1. Live healthier by following a 100% plant-based lifestyle
2. Reduce in the process our impact on the planet’s resources
3. Eliminate animals’ suffering and stop the huge scale production of animal protein. 

The win-win-win is ideal in multiple ways. For instance, by cutting our consumption of animal proteins, we reduce the impact of massive meat production on the environment such as deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions AND we improve our health e.g. lower the risks of heart-related diseases and cancer. Also, by reducing the massive scale of animal farms, we reduce the risks of pandemics for humans AND we improve animal welfare.

Hence, my reasoning has been: “let me demonstrate that I become healthier on a plant-based diet and hopefully in the process I’ll inspire others to contribute to the triple win.” 

To validate this reasoning I went back to school, graduated as a food coach in June 2022, and followed a course from PNI Europe (introduction in “clinical psycho neuro immunology”, “KPNI” in Dutch). Both courses have convinced me to revise my standpoint to some extent.

I still do not eat meat!

However, I have reintroduced animal protein in my regimen. This is a departure from my idealistic win-win-win standpoint, so I feel the need to explain what and why I changed.

What Has Not Changed: A Solid Plant-Based Foundation

I still believe that a mostly plant-based approach to life is the way to go. From a human health point of view, our menu should be based on 80% alkaline ingredients, vegetables and fruits! This still needs to form the bulk of man’s diet. Why is explained here.

Considering the amount of unhealthy crap (sorry!) in processed food, I still believe that organic, pure, non-processed food is the way to go. Please read the ingredients of what you buy before you put in your mouth. Wheat? Avoid – see why here. 

Vegetable oils, like sunflower and peanut oil, beware! They contain Omega 6 fats which are responsible for low-grade inflammation.

To lower the logistics impact of the food system, I still go for mostly seasonal and local produce. That’s why I’m a customer of Boerschappen.

Still No Steak For Me!

Red meat like beef, pork, lamb… are still on my black (or red) list. I strongly advise against eating these foods. The biggest issue: they contain a molecule, Neug5Gc, which humans cannot synthesize, and that presents many issues. The largest risk is that Neu5Gc results in low-grade inflammation. See for instance “A red meat-derived glycan promotes inflammation and cancer progression”. Or just Google “Neu5Gc”.

Additionally, the molecule resembles the human Neu5Ga and that means that pathogens (viruses and bacteria) can sneak in our bodies and make us sick.

Bottom-line: red meat lowers your immune defences. 

Not Fake Meat Either!

I occasionally order a veggie hamburger in a restaurant but I don’t buy the fake meat products you find in supermarket. That’s 100% processed food, and the ingredients are most often unhealthy. 

Only exception: tempeh because it’s mostly pure and it is fermented. Fermented vegetables contain bacteria that are good for one’s microbiome.

What Has Changed: Some Animal Protein

This has been months in the making but here it is… I am no longer a vegetarian. Let alone that I have adopted a vegan lifestyle. I have not joined the dark side completely either. I still don’t buy meat and I very rarely eat it. However, I am back eating animal protein: a bit of cheese, eggs, fish, and seafood. 

Note, by the way, that the awful Neug5Gc molecule is also present in milk and cheese, in high quantities in goat cheese. Eating that from time to time is a risk I’m willing to take occasionally. Cheese 🧀 and wine 🍷remain my drug of choice. Oh yes, and chocolate 🍫 as well.

What Happened?

Let’s go back to the beginning. When I engaged on my “French Food Philosopher” journey I was convinced that going vegan was THE solution for the sustainability challenges our planet is facing. A great win-win-win was the ideal that motivated me: better human health through good food, much lower impact on natural resources, far less animal suffering.  

Doubt however was gnawing at me. My professors made it clear that vegans do not get enough vitamin B12 and Omega 3 fatty acids. And as I’m against industrial, processed products, I found it weird that one of the “wins” meant compromising with an important principle: having to eat processed foods. 

Furthermore, I found that eating legumes (beans, lentils, chickpeas) to get to my daily intake of proteins felt unpleasant. After all, flatulence is not only socially awkward, but also a sign that your body is struggling to digest something. And in my case, there is a clear indication that I struggle to digest legumes. One of the reasons for that can be found here.

The PNI course has made it clear to me that lectins, one of the substances contained in legumes, are not a human’s friend. See for instance “The Problem With Lectins” in this article.  

As always, it’s not an “all of nothing” law. The point is that we cannot rely on legumes, grains, seeds and nuts to live healthy lives. We also need some intake of animal protein.

Changed Menu

Long story short: everyone’s body is unique. It’s up to you to find out what best works for your health. I won’t deny that animal proteins can be needed in a human’s diet. In my case I eat fish or seafood twice a week. Poultry? I’m still seating on the fence.  

Additionally, I use ghee (clarified butter) to cook – next to coconut and olive oil. And you’ll find butter, a bit of cheese and a little dairy on my menu. Not a humongous change, but a departure from my ideal “win” based on a 100% plant-based lifestyle. 

Should you want more information, scientific sources or otherwise, please drop me a note.

A Plate Full of Knowledge

Those three items are keeping me intellectually busy:

• Two students in Nutrition & Health from the Wageningen University & Research, Eva Everloo and Ella Stephens, have produced an excellent online course on EdX – “Plant Based Diets: Food for a Sustainable Future”. I will share some of their wisdom and insights later. The course is now closed for enrollment but I reckon it will reopen one day.
• The new book “The Plant Based Athlete” finally reached my home. I’m on chapter 3, “It’s time to have the protein talk”. This book is well written, I highly recommend it already. It’s exciting as it promises to help you make a personalized choice, regardless of what your motivation and fitness levels are.
• I picked up a new hobby: reading labels on packages in the supermarket. The webinar “Food as Medicine”, in Dutch (“Voeding als Medicijn”) organized by Ivo Houben of How2BeHealthy, among other things, how to recognize healthy ingredients on food labels.

Glass Half Full: Protein Transition

Whether it’s DNA, karma or education, I have had to train myself to take a positive outlook on life. It is sometimes challenging to discover a silver lining in the flow of negative messages surrounding us. I choose to see the three aforementioned nuggets of knowledge as anecdotal evidence that the world is warming up (no, not talking about the climate) to the idea of a protein transition.

We need to eat less meat and adopt a plant-based diet. For the sake of our health, that of our planet and – yes, these are big words – the survival of the human race. Obviously I suffer, like everyone else, a condition called “confirmation bias”: I look for evidence that reinforces my convictions.

Hence my pledge to back my standpoint with objective evidence. Thanks to the sources I mentioned before I will come back to that!

Orange Dish

In the spirit of the European Football Championship (Soccer) and as the Netherlands are playing tonight I’m happy to close this piece with an orange dish. Thanks to Boerschappen for this “Oranje AVG”, it’s delicious. It is yummy and it is based on locally sourced ingredients, as always with Boerschappen.

• Just mix small potatoes with oil, pepper, salt and paprika powder and bake them in your oven for 30 minutes.
• Grill orange cauliflower (it’s extra full of vitamin A) for a few minutes in a pan and add them to the potatoes for the last 10 minutes and put a little (Dutch) cheese on top to melt.
• In a pan saute some garlic and onions and bake mushrooms and/or a vegetarian burger in a bit of butter (learned from Ivo: to bake, real butter is beter than olive oil).

Voilà: an orange potatoe-vegetable-burger dish. Full of healthy carbohydrates, proteins and fat and micronutrients. My photograph doesn’t do the dish justice. It really is delicious!

Based on a this dish, here is a reminder of what constitutes healthy foods, based on the Canadian government’s food guide.

Source: https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/

Enjoy, and stay tuned!

How it Works

As far as I’m concerned intermittent fasting is a way of life, an eating pattern, not a diet. Intermittent fasting (I.F.) means that you take all your meals within a relatively short period of time, or you eat one day and not the next. There are quite a few models to implement I.F.; this article describes five different methods, with a good analysis of their pros and cons.

My Own Experience

My I.F. pattern is similar to the “Leangains” or 16:8 method: fasting during sixteen hours and taking meals within an eight-hour period. I stick to this pretty strictly every weekday and follow a somewhat looser pattern in the week-ends.

A personal trainer, Marc Raats, introduced me to I.F. about three years ago. I wondered about how to go about eating in combination with exercising. I hated to go for a run with a stomach full with my breakfast (first meal in the morning, hence “break fast”). Marc told me he did not eat before exercising and he mentioned I.F. which I researched and ended up adopting.

My daily pattern looked something like this:

• Sport – Start the day with running or fitness, without eating anything until lunch
• Eat – Enjoy a big lunch at noon, snack with a fruit or vegetable snack around 3pm, have dinner around 6 or 7 pm.
• Fast – until the following day.

It took me about a week to become comfortable with this pattern. For sure, not having breakfast was hard at first. Warm beverages like tea and coffee helped me cope during the first few days.

For a variety of reasons I shifted the timeline and these days I eat a small breakfast around 8am, a large lunch and a light afternoon meal. I love to run in the morning, for up to two hours, on an empty gut. Ending my eight-hour eating cycle around 4pm means I digested well when I go to bed.

Weight Loss Benefits

When you are not eating you give your body time to lower insulin levels and your fat cells can then release their stored sugar, to be used as energy. You lose weight because your body burns fat if you let insulin levels go down.

During the past three years I noticed that whenever my weight goes up, for instance during holiday periods, I find it easy to bring it back to my desired level within a couple of weeks. To be completely transparent: my weight has remained steadily between 76 and 80 kilos.

Health Benefits

Besides losing weight, you may experience improved heart and brain functions because of reduced insulin. Research suggests that intermittent fasting is beneficial for reducing inflammation and improving conditions associated with inflammation, such as Alzheimer’s disease, arthritis, asthma, multiple sclerosis and even stroke. It also helps to prevent diabetes type 2.

Another benefit of fasting that is strongly suggested by research is that it induces autophagy. Your body consists of billions of cells. Over time, unwanted molecules can build up inside those cells and sometimes this can damage the cells. Autophagy is the natural process whereby your cells remove these unwanted molecules. Autophagy also seems to play an essential role in the immune system by cleaning out toxins and infectious agents.

Warnings

Skipping meals and limiting calories can be dangerous for you if you suffer from conditions such as type 1 diabetes. Beware also if you take medications for blood pressure or heart disease as you may be more prone to imbalances of minerals during periods of fasting. In short: please consult your doctor before experimenting with IF should you take medicines for a chronic disease.

If you, like me, adopt intermittent fasting, be extra mindful of what you eat. As you may eat less in quantity, the quality of your calories is of more importance than before. Feed your body with healthy food and avoid “useless”, processed foods. As always, I recommend the blue zone guidelines to help you create a balanced menu.

Blue Zones Guidelines

Interesting? Want to know more about intermittent fasting? You can find below a few links of articles I used to prepare this article. I am also keen to hear about your experience, please share your thoughts and feedback!

Links for your information:

• Does Intermittent Fasting Work?
• Intermittent fasting: Surprising update
• Time-restricted eating – a detailed intermittent fasting guide
• 4 intermittent fasting side effects to watch out for
• Intermittent fasting: A path to changing life and fighting cancer
• Autophagy: Everything you need to know

Unfortunately, there are good reasons to be careful about indulging too much in those products. For one thing these are calory bombs and not particularly healthy, e.g. consider the amount of saturated fat in pastries. If you are young, fit and thin, you may not worry to much about those disadvantages.

The other reason that those products aren’t great for your health is wheat. This cereal forms the traditional basis for our nutrition for centuries, across the globe. You find it in bread, pasta, semolina (couscous), of course. It is so versatile and cheap that it is also used as a thickener in (bechamel) sauces and soups… You might be surprised to find wheat as an ingredient when looking at the label on any product in the supermarket. Instant soup powder? Wheat’s in it. Milk replacement drink like oat milk? Probably contains wheat. Surprise: it’s also an ingredient in soy sauce! Not to speak about sweet stuff like cookies, of course.  

So what? Where’s the problem I hear you say?

I have three reasons for you to consider reducing your wheat intake. A fourth is gluten. It’s a well-known fact that wheat is gluten rich. And gluten allergy or intolerance is a well-known problem. It is therefore a good idea to go easy on wheat. But I have three other, less obvious reasons:

• Chemicals
• CO2 footprint
• Nutritional value.

Chemicals in Wheat Production

I once heard in a podcast that the chemical glyphosate is used abundantly in the cultivation of wheat. Glyphosate is, among other products, commercialized under the name Roundup by Monsanto (now Bayer). This chemical product is held responsible for thousands of cancer cases among farmers. And also to the extinction of insects in our modern society. Not surprisingly as glyphosate is a pesticide.

So I did a little research. And sure enough glyphosate is used in wheat crops. In more than one way as explained in the article “Glyphosate Use in the European Agricultural Sector and a Framework for Its Further Monitoring”.  The worrisome bit is that glypohsate is used in the “pre-harvest” stage. So shortly before wheat is harvested it is sprayed with glyphosate.

A quote from another interesting article: “Consumers eating products made from wheat flour are undoubtedly consuming minute amounts of Roundup. An interesting aside, malt barley which is made into beer is not acceptable in the marketplace if it has been sprayed with preharvest Roundup. Lentils and peas are not accepted in the market place if it was sprayed with preharvest roundup….. but wheat is OK.”

In other words: when ingesting industrial wheat you probably ingest small amounts of a cancerigen substance.

CO2 Footprint of Wheat

Wheat is produced on a massive scale all over the world. Producers of foodstuff of course look for the cheapest raw material to make their pasta and cookies. During my little research I was surprised to find out that the wheat produced by “conventional farming” in Holland, where bread is hte basis for many breakfasts and lunches, is not suitable for human consumption. This is explained in ”Sustainability assessment of wheat production in the Netherlands”.

The euphemism “Conventional farming” means: intensive, not organic. Read pesticides and other chemicals are used plentily. The report states: “Dutch wheat is suitable as milling wheat to a limited extent; milling companies receive only 20% of national production to produce meal and flour for bread, 55% is used in the production of animal feed, and the rest is destined for the starch and bio-ethanol industry. Therefore, the Netherlands is a net importer of grain; almost 80% is obtained from other countries, mainly Germany and France.”

So, depending on where you live and eat, you probably eat wheat-based products with a heavy CO2 footprint. The flour used has travelled many a kilometers before ending on your plate.

Nutritional Value of Wheat

Last, but not least, consider the nutritional value of “conventional” wheat. Here again I mean: mass-produced, processed white wheat. The bottom-line is that nutritional value of wheat bran or its fiber is poor. Quote from another interesting article: “the modern milling methods used to commercially produce white flour eliminate the portions of the wheat kernel (bran, germ, and shorts) that are richest in proteins, vitamins, fats, and minerals. This results in the grain itself being nutritionally deficient and so far removed from its original form that our bodies basically view it as a foreign substance. It is seen by our bodies as an irritant with little nutritional value.”

In other words: wheat is more than useless for your body.

In Conclusion

Whether or not you have an issue with gluten, please reduce your intake of wheat. Buy pasta based on other cereals such as corn or plants like chickpeas or lentils. Eat bread made from spelt, oat, rye, etc. Avoid ready-made products with wheat in them. If you can find it, used flour produced from organic and whole wheat. Avoid the, from a nutritional value standpoint, useless white wheat flour.

However… do you come across a French bakery and smell enticing fresh croissants or baguette? Treat yourself and enjoy it… just once in a while!

I used to think that way until I decided to adopt a plant-based diet and looked into the nutrition value of tofu. That changed my mind and I decided to look for ways to make this valuable ingredient more palatable. More on the virtues of tofu. First: how can you turn tofu into something delicious.

Today’s recipe is inspired by this Boerschappen’s Asian Wok recipe (in Dutch). Except: I substituted tempeh (which I still dislike) by tofu.

It’s really simple; chop an onion, garlic cloves, a red peper and mix that with grated ginger.

Dice your tofu and put those dices in a container in which you pour the marinade sauce. Experiment with your marinade. For instance use half Japanese or Chinese soy sauce and half Indonesian sweet ketjap. This results into a sweeter and stickier tofu when you heat it up in your pan later.

Put a lid on your container, shake it to mix the tofu with the ingredients and set that in your fridge for at least 15 minutes. I prefer to prepare this half a day in advance, e.g. in the morning to use at lunch time.

When it’s time to eat, put some water to boil to prepare rice noodles.

Chop an onion, a couple of egg plants and some mushrooms. Fry those in a wok pan at medium heat. Pour the liquid (soy sauce) part of the tofu marinade onto the egg plant-mushroom mix.

In a separate pan, heat up your tofu with the onion-garlic-ginger-peper mix. Let this cook for 8 or so minutes. Wait until the tofu looks brown and crispy.

When all ingredients are ready, put them on your plates: the rice noodles, the veggies and then the crispy tofu. If you want add a fried egg on top, to add extra silkiness and proteins to the dish.

Another way to accomodate this way of preparing tofu is in a lukewarm salad. In a bowl mix roman lettuce and broccoli with coriander. Add your crispy tofu and here you go: a delicious meal in no time!

While you enjoy this, allow me to share a few reasons why it’s a good idea to add tofu to your menu. You can find many sources on the Internet. I’m summarizing here the main facts from this article: “Tofu Nutrition Facts – Calories, Carbs and Health Benefits of Tofu.”

• Tofu is made from soybeans. It’s high in plant-based proteins, low in calories and carbs, dairy-free, gluten-free, cholesterol-free, and vegan. In addition, tofu is an excellent source of calcium and iron.
• On the downside, as its main ingredient is soy, beware! Soy is one of the top food allergens in children and adults. If you’re allergic to wheat, beans or milk you may also have an allergic reaction to soy.

Last piece of advice: check the label before you buy tofu. Prefer REAL tofu, made from local (in my case European) soy beans above tofu that has made many kilometers before ending on your plate. Also prefer organic tofu. Quoting Wikipedia: “Organic farming features practices that cycle resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity.” In other words; it’s better for our environment and your body.

Hope this inspires you. Enjoy tofu!

I realized that in my past blog posts I have mostly written about whole, plant-based food. But I missed making a point about the kinds of ingredients you can buy.

1 Junk food – save for last

Starting with the last category: I admit I buy some of that. Processed food from the supermarket I mean. Far less, though, than many years ago when we had young children. Strangely enough, back then we didn’t think much about the quality of the food we served to our family. Sorry about this, kids! We compromised your health because of speed and  convenience. Never late to start doing the right thing, though!

So, if you haven’t already done that, please take a look at the ingredients you put into your body. Simply put; we ingest a lot of junk when we buy processed food. Junk is used to make bad quality foodstuff taste, smell or look better. Junk is used to make food last longer on your shelf or fridge.  Junk is used because mass-produced, refined ingredients result into cheaper end products. Junk is used to transport and package your food. Hence: junk you end up eating.

2 Whole food – that’s OK

The second category, whole foods are foods that have not been processed, refined or had ingredients added to them. All the recipes I share with you are mostly based on whole food. And as mentioned almost all of them are plant-based. But today’s discussion goes beyond promoting a plant-based regimen.

3 REAL food – please choose those!

The definition of The REAL Food Challenge of “Real Food” is: “Broadly, Real Food truly nourishes everyone: producers, consumers, communities, and the earth.”

Another way to put it, REAL stands for: faiR trade, Ecologically sound, humAne, Local. I’m sure we can find a better mnemonic!

A personal example. We recently started to purchase some of our groceries from local farmers. This thanks to a company called Boerschappen, which roughly translates into “Growceries” or “Farmershopping”. They purchase foodstuff, in our case mostly vegetables and fruit, from local farmers and sell that online direct to the consumer.

This way they:

• dramatically shorten the time between harvesting and consuming, resulting in fresh and delicious produce on our plate
• reduce logistics and packaging costs, therefore having a positive impact on the environment
• and they can make sure farmers get more money for their efforts.

There are of course other initiatives for you to choose from. Look around and surely you’ll find suitable solutions. For instance a French company called La Ruche Qui Dit Oui is present in a growing number of European countries, including the Benelux (Boeren en Buren), and Germany (Marktschwärmer.)

To make things simpler here’s a summary as simple as 1-2-3 😊:

Agree? Disagree? What do you think?