So, you’ve heard that the Mediterranean diet is healthy. You have a friend who lost big-time weight following Paleo. Or maybe South Beach Diet, or Eat Right for Your Type, or Ayurveda have peaked your interest.
All of these diets, if followed in their healthiest version, have whole food plant-based eating at their core. All of these diets kick processed foods to the curb. All of these diets are built around plants. All of these diets, at their best, speak to food quality.
So, just what is a whole food, plant-based diet?
Let’s begin with the plant piece. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) do a good job of defining a plant-based diet. Remember 5-a-day? That was a program that was around for decades, promoting fruits and veggies, and suggesting we eat 5 servings daily. The website used to be www.5ada.gov. Well, the website is now www.fruitsandveggiesmorematters.org. That’s because the CDC has boosted its recommendation to 9-13 servings for most adults. What’s a serving? About a half-cup, or a tennis-ball sized serving (for salad greens, a serving is one cup).
If that recommendation gives you gas just thinking about it, well, breathe and send relaxing love into your nervous belly!
All you need to do, and the only question that really matters for you, is where are you now (how many servings do you take) and how can you increase that by one or two servings? The CDC’s long-winded website has lots of good and simple ideas.
Envisioning that pile of tennis balls made up of fruits and veggies eaten through the day will give you the picture of what a plant-based diet looks like.
OK. How about whole food?
Whole food has minimal processing from the earth to your plate. Generally, the more someone does for you between those two points, the more refined a food is. And generally, the more refined a food, the more calorically dense, nutrient devoid, low fiber, and of poor nutrition quality it is.
The food industry is beginning to change, and I am seeing an increase in packaged foods that are more healthful. But packaged foods remain confusing, and overall, process foods remain less than whole counterparts. For me, it’s a matter of trust – big food, while it is changing, still puts profits first, nutrition second – I don’t think that has changed. So I tend to be wary.
How do you identify processed food? Boxes. Wrappers. Plastic. Labels. You’ll find whole foods in the produce section, the meat and fish sections, and the dairy section of your grocery store. With so much of our food handled for us, getting to 100% whole is probably not necessary. Remember, the goal is to minimize unhealthful chemicals and retain the natural nutrition of your food to support your health.
Be well.
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I’ve worked at Kripalu (the largest yoga center in the country) for seven years, so I have enjoyed my share of Indian food. I love the flavors of India – spicy curries, sweet-piquant chutneys, yogurt and lots of creative plant-based proteins. Indian cuisine in its original form is naturally healthful – filled with plants (often vegetarian) and aromatic spices.
I also love the work of the American Diabetes Association (bias alert – they published Yoga & Diabetes, which I co-authored). They have put together a collection of beautiful cookbooks that reflect a fresh range of ways of cooking and eating for health. If you have not yet looked at their growing collection – check them out! You don’t have to have a diabetes diagnosis to enjoy them – they are simply accessible healthful fare for everyone. May Abraham Fridel’s Indian Cuisine Diabetes Cookbook has an authenticity and accessibility that are the hallmarks of a great cookbook. It practically smells like cumin – must be the beautiful red-brown of the two-color interior and beautiful four-color photos of select dishes. If you love the smells and tastes of India food and want to bring a bit of that into your own kitchen, this is a book for you.
The book begins with an overview of the philosophy behind India cooking, including the ancient nature-based wisdom of Ayurveda, a sister science of yoga.
There is a Spice Guide, a Pantry List, and some How-To Recipes to introduce you to the staples of healthful Indian Cuisine.
This is the book I will consult the next time I make Dal (spiced lentils). There are three easy tasty recipes and tons of advice to guide me. There’s a healthy version of my favorite Indian dish, Palak Paneer (cheese in spinach sauce) – this one uses tofu instead of cheese and skips the heavy cream that often turns that healthy sounding dish into something that while filled with nutrients is also calorie-dense. There is a chapter on street food and one on elegant dishes, a chapter on curries, a chapter on grilling, a chapter on Indian flatbreads, one pot meals, sides including slaws and salads, and drinks (I love me some lassi – India’s yogurt smoothie).
Ms. Friedel is a food literacy advocate, philanthropist and the founder and CEO of an organic spice company (www.passionforspices.com). She clearly knows of what she speaks when it comes to the flavors and spices of India.
I’m grateful for her offering, happy to add it to my cookbook shelf and look forward to continuing to sample and to learn about Indian cuisine.
Confused about what’s healthy and what’s not? You are not alone!
It’s a challenge to follow a healthy lifestyle in our anything-but-healthy culture. But for most of us, it’s worth the effort to be the most vibrant, healthy version of ourselves that we can.
No matter who you are – how old, how physically or financially limited – you can improve your life by making healthier food choices, moving more, and connecting with others. As a nutritionist for nearly 30 years, I’ve seen people transform their lives through modest lifestyle changes practiced over time.
Here are a few ideas for laying the groundwork for healthy eating.
Don’t believe the hype. The idea of a pill, potion or diet that will magically excuse you from the reality of how our human bodies work can feel irresistible. But like low-payment mortgages and other investment schemes we’ve learned so much about in the past few years, if it seems to good to be true, it probably is. The FDA recently warned that some diet aids can actually do serious physical damage.
The only way for the average person to stay healthy over the long haul is to eat a healthy diet that honors their needs (and for most, features plants) and to be adequately physically active. Within that guideline are limitless paths to get there. The pill or diet might help with a jump-start, but eventually, we all live within the laws of our human physiology.
Take a positive, additive approach. Weight loss or getting healthy is best experienced as an exercise in getting to know yourself and how your body works. One key is to find some joy – some fun, in learning how to care for yourself well. In my decades of counseling people on lifestyle, I find it’s best to start by adding good things – like physical activity, and servings of fruits and vegetables. That way, the foods and activities that don’t serve you (like French fries, donuts and Law & Order marathons) tend to fall by the wayside with less sacrificial pain. There is a way to enjoy what you eat and follow a healthy diet.
Here’s an exercise: on a piece of paper, make a list of things that fuel your life force. List things large (vacation on the beach!) and small (get myself flowers!), expensive and free (call an old friend!) – everything from getting outside, taking a great bath, being active, reading – whatever fuels your passion, or is fun, or feels good. Here’s a tip: people who take excellent care of themselves give themselves things that fuel their life force. And taking excellent care of yourself makes a healthy lifestyle easier and more fun to stick with.
Know where your journey begins. There is a slew of good (and free) web-based assessment tools to help you figure out what and how much you’re eating right now. That’s really the first step in finding out where you want to go. Step on the scale, find your BMI and see where you are on the sliding scale from underweight to obese. For most of these assessment numbers, see them then set them aside, and focus on the habits. It’s easy to get fixated on “I knew I struggled with weight but now I see I’m obese – I’m no good and it’s hopeless.” When those kinds of thoughts pop up, see if you can turn it around to a positive, like “I knew things were getting out of hand, and now I know the situation and can do something about it – I can do this.” So long as you are focused on positive change and positive habits your life is likely to get better. Everyone has difficulty with something in their life. It’s how you work it in your mind that makes the difference between success and spinning your wheels.
Remember that with diet, “relapse” always happens. One of my wise teaching friends at Kripalu says “progress not perfection,” and with diet, there will always be a wedding or dinner with friends or just a day when you haven’t eaten well. Often, people feel like they’ve failed when they’re not perfect, and slide into the land of “it’s too hard” and “I can’t do this” and “it doesn’t really matter,” and they give up. It can be months before they try it again. If only they knew that it’s natural not to be perfect! If you ‘fall off the wagon’, dust yourself off, have a glass of water, forgive yourself and get back to practice as soon as you can – the same day, the next morning, but soon. Think about what made healthy eating too difficult – that can be an experiment for next time. That’s how real change happens.
What next?
Want to stay connected and join others on this path to wholeness?
The best way to do that is to sign up for my monthly newsletter to get tips and resources to support you.
You can also check out opportunities to study with me.
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Pesto is a base recipe for food as medicine. The herbs you use for pesto are concentrated sources of health-enhancing nutrients. Through the seasons, you can make several batches for use on cooked vegetables, grains, really anything and everything.
Pesto is also a great recipe to begin exploring a little wild plant medicine.
When I speak of wild plants, I’m talking about plants you collect from your (unsprayed with chemicals!) lawn or the edge of a forest. I’m talking about dandelion greens, garlic mustard, mugwort and the like. Many of these wild plants are strongly flavored – I think of them as the wild game of the plant world – and just a little wild food does a human good. So, in pesto, I will mix familiar herbs like basil with a bit of the stronger wild stuff like dandelion or garlic mustard, depending upon what’s tender and not overwhelming (dandelions, for example, get more and more bitter as the season progresses).
Here is a base recipe for pesto I use and modify based on what’s available. Sometimes I use cheese, often not (I love to eat a lot of it, and cheese is not the most health-enhancing food for me, so I use just a smidgen). I can use creamy pine nuts, toasted walnuts, or sweet almonds depending on the herbs I have, the flavors I’d like to play with, and what I’m hankering for.
Here it is:
2 1/2cupsfresh leafy green herbsbasil, cilantro, thyme, parsley or your favorite
1/2cupwild savory herbsgarlic basil, dandelion
2garlic clovespeeled and center woody section removed
1/2cupnuts or seedspepitas, walnuts, almonds
1/2tspsalt
Instructions
Pour oil into a blender, add garlic, nuts, and herbs in thirds and blend to that lovely pesto loose paste-like consistency.
Add salt.
Notes
Classic pesto contains basil and pine nuts and a half-cup of Parmesan in the above recipe. Use your imagination and what you have on hand. Variations are endless!Remember, when it comes to wild food and botanical medicines – safety first!
When I first chose to study nutrition at Cornell so many year ago, I could not have imagined the evolution in what we think about when we think about food. Nor could I have imagined the changes in the food we eat in this country. Food, here and now, is just so everything.
My friend, colleague and visionary Kathie Swift often quotes Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, who was right and prescient when he said: “Tell me what you eat, and I’ll tell you who you are.”
Food is…
Social
It’s the center of most gatherings of family, friends and colleagues. What we feed others communicates how we feel about them and expresses to them who we are. We have intimate dinners, casual nights, celebratory feasts. To be a good friend, feed someone. To show love, feed someone.
Economic
Growing up, the quality of food available not so directly related to income as it is today. Now we have food deserts, over-consumptive malnutrition (the real epidemic of weight, where those without eat a higher-calorie yet lower nutrient-density diet), and food marketing is disguised as real nutrition information or education. If you are poor in America, you just don’t have access to high quality nutritious food. Thank the Lord for WIC and other food assistance, which can close the worst of the gap if used well.
Environmental/Ecological
What you choose to eat impacts the planet and you can’t get around that. Meat is rich in every sense of the word. It is nutrient dense, resource-rich, high-impact, and energetically hot stuff. No inherently evil, but easy to overdo, and human nature seems to make us overdo it in spades. Today we eat twice as much protein as we physiologically need, yet new diet after new diet tells us we need more more more. The truth is we don’t if we cultivate a balanced whole-food active life.
Political
Every 5 years, a big bill works its way through congress. That bill, the Ag Bill, determines to a great extent what America eats. What America eats these days is subsidized GMO soy, factory-farmed meat, dairy, corn (to be made into the high-fructose corn syrup which researchers agree is undermining health on a grand scale). We can change it – the last round had a bit of funding for organic fruits and vegetables, and linking school lunch with farmers’ markets. You can vote on this by calling your congresspeople and insisting on the funding shifts you want.
Emotional
I personally have an emotional relationship with food. Changing my diet takes a long conversation, and a bargain with myself. Do this and I’ll treat myself in this way (often a massage or oil dip at Kripalu healing arts, or a new get-up).
Tactile and Sensual
Food is beautiful. It’s smells, textures, and of course, flavor absolutely thrills most of us. Yum. I’m working on a book project on whole food, and how to make it as easy as possible to eat healthfully. There’s no getting around the need to come into close personal contact with food when it’s whole. You have to cut the bottoms off asparagus and put fresh spears in water. You have to trim herbs and place them in water. You have to crack the egg, (and hopefully, put all the scraps into your compost bucket – wowsaa another spring topic!). We can do things to make cooking efficient and as easeful as possible, but ultimately, you have to revel in the sensuality of whole food.
I could go on – it’s love! So, take a little time considering a two-way relationship with the whole food you cook and eat. As you slice a carrot or dice an onion, take a breath to wonder what the carrot would say to you if you’d listen? Who is that onion, anyway?!
This is why changing your diet is such a huge deal. Because when you change your diet, you change everything. You become someone else, bite by bite. So, be easy on yourself if you are finding it challenging. Notice what’s hard, and press on. Make the healthful choice anyway. If you fall off the wagon for a meal or a day, get right back on. Practice practice practice, not perfection.
Enjoy!
May Abraham Fridel’s 
