The mother-daughter duo, Ann Crile Esselstyn and Jane Esselstyn, are descended from a line of brilliant medical innovators. These descendants of George Crile, MD, the founder of the Cleveland Clinic, and his son, Ann’s father, George Crile, Jr., MD, both surgeons and medical pioneers, now host a wildly popular YouTube cooking show, Plant-Based with Jane Esselstyn and Ann Esselstyn. With humor and simplicity, they teach a whole food plant-based vegan diet, a lifestyle, clinically proven to prevent and even reverse chronic lifestyle-related diseases: obesity, heart disease, cancer, stroke, and Type 2 diabetes, to name a few.
This isn’t just any culinary duo. Ann and Jane not only descend from the old guard medical establishment, but Ann is the wife, and Jane the daughter, of Caldwell Esselstyn, MD, the pioneering Yale-educated and Olympic gold medalist Cleveland Clinic surgeon whose research revolutionized the understanding of heart disease as a reversible condition through low-fat plant-based nutrition. Esselstyn is the founder and director of the Heart Disease Reversal Program at the Cleveland Clinic. In their kitchen, Ann and Jane make his peer-reviewed science become a vibrant, accessible, and delicious lifestyle. Their cooking show is the joyful, practical bridge between these two monumental strands of medical history: institutional foundation and nutritional revolution.
At the Esselstyn family table, conversations naturally centered on medicine and nutrition. Following that path, Jane became a registered nurse. The entire extended family has now adopted a whole food plant-based (WFPB) diet. Today, Dr. Esselstyn, Jane, Ann, and Rip are all New York Times bestselling authors of lifestyle cookbooks.
A WFPB diet has granted Ann remarkable vitality at ninety years old. She maintains a sharp mind, a strong and fit body through regular exercise, and the energy to fully participate in her large, active, multigenerational family. Her strength was playfully demonstrated when she successfully pulled a heavy tire down the road—an amusing feat captured on video. For Ann, this lifestyle is the foundation for a life thoroughly enjoyed.
Completing this family venture is Jane’s brother, Rip. A former firefighter turned entrepreneur, he has written four diet and nutrition books—several of them New York Times #1 bestsellers—and founded the highly successful company Plantstrong, promoting the WFPB lifestyle through education and tasty food products.
How did this family unlock the power of plants? The answer lies in the early 1980s, during Dr. Esselstyn’s career as a surgeon. He was deeply troubled by the suffering he witnessed and what he saw on the operating table, and sought a way to prevent such diseases. Studying global health trends, he discovered a revealing pattern: breast cancer rates were 30 to 40 percent less frequent in some areas but rampant in others. Since environmental factors like air and water were consistent, he concluded the difference must be dietary, with saturated fat from animal products the probable cause. To ethically ask his patients to forgo meat and dairy, he first embraced the change with his own family. As a result, in the beginning of their WFPB journey, the Esselstyn household became known, with good humor, as the worst house for typical fun snacks.
Building on their heritage of medical innovation, Ann and Jane Esselstyn have authored a new chapter with their delightfully eccentric cooking show. Through this YouTube cooking show, they transform dietary science into a joyful culinary rebellion.
Since launching in 2016, their unscripted videos—now 361 episodes strong—have earned a YouTube award, a success that surprised even them. Beyond their channel, they host the educational “Be a Plant-Based Warrior” food fest several times a year outside Cleveland, Ohio, on their family’s scenic property overlooking Lake Erie.
A cornerstone of their work is the Esselstyn Foundation, whose mission is to teach the world how a WFPB diet can prevent and reverse lifestyle-related chronic disease. They bring this message directly to communities through educational outreach to institutions ranging from hospitals and medical schools to firehouses, congregations, and classrooms. Jane extends this vital work through her new book, Be a Plant-Based Woman Warrior, and her business, “Jane Esselstyn Health Care is Self Care.”
