02/22/2024
If you’ve been with me for a minute, you may have heard me mention the importance of “plant variety” in your diet. You may have also heard me mention the importance of “gut health”. And if you’ve really been listening, you know that two go hand-in-hand, or maybe I should say microbe-in-microbe. Picture your gut like a beautiful lush, colorful rainforest full of more species of plants and other living creatures than you could ever dare to imagine, let alone name! Every single living thing in that rainforest helps to keep the ecosystem in balance every day. You’ve all heard the phrase “save the rainforests”, because if you start cutting down trees, you endanger the life of all the living things in the environment. Think of modern agricultural practices with the use of tons of chemicals, as machines cutting down all of the trees in your beautiful rainforest. The less you have in there, the less life there is. Well, now it’s time to save your gut!
Plants are living things which contain their own incredible microbiome (specifically and especially if they’ve been grown using regenerative ag practices, in healthy soil which also has its own microbiome!). So it might make sense that if you consume a (healthy) living thing, it would also boost your health (this goes for animals too!)! And each plant contains specific “germs” that act as food for your microbes (good germs in your gut). The more variety you offer your gut, the more variety your rainforest has and each helps provide that perfect balance. And your gut is what is responsible for keeping you alive! So again, the more life you put in, the more alive you will feel alive!
Highly processed foods, or foods that can’t go bad (or die), do not add any life to your gut. In fact they act as pesticides, crop killers, and bulldozers inside you. They demolish, kill, and destroy anything good. Antibiotics do the same. While they do go in and kill the bad germs (the big trees), those bulldozers don’t avoid the beautiful ferns getting crushed on the ground in the process. Everything goes down. So it’s up to us to rebuild our rainforests and we can do that with plants!
We should aim for at least 30 different plants per week! Yes, 30. I know that sounds like a lot, but even just by ordering the food in my monday meals you get over 30 If you buy mixed greens you get up to 6 varieties just in that one container. Nuts, nut butters (peanut butter, baby!), seeds, herbs, spices, legumes, leafy greens, berries, bananas, potatoes, squash, broccoli, etc. etc.- they all count as more variety! Ever eat something every single day and then just get sick of it? That’s not just because your body is sick of it, it is because your gut is craving some variety. Your body knows best. Do you have to eat different foods every single day? No! But here are a few ways to get in some variety:
Pick one new veggie or fruit per week to try. You don’t need to make complicated recipes to try a new food, just buy it, google it (with the word easy) and try it.
Add one new spice to your foods. Used to salt and pepper? Add garlic, paprika, onion, mustard seed, celery root, cumin, etc.
Love rice? Try a new kind of rice - wild, black, brown, basmati, jasmine, etc. Each different variety offers it’s own unique benefits!
Try adding seeds to your meals - think hemp, chia, (ground) flax, sesame, poppy, etc. Just sprinkle onto a salad or oatmeal bowl adds a boost of nutrients, texture, and flavor.
Eat a rainbow! Each plant color offers different benefits. For example, fruits and veggies with deep colors like purple and blue (think blueberries and cabbage) have high amounts of polyphenols. Try getting at least one of each color into each meal, or at least throughout the day. This can be a great challenge to do with the kiddos as well.