Today, 10:31
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Senior Member
Posts: 1,984
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Plan: Atkins-ish (hypoglycemia)
Stats: 000/000/000
BF:
Progress: 50%
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Continuing with the vegan diet theme - this popped up yesterday on Firefox Pocket:
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“I’ve Been Eating Over 30 Plants a Week for a Year – Here’s How It’s Transformed My Gut Health”
It’s become the go-to piece of gut health advice, but just how realistic is it to eat 30 plants a week every week?
You can’t move these days for nutritionists and gut experts recommending people aim for a ‘30 plant a week’ goal to improve gut health. If that sounds like a lofty aim, it becomes even more ambitious when you realise that this isn’t about consuming 30 portions – but 30 different foods.
But it’s a goal that works. I should know – I’ve been meeting that target every, single week for an entire year and I’m convinced that my gut health is the best it’s ever been. In fact, I recently took the Zoe nutrition test and actually scored higher on the microbiome test than gut supremo Dr Tim Spector… so there’s definitely something in it.
If you’re the kind of person (like me) who eats lots of plants but gets stuck eating the same fruits and veg every day, you’ll struggle with the challenge.
For 12 months, I’ve kept a record of the herbs, veggies, nuts, seeds, legumes, grains and fruits that I consume while on holiday, on work trips, on my wedding day. I’ve eaten everything from samphire and sunflower seeds to dragon fruit and physalis. Everything counts, including potato, red onion and basil.
Most weeks, I’m averaging about 35 plants and beyond filling up my phone with inane notes, I definitely feel different. As such, I plan to keep on recording my plant intake well into 2024 and beyond. Here’s why:
Less bloating
It’s hard to know what causes bloating sometimes. I’m a vegan who eats a lot of fibre in general, but between tight jeans, ever-changing timetables and a fear of pooping in the office, bloating is a semi-regular fact of life.
Over the past 12 months however, I’ve only been bloated in the couple of days before my period – which is to be expected. My morning loo habits are much more regular thanks to a highly fibrous dinner.
A few years ago, I’d try to avoid eating breakfast for fear of feeling uncomfortable in the office, but these days, I’d argue that having a regular breakfast (protein berry smoothie if at home, chia pudding with Brazil nuts and blueberries in the office) seems to regulate gas production and after more plants at lunch, I don’t have big energy crashes or bloats come 3pm.
Tastier meals
When I’ve spoken about eating 30 plants with other people, the immediate reaction has been, ‘That’s a lot of vegetables!’ But that’s missing the point: the challenge is about eating more things that grow, whether that’s grain, fruit, nut, seed, veg or herb. And herbs are not only incredibly nutritionally dense, but they make everything taste better.
I’m no stranger to a pot of dried oregano or pepper flakes, but these days, I make fresh herbs and spices a non-negotiable part of my diet. I splash nearly all foods in lemon or lime juice. Curries are topped with fresh coriander, mint is chopped into salads, and I make my own turmeric root and orange juice. I serve meals with side bowls of sumac, olive oil and za’atar almost daily, as well as cooking mushrooms in shawarma spices.
More adventurous cooking
It’s so easy to end up eating the same foods every day. I’ll eat the same lunch for months, make the same side dishes for every meal or eat the same fruit for yonks. And while I was convinced that I was relatively healthy before, I was shocked when I started this experiment in January to discover just how lacking in diversity my diet was. I’d make pasta using an onion and a tin of tomatoes for three evenings in a row and make the same salad for lunch – unable to move past about eight plants.
By concentrating on diversity, it’s forced me to cook different meals. I’ve started looking up recipes that use new ingredients, such as the butterbean and cherry tomato gratin I made last week. Curries are bloody brilliant for packing in the plants and you can make small tweaks like adding a cup of blended cashews to make a milder, creamy dish or lots of lentils and chickpeas for a more dhal-like texture. Or add mango chunks to, well… anything that seems appropriate.
My favourite dinners tend to be compiled of lots of different small plates, which you can theme around one key dish. A Mexican-esque meal might include bowls of fajita-flavoured stir-fried peppers and tofu, a guacamole (avocado, shallots, lime juice), chopped coriander, mixed grains, refried beans, salsa (chopped onion, chilli and tomato) and gem lettuce leaves. Or if you’re making hummus (chickpeas), you could quickly whip up an Israeli salad (tomatoes, cucumber, pickles, onion, coriander, lemon juice), pan-fried aubergine, mushrooms and flatbread.
Cheaper food bills (and more batch cooking)
You might think that upping your intake of perishable foods is expensive – especially during a cost of living crisis. But I’ve found that ticking off plants inevitably increases the volume of food being made, and that means more leftovers for lunches. Making big grain mixes is cheap, and I often bulk those out with frozen peas and sweetcorn. It’s a damn sight cheaper than aiming for seven portions of fruit and veg.
I try to soak beans ahead of time (which is much more economical than buying tins) and look to cupboard staples when making dessert. At the moment, every evening ends with a bowl of frozen berries in oat milk and a couple of bliss balls made from a blended mixture of medjool dates, oats, flaxseeds and almond butter – all covered with a dollop of dark chocolate. That dessert contains around six plants and tastes better than the chocolate biscuits I used to have.
Fuller for longer
We might all be big grain champions these days, but that’s not always been the case. The noise around glucose and ‘dangerous sugars’ is boringly redolent of the bad old days of keto, Atkins and ‘no carbs before Marbs’. If you got into fitness around 2017 when the only ‘good’ carbs were overnight oats, then you might still be getting used to seeing rice as a healthy, filling part of your plate.
I grew up eating rice, barley and quinoa but took a break from all of them for years. This experiment has encouraged me to return to grains in a big way – often mixing three different kinds together per meal. This week, I’ve made a big batch of amaranth, brown basmati and buckwheat. Last week, it was quinoa, quick-cook rice and giant couscous (the latter is not technically a plant).
This has boosted not only the fibre content of my meals but quite often also the protein. And it’s also made the carb element of my dish a lot more interesting with a greater variety of texture, size and flavour. It’s also cheaper to batch cook: some grains swell more than others so you end up with a greater volume than you would if you’d just boiled a load of rice.
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https://www.stylist.co.uk/fitness-h...-6-month/799551
I read this piece of... **** with a cross between a look of    on my face.
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You can’t move these days for nutritionists and gut experts recommending people aim for a ‘30 plant a week’ goal to improve gut health. If that sounds like a lofty aim, it becomes even more ambitious when you realise that this isn’t about consuming 30 portions – but 30 different foods.
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Funny - this is the first time I've heard of 30 different plants each week. (apparently I haven't moved a muscle in many, many months since this article was from Dec '23)
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For 12 months, I’ve kept a record of the herbs, veggies, nuts, seeds, legumes, grains and fruits that I consume while on holiday, on work trips, on my wedding day.
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Oh, so herbs and anything else that's not an animal product counts as one of your 30 plants. Got it. That actually makes it one heck of a lot easier to get to 30 plants a week than what she's trying to make it sound like.
(by the way, keep track of how many times she counts grains as plants - something very odd about that comes up in the very end)
Quote:
It’s hard to know what causes bloating sometimes. I’m a vegan who eats a lot of fibre in general, but between tight jeans, ever-changing timetables and a fear of pooping in the office, bloating is a semi-regular fact of life.
Over the past 12 months however, I’ve only been bloated in the couple of days before my period – which is to be expected. My morning loo habits are much more regular thanks to a highly fibrous dinner.
A few years ago, I’d try to avoid eating breakfast for fear of feeling uncomfortable in the office, but these days, I’d argue that having a regular breakfast (protein berry smoothie if at home, chia pudding with Brazil nuts and blueberries in the office) seems to regulate gas production and after more plants at lunch, I don’t have big energy crashes or bloats come 3pm.
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If you fear pooping in the office, excessive gas (aside from that being far TMI), the bloating after lunch itself should tell you something about your diet: that it's not a good diet - it's making a royal mess of your digestive system.
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the challenge is about eating more things that grow, whether that’s grain, fruit, nut, seed, veg or herb. And herbs are not only incredibly nutritionally dense, but they make everything taste better.
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Of course herbs make things taste better and for plants, they do have good nutrition - but do the amounts you use in cooking truly provide that much more nutrition, and does a 1/4 tsp of oregano or basil count as another plant in your diet? Apparently it does to 30 plant purists.
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while I was convinced that I was relatively healthy before, I was shocked when I started this experiment in January to discover just how lacking in diversity my diet was. I’d make pasta using an onion and a tin of tomatoes for three evenings in a row and make the same salad for lunch – unable to move past about eight plants.
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Obviously you weren't using enough herbs and spices, since a tiny pinch counts.
Quote:
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At the moment, every evening ends with a bowl of frozen berries in oat milk and a couple of bliss balls made from a blended mixture of medjool dates, oats, flaxseeds and almond butter – all covered with a dollop of dark chocolate. That dessert contains around six plants and tastes better than the chocolate biscuits I used to have.
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Dark chocolate counts as a plant. 
Quote:
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We might all be big grain champions these days, but that’s not always been the case. The noise around glucose and ‘dangerous sugars’ is boringly redolent of the bad old days of keto, Atkins and ‘no carbs before Marbs’. If you got into fitness around 2017 when the only ‘good’ carbs were overnight oats, then you might still be getting used to seeing rice as a healthy, filling part of your plate.
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No, we're not all big grain champions these days. And I don't recall overnight oats ever being "good carbs". Yes, they have some fiber - they still have loads of starch.
Now for the part where I said count the number of times she refers to grains as plants:
Quote:
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This experiment has encouraged me to return to grains in a big way – often mixing three different kinds together per meal. This week, I’ve made a big batch of amaranth, brown basmati and buckwheat. Last week, it was quinoa, quick-cook rice and giant couscous (the latter is not technically a plant).
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I looked up giant couscous to see what it is - it's made from semolina, which is... <ta-da> a plant.
She obviously doesn't really even know what she's eating.
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Middle-aged people getting serious illness is sadly not unusual.
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