Bestselling author Kathy Freston took to Oprah.com to share her latest research on a plant-based diet and how it relates to disease prevention. In the piece, Freston writes:

“Here’s the bottom line: Animal protein seems to greatly contribute to diseases of nearly every type, including cancer, and a plant-based (vegan) diet is not only good insofar as prevention, but it could also be curative.”

Throughout the piece, Kathy quotes many highly esteemed doctors and sites numerous studies that prove eating lower on the food chain can help prevent (and sometimes even cure) some of today’s most deadly diseases.

Trust me — you definitely want to read this article! Scoot on over to Oprah.com and get your learn on!

The LA Times recently interviewed the 28-year-old actress in a vegan restaurant in downtown Manhattan, (nibbling on a soy-cheese sandwich no less) and got the scoop that Natalie is once more vegan. There had been doubts this was the case in a recent interview she gave with Jake Gyllenhaal, but that’s all cast aside now, and we have author Jonathan Safran Foer to thank for it. Portman scored an early release of his upcoming non-fiction work Eating Animals and switched from vegetarian to vegan immediately after reading it. Here’s a brief description of the book:

Brilliantly synthesizing philosophy, literature, science, memoir and his own detective work, Eating Animals explores the many fictions we use to justify our eating habits-from folklore to pop culture to family traditions and national myth-and how such tales can lull us into a brutal forgetting.

You might remember Safran Foer for his incredible book (which was made into a movie starring Elijah Wood) titled Everything Is Illuminated.

Anyways, Portman reveals that as a result of the book, she plans on becoming much more involved with animal rights. “There are certain things you can have different opinions on, but then other things, like torturing animals, [are] just wrong,” she said.

We couldn’t have said it better. Check out the rest of the interview here or preorder “Eating Animals” here.

We mentioned last week that Alicia Silverstone would be launching a website to go along with her new book The Kind Diet, but it seems as though the plans are a bit more ambitious than that.

Called The Kind Life, the actress created the website as an “interactive extension” of her healthy living book — sharing tips on everything from fashion and beauty, to simple ways to help the planet. “I will be posting tons of photos, blogs, and videos detailing all of the things in my life that have helped me to be as kind to the planet as possible,” she writes. “My friends, colleagues, and medical professionals will also post information on the site. My goal here is to share everything that I have learned on my journey with all of you, and I want you all to share your experiences with me.”

That last sentence is what separates this site from Gwyneth Paltrow’s similar, yet one-way street GOOP. Whereas both dish on what makes them happy — and offer advice from friends and experts in various fields, Silverstone wants to hear from you on what defines your happiness.. “Just send me a message and I will do my best to help,” she offers. “The Kind Life is a place where we can all support each other on this passage to healthier and happier living.”

To that end, the site, while still under development, features a social networking backend that will power the community Silverstone is hoping will thrive. There’s also a forum with categories for food, fashion, flirters (um, dating?), and oddly, superheroes.

Want to take a peek and be one of the first to sign up? Jump to The Kind Life website here.

Move over Gwyneth Paltrow — there’s another actress coming online that wants to share her healthy, environmentally-friendly finds.

In conjunction with the release of her new book “The Kind Diet“, Alicia Silverstone is branching online with a new site called TheKindLife.com. Hit it up currently, and you’re met with nothing more than a “Hellow” — but in an interview with EcoStiletto, Silverstone reveals her plans for the site — as well as some of her favorite brands. From the article,

“I created a website called TheKindLife.com to get people hooked on all my groovy latest finds—that will happen around the time of the book. I love Tammy Fender and Suki—those are my favorite skin care lines. Josie Maran lip gloss and eyeshadows [link]. Kiss My Face and Giovanni for shampoo. Desert Essence for conditioner—it smells so yummy! And Pharmacopia moisturizer. It’s all organic, except for a teeny bit of parabens. That’s my one naughty treat. I buy it like once a year. It’s smells so yummy! We have to all write to them so they’ll take the parabens out. I love Melissa [Plastic Dreams] shoes. And Stella McCartney. Melissa makes these two shoes that are so great. They’re these black slightly raised flats with an open toe. And a spider web gold shoe that is so awesome.”

I love the idea of Silverstone adding a website to go along with her new book — and I look forward to seeing some great recommendations as well. Look for The Kind Diet to officially launch on the 13th, and the website to follow somewhere around there. We’ll have a full review up shortly.

Much criticism has been lobbed on Gwyneth Paltrow for her GOOP side-project — a weekly wellness newsletter that covers everything from eating better to shopping. While our reactions sway between scorn and praise depending on the topic of the week, we nonetheless find GOOP to be an interesting, if not always practical, piece of the celebrity landscape.

One Esquire journalist wanted to take things a step further than just reading and dissecting Paltrow’s advice. For two weeks, Richard Dorment decided to use GOOP to dictate his daily routine — from eating to exercise to acupuncture. “I would read all her newsletters and regard her every word as gospel,” he wrote. “and maybe I might feel good after a few weeks of the Goop life. It’s not as if I could feel any worse.”

What happened? Well, the article is a hilarious intersection of normal everyday guy with the not-so-normal world of a celebrity — but Dorment sticks with it, even though the first couple days were rough. “Feel hungover,” he writes during day three. “The hunger isn’t in my stomach but in my throat. I am craving KFC. I never crave KFC. I don’t even like KFC. And yet I want it. My tongue feels swollen. I have a headache. This, I am told, is part of the natural detoxification process. It blows.”

After the detox, by sticking to the recommended diet of no red meat, organic vegetables and lots of water, Dorment starts to feel recharged. Going through the motions of a few other GOOP activities (including acupuncture, reading, and exercise), he completes the two-week period with this conclusion:

At the end of this two-week experiment, I can report, without qualification or caveat, that I felt very, very good. I was sleeping better. I had more energy. I’d lost nine pounds. (People liked to remind me that this was all water weight and that I’d probably gain it all back, but that’s just noise to me.) Revolutionary or not, Gwyneth’s way worked, and if it worked for this sinner, it could work for anybody. Case closed.

Granted, Dorment ends the piece saying that the whole experience wasn’t that much fun — and a bit expensive for things like acupuncture. Perhaps the greatest complaint, and one that all us non-celebrities can relate to, is that he just doesn’t have lots of time to commit to feeling good. “I came to realize that I couldn’t live the life I wanted to live while doing all the things Gwyneth Paltrow thought I should do. So for those reasons and a few more, I began slipping back to where I’d started. Now I try to eat more vegetables and spend a little more time in the gym.”

Still, it’s pretty incredible to see how an average guy’s body can benefit from just a few of GOOP’s recommendations. Rocket Science, it isn’t — but in a society of fast food and poor nutrition education, taking a bit of GOOP’s advice for what it is, and less for who’s behind it, might just be worth chewing on.

Jason went raw last April when his “trusty sidekick, Toca Rivera…discovered he was Diabetic.”  A year later, Jason likes the diet so much that he’s still rocking it.

To help promote his Cafe Gratitude tour, Jason has been releasing a series of comical videos that we think are pretty neat.

In one of the latest ones, Jason leaves his assistant to prepare some delicious raw vegan food when…

Well, we won’t ruin the surprise. Just watch below!

Anyways, continuing his personal fitness regimen, Crowe has taken to biking around Sydney, Australia. During one these workouts recently, the trailing paparazzi snapped some photos of the 46-year-old actor taking a break from a ride, smoking a cigarette and quaffing down some tacos and a soft drink. Gossip columnist Annette Sharp of Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph mocked Crowe’s new diet saying that “Smokes and fatty foods the fitness regime for Rusty.” Crowe was apparently offended by the quip and challenged Sharp to keep up with him on one of his rides. From the article,

In a story published Friday, the paper said Crowe’s spokesman called up gossip columnist Annette Sharp the next day and said, “Get on your bike. Russell wants you to go riding with him. Are you ready to die?”

Sharp accepted the challenge and the pair met a dawn for a 12-mile (20-kilometer) ride through the city. Video of the race shows Sharp struggling to keep up while Crowe zooms along unfazed. At one point, Sharp fell off her bike. Still, Crowe gave Sharp some credit, telling her she was a better biker than Australian director Baz Luhrmann. “You’re twice the man Baz is,” he said.

Ok, so Russell Crowe can kick all of our asses. We knew that already. However, smoking and fast food are really counter-productive to anyone attempting to get into shape. Eventually, it will all catch up to him and then any 10-year-old on a Huffy will be able to pass him by. Just wait.

Photo credit: Hollywood Grind

“Unfortunately many of our health-care problems are self-inflicted: two-thirds of Americans are now overweight and one-third are obese. Most of the diseases that kill us and account for about 70% of all health-care spending—heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and obesity—are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal alcohol consumption and other healthy lifestyle choices.”

“Recent scientific and medical evidence shows that a diet consisting of foods that are plant-based, nutrient dense and low-fat will help prevent and often reverse most degenerative diseases that kill us and are expensive to treat. We should be able to live largely disease-free lives until we are well into our 90s and even past 100 years of age.”

- Whole Foods CEO John Mackey offering some plant-powered advice to the Wall Street Journal. Mackey is vegetarian and almost vegan (he eats eggs from the chickens he keeps on property) and believes the key to good heath is lots of plant-based foods. That’s funny…so do we!

-Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson speaking out about his new role as ambassador of the Diabetes Aware campaign.  Diabetes is the pits and totally out of control! We’re happy to see a celeb encouraging healthy lifestyles. 

For those that love to hate GOOP — Gwyneth Paltrow’s weekly lifestyle newsletter — Vanity Fair has printed a mock interview with the actress that’s just for you. It touches upon her main focal points of “Go”, “Do”, “See”, “Be”, “Get”, “Make” and is rather hilarious. Here’s a highlight of their spoof on “MAKE”:

MAKE

And at that moment your personal trainer calls with this amazing new recipe for a detox face cream consisting of oatmeal, bee pollen, butterfly larvae, organic anti-freeze, sunflower extract, and liquid Lycra.

How do you cope? This is my method—and it would be great if you tried it, too.

Get your nanny to look after the kids, your agent to deal with Mendes, your kitchen staff to fold the napkins, your environmentalist to mix the face cream, and your lovely P.A. to book the table. You know what? My life is good because I am not passive about it. I invest in what is real. Like real people, to do real things, for the real me.

Ouch. Check out the full article here.