What common sense has known for centuries is increasingly demonstrated by scientific research. A well-maintained microbiome, having a wealth of bacterial bugs in your belly, is clearly positive for your body’s immunity. Reversely, an unhealthy gut is known to be the source of many physical and mental diseases. This list is very long, from benign or mild (skin rash, burping and farting, acid reflux, stress…) to serious and even life-threatening issues (Crohn’s, various cancers, Alzheimer’s…). 

The short of it is: want to leave a healthy, preferably long, life? Take care of your gut!

Have Chronic Pains? Pay Attention!

Here’s something you might want to try. It’s called food combinations.  I have tried this for a few weeks, and I see results already: I’ve lost a few pounds, my belly is flatter, I sleep better, my feces look better…

The theory behind food combinations is very simple. Macronutrients (carbs, proteins, fats) are digested differently. Your body produces different enzymes for each sort of foods. Starches are digested by the enzyme amylase, among others. Amylase is present in your saliva. Fat is broken down by the enzyme lipase, made in the pancreas. Lactase breaks down dairy products. Proteases help digest proteins, like meat products and are produced in the stomach and pancreas…

Hopefully you get the picture: digestion is a complex process. The production of enzymes calls upon various organs: glands in your mouth, pancreas, liver, intestines. For each sorts of food various organs are used differently.

For more information, consult this article or this one.  

Food Combinations

For the body to process food efficiently and effectively we need to combine macronutrients wisely. This helps your body use a minimum amount of energy and absorb nutrients optimally. If you combine foods poorly, you exhaust your digestive organs AND miss nutritional benefits.

The bad news is that combining food healthily requires a radical new approach to preparing meals. There are a few good combinations and unfortunately, many bad ones. See below the illustration.

I am not making this theory up. It has been documented by Jan Dries, among other people, in various books. Jan is among other things the author of “The New Book of Food Combining: A Completely New Approach to Healthy Eating”. You can purchase this and other books by Jan on Amazon.com and Bol.com.

Good News!

The good news is that you can combine most vegetables anyway you want. There are a few exceptions as some vegetables are very rich in starch or fat so they fall in those categories. The way it works is that you may combine any category of food with another compatible one in the same meal. For instance:

• Breakfast – Overnight oats with plant-based milked (mostly water), avocado or any vegetable of your choice
• Lunch – A greens salad with nuts and seeds, with an egg omelette
• Diner – Stir fryed vegetables with rice.

In the illustration below you see a more comprehensive view of good and poor food combinations.

Fruit is a different story. Fruit is digested quickly, it leaves your stomach within approximately 20 minutes. You can best eat fruit separately, as an appetizer 20 minutes before any meal.   

What About Legumes?

Legumes, like white beans and chickpeas present an issue! They naturally are rich in protein and starch. As you can see in the drawing those two ingredients are incompatible in terms of food combination. This combination is also present in cereals but the ratio is better, the amount of protein in cereals is far lower than in the case of legumes.

In order to digest legumes well combine them with lots of vegetables. For instance mix a little bit of lentils in a salad with lots of green leafy vegetables.

A Good – and Tasty! – Food Combination Recipe

To make it clear that food combinations are compatible with a tasty meal, here’s an example. Thanks to Boerschappen again for the great ingredients and creative recipe!

The dish: celery medallions with truffle potatos, oven baked beets and (vegan) pesto.

Ingredients for two persons:

• 400 grams truffle potatoes
• 400 grams beets (the original recipe is with carrots but I replaced them)
• 200 grams celery
• Mustard, flour, water, pepper for seasoning
• Coriander / cilantro or whichever fresh herbs you have.

This foods combination is “green”:

1. Celery, beets, fresh herbs = vegetables 
2. Potatoes and flour = starch
3. Pesto = fat

Slice the beets in cubes and bake them in the oven on a tray for about 20 minutes. Boil the potatoes and cook them as you like.

Grate the celery. Mix that with a good spoonful of musterd, pepper, salt, some flour and water to bind the celery. Make little balls of the mixture. Throw the balls in a hot pan (use coconut or rice oil) and flatten the balls to create hamburger style paddies. Bake those 4 minutes on each side. 

Put celery medallions, sliced potatoes, beets on the plates, drizzle pesto. the chopped cilantro or other herbs on top. Enjoy!   

This recipe forms a great way to present vegetables in an original and very satisfying fashion. Hopefully I won’t horrify Japanese people with the variations and liberties presented below! Should you want to chip in with your experiences and variations, please do so.

Apart from the fact that I really like the taste – especially thanks to the sauces – I also really enjoy the concept of a warm dish that is in addition relatively complete from a nutrition standpoint. Looking at the Daily Dozen this recipe ticks the following boxes:

• Cruciferous vegetables (cabbage
• Other vegetables (carrots, onions)
• Whole grains (flour)
• Beans (soy sauce, OK not that much but every bit helps)

Ballast Substances

Furthermore, I am pleased to introduce a concept never afore mentioned on this blog: that of “ballast substances”. Nutritionists call ballast substances the components contained in food of plant origin and cannot be digested. They are especially abundant in fruits and vegetables and completely absent in animal proteins.

Ballast substances are composed of cellulose, fiber, etc. They benefit your digestion, helping to solve a lot of problems. The main advantage is a long digestion time, which gives you a long feeling of satiety. Ballast substances moreover remove bile acids, lower cholesterol levels, and ensure a normal stool (a type 4 on the Bristol stool scale).

And by the way: those seemingly useless compounds offer the additional advantage of having virtually no calories in them. So: you feel fulfilled, and you don’t put on weight. In this recipe you’ll absorb plenty of ballast substances through the cabbage and carrots.

Okonomiyaki Pancakes Recipe

Enough theory. Let’s get cracking on our okonomiyaki pancakes! In this case they are almost completely plant-based, vegan. The only exception: a little fish sauce.

Ingredients for the pancakes:

• Cabbage, whatever you have available: green, red, savoy… (100 grams per person)
• Carrots (100 grams per person)
• Onions, preferably spring onions or shallots (1 or 2 per person)
• Whole grain flour (50 grams per person)
• Vegetable broth (100 ml per person)

Regarding the measurements you can pretty much improvise here. You can mix the vegetables in whatever ratio you prefer. You can also add flour and broth to obtain your preferred thickness and consistency. My preference: go light on the flour! You can choose by the way any flour that binds well.

Ingredients for the sauces:

For the okonomiyaki sauce – if you can’t find it ready-made in the store:

• Soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce (two soup spoons)
• Fish or oyster sauce (one soup spoon)
• Ketchup or chipotle (one soup spoon)

For an additional kick: mix (vegan) mayonnaise with wasabi or Dijon mustard.

Steps to follow:

• Prepare the sauces by mixing the ingredients.
• Grate or chop the cabbage and carrots into fine or rough slivers.
• Slice the shallots or spring onions into small rings.
• Mix the vegetables in a large bowl. Set aside about a quarter of the mix to serve as a salad side dish.
• Add the broth and sprinkle the flour into the rest of the chopped vegetables. Mix to create a batter.
  

• Heat up coconut or rice oil in a frying pan (coconut and rice fat sustain higher heat than your traditional olive oil). Medium heat.
• Pour the vegetable batter to create one pancake at a time. Bake the pancake three minutes per side. Use a plate to flip the pancake.
  
• Slide the pancake on the serving plate, add the salad vegetables on the plate, sprinkle some vinegar and oil.
• Pour the sauces on the pancake with a spoon. Create nice looking crossed lines or dots.

Optionally: crack seaweed chips and on top of the pancake for additional texture.

Enjoy your meal!

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

This squash is very low in calories (27 per 100 gram), it’s almost completely fat free and it is loaded with nutrients: fiber, vitamin C, manganese, vitamin B6… It also contains carotenoids, which the body converts into vitamin A. Although it is mildly sweet this squash contains little sugar (2,5 gram per 100 gram). (source)

Why is it called spaghetti squash? I’ll come back to that later with a recipe. Allow me first to finish praising its health benefits.

Antioxydants

Winter squash varieties like spaghetti squash are loaded with antioxidants. Antioxidants search and destroy free radicals from the body cells and prevent or reduce the damage caused by oxidation. “Oxidative stress can damage cells, proteins, and DNA, which can contribute to aging. It may also play a role in development of a range of health conditions, including diabetes, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.“ (source)

In laymen’s terms: antioxidants are good for you!

Fiber

Eat a lot of squash and other veggies: the value of fiber cannot be underestimated. Fiber is a type of carbohydrate that the body can’t digest. Fiber helps regulate the body’s use of sugars, helping to keep hunger and blood sugar in check.

Fiber comes in two varieties, both beneficial to health (source):

• Soluble fiber, which dissolves in water, can help lower glucose levels as well as help lower blood cholesterol. Foods with soluble fiber include oatmeal, nuts, beans, lentils, apples and blueberries.
• Insoluble fiber, which does not dissolve in water, can help food move through your digestive system, helping prevent constipation. Foods with insoluble fibers include whole wheat, whole grain couscous, brown rice, legumes, carrots, cucumbers and tomatoes.

And squash? Well, it’s highly soluble. So it’s a good idea to complement it with insoluble fiber. In addition note that spaghetti squash is low in protein so it’s also a good idea to mix your squash with an additional source of protein. Let me get back to that in the recipe!

Fiber, from fruits and vegetables, is good for your gut health. For some reason I have come across the gut health topic a lot in the past few of weeks. The brain-gut connection, the gut microbiom and other gut-related topics are fascinating and definitely deserve a lot of attention. I shall get back to this in the future. 

For the time being remember that fiber and a diversity of nutrients are necessary to feed the  microbes that keep your gut in balance. Fat and animal proteins don’t contain any fiber, hence favour carbohydrate-heavy, organic and real (unprocessed) foods.

Spaghetti Squash Oven Dish Recipe

Having said all that, here is at last a delicious Spaghetti Squash recipe. As mentioned earlier I discovered this ingredient thanks to our weekly subscription to Boerschappen. 

You can find the original Boerschappen recipe (in Dutch) here. 

The recipe in English with my tasty additions. You need, for 2 persons (single dish) or 4 persons (side dish):

• Spaghetti squash (1)
• Tomatoes (200 gram)
• Spinach (100 gram)
• Lentils (tin, strained)
• (Vegan) feta (200 gram)
• Lemon
• Onion (1)
• Garlic (2 cloves)
• Fresh ginger and turmeric / kurkuma (a thumb-like piece) 
• Fresh herbs like celery or sage leaves.

Instructions:

• Switch your oven on and set it at 180 degrees Celsius.
• Wash the squash and then cut in two equal halves. Remove the seeds using a spoon.
• Sprinkle the inside of the squash with a bit of oil, peper and salt. Place the squash in the oven faces up, directly on the grill or in an oven dish.
• Bake the squash in approximately 35 minutes.
• Throw the onion, garlic, turmeric and ginger in a small electric chopper and chop them roughly.
• Heat (rice or coconut) oil in a pan and put fry your spices mix. If you don’t have fresh turmeric or ginger, use the dry powder alternative instead.
• Cut the tomatoes in rough cubes and add them to the pan, stir the spinach and fresh herbs. Having strained the lentils you can add them to the mix and warm the whole thing up.
• Once the tomato-spinach-lentils mix is slightly cooked, remove the pan from the heat. 
• Once the squash is ready proceed to scrape the flesh from the shell using a fork. That’s where the spaghetti-shaped strings appear. My wife thought the texture felt like sauerkraut, but the acidity is definitely absent. 
• Mix the squash strings with the rest of the vegetables and divide the mixture over in the two empty shells.
• Dice the (vegan) feta and push the cubes into the mixture. 
• Bake the squash in 5-7 minutes in the oven.
• Once it’s ready add lemon juice to the squash and serve.

Adding fresh spices and lentils to the recipe helps 1) create a balanced meal thanks to the protein of the lentils, 2) add Asian flavour and heat which I particularly like.

Enjoy!

Alternative Plant-Based Burgers OK?

So what to do as a vegetarian or vegan? I have tried a couple of alternatives from the supermarket but can’t say their taste blew my sock off. On top of that: I looked at the ingredients’ labels… That too did not please me. Those “fake meat burgers” contain a rather long list of vague ingredients like flours and E numbers.

Why stop eating meat and choose an alternative that is unhealthy and has a unnecessary high carbon footprint?

Let’s take advantage of the protein transition to create a “eat healthier” transition!

Should you know of a healthy, carbon-neutral and tasty alternative, please let me know!

Home-Made Mushroom-Lentils Burgers

In the meantime, here is a good solution in case you crave a good burger: make one yourself.

Inspired by a delicious lentils meal earlier this week I looked for a recipe that combined those with mushrooms, one of my preferred Umami ingredients. Below is my version of De Hippe Vegetariër’s mushrooms-lentils burger.

Ingredients:

• Dry lentils, about 100 gram
• Mushrooms, 250 gram
• Shallot, one
• Garlic cloves, two
• Soja sauce, a couple of teaspoons
• Miso, a teaspoon
• Oats, a tablespoon
• Chia seeds, a tablespoon

Cook the lentils in water in about 30 minutes (follow the instructions on the package).

In the meantime: chop the garlic cloves and heat them up gently in a pan. Blitz the mushrooms together with the shallot and the soja sauce.

Add the mushroom mix to the hot pan with garlic and cook that up. Turn the oven on, around 180 degrees Celsius.

Using the same mixer, chop the oats fine and after about fives minutes add the oats, lentils and chia seeds to the mushrooms in the pan. Season it with salt and pepper. Let this simmer at low heat until the water is absorbed and the mixture feels consistent.

Turn the mix into six or eight paddies, lay them on a baking sheet and set this in the oven.

Turn the paddies after 5 minutes; they’re ready after another five minutes or longer if you prefer them slightly toasted.

Serve your plant-based as you like. Unfortunately I did not have fine bread buns today so I served them together with corn and romanesco with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

Hope you enjoy those! Please let me know what you think.

During the last NMA episode I heard about his new book coming up, The Plant-Based Athlete. If you, like me, pre-order it before June 15 you’ll get some nice digital goodies! This is free publicity, I don’t get any kickback or other kind of advantage.

In the process of looking at those goodies I stumbled across a video of Matt giving a lecture. This is an introduction to Matt’s Stress-Free Plant-Based Plan. Also known as the No Meat Athlete’s Perfect Day. Subtitle: “How to thrive without worrying about nutrients or following a meal plan.”

Let me describe how Matt’s perfect meal day looks like. I will later explain why it is so perfect!

1. Smoothie or Oatmeal

Matt starts the day with an oatmeal or a smoothie. This breakfast’s ingredients:

• Berries or other fruit
• Flaxseeds or other nut
• Greens, like spinach or broccoli
• Green/White Tea Leaves or matcha powder
• Turmeric

And of course oats if you rather have something more to fill your stomach

You can find many of Matt’s recipes here. You get many more if you pre-order his book ;-).

2. Giant salad with beans & nut-based dressing

For lunch, Matt has a big bowl of greens, throws in beans, other veggies, and tops it off with a nut-based dressing such as tahini with garlic and onions. To make this more filling Matt might add whole grains like rice, quinoa or whole wheat bread. For dessert? Fruit!

3. A grain, a green, and a bean

For the last meal of the day Matt makes a burrito, tacos, soup, pasta or curry, and tries to always work in onions or garlic. This dinner is based on the following ingredients:

• Whole grains
• Cruciferous and other (green) vegetables
• Beans
• Mushrooms
• Turmeric
• Nuts or seeds (topping or dressing)

Snacks are allowed in Matt’s diet. Think fruit, hummus with veggies or whole grains (crackers, bread). And let me add that Matt, as a 100% vegan adds supplements to his diet. Whole-food, plant-based diets, while very high in many micronutrients, typically don’t provide enough vitamins B12, D3, and DHA/EPA.

No Meat Athlete Framework

So, have you discovered a pattern in this perfect meal day? Well, there is a one!

Matt Frazier developed a framework based on reading two books: How Not to Die (Michael Greger, M.D. and Gene Stone. New York: Flatiron Books, 2015) and Super Immunity (Joel Fuhrman, M.D. New York: HarperOne, 2011). The common denominator is that to remain healthy there are eight food groups that you basically need to eat every day.

These “8 foods to eat every day” are:

1. Greens (leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables). Eat them often, raw and cooked!
2. Other vegetables, mushrooms and whole grains.
3. Berries and other fruits. Quoting Matt: “the most vibrantly colored fruits because of their strong anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, and anti-cancer properties. Buy them organic if possible.”
4. Flaxseeds and other nuts and seeds. These natural fats are high in Omega-3s among other good stuff.
5. Beans, that includes lentils, chick peas and other legumes. They are a food common to the world’s longest-lived cultures (see my piece on the Blue Zones).
6. Onions and garlic. Not because they taste great but because of their positive effect on reducing cancer risks.
7. Turmeric / curcumin. Thanks largely to its pigment it protect against heart disease & cancer. Others spices are beneficial as well.
8. Tea, green, white or herbal. Because it’s high in antioxidants.

Good to know as well: Matt warns that some of these foods may not be good for you. Turmeric may cause pain for people will gall stones. I you’re on blood thinning medication, eating an abundance of greens could require that your doctor up your dosage to prevent blood clots. So as always: there are exceptions and it’s recommended you consult your physician if you suffer specific conditions.

As the subtitle mentioned earlier indicates: if you manage to work these eight food groups in your daily diet, you don’t have to worry about “am I getting enough proteins?” (or other nutrients).

As always, I hope this inspires you. Go for a run and eat healthy!

Here’s a summary of this useful and interesting 1,5 hour webcast. You’re welcome 😜

As made clear by his background, refusing to work for a company that contributes to poor health, John Robbins is on a mission to help slash risks of chronic illnesses (heart disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes, dementia…) by 80% by doing four simple things:

• not smoking
• maintaining a healthy weight
• exercising regularly
• and most importantly by eating a healthful diet.

In his masterclass John, assisted by his son Ocean Robbins, deconstructs what he calls four lies (I prefer the word “myths”) and presents ten keys to a healthy diet. Here they come…

Four Myths

Myth #1: Healthy Eating iIs Confusing & Complicated

True, there’s a lot of confusion that is relayed by the media and sustained by all sorts of fads.

What constitutes a healthy diet is quite well understood and quite simple: eat more plants and fewer animal products, hy away from ultra-processed foods and eat whole foods.
Plant-based foods provide all that you need: fibers, anti-oxidants, essential fats, proteins, vitamins, minerals… all sorts of ingredients that are essential to your health.
Each body is different, however, so your diet needs to be fined tuned to your self.

Myth #2: It Can’t Bbe Real If My Doctor Doesn’t Know It

Surely you recognize this one! Doctors are not trained as dietitians and traditional medical education gives little attention to nutrition. Your general practitioner is trained to act as a firefighter. They look at curing your symptoms instead of preventing them in the first place.

Part of the responsibility is yours. Look at how to prevent illnesses through healthy habits rather than focusing on curing them.

Myth #3: Healthy Food Is Boring

It’s not for nothing that your kids prefer a “Happy meal” above broccoli. Indeed, people’s association with “good for you food” is that it’s unpleasant. And usually we associate food that is enjoyable with “bad for you food”. Unfortunately the food industry spends billions of euros every year on developing, producing and advertising foods that play on our natural desires for short-term pleasure.

It is high time that we realize that highly processed, fatty, salty and sugary foods are just as unhealthy and addictive as tobacco. The sugar tax may come, but you don’t have to wait. We all need to learn how to prepare and enjoy delicious AND healthy food.

Myth #4: You’re Too Small To Make A Contribution

Shifting to a (mostly) plant-based diet is good for you as well as for our planet. We know that 80% of the world’s agricultural land is used to produce meat, eggs and dairy products. The industrial food processes, from agriculture, the ensuing production and logistics that lead to processed food on your plate, have a great impact on our environment. These processes contribute to the destruction of ecosystems, the emission of greenhouse gas, climate change and in the long run they impact our ability to grow food.

For more information about this, read this article and study by the University of Oxford: “Plant-based diets could save millions of lives and dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions”.

Something Robbins said truly amazed me: what do you think would happen if the entire world went vegan? Just bear with Robbins for this example. About how much land would become available?

The answer: we could AND feed the entire human population AND free up an area equivalent to…

• the whole of Europe,
• the United States,
• India,
• Australia,
• and China combined!

You can make a huge difference on some of these challenging issues by eating less animal products and more plants.

Ten Keys to a Healthy Diet

John and Ocean Robbins then turned to share tips, the “10 Mighty Plant-Powered Keys.”

Key #1: Eat REAL Food

This means avoid the ultra-processed food-like substances that make up most of the calories in the modern, Western diet. When you eat fresh whole food, you help your body to have all the nourishment you need.

Key #2: Eat… Not Too Much

Robbins claims that the average American eats 500 calories too much on any given day. So, eat plenty of fibers because it provides a sense of bulk that leads your belly tell your brain “I’m full”. Eat a nutrient-rich diet: with a whole-food diet you don’t eat excess calories.

Key #3: Eat Mostly Plants

Vegetables and fruits are the most concentrated sources of the nutrients your body needs in order to thrive.

Key #4: Drink Coffee

Surprisingly to me, people who drink coffee tend to live longer, to have sharper brains with lower rates of Alzheimer’s, to be less likely to get type 2 diabetes, and to have lower rates of obesity, heart disease, and cancer. Another good piece of news: decaf has about 75% of the antioxidants of regular coffee. Oh yeah: lose the milk/ cream and sugar!

Key #5: Eat Mushrooms

It seems like all the kinds of edible mushrooms contain bioactive compounds that have anticancer effects, especially hormone-related cancers such as breast- and prostate cancer. They inhibit an enzyme that produces estrogen in the body. They also contain lectins that help your body fight cancer cells.

Key #6: Eat Berries

Berries are good for your heart and your blood sugar balance. They contain critical minerals, vitamins, anti-oxidants and many other beneficial micronutrients. Berries are great foods for your brain, heart and overall health. Frozen berries also have these benefits.

Key #7: Eat Beans

… and other legumes like split peas and lentils. They are a critical source of protein. They’re also one of the leading sources of fiber in the human diet. They are also a rich source of vitamins and minerals, including folate, iron, magnesium, potassium and choline.

Good tip: to prevent gas soak your legumes for at least 24 hours before cooking them. Change the water and rinse them a couple of times. Cook them very well so they’re soft before you eat them

Key #8: Eat Greens

Any greens by any means necessary, of any sort: broccoli, Brussel sprouts, kale, roman lettuce, spinach, cabbage… We all know we need to eat greens. They are plenty of studies that demonstrate their health benefits to prevent all kinds of illnesses. Just do it, get used to their tastes!

Key # 9: Use Spices and Herbs

Of course spices present great culinary interest. Extraordinarily hundreds of studies have demonstrated that spices, like turmeric, garlic, basil, ginger, pepper, parsley… may help prevent Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia and can help reduce unhealthy levels of inflammation, protect against heavy metal toxicity, and even lower heart disease risk.

Key #10: Create Good Habits

The key to success is to create systems and norms so that when you’re taking the path of least resistance, you’re moving towards greater health. Time, money, social pressure can be experienced as major thresholds to creating those habits. Please try my life hacks, like how to prep your meals, or how to create plant-based umami.

And so they end this list: John and Ocean Robbins invite you to join their course entitled Plant-Powered & Thriving.

A lot of good stuff in this masterclass. After the useful data tips the masterclass turns to testimonials; people who followed the course and who explain how they changed their diet and adopted healthy habits. Some lost a great deal of weight and maintained their ideal weight. Others saw chronic diseases disappear or levels of medication dropped. More energy, clarity of thinking, better sleep are also mentioned as benefits.

In the testimonials people mention that sometimes significant changes appear within days. Based on my own change experience (not with the course) I can believe that.

Whether or not feel like following this 6-week course, I encourage you to adopt the 10 keys to a healthy diet! Go ahead, read my blogs and let me know if and how I can help you.

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!

First of all: I admit I’m late. Soup is more of a winter dish. And the recipe shared below is using an ingredient that is about to become unavailable: squash. Of if you prefer: pumpkin. Mix both a butternut squash and pumpkin to produce a delicious soup.

Regardless of the season, I find soup a brilliantly healthy, versatile, filling and satisfying snack. Just ate a bowl for breakfast after my Saturday run this morning! Soup also fits perfectly my intermittent fasting habit as my last, light meal of the day. Produce a thick and spicy soup, and you can accommodate it in a variety of ways.

In this case I feature pumpkin soup but my point applies to any other kind. Potato and leek. Vegetable mix. Carrot and cauliflower… vary and experiment my friends!

Fill like a sweet and light snack? Add oat milk and honey before warming up your bowl to make a lighter desert soup. Looking for a filling meal? Eat a side of toast, or add oatmeal flakes to your bowl of soup before microwaving it.

Last thing before diving in the recipe: soup also perfectly fits in my food-prepping system. Make a couple of liters of soup and you have a reserve for the whole week. You can even deep freeze part of it for later.

So, here it comes: a delicious pumpkin / butternut squash / carrot soup in a few simple steps…

Start with the standard base: chop onions, red peper and garlic, and warm that up with your preferred mix of dry spices like curry, ginger, turmeric, cumin, coriander, paprika… whatever you fancy. I like to keep it simple and usually stick to curry and turmeric. The end product looks prettier 😉

While the spice base gently warms up, chop the vegetables in cubes: pumpkin (peel it), butternut squash (no need to peel it!) and carrots (don’t you bother peeling them). Stir ’em in the pan, raise the heat a little and warm them up for a couple of minutes. I never weigh the ingredients but roughly use two thirds squash/pumpkin and one third carrots.

You now have done the heavy duty. While the vegetables are getting some direct heat – let them stick and caramelize a little – warm up a liter or so of water in a kettle, just to speed things up. Pour the boiling water in the pan to cover the vegetables. Add more if you prefer a watery soup.

I used to add one or more stock cubes (you know, the Maggi cubes). Not anymore!

The secret finishing touch: hazelnut butter. Or cashew butter. And of course salt and pepper. For a couple of liters of soup I add a tablespoon of nut butter. Please try this. Trust me, it gives an amazing flavor to this soup.

Thanks to restaurant Mûre and their recipe book (“La cuisine des gens qui sèment”) for this tip.

Almost done! Don’t cook the vegetables too long. Make sure you they are just tender to preserve their nutritional value. Pour the vegetables in a good blender (I’m very pleased with our Magimix power blender) and blitz the soup to a smooth consistency.

So, here you: a week or more of healthy snacks ahead of you. Enjoy!

Maybe your mom has stated your whole life that “breakfast is the most important meal of the day”. Or when hearing about vegetarians your father always comments: “we were born omnivores, we are meant to eat meat.” Possibly you were raised in an pig farming area and you can’t conceive of a day without ham at breakfast, eggs baked in lard, paté on bread for lunch and porkchops for dinner. And what about proteins? Humans need proteins, hence we must eat meat! And vitamin B12 and other essential amino-acids, we can only get that by eating animal flesh, right?

As a (former) Frenchman I am very aware of all of the above. Far from me the idea to insult your heritage or your culture. The only thing I wish for you is: for the sake of your health, keep an open mind. Take a moment to reconsider your convictions and habits.

And, by the way, I am by no means a fundamentalist or extreme activist. During a dinner about a year ago I was served a succulent-looking piece of meat. I didn’t refuse to eat it and ask to throw it in the bin. I was polite to my host and ate my plate. We also eat fish once in a while. I won’t deny we are open to a few exceptions to strictly plant-based. My rule of thumb is to follow the Blue Zone food guidelines: 95% plant-based.

Circling back to the points mentioned above about your hypothetical mom and dad: I challenge each of those statements!

There is no such thing as the most important meal of the day. As long as your food intake is balanced don’t worry about the traditional breakfast-lunch-dinner construct. There is a nice rule that helps you maintain a stable insulin level: “breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dine like a pauper.” On the other hand, recent research by Harvard on intermittent fasting suggests that this habit (which is one of mine) is “a sustainable, and effective approach for weight loss, as well as for diabetes prevention.” The bottom-line: you don’t have to eat breakfast early in the morning.

What about humans being omnivores? Well, think about it: has evolution make your dentition look like a lion’s or is more more like a cow’s?

The answer: evolution has better prepared our body to eat and digest plants than animal flesh. Be honest with yourself: yes, you the umami taste of meat. But do you really feel well when digesting it? And what about a salad with legumes?

“We need proteins hence we need animal flesh”, that myth has been busted multiple times by now. What is true is that you need to eat more plant-based foodstuff in terms of weight to get the same amount of proteins as in meat or fish. So what? You get to eat more 😍. More lentils, chickpeas, beans, tofu, black or red rice… And if you want to eat vegetarian but not vegan: more dairy, cheese and eggs.

Studies after studies demonstrate that “plant-based diets offer all the necessary protein, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals for optimal health, and are often higher in fiber and phytonutrients.” Depending on whether you eat fish or meat once in a while you may need to throw in a B12 tablet once in a while. That story is funny by the way: it is most likely that the animals you eat also get B12 added to their food.

Not yet convinced that plant-based is the way to go? That’s OK, I’ll be back 😉

In the meantime, please leave your comments or questions below!