Your Daily Dozen and a Winter Lasagna Recipe

This blog is about Dr. Michael Greger’s Daily Dozen. I’ll soon explain what that is but let me first start to introduce Michael Greger. He is the founder of NutritionFacts.org a source of free information on food and health that I highly recommend. Greger is not just another self-proclaimed “guru”. A medical doctor, He has dedicated his life to research how to live healthily. He shares Hippocrates’ philosophy: “Let food be thy medicine”.

His website (nutritionfacts.org) is a donation-driven nonprofit, and he doesn’t offer any products. In fact, his main recommendation is to avoid any products and just eat whole, natural food!

“How Not to Die”

Greger is also a prolific author. It’s personal but I really enjoy his borderline cynical sense of humor. Check one of his videos on YouTube to get a taste. In his great book “How not to die” Dr. Greger demonstrates how nutrition and lifestyle choices help prevent the top causes of premature death. Each of the first fifteen chapters of the book describes which disease you do NOT want to die from: heart conditions, cancer, type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s, high blood pressure, liver diseases, infections depression…

The Daily Dozen

In the second part of the book Greger goes in to explain how to put his recommendation in practice. He summarizes his recommendations of all the things you should try and fit into your daily routine: the Daily Dozen. It’s basically a checklist. There’s even a Daily Dozen app!

This checklist contains the building blocks essential to remain healthy, including in which quantity one should take them. Greger: “Each day, I recommend a minimum of three servings of beans (legumes), one serving of berries, three servings of other fruits, one serving of cruciferous vegetables, two servings of greens, two servings of other veggies, one serving of flaxseeds, one serving of nuts and seeds, one serving of herbs and spices, three servings of whole grains, five servings of beverages, and one serving of exercise.”

Let’s add B12 vitamin to this list. Greger clearly promotes veganism and B12 is the only vitamin the body cannot produce naturally. Trust me: although it takes some thinking, it is easy to check all the boxes every day.

Winter Lasagna Recipe

Allow me to help you with your servings of flaxseeds, herbs, cruciferous vegetables, greens and other vegetables with this “tricolore lasagna”. To challenge myself I experimented with vegan bechamel and made this recipe gluten-free.

Start by chopping broccoli. Greger states that the full benefits of this cruciferous vegetable’s enzymes are released when you cut this veggie 45 minutes before you cook or eat it. To boost the cruciferous content, I added brussel sprouts with I halved so they fit more easily in a lasagna layer.

Start the baking process by frying garlic and onions. Sauté the vegetables. Add fresh spinach leaves, or frozen green peas or whatever veggie you feel like. In this case I used zucchinis (not a winter veggie, but these are available year-round in Dutch supermarkets thanks to the prolific greenhouses here).

Once the vegetables are warm, add tomato sauce or diced tomatoes and chopped freh herbs. Keep this mix warm while you prepare the bechamel.

Vegan and Gluten-Free

As one of my relatives has difficulty processing dairy and gluten I decided to create a gluten-free bechamel and to use gluten-free lasagna pasta. Instead of milk I used a non-dairy alternative, a hazelnut-rice milk by Zonnatura. Check the ingredients list of your “non-dairy milk”: they mostly contain water and additives such as sunflower oil, a commonly used trans fat. As trans fats are bad for you, prefer products that don’t contain them. More on that topic in a future blog!

To create a thick sauce, I dissolved two spoons of corn starch and two spoons of broken flaxseeds to the hazelnut-rice milk. I slowly brought this mix to a simmer until it thickened.

The process of making lasagna is well-known: a layer of base mix (the vegetables), add the lasagna pasta, pour some bechamel, repeat. On the top layer, next to bechamel I added grated vegan cheese and pumpkin seeds. Vegan cheese, by the way, isn’t that healthy but it helps create a for the eye pleasing gratin look.

In summary, here’s how this lasagna helps tick Daily Dozen boxes:

• 1 of one serving of cruciferous vegetables
• 1 of two servings of greens
• 1 of two servings of other veggies
• 1 of one serving of flaxseeds
• 1 of one serving of nuts and seeds
• 1 of one serving of herbs and spices
• 1 of three servings of whole grains