🌱 Independent educator we admire
Meryl Fury, MS, RN
🩺 Public Health Nurse · 🥕 Food as Medicine Leader · 🧒 Children’s Nutrition Advocate · 🌿 Plant-Based Nutrition Educator · ⚖️ Health Equity Champion
Her inclusion here recognizes her publicly available work and does not imply that she endorses, advises, or clinically reviews Kitchen Monk™ or Flourishing Nursing™.
🎬 Featured replay · Plant Based Support
Can Fasting Save Your Life? (We Can Make It Better)
🌿 With Alan Goldhamer, DC · 📚 published in October 2026 in Plant Based Support’s Online Event Replays
⏱️ Start with the Q&A — 52:23
“I especially recommend watching the Q&A starting at 52:23.” — Nathanael Elijah Smith, FNP-C, DipACLM
🤝 With gratitude to Meryl Fury, MS, RN, and the Plant Based Support team for opening the door to education and community.
ℹ️ How to watch & what to know
- 🔑 The replay library asks you to sign in as a Plant Based Support member. Please check its current terms, trial and pricing before joining.
- 🧭 After signing in, choose the title above and move the player to 52 minutes, 23 seconds.
- 📺 As of October 26, 2026, we have not found a public YouTube copy of this recording. The public YouTube community playlist is a separate collection.
- 🩺 Educational content, not individual medical advice. Prolonged fasting requires medical evaluation and supervision. Our recommendation is our own; neither the speaker nor Plant Based Support has endorsed our websites.
🥦💪 Our everyday recommendation: while fasting may have some benefits, we predominantly recommend eating whole plant foods every day and keeping all the muscle we can as we age.
🏛️ The American College of Lifestyle Medicine put muscle health front and center on its Lifestyle Medicine 2026 conference program with the session “Managing and Treating Sarcopenia with Therapeutic Lifestyle Medicine & Emerging Technologies” (Tuesday, November 10, 2026, 2–3 p.m. Eastern Time), focused on spotting sarcopenia (age-related muscle loss) earlier and supporting strength and function. Please talk with your own clinician before fasting or making big changes.
✅ Honorary title, accepted with gratitude
🌿 Chief Plant-Based Support Nursing Guardian
Meryl Fury, MS, RN, honored for the community support, education and hope she brings to patients, families and nurses through Plant Based Support, the Plant Based Nutrition Movement and 6 Million SEEDS.
An honorary Kitchen Monk™ and Flourishing Nursing™ recognition, accepted by Meryl. It is not a professional credential, clinical role or employment.
🌿 Plant Based Support: free weekly meetings
🤗 Plant Based Support, led by Meryl Fury, MS, RN, holds free online support meetings and classes every week, and you don’t need to be fully plant-based to join.
Dates and times are set by Plant Based Support and kept current on their own schedule. Registration is handled on their pages; some events may require membership. Independent recommendation: no sponsorship, partnership or endorsement is implied, and event content is not individual medical advice.
🎬 Meryl Fury: interviews & community videos
Start with recordings featuring Meryl herself, then explore the separate Plant Based Support organization collection.
These are previously published recordings, not a current live broadcast. Additional recordings and publisher collections appear below.
The Goldhamer replay is published by Plant Based Support in its member library. It is separate from Meryl’s personal interviews.
🌿 Meryl’s work: three paths to support
Meryl Fury, MS, RN, is President and Chief Executive Officer of Plant Based Nutrition Movement, leads its 6 Million SEEDS Child Nutrition Project, and hosts the Growing a Healthy Child podcast. She is also President and Chief Executive Officer of Plant Based Support, a separate nonprofit; Plant Based Nutrition Movement describes the two as sister organizations with a shared mission. Explore the guides below to find community, education, and family resources.
Read Plant Based Support’s official announcement of her leadership, or contact each organization directly.
🎬 Meryl Fury on video
Three conversations featuring Meryl in her own words. Each player below is that exact video; tap ▶️ to play it here with sound.
Videos belong to their hosts and channels and play from YouTube, which may set cookies under its own privacy policy. Nothing plays on its own; tap ⛶ for fullscreen and CC for captions. The Plant Based Nutrition Movement button opens the channel of the organization Meryl leads as President and Chief Executive Officer, not a personal channel.
📺 Supplementary: Nutritionist Deepa · other speakers and topics
Publisher-updated uploads may include other educators and topics; this is separate from Meryl’s named recordings above. Availability, captions and continuation depend on YouTube and your browser. Open this exact publisher collection on YouTube ↗
📺 Supplementary: The Plant Yourself Podcast · other speakers and topics
Publisher-updated uploads may include other educators and topics; this is separate from Meryl’s named recordings above. Availability, captions and continuation depend on YouTube and your browser. Open this exact publisher collection on YouTube ↗
Explore Meryl’s nursing-leadership profile and recordings on Flourishing Nursing ↗
🎬 Plant Based Support · Replay Library
Learn, connect and keep watching. This YouTube playlist reflects the publisher’s current collection whenever you load the player. These are recorded videos, not a live broadcast.
🔊 Autoplay with sound is requested. If your browser blocks it, press Play and enable sound. The playlist supports playing videos in sequence; availability and continuation depend on YouTube, your settings and browser. Use the player’s playlist menu to choose a recording.
📌 Replay update · October 26, 2026: Plant Based Support has published “Can Fasting Save Your Life? (We Can Make It Better)” with Alan Goldhamer, DC in its member replay library (sign-in required). We have not found that recording in this public playlist, which is a separate collection whose order is set by its publisher.
🌿 Plant Based Support guide · 🩺 Meet Meryl Fury · 🤝 Official support groups
Independent educational resource; no endorsement implied. Organizational recordings may feature many speakers and are separate from Meryl Fury’s individual interviews. Embedded playback connects to YouTube. Educational content does not replace individual medical care.
📣 LEADERSHIP ANNOUNCEMENT · SEPTEMBER 2026
🎉 Congratulations, Meryl: President & Chief Executive Officer of Plant Based Support
Plant Based Support has named Meryl Fury, MS, RN, its new President & Chief Executive Officer. It is another example of a nurse bringing compassion, education, collaboration, and systems-level thinking into the spaces where we need them most.
To Nathanael, Meryl is much more than a respected nurse leader. She is one of his closest nursing friends. When he was brand new in his current clinical role, she was one of the very few people who stepped forward to help. She gave her time. She trusted him. She encouraged him. She wanted another nurse to succeed.
Congratulations, my friend. Your greatest impact may still be ahead. 🌱💚
📰 What Meryl and Her Teams Are Sharing
🌱 Recent headlines listed from the public feeds of Plant Based Nutrition Movement, 6 Million SEEDS, and Plant Based Support. Tap any headline to read it on their site. If a list is empty or out of date, use the buttons below.
🌳 Plant Based Nutrition Movement & 6 Million SEEDS: recent posts
🤝 Plant Based Support: recent blog posts
Headlines are listed from each organization’s public feed and open on their own sites. Listing a headline isn’t review or endorsement, and these organizations haven’t endorsed Kitchen Monk.
It is difficult for me to put into a few paragraphs how highly I regard Meryl Fury, MS, RN.
Meryl has my enormous, wholehearted, and unequivocal recommendation.
She represents something I care about deeply: what can happen when nursing moves beyond simply responding to disease and steps fully into prevention, education, advocacy, nutrition, community health, health equity, leadership, compassion, and transformation.
🩺 Meryl is a nurse.
🏥 A public-health leader.
📚 An educator.
🧭 A transformational organizational leader.
🥕 A Food as Medicine advocate.
🧒 A champion for children and families.
🏘️ A champion for historically under-resourced communities.
🌿 A champion for whole-food, plant-based nutrition.
⚖️ A champion for health equity.
— Flourishing Nurse Ninja Nathanael Elijah Smith, FNP-C, DipACLM, Founder, Kitchen Monk™
🏥 More Than Three Decades of Nursing and Public Health
Meryl brings more than 30 years of experience in nursing leadership, public health, community health, and nutrition education. A Registered Nurse with a Master’s degree in Nursing, she has worked extensively in public health and with underserved communities.
That history matters. Meryl did not arrive at health equity through theory alone. She understands that telling someone to “make healthier choices” means very little unless we also address education, access, affordability, culture, food systems, schools, families, and neighborhoods.
🏘️ Health lives within environments. Food access, affordability, transportation, time, school meals, culture, social support, and healthcare access all shape whether health advice can be followed. Lifestyle medicine must never become “you’re sick because you made bad choices,” and it must never become a luxury service. It means giving people knowledge, resources, opportunity, community, compassion, and practical support.
🚀 What Meryl Shows Us About Nursing
Meryl’s career is one of the clearest real-world examples of Flourishing Nursing Forward™. A nurse can lead a nonprofit and become a Chief Executive Officer. A nurse can build national initiatives, work with schools, teach Food as Medicine, advocate for health equity, host a podcast, convene experts, and help change the food environment surrounding a generation of children.
This is not a call for nurses to leave the bedside. Bedside nursing is sacred work. It is a reminder that the scope of nursing’s contribution to human flourishing is enormous, and that it continues in homes, kitchens, schools, cafeterias, community centers, churches, and around dinner tables.
🌳 One Seed, Many Branches: Meryl’s Work
🤝 President & Chief Executive Officer, Plant Based Support
Plant Based Support announced Meryl as its President & Chief Executive Officer on September 2, 2026, effective July 20, 2026. The national nonprofit offers more than 20 online education and support sessions each month, plus community programs, teaching kitchens, and practical guidance.
🌿 President and Chief Executive Officer, Plant Based Nutrition Movement
Meryl is President and Chief Executive Officer of Plant Based Nutrition Movement, a nonprofit advancing whole-food, plant-based nutrition education and community health, with a strong focus on children, families, and at-risk communities. Plant Based Nutrition Movement and Plant Based Support are separate nonprofits; Plant Based Nutrition Movement calls them sister organizations, with Plant Based Nutrition Movement as the activist arm and Plant Based Support as the education and support arm.
🌱 Leads the 6 Million SEEDS Child Nutrition Project
Meryl leads Plant Based Nutrition Movement’s 6 Million SEEDS Child Nutrition Project. SEEDS stands for Students Educated in Environment, Diet, and Sustainability. The project brings whole plant foods and evidence-based nutrition education to students, teachers, classroom parents, and school food professionals, asking one of public health’s most important questions: what are we feeding our children?
🎙 Host, Growing a Healthy Child Podcast
Launched in January 2022, the podcast speaks to the adults who decide what children eat: parents, educators, and healthcare professionals. One nurse cannot care for every child, but one nurse can reach the adults who influence thousands of them.
🍲 Food for Life Instructor
Meryl is a Food for Life Instructor with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Hands-on classes turn information into confidence: people see food prepared, taste it, and realize, “I could actually do this.”
📚 Education, Evidence & Leadership
Meryl holds a Master’s degree in Nursing and certificates in Plant-Based Nutrition from the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies and eCornell, in project management from Villanova, and in plant-based cuisine from Rouxbe and Forks Over Knives. She has served on the Board of Directors and Medical Advisory Board of the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies and is a member of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine.
She speaks many languages at once: nursing, public health, implementation, nutrition science, culinary education, and, most importantly, the language of ordinary people trying to build healthier lives.
🕊️ With Love and Acceptance
Meryl’s own plant-based journey began at age 15 and grew through years of nursing study, reflection, and personal transformation. Her aspiration to share the whole-food, plant-based message with love and acceptance resonates deeply with Kitchen Monk. Healthcare has enough shame, and nutrition has enough judgment. People need guides, teachers, encouragers, practical resources, and communities that meet them where they are.
🛡️ For Our Flourishing Guardians
Children need heroes whose superpowers are compassion, wisdom, courage, service, nourishment, teaching, curiosity, and love. We want our Flourishing Guardians to grow up knowing that changing the world can look like helping a school put more nourishing food on a lunch tray, teaching a family one recipe, or becoming a nurse.
🌻 Continue Meryl’s Work
Meryl is busy doing the work, so the best way to honor her is to join it. Follow along, share her posts, and help her message reach more families.
Meryl’s personal accounts
Organization accounts
🙏 Thank You, Meryl.
Thank you for planting seeds. Thank you for protecting children. Thank you for advocating for communities that deserve to be seen. Thank you for advancing Food as Medicine and bringing nursing leadership into the plant-based movement. Thank you for showing that health equity belongs at the center of lifestyle medicine. Thank you for teaching with love and acceptance. Thank you, Meryl, for everything you do for nurses and patients. And thank you for helping us imagine healthcare not merely as the treatment of disease, but as the cultivation of human flourishing.
🌱 Plant the seed. 🥕 Nourish the child. 🩺 Equip the nurse.
🍲 Transform the kitchen. 🤝 Strengthen the community.
🌎 Protect the future. 🌲 Cultivate flourishing.
With my deepest respect and highest recommendation,
Flourishing Nurse Ninja Nathanael Elijah Smith, FNP-C, DipACLM
Founder, Kitchen Monk™
🧭 Where to next?
🌱 Independent educational resource. No affiliation or endorsement implied. This page expresses Kitchen Monk’s admiration for Meryl and her work; it does not imply that Meryl or the organizations named here endorse, advise, or clinically review Kitchen Monk™ or Flourishing Nursing™. Her role and credentials are drawn from public sources, including Plant Based Support’s announcement. No payment is involved. Kitchen Monk earns nothing from any link here: no affiliate commissions and no payments. Educational information only, not medical advice. Read our transparency notes → Information last reviewed: September 2026 · Last updated October 9, 2026.
“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” 
