Enjoyed reading your post about your success with a WFPB diet as well as the followup comment. Thanks for posting them! Liked your dynamic slow cooker approach to variations. I should try that.
Sad to see your informative and insightful comment modded down. Just goes to show how problematical discussion of all this can be. The issue is not so much ignorance as decades of (often profit-driven) misinformation. Peter C Gøtzsche wrote some books on problematical issues with a profit-driven medical industry.
Some more comments on related issues -- pardon if you have seen much of this before.
On your last paragraph, for salads, Dr. Joel Fuhrman suggests "Make the salad the main dish" including by adding a lot of things to it, like chickpeas and so on, and making dressing using nut butters.
https://info.drfuhrman.com/make-salad-the-main-dish
He's also big on smoothies, especially in the morning, where people can drink them on the go.
I did not see you mention mushrooms. Something to consider:
https://www.drfuhrman.com/blog/237/g-bombs-the-anti-cancer-f...
As a rule of thumb, Dr. Fuhrman basically suggests eating one pound raw foods and one pound cooked foods per day (ideally all WFPB). I can't say I manage that though. I keep trying to take short-cuts to all this, and probably none of them work that well. I've also tried meal delivery services (like Whole Harvest) but the cost, packaging, timing, and not having recipes tuned to my tastes is problematical -- even if the food is generally healthy otherwise. I am at least eating a lot more leafy greens, often in wraps -- although what I use for wraps can be problematical (any of processed wheat wraps, Ezekiel wraps, corn tortilla wraps, Nori wraps, large leaf lettuce, some worse than others).
Right now I am struggling with what to eat for breakfast. I have been trying some organic oat-based cereal with almond milk, fruit, and an organic plant-based protein powder -- but I know it could probably be much better if I was cooking more. Related to that I have been doing roughly 8:16 intermittent fasting by shifting my eating window into the mornings from roughly about 8am to 4pm (after a seven day water-only fast a couple months ago). So a good breakfast becomes more important. Surprised no comments by anyone here so far have mentioned fasting as another possible way to help with arthritis and other autoimmune issues.
The book "The Pleasure Trap" explains why so many people (whether me or your relative mentioned in your followup) are caught up in a "Pleasure Trap" of unhealthy eating related to how our natural inclinations rooted in food scarcity are maladapted for a world of food abundance (especially an abundance of salt, sugar and fat found in engineered ultraprocessed foods -- and also various non-food-related stress where the natural human response to stress is to fatten up for likely hard times):
https://www.healthpromoting.com/the-pleasure-trap
https://archive.org/details/the-pleasure-trap-mastering-the-...
Joe Cross' movie "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead 2" explores why it can be so hard to keep up with healthy eating in modern Western society:
https://www.rebootwithjoe.com/watch-here/
From:
https://www.rebootwithjoe.com/about-fat-sick-nearly-dead-2/
"But then a funny thing happened, even with all the knowledge I’d learned, the techniques and tips I’ve gotten from experts, the fact that I was still off all of my medication, I found it was an ongoing struggle to keep the weight off! I was like, “hey, this isn’t supposed to be happening!” I’d done all the hard work, I even got off my meds! But that’s not how it works. I learned that losing the weight was easy, that the hard work really starts when you’re trying to maintain the weight loss. I quickly realized that I wasn’t alone. Seems like everyone has trouble keeping the weight off. That’s where the idea for “Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead #2” came from. I figured that I might as well share all this stuff. I was learning? So while I traveled to 10 countries, learning about health and nutrition along the way, I brought along the camera crew and what I found out is what you’ll see in the film. I visited doctors like Dean Ornish who gave me insight into the keys to health besides food, and Sheila Kar who gave me a view of my own arteries. A real eye-opener, I’ll tell you! I also wanted to know the power of marketing and see if I could eat only what I wanted to, not what I was being told to eat. That was what led me to Professor Brian Wansink who took me on a very enlightening tour of his hometown and showed me how food is sold to us and what we can do about it."
One interesting thing I read on Dr. Fuhrman's site somewhere is that one patient concluded it was cheaper to spend a month at a retreat and learn to eat better to reverse his heart disease than it would be to pay the deductible and copays on a heart bypass operation. I can wish there were more such health retreats all over the USA and the world -- maybe a Y-Combinator success yet to happen about that someday?
https://www.drfuhrman.com/etlretreat
Supper clubs are one alternative to "retreats":
"Logical Miracles: 100 Stories of Hope and Healing"
https://www.amazon.com/Logical-Miracles-Stories-Hope-Healing...
"Why is it so hard to eat right? What does it take to turn around the habits that make us sick and fat? Logical Miracles is a collection of stories by people in The Suppers Programs who found their personal solutions by experimenting with whole food. In an environment of nonjudgment, we cook, taste, and feel our way to health, and we forge new friendships based on healthy living. For five years, pilot Suppers groups have been helping people with a range of food-related challenges find their path, especially people with depression, anxiety, learning issues, obesity, diabetes, and problems with alcohol. No special diets. No fees. No commercial messages. The only requirement for membership is the desire to lead a healthier life. Now we’d like to share our logical miracles, our road maps, our recipes, and especially our hard-earned wisdom related as stories of hope and healing. Welcome to Suppers."
A bigger societal-level approach to transformation towards health is pursued by the "Blue Zones" project.
https://www.bluezones.com/
Congrats on finding things that work for you to stay healthy in our current short-term-profit-maximizing society -- one that often privatizes gains like from addictive ultra-processed foods while socializing costs like ill health (paid for by higher medical-related taxes/borrowing and higher "health"-insurance premiums, not to mention years of personal suffering or family/communal grief from early deaths).