The Purjes Foundation is a private charitable trust organized under IRS rule 501(c)(3). It was established by Dan and Edna (“Ed”) Purjes and is solely funded and managed by them.

The Purjes Foundation’s mission is to fund greater public awareness to the benefits of a plant-based, whole foods lifestyle.

We focus on the importance of changing existing attitudes and behavior about food, and its direct impact on health. We aim to enlighten the public about the healing quality of plant-based nutrition, and its ability to prevent and reverse disease. We seek to support scientific research that affirms this position.

While the Purjes Foundation supports many worthwhile causes each year, ranging from education to the environment, health takes center stage because of the personal experience of Dan and Ed Purjes.

Dan suffered a heart attack in 2011. (Read his story here.) He reversed his heart disease by converting to a plant-based, whole foods lifestyle. The improvement in his health was so dramatic that he and Ed decided to devote considerable time, energy and money to helping people avoid needless suffering and needless death from chronic diseases.
We investigated the benefits of a plant-based, whole foods lifestyle through discussions with many physicians and researchers, by reading numerous research articles in peer-reviewed medical journals, and through meetings with dozens of people who reversed their own chronic diseases. We discovered that many people reversed heart disease, diabetes, cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, Crohn’s, and other diseases.
The Purjes Foundation has funded and been involved with many health-related causes:

• Funded a randomized clinical trial involving 100 patients at NYU Medical Center, comparing a plant-based diet to the diet recommended by the American Heart Association (“AHA”). This study demonstrated a four-fold improvement in a key marker of inflammation in the plant-based patients as compared to the AHA patients. Inflammation is a critical component of heart disease. The Wall Street Journal wrote a feature article on this study.
• Acquired a powerful documentary film called, Eating You Alive, which dramatically shows individuals suffering from severe chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes, obesity, lupus and heart disease. The film depicts the successful reversal of these diseases through a plant-based, whole foods lifestyle. The film will be screened in hundreds of theaters on April 5, 2018.
• Launched, in partnership with the Plantrician Project, a new, peer-reviewed medical journal called, the International Journal of Disease Reversal & Prevention. The Plantrician Project is a public non-profit organization with 30,000 physicians and healthcare professionals with an interest in the benefits of plant-based nutrition, and a desire to educate their patients in those benefits.
• In conjunction with the Plantrician Project, helped build a directory of plant-based physicians called PlantBasedDocs.com, to help individuals locate a plant-based physician near their home.
• Finalizing arrangements for additional studies involving plant-based nutrition.