|
|
Food for Thought Friday: how many plants do you eat in a week? 🌾
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hi friend!
This week I read a fun fact that I can’t stop thinking about. It came from a totally random place - it was in an email from a company called Everyday Oil (I love their body oil). In an email about supporting your microbiome, they noted an interesting finding from the “largest study on the human microbiome to date,” which is this: “people that eat 30 or more varieties of plants per week had significantly more diverse microbiomes. Having a diverse microbiome is strongly correlated with health; better resistance to disease, inflammation, etc.”
Before I discuss this directly, I have to tell you that I have a love/hate relationship with health news and advice. I care A LOT about my health, which means I’m a total sucker for a health-related, attention-grabbing headline. I will click on it almost every time. That said… I have found that if I read too much health news, I can start to feel bad about myself - like I’m not doing enough, don’t know enough, like I’m missing out on whatever the latest/hottest healthy thing might be. Plus there’s so much conflicting information out there, it can be really overwhelming. So, I generally keep my incoming health news to a minimum these days. I have a few people/sources I follow, and I love to dig in on a specific question or topic when I need to, but too many health headlines stresses me out.
But… I have to admit I’m fascinated by the microbiome, so this email got me. The microbiome seems so cool and mysterious! And also like a potential health frontier. I spent a couple hours reading about this study, and I couldn’t stop thinking about 30 different plants per week! That seems like a LOT of plants!
One of my personal health strategies is exactly this - to eat a wide variety of plants, and whole foods in general. I try to mix it up week to week, and get different and weird foods whenever I can. When I go out - I try to order things I don’t usually eat at home. But here was a simple metric for my philosophy: 30 per week!
Of course it made me wonder: am I eating 30 different plants in a week? I felt somewhat confident I was, but I obviously had to count it up to find out :).
Now, I’m not sure the details on this stat - does it mean 30 different fresh fruits and veggies? Do grains/beans/nuts/seeds/spices count? I don't know and I didn't see it clarified in the study.
I decided the easiest thing was to write down all the fresh fruits and veg currently in my fridge or on my produce shelf, copy/pasted below. Now - I had JUST gone to the farmers market to load up for the week, and the week before I had been to a different grocery store where I bought some different-than-usual produce, of which I still had some, so I have to say this is a little more diverse than usual, even for me.
Food in the fridge/produce shelf right now, 2/21/22:
- kale
- bib lettuce
- romaine lettuce
- radicchio
- another kind of chicory
- small red lettuce
- purple mizuna greens
- dandelion greens
- green cabbage
- broccoli rabe
- watermelon radishes
- grapefruit
- blood oranges
- shishito peppers
- cilantro
- parsley
- thyme
- tarragon
- cucumbers
- cherry tomatoes
- shiitake mushrooms
- brussel sprouts
- butternut squash
- kabocha squash
- spaghetti squash
- plantains
- apples
- asian pears
- garlic
- shallots
- jalapeno
- avocados
- 2 kinds of onions
- 3 kinds of berries
- 3 kinds of turnips
- 3 kinds of oranges/tangerines
So.. that’s 43 fresh plants, which doesn’t include grains/beans/spices, etc. We’ll likely eat these over the course of two weeks instead of one (because I may have overbought just a tad this week…), but I was excited about this number!
Eating a diverse diet is health advice I can actually live by, because it feels fun and natural to me. I tend to get sick of the same things when I eat them too much, I get a thrill from trying new foods (especially produce), and I generally shop with the seasons, which gives me a built-in diversity of fresh food throughout the year. I still cook a lot of the same types of dishes (my 10 "formats" I follow about 80% of the time), but because I cook intuitively, I can use different veggies and toppings to keep things interesting and diverse without being too complicated.
How many different plants do YOU eat in a week? I think it’d be cool to count it up and just see where you fall! This is not meant to make you feel bad if the number is small, just a hopefully interesting (and relatively easy) thing to check in on!
And if getting a wider variety of plants in your diet is something you want to do, here are a few ideas:
- Green sauce - you can put a ton of different herbs and/or greens in green sauce and it will be delicious! Recipe here. I make this almost every week - so good on veggies and meats.
- Rotating greens is one of my go-to easy ways to increase variety. I rotate through different kinds of kale -> collards -> spinach -> swiss chard -> cabbage -> dandelion greens (less often but I still try to incorporate those every once in a while!) -> whatever else I see that looks different! You can treat most hearty greens the same way in cooking! I love adding them to soups/stews at the end, or to my daily saute bowl, or to scrambled eggs.
- Buy one new veggie. When I was first learning to cook, I would buy one new veggie per week that I didn’t know how to make, and I’d come home and have to figure out what to do with it. You could do this with fruit too, which would be more sweet/fun and likely less work!
- Smoothies - I’m personally not a big smoothie person, but smoothies can be a great place to add new fruits and veg. In fact, the email I cited suggested making “Strange Smoothies.” See here for more!
- Fermented veg - no time for fresh veg? No prob! Fermented veggies last a whiiiillllleeeeee in the fridge and are GREAT for your gut! They make a tasty topping for avocado toast, or really almost any dish you wanna eat. I think of them as an alternative to pickled onions - they add crunch, zing, and acid (and good bacteria) to any dish that needs a little somethin! Try a few till you find one you like. Note - if you're just starting out eating fermented veg, regular/plain sauerkraut is personally not my top choice. I'd start with something with beets, or even kimchi, especially if you like spicy and/or Asian flavors. (More on kimchi in last week's email.)
Happy diversifying your produce drawer!
Love,
Jess
PS. I don't mean to imply in the above writing that you should take health directives from an "interesting finding" in a random study someone shares (nor should you ever take health directives from me, as I'm not a doctor)! I just thought this was an interesting metric on something I already do/believe in, so I wanted to write about it :).
PPS. Let me know how many plants you eat per week if you decide to count it up!
PPS. Someday I wanna do the microbiome/diet tests by the company discussed in this article.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
All photos are taken by me and recipes written by me, unless otherwise noted.
If you like this email, forward it along to your favorite food-loving friends (it would mean so much to me)! Wannabe subscribers can sign up here. Thanks for reading!
In case you missed out, here are a few past issues to check out:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hi, I'm Jess! I help health-conscious, busy people transform their cooking from chore to lifestyle through intuitive cooking, which I teach through online classes, free content, coaching and more. This is my newsletter, Food for Thought Fridays, where I share highly actionable tips and inspiration to help you cook more intuitively (which makes cooking feel easier and SO much more fun!). Once a month or more, I share a recipe that's really worth making, and I only share those with my email subscribers. Sometimes the text above may include affiliate links, meaning (at no additional cost to you) I get a commission if you click through and make a purchase. This helps me to continue to share free content, so I would love it if you buy through my link! Thank you for supporting Garlic Press Jess!
I currently work + live on land that is the unceded territory of the Ramaytush Ohlone. And I can't wait to eat at Cafe Ohlone when they reopen someday! Check out this article about them.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
