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
It’s always inspiring for me to re-commit to a more nutritious diet and to keep widening and diversifying to support my microbiome. Great article!
Thank you, Ka! I like to reevaluate and recommit to healthy eating habits from time to time too :). I can slip into eating the same things over and over if I’m not being thoughtful.
Interesting! I do tend to eat the same foods almost every day but they are mostly organic and unprocessed (except for maple syrup, honey and olive oil). Cooking everything from scratch is time-consuming but worth it! 🙂
That’s amazing and so rare! I’ve noticed my motivation to cook really ebbs and flows but definitely feel my best when I take the time to cook healthy meals.
As always, thank you for the great information. I’m really trying to follow all of your good advice. if you ever want a job as my personal chef, you got it!😉
Thank you! I love the idea of being your personal chef :)!
I’ve heard a lot recently about the 30 a week reasoning! You absolutely can’t fault the science, but I wonder for many people how sustainable it is? I suppose by having lots of different nuts/seeds/dried fruit is a good idea, but 30 is a lot nonetheless…
It does sound like a lot, but I think it’s actually doable. I took a Greek cooking class recently with a woman who uses one of the apps that counts the plants she eats each week, and in just one (big) meal, we ate 16! I don’t know if I actually reach 30 myself, but I’m trying to branch out of food ruts and incorporate more variety in my soups and salads at the very least :).