A Meal Template
This makes healthy meal prep easy!
I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts the other day, a politics one, but the topic of food, healthy eating, and ultra-processed foods came up, and one of the two amazing women podcasters said, (and this is not a direct quote) “Nobody wants to spend hours in the kitchen cooking. Nobody has time for that. We just want something good we can grab and eat and get on with our day. Make us some good, healthy foods!”
I’m sorry to tell you that eating healthily requires cooking. The more a food is processed, the fewer nutrients it retains. It is only possible (right now) to have food that is both “grab-and-go” and “healthy and nutritious” if we DIY that shit.
BUT we CAN make our own grab-and go-foods that are healthy and nutritious, and we CAN eat healthily without spending daily hours in the kitchen. We have two resources here for you that ought to help.
The first priceless helper
The WFPB meal template
Obviously, there are a lot more foods that fit into each category than I could fit in this handy shorthand graphic. In time, you’ll know most of them by heart, but you’ll also notice that many overlap.
Here are the basics.
Complex Carbohydrates
This doesn’t mean potato chips and cookies and it doesn’t mean white flour, white rice, white breads, or white pastas. As the great Melanie said, “Oh white could be beautiful, but mostly, it’s not.”
So look for whole grain rices, pastas, and breads. Cook oatmeal from “old fashioned” or “steel cut” or “natural oats.” Use whole grain flours and raw sugar. And remember that carbs are in your fruits and vegetables too, especially root vegetables like potatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes, turnips, and beets. Also winter squashes are filled with healthy carbs.
The human body is a carb-based life form, at least that’s what the late Dr. John McDougall, a leader in the plant based movement was fond of saying. 60%-80% of our daily calories should come from complex carbohydrates. This is how we stay full and satisfied.
Low carb/high protein diet fads are terribly unhealthy, and have been proven to increase the rates of heart disease, high blood pressure, and some cancers. Any weight loss is temporary, but they do shorten your life expectancy, so temporary might be all you need.
How to tell
Anything “refined” is no longer a complex carb. Look for the words “whole grain” or “whole wheat.”
Cruciferous Vegetable Group
This might be the most important category of foods we can eat, and that’s because this group of vegetables restore nitric oxide, which can reduce existing plaque from coronary arteries. No medication or procedure can do that.
It is recommended that we consume 5 servings per day of this group, where 1 cup raw or 1/2 cup cooked = a serving. It is recommended we sprinkle the veggies with a bit of balsamic vinegar & let stand for for 5 or 10 minutes before cooking or eating raw, which helps enhance the nitric oxide effect.
This group includes all the green leafies: spinach, kale, cabbage, Swiss chard, arugula, turnip greens, beet greens, collard greens, dandelion greens, fiddlehead fern, any greens you can eat could.
Also in this group are all the broccoli, cauliflower, bok choy, Brussels sprouts, asparagus, turnips, beets, broccolini.
Here is renowned cardiac surgeon Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr, head of cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic for much of his career (now in his 90s) discussing how these power veggies can reverse coronary artery disease.
He’s also featured in the documentary Forks Over Knives, which everyone reading this blog should watch at the first possible opportunity. I’ve watched it a dozen times, maybe more.
So eat your greens.
Tip: Spinach can block the absorption of calcium, so as a rule, eat it separately from your calcium sources. Micronutrient sources from plant-based foods will be its own post, but for now, your soy products, chia seeds, almonds, figs, tofu, white beans, sunflower seeds, kale, broccolini, butternut squash are plant-based calcium sources, among many others.
Proteins
The whole low carb, high protein garbage is a marketing scheme designed to sell you on ultra-processed foods with “high protein” stamped on their packaging. What they don’t tell you is that mutated cancer genes like BRCA1 and BRCA2, among others, lie dormant in your body until something activates them. Once activated, they begin producing cancer cells.
Protein is very good at activating those genes, turning them on, starting up the cancer-cell-making-factory.
Careful and repeated, peer reviewed clinical research has proven that a diet with 20% or more of its calories coming from animal proteins turns those genes on, where a diet of 5% protein did not.
Moreover, when the poor lab mice with the genes turned on by 20% diet, were switched to the 5% diet, the genes TURNED BACK OFF.
There’s more about these studies in the FORKS OVER KNIVES documentary, which you can find on TUBI (FREE with ads) Fandango At Home (FREE with account,) Amazon Prime (2.99,) and Apple TV (3.99).
You can also watch the full hour and thirty-six minute documentary for free right here on Youtube.
If you own a human body, this film is the owner’s manual.
All plants have protein, and in fact, all plants have all nine essential amino acids. Essential amino acids are the ones our bodies can’t make on their own and must get from foods. There are nine of them that we need from external sources, and all plants have all of them. Amino acids are the things our bodies use to make protein.
Big meat and big dairy and the “scientists” and “research” they buy, try to say plants are “incomplete” proteins, because each individual plant has varying amounts of these 9, whereas animal flesh has the exact right ratio of the 9.
The animals, however, got that perfect ratio by eating plants. So that logic doesn’t hold.
The truth is that if you eat a variety of veggies, whole grains, and legumes, you get plenty of every one of the nine and your flesh, too, if analyzed, would show the perfect ratio. Yet we don’t recommend eating your fellow humans.
Other Veggies
Obviously there are more vegetables than just the cruciferous group, and variety is one of the keys to excellent health. So try expanding your palate by adding new veggies (and fruits too) as often as you find them. One of the phenomena of switching to a whole food all plant lifestyle is that your tastes change dramatically. I hated kale when we started, and arugula too, and now they’re two or my three favorite greens. The other is Swiss chard. There are tons of things I wouldn’t touch before that I love now. This is a natural evolution.
I’ve noticed too that when I eat foods with oil, I can feel its disgusting coating on my tongue until I go brush my teeth. Never bothered me before, but now? Ew.
It gets easier and easier.
So broaden your veggie horizons, and try them all!
Fruits & Berries
There is no need to limit fruits, if you’re eating them raw, or frozen, or canned in water (not “in their own juices” and not in “syrup” even if it’s labeled “light” or misspelled “lite” which drives this novelist up a freaking tree. But that’s a different topic.)
Berries are loaded with antioxidants.
Tip: when eating berries, don’t also eat bananas. Save the banana for another meal or have it a couple of hours later. Bananas can prevent the absorption of antioxidants.
So can any other fruit or veggie that normally turns brown when exposed to air, like apples or potatoes, and that’s all I can think of.
Nuts & Seeds
While they didn’t make the menu graphic, nuts and seeds are also important parts of a plant-based diet.
They are high in fat, and so if reducing fat is a goal (as it always is with cardiac patients) we want to limit the nuts to “a handful a day.”
We use nuts a lot here at Chez Shayne, and probably have more than a handful a day. Natural peanut butter takes the place of oil or shortening or butter in most of my baking. I use walnuts to make a wonderful sandwich spread, and am about to dive into trying to make a cashew cream French onion spread that’s as good as the store bought one I’ve found and fallen for.
Seeds are also high in fat, but it’s unsaturated fat, (nuts, too) which is better for us than saturated, but we do not need to add fat to our diet. The old, “you need healthy fats,” is just an excuse to eat badly. The healthy fats we need are part of the fruits, veggies, whole grains, and legumes we’re already eating. Nuts and seeds are extra, and fine in moderation, but not necessary.
The benefits of nuts and seeds include high protein, high fiber, B vitamins, zinc, niacin, folate, magnesium, potassium, calcium, iron, and antioxidants.
Eat them in moderation.
Making a Meal
When deciding what to make for dinner, I just pick and choose. Which whole grain or carb is going to be the basis of the meal? Will it be potatoes, or rice, or pasta, or noodles, or quinoa, or what?
Once I’ve chosen that, I decide which cruciferous is going in, and then pick a protein
Mixing and matching those three basics gives me the heart of the meal. The other veggies and fruits, nuts and seeds, provide the finishing touches that give the meal variety.
I also use Nutritional Yeast, tamari, vinegars including aged balsamic to create my meals. I also rely on a wide variety of herbs and spices that also bring their own healthy benefits.
Supplements
A daily B12 should be taken by every living human since it’s been depleted from our soil by irresponsible farming practices, and so is no longer found in sufficient amounts in either plant or animal-based foods.
The Second Priceless Helper
Batch Cooking
When you choose your basic meal elements, cook a lot of them. Cook enough for two or three meals instead of one. I like to make a big batch of perfectly seasoned rice, or a whole pot of potatoes or sweet potatoes, and then use them during the week.
If you open your fridge, it should look like a Subway restaurant, chock full of ready to eat foods you can grab at a moment’s notice. The greens are already washed and sorted and chopped, the tomatoes already diced, the dressings already mixed, with mounds and piles of yummy veggies for the taking.
I’ve written before about my big batches of chili, goulash, Spanish rice, veggie stews, soups, and so on that I make in a gigantic crockpot use throughout the week. I pack a lunchbox every morning, never less than six courses and it takes me under fifteen minutes each morning, because everything’s already made, including the hummus, and the veggies and fruits are already washed, sorted, and chopped. A typical lunchbox meal might include a wide-mouth thermos full of chili, raw veggies & homemade hummus for dipping, mixed nuts & raisins, grapes, a mandarin orange, a few cooked potatoes, or sweet potatoes, or diced beets, and a dessert.
A couple of hours in the kitchen on the weekend, not all day, just a couple of hours, can get you through most of the week with ease.
Little by Little
This is a gradual shift that becomes easier, simpler, more automatic, the longer you do it. We’re five years in now, and still improving bit by bit as we learn more and discover new recipes and techniques.
I paid $49 for a WFPB bread-making class, because I couldn’t resist it, yet I was also in the final stages of a novel when it ran, and I never even had time to go download the course materials. Broke my heart when I realized I’d missed it, but I will try again, and maybe even go see if the stuff is still there so I can grab it.
Never stop learning.
Never stop growing.
Never stop improving.
Never stop loving and enjoying your food!
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Great info as always. Enjoy your posts so much. 10-year vegan now, and always learn something new from you. Thank you!