the kitchen staff prior to the event, and despite the fact that our group comprised a tiny proportion of the overall passengers, the executive chef and his huge international team could not have shown more commitment to ensuring that the food would exceed participants’ expectations.
Every night, the menu was more delicious, innovative and beautifully presented than the night before. Kimberly and Ashley were invited into the kitchen to introduce the chefs to ingredients that are run-of-the-mill in plant-based kitchens but were either completely unfamiliar to them, or used in very limited ways – such as nutritional yeast, chick pea flour and agar agar – and to teach them their own recipes, which very rapidly appeared on our daily menus!
Kimberly and Ashley both delivered several cooking workshops that covered not only the ‘how-to’ of plant-based meal preparation and batch cooking, but also the ‘why’ – why to choose whole plant foods over what Ashley dubbed ‘Frankenfoods’ which our bodies have no evolutionary exposure to; why to take the seasons into account when selecting individual foods and recipes; why abrupt dietary change is so challenging for most people, and how to ‘start where you’re at’ by matching the tastes and textures of the food you (or those you cook for) prefer now, with healthier alternatives.
The most startling moment in Ashley’s presentations came when she shared that she purchased a package of grated cow’s milk cheese in October 2015 to see how long it would keep. She placed it in a unrefrigerated storage box that she uses for such demonstrations… and despite the original packaging becoming punctured, 3 years later, it remains more-or-less intact. When mice broke into her storage box, they chewed through the packaging to eat some muesli bars, but left the grated cheese intact. Her take-home point was that nothing that a self-respecting bacterium, yeast or rodent refuses to touch belongs inside the human body!
Kimberly – my cabin-mate for the cruise – also led 5 yoga and meditation sessions which set us up beautifully for our intensive days of learning.
In his 4 lectures, ‘How not to become a patient in the ICU’, ‘Which diseases can be helped with a plant-based diet?’, ‘Sleep and mindfulness’ and ‘A doctor’s thoughts on how to boost your intake of plants’, Andrew Davies shared his personal experience of health transformation as a result of adopting a wholefood plant-based diet and healthy lifestyle practices, as well as the daily tragedies that play out in the intensive care ward as a result of people not following such practices. It turns out that most ICU patients end up there because of the complications of chronic lifestyle diseases such as obesity, type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure.
For Andrew, the consequences of the unhealthy choices pushed at us every day by industries that profit from our societal addiction to calorie-dense, nutrient-poor food (which was, sadly, clearly evident in the Celebrity Solstice‘s many restaurants and cafés) became deeply personal earlier this year, when his father lost his life to prostate cancer after having previously survived a heart attack.
Andrew’s delightful Mum, Jan, joined us on the cruise event, and as lovely as it was to get to know her, I felt deeply saddened that she was among us as a widow when she should have had many more years of travelling the world with her husband.
Sandra Kimler shared her knowledge of restoring health through activating the body-mind’s self-healing potential in 3 lectures, ‘The power of alkaline food and water’, ‘Fasting – the safe way’, and ‘The mystery of the body, mind, spirit connection’.
Sandra is a shining example of the power of living a health-promoting lifestyle – she simply brims with vitality… as does her gorgeous daughter Kelsey, who joined us as the event’s official photographer (and also has the moves on the dance floor!).
My own lectures were ‘Healing our broken hearts – how to address the ‘other’ risk factors for cardiovascular disease’ (on the psychosocial risk factors for heart disease, such as loneliness and depression), ‘2 brains and 100 trillion bugs – new perspectives on health, disease, and being human’ (on the gut microbiome), ‘An introduction to EFT – how to use EFT to break bad habits and rewire your brain for health and happiness’, and ‘Is your mood disorder a food disorder – how what we eat influences how we feel and think’. Some very interesting conversations with participants were stimulated by each of these presentations!
On our port days we were all free to explore some of the most picturesque locations in the South Pacific: Nouméa, Mystery Island, Isle of Pines and Lifou.
I admit to being sadly ignorant of the history, politics and culture of these Melanesian islands, all of which bar Mystery Island (which is part of Vanuatu) belong to New Caledonia, an overseas collectivity of France.
As our tour guide on Lifou, the delightful Albert, explained, New Caledonia is holding a referendum on 4 November 2018 to decide whether to declare independence or remain part of France. Although Albert felt that the independence vote would carry the day, current polling suggests that the majority of New Caledonians wish to remain part of France. Watch this space!
Although the cruise event was wonderful in every way, it would be remiss of me to omit some of the darker elements of cruises. Watching obese, obviously ill people eat mountains of high fat, high sugar, low nutrient food and wash it down with rivers of alcohol on a daily basis was disturbing, to say the least. I’m curious to know what the rate of heart attacks and strokes during and in the aftermath of cruise holidays might be.
Then there is the terrible amount of food waste, and the appalling overuse of single-use plastics such as cup lids, drinking straws and industrial-sized rolls of cling wrap that covers food coming from the ship’s kitchens en route to the dining areas for as little as a few minutes, before being removed and discarded.
And, of course, grinding poverty is so clearly evident on the tiny Melanesian islands whose populations are utterly dependent on cruise tourism for income, but whose traditional lifestyles are being eroded by the business of catering to Western tourists. My heart broke to see the half-starved dogs that roam the Isle of Pines, their ribs, spines and pelvic bones protruding beneath their dull coats. Being a Western tourist in these dirt-poor communities is a constant cause for guilt and soul-searching.
All in all though, The Whole Connection was a truly wonderful experience for me, the other presenters, and participants. If you’re kicking yourself for not coming, and would like to participate in future events, be sure to hop on The Whole Connection mailing list.
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