How to get the biggest bang for your buck (and your tastebuds)
And your current and future self...
One of my biggest frustrations is how 70% of food is closer to a food product than the real thing.
The first time I went to a Whole Foods market back in 2009, I made the same hour-and-a-half round trip the very next day. My body craved whatever vegetables, fruits, lean protein, and whole grains were in the salad and hot food bars. As I moseyed through the isles to digest what would have satisfied a 250lb athlete, my MO shifted to finding what I could cobble together with only a George Foreman-type grill and a mini fridge. I did my best with what I had.
I remember sledding on the lid of a cardboard box as a kid. It’s near impossible to make ends meet on a single factory worker income, even more so while caring for a child fighting a rare form of cancer. When my mom hugged me tight and told me how the doctors gave my sister Gina only two weeks to live, I didn’t believe it. I knew she was sick but she was always sick, and she always got better. Our familial trait is stubbornness - we would not accept a reality that in our eyes, was unacceptable.
There were two options. Go through yet another intensive round of chemotherapy or, adopt a diet of only whole, organic foods combined with an extract, some sort of tea from the Amazon that looked like watered-down spinach and smelled of decaying forest floor.
My parents did whatever they could to buy and consume local, whole, and organic food with the little resources we had. Through my diet shifting from TV dinners and Entenmann's to farm-raised chicken and green juice that Gina and I occasionally used to water the house plants on the days we just couldn’t choke it down, I felt good. It was easier and more natural to focus my energy, make friends, and play sports, while my sister gained 10 more years of life lived mostly in good health.
My idea of illness, that it was either rare, like my sister’s, or communicable, like chicken pox, slowly shifted over the years. What we face today is an epidemic of chronic disease stemming from ultra-processed foods (UPF).
Food as Health
I cannot give medical advice. What I can do is share what is going on in research, policy, business (companies like Virta, About Fresh, and Enara paving the way for food’s role in health), agriculture, the non-profit space, and in my kitchen to ultimately fix what is broken in the industrial food and U.S. healthcare systems.
It will take time and a ton of effort, but it can be done.
There are many models for what can make or break metabolic health that Nick Jikomes, author of the Mind and Matter Substack, shares in his Podcast and 4-part series “Exploring the dietary causes of obesity and metabolic dysfunction.”
You can find Part IV below, with links to Parts I-III within the post:
There’s the calories in, calories out model that I grew up with. The model that brought in barrels of cash for Big Food while we all gobbled down 5+ reduced-fat fudge pops in one sitting. Calories play a role, but not all calories are equal because our bodies process them differently. More to come.
There’s the non-caloric obesogen model studying the obesogenic effects of chemicals like Tributyltin. The absence of chemicals in commercially grown produce is what inspired my Bean Broth Soup below, based on the Environmental Working Group’s Clean 15, with onions ranking 4th and carrots ranking 15th.
There’s the seed oil model linking an overabundance of omega-6 fats to obesity.
The ketogenic model that, used in conjunction with digital care, has proved effective in resolving type 2 diabetes and obesity.
Then, there’s the ultra-processed food model, the one I live by: Avoid ultra-processed foods at all costs.
The ability to easily access food directly from the source is the opposite of a food desert, where ingredients are stripped of their nutrients and fibers and filled with high-fructose corn syrup and god knows what else - pick-your-poison of additive designed, not to fuel your body, but to keep you coming back for more.
To navigate through the ultra-processed foods hidden in plain sight in major grocery retailers, there’s a free resource, Perfact where you can create a grocery list filtering out UPF. I’m a fan of Dr. Robert Lustig, author of Metabolical, who has a Perfact specific to filtering out sugar.
My three rules of thumb for shopping stem from looking at the ingredient list and…
If you don’t know what an ingredient is, don’t buy it. Or, look it up. The only exception is when the item doesn’t come in an eye-catching package (i.e., it’s a whole food.)
Avoid high fructose corn syrup and added sugar, and limit the amount of corn and seed oils high in linoleic acid, such as soybean. (Consuming a high amount of oil rich in linoleic acid can throw your omega 6 to omega 3 ratios out of balance1.) More on this in a following post.
Whatever is listed first, second, and third are the main ingredients (it’s chronological). The longer the ingredient list, the more likely it is that the food is ultra-processed.
As much as I want to source, cook, and consume locally grown food, it’s not always possible or practical. This is why I want to share a recipe that can be made in 15 minutes with your eyes closed, with just a few common ingredients, inspired by the Environmental Group’s Clean 15 and Dirty Dozen identifying non-organic (i.e., less expensive) produce grown with the least amount of pesticides.
There is value in optimizing for nutrients, but there is no standard guidance on what constitutes a nutritious food. One of the reasons we overeat is because our bodies crave essential nutrients, leading to a dynamic where we are calorie-rich and nutrient-poor. The metabolic dysfunction that results from ultra-processed food consumption only makes matters worse.
If there’s one thing I’m a fan of, it’s taking matters into my own hands. And all we can do is our best. The one thing I value more than nuance, complexity, and detail is simplification. So with this ethos in mind, let’s jump into a most delicious accident that will serve as the base of much more to come.
You don’t need to have a ton of time, resources, or experience to make a tasty, nutritious meal. All you need is a carrot, an onion, a few celery stalks, a bag of beans, and some bones - the base for stock.
*Recipe: Bean Broth Soup
Note from Chérie: If you can, source high-quality beans. I like Rancho Gordo and anything grown outside of the U.S. I can get my hands on. You have the option to remove the vegetables at any time; if you do, be sure to add them back to your pot just before salting. I like to let them cook the entire time because they take on so much flavor and become so soft.
Cooking time: 15 minutes active, 2.5 - 4 hours inactive
serves 4-6 as a main course
Ingredients:
2-3 cups of beans - I lean towards Italian for this soup; I love these Cicerchia for how flavorful of a broth they leave behind
1 bone, rich in cartilage and/or 2-6 chicken wings - If you can get a roasted bone from your butcher, even better
1 carrot
1 leek or yellow onion cut in half - If using a leek, cut lengthwise to expose its layers and rinse away any dirt
2 celery stalks
2 bay leaves
20 or so peppercorns
Salt and pepper
Parmesan or pecorino cheese, olive oil, and/or baguette for serving
Method:
Rinse and strain beans of any debris. Soak for 2-6 hours. (The longer they soak, the shorter their cooking time.) Meanwhile, fill a large pot with water and add the bone(s), carrot, leek or onion, celery, bay leaves, and peppercorns. Bring to a light boil then reduce to a simmer.
Keep an eye on your stock while it simmers. Checking every 30 - 45 minutes is a good baseline. Maintain a simmer by either turning down the heat, keeping the lid ajar, or adding ~1/2 cup of fresh water.
When you’re ready to add the beans, give them one final rinse before adding them to your stock pot.
After about an hour and a half, at which point the stock has simmered for ~3.5 hours, taste a few beans to see if they’re done. They’ll likely need another 30 - 90 minutes, but it’s good to check in early to see where they’re at. A bean that is done will be creamy inside, and it’s perfectly fine, almost necessary, for a handful to break their skin.
Once the beans are almost done, salt generously and gently simmer for a final half hour to develop flavor. Once done, remove the vegetables with tongs and chop them into bite-size pieces. Place back into your pot and give your bean soup one final stir.
Serve as is or topped with olive oil, pepper, and parmesan or pecorino cheese, alongside steamed rice or a few slices of fresh bread.
In good health,
Chérie
THANK YOU FOR READING! THE SAVORY WOULDN’T BE HERE IF IT WEREN’T FOR YOUR SUPPORT! ♥️
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See Chapter 5 of The Healthiest Diet for You: Scientific Aspects by Artemis P. Simopoulos’s.