There are two trends in healthy eating right now that complement each other nicely. The first is Thirty a Week, with the focus on eating at least 30 different plant foods each week to enhance the microbiome.
Why has this become a thing?
Eating a variety of different plant foods means you are giving your microbiome plenty of prebiotics which are essential for helping the good bugs in the gut to prosper and win over the bad bugs, (or too few bugs).
How to do it:
Thirty means thirty different plant foods, which can include many categories of food besides the obvious fruits and vegetables. It includes herbs, whole grains, nuts, legumes, and even dark chocolate, coffee, and more. The main point to observe is that if you eat a certain food, such as a Honeycrisp apple, every day at lunch for 5 days in a row, that only counts as 1 of the 30. If instead you eat a different kind of fruit every day at lunch for 5 days straight, then you have 5 out of the 30. There are apps out there to track how many plant foods you eat, if that is your thing, but personally I already have more apps than I care to. For more ideas on how to achieve thirty a week, this linked article is a wonderful place to start.
How it relates to minimizing ultra-processed foods:
The Thirty a Week concept works well with trying to get away from ultra-processed foods because when focusing on getting real foods into our bodies, there are less opportunities to choose ultra-processed food. There is more awareness now that ultra-processed foods make up the majority of American diets, (55% is the latest number), and an even larger proportion of youths’ diets. Ultra-processed foods lack nutrition, contain questionable ingredients, are generally packed with excess sugar and salt, and are designed to make people crave foods and overeat. Ultra-processed foods are seen as one of the main reasons if not the number one reason that people are overweight, especially children, and yet unfortunately, they are everywhere.
What exactly is an ultra-processed food?
Knowing what is ultra-processed as opposed to simply processed can be tricky. To understand what makes a food ‘ultra-processed’, I am copying this simple explanation from Stanford Medicine’s News Center:
- Unprocessed or minimally processed foods: Examples are fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, seeds, eggs, meat, poultry, pasta, plain yogurt and coffee.
- Processed culinary ingredients: These include sugar, honey, maple syrup, vegetable oils, butter and vinegar.
- Processed foods: Examples are salted nuts, cured meat, canned fish, canned vegetables, most cheeses and freshly made bread (such as from a local bakery).
- Ultra-processed foods: Examples are commercially produced breads, most breakfast cereals, flavored yogurts, hot dogs, frozen meals, potato chips, soft drinks and candy bars.
As you can see, unprocessed or minimally processed foods are mostly the foods that make up the Thirty a Week guideline.
The upcoming change of seasons is as good a time as any to commit to healthier, smarter eating. Happy Equinox week! 🥣🌿Â