Edition #1 ..

Greetings!

This is the first of my Tuesday posts on Whole Food Plant-Based (WFPB) eating. Why are you receiving this? Because 1) you’ve expressed your interest in preventing or reversing chronic disease, and/or 2) I know you want to reduce your pollution and climate impact, and/or 3) I know you find factory farms abhorrent, and/or 4) you’ve volunteered the past to be part of my Cornell WFPB projects, and/or 5) I care about your health and well-being and would love to see you thrive throughout your lifetime.

I will not be delving into the many reasons for you and your family to embark on this lifestyle venture. If you have questions about the rationale, feel free to ask me. However, I’m going to assume that you believe the solid science showing the benefits of a WFPB diet and that you are ready to begin optimizing your health today.

My focus? Healthy food with minimal prep time…i.e. Healthy Fast Food.  I think I’ve explained the concept best in a little book I wrote in 2020 called Batch-It Crazy that you’ll find HERE. Several of you have already seen this, but I think it’s a good place to start. It assumes you have a 6 Quart Instant-Pot. If you have an 8 Quart version:

The minimum liquid requirement for an 8-quart Instant Pot is 2 cups, whereas for a 6-quart model, it’s 1 cup. This is because the larger pot needs more liquid to generate sufficient steam and reach pressure.

Pressure build-up time is longer in an 8-quart due to its larger volume, but once at pressure, the actual cook time remains the same.

If you have no pressure cooker, of course, you can stand by the stove and babysit your food OR buy canned or frozen versions. For simplifying life, I’m a big Instant Pot advocate. When you start using an Instant Pot, you’ll be amazed at how it’s like you just hired a cook and you can go off and do other things around the house while your Instant Pot cooks for you! Note: Pressure cookers have come a long way over the years. They are no longer the scary, run-for-your life variety.

Those of you with digestive issues may want to soak your beans overnight and use a bit of Kombu (sea vegetable) when pressure cooking. You’ll want to reduce your Instant Pot times accordingly as shown HERE. As you try different beans/peas, you may want to make your own cheat-sheet of cooking times unless, unlike me, you have a stellar memory. HERE are Instant Pot times for grains and HERE are times for several vegetables.

Whether you want to do a Meatless Monday or dive right into full time plant-based eating, I’m here for you.

Important: If your plan is to reverse an already diagnosed disease process, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, or type 2 diabetes, please 1) go easy on nuts, seeds, avocados, and oils, and 2) ask your doctor to monitor your blood levels and medications because your medication requirements can quickly diminish, leaving you seriously over-medicated.

That’s a wrap for Edition #1.  My goal is to distribute 8 Editions, which will take us through the end of March.

Question: Would you like receive future editions each Tuesday? Please let me know. I’d also love to respond to your questions and concerns.

The email subject line in future weeks will be Healthy Fast Food.

Interested friends and relatives? I’m happy to add them. Feel free to send them my way or forward my emails.

To Your Plant-Powered Health,

Gerri

Edition #2 ..

Savor the Flavor!

Last week, we focused on basic batch cooking. Whole grains and beans and greens can be delicious, particularly when we’ve broken free of sugar, fat, and salt and taken back our taste buds. During this time, let’s surprise our palate with exciting flavors, ranging from the simple to more complex.

Simple Drizzle: Squeeze lemon or lime juice or balsamic vinegar (reduced/glaze) right before serving your salad, stir-fry, power bowl, or wrap.

Two Simple Sauces, using just a whisk:

Lemon Tahini Sauce – juice of whole lemon, ¼ cup each of water, nutritional yeast, tahini, ½ tsp garlic powder, and a dash of chili pepper flakes. Refrigerate.

Peanut Ginger Sauce: Whisk together & refrigerate.

¼ cup natural peanut butter

1.5” fresh ginger, grated

1 small garlic clove, minced

2 tbsp low sodium tamari or soy sauce

1 tbsp brown rice vinegar (a great option for extra nutrients, but regular rice vinegar works too)

1 tbsp maple syrup

1 tsp toasted sesame oil

¼ to ⅓ cup water (for thinning to desired consistency)

½ to 1 tsp sriracha or red pepper flakes (optional, for heat)

There’s no photo of the Peanut Ginger Sauce because it has already been mixed into the amazing stir-fry below. Those who are aiming to reverse an already diagnosed health issue, go easy on these sauces–just enough to add a bit of pizazz. Plant fats are healthier than animal fats, but reversing heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers requires consuming less fat of any kind for now. What are those chicken-like pieces seen in the stir-fry, you ask? Those are Butler Soy Curls. Do you use them? If not, give them a try. I think you’ll just love the texture and nutrition benefits.

No time to make sauces this week? No worries. Be sure to stock:

Nutrient-Dense Soups. They’ll come to the rescue in a pinch, doubling as a sauce. Hey, if you forgot to batch-cook beans, bean-laden soups can also double as your bean/protein component as well. Look for Amy’s or other minimal ingredient low-sodium organic soups. You may want to add the YUKA app to your cell-phone, which will rate your food options when you need to go the processed route. I predict that you’ll love this app. Try it and let me know what you think.

Now you’re all set to pour on the flavor, even if you just have time to microwave a sweet potato. Simply top with the sauce of your choice. Plus, why not ramp it up further with:

Fresh herbs? Parsley. Cilantro. Mint. Basil. Thyme. Have some on hand.

Toasted seeds? Sesame. Hemp. Sunflower. Chia. Flax. Warm the seeds in a cast-iron pan until they just begin to crackle, then remove them from the heat. Batch-toasting seeds is simple, quick and they’ll be fine in your refrigerator for a month or two.  Sprinkle them atop your power bowl, casserole, or salad.

A well-stocked pantry is your ticket to successful batch-cooking and Healthy Fast Foods through the week. What NOT to stock is just as important. Junk and processed foods will be eaten when your time and energy are low, so making them unavailable is a wise step.

Running my practices and ideas by you does not mean I expect you to adopt them, but if you’re like me, you like to be open to new practices and skills that expand your culinary world. I know that each of you has a food prep super-power that I lack. With this in mind, I would love for you to:

Please tell me about a cooking skill, practice, tip, or short-cut about which you’re excited to know. At some point, I may share it with this group without using your name. This collaborative effort may lift our cooking experiences to a new level without the need to take expensive cooking courses.

Here is one from me: I forget where I learned this, but I take an inexpensive bottle of organic balsamic vinegar and reduce it by about half by simmering and stirring it for about 30 minutes. Since I’m not a fan of standing over the stove babysitting food, I use this time to meditate or to ask ChatGPT some questions while I stir. I allow the reduced balsamic vinegar to cool a bit, then pour it into the vessel used at the table. Like sauce, herbs, and seeds, it is always ready to liven up a salad or any food crying out for a mellow, sweet/acidic flavor. Recently, I added fresh rosemary and orange zest to the vinegar during reduction, resulting in a tasty food rising to wildly tasty!

Please, take me seriously when I ask for your tips and tricks in the kitchen. Got some? Let me know. Some of you have expertise well beyond mine.

To Your Plant-Powered Health,

Gerri

Edition #3 ..

Without meat and dairy, am I getting ENOUGH PROTEIN?

We tend to be FIXATED ON PROTEIN. However, with few exceptions, those of you who eat a whole-food, plant-based (WFPB) diet easily meet your protein needs if you’re consuming a diverse diet with adequate calories. Whole plant foods contain all nine essential amino acids. While some plant foods are lower in specific amino acids, eating a variety of foods throughout the day ensures all essential amino acids are consumed. The body maintains an amino acid pool, so immediate consumption of “complete proteins” in one sitting is unnecessary. The Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for protein is 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight per day. A varied WFPB diet can easily meet or exceed this amount. The EPIC-Oxford Study, with over 65,000 participants, showed that vegans consumed slightly lower protein intakes compared to meat-eaters, but still met daily requirements. Their average protein intake was approximately 70 grams/day.

YOUR IDEAL BODY WEIGHT ÷ 2 = approximate grams of protein needed/day, which is slightly above the RDA but aligns well with recommendations.

Who benefits from a HIGHER OR LOWER INTAKE OF PROTEIN? Athletes, pregnant & breastfeeding women, people recovering from illness, injury, or surgery, and those with cancer, infections, or burns need more protein. People with kidney disease who are not on dialysis may need less protein in order to reduce kidney stress.

Is replacing animal protein with PLANT PROTEIN better for your health?

That is what I would title Dr. Michael Greger’s excellent 7-minute video found HERE.

Does Increasing Protein Intake Slow Age-Related Muscle Mass Loss?

Dr. Michael Greger’s 8-minute response can be found HERE.

Several of you asked me:

Where can I buy Butler Soy Curls?

The best and least expensive way is to order directly from the Butler Foods website: https://www.butlerfoods.com/products . If you know five other people who may enjoy these HIGH PROTEIN fiber-rich soy curls, you can order six 8 oz bags, each costing just $6.18. Note: A little goes a long way. They grow when soaked in hot water! Please heed the expiration date as this product contains no preservatives.

Ok, so you’re still fixated on getting enough PROTEIN. This TABLE will help you estimate your intake. Remember that all whole foods, even fruit, have at least SOME protein, so toss in a decent number of grams for the whole foods not typically considered high-protein.

Thank you for all of your tips & tricks!

Here are several sent to me this week:

“Sharpen your knives” to make vegetable chopping easier and safer.

Chopping celery – One of you told me: In the past, I had cooked for large numbers of people, and I continue the practice of fine chopping celery from the leafy end of the bunch as a whole, rather than pulling off one stalk of the bunch at a time. When I get halfway down the bunch, I wash the mud from the base of the bunch, which I can usually do without breaking the stalks off the core. Sometimes I use the leafy tops in soups or salads, but if I want to make a stir-fry, I use both leaves and stalks.

“The YUKA app is a total winner for me.”, said one of you.  He has changed a handful of frequently bought items already with its help. Before you go grocery shopping, scan the barcodes of items already in your fridge/recycling bin and write the score you’re trying to beat next to each item.

“Sauté a couple handfuls of fresh baby spinach to go with your breakfast.” Some local farms have it available year-round and it’s tastier than store-bought.

“Decide on a system that will work for you to find your batched frozen and refrigerated foods easily.” If labeling is tedious, try color-coding, using one color storage lid for beans, one for grains, and one for everything else.  

Add sorghum to the Instant-Pot Grains time-table. It takes 35 minutes without soaking overnight and 20-25 minutes if soaked.

Frozen fruits and veggies are great for convenience.

Grow your favorite herbs in an easy-to-access spot to increase the chances you’ll add them to your meals.

Keep your ideas coming!

To Your Plant-Powered Health,

Gerri

Edition #4 ..

Without dairy, are you getting ENOUGH CALCIUM?

Cow’s Milk is the perfect food for calves. A mammal’s milk is designed to nourish and grow its offspring. In the case of cow’s milk, this means growing a calf from 90 pounds to 1200 pounds in less than two years. HERE is a comparison between human milk and cow’s milk. Human beings are the only species who consume other mammals’ milk. This is not something that occurs in natural habitats. Evidence of this is the fact that nearly 70% of the world’s human population is lactose intolerant.

Then why do our Dietary Guidelines for Americans feature dairy products as a food group? The dairy industry plays a significant role in lobbying for and shaping U.S. dietary policy. The USDA, which helps create the guidelines, also promotes dairy through programs like the National Dairy Promotion and Research Board.

Will your risk of osteoporosis increase if you no longer consume dairy products?

The higher prevalence of osteoporosis in countries that consume more dairy foods suggests that dairy products are not an effective preventative strategy.

Back to the question, are you getting ENOUGH CALCIUM?

Aim to get at least 600 mg/daily via calcium-­rich plant foods—dark green leafy vegetables, such as kale, collard greens, Bok choy, and beans, tofu, nuts, and seeds. Some healthy foods, such as spinach, chard, and beet greens, contain higher amounts of oxalic acid that hinder calcium absorption. Thus, it is important to eat a variety of plant-based foods.

Calcium in low oxalic acid dark green leafy vegetables is absorbed about twice as well as the calcium in milk, and there’s a bonus of fiber, folate, iron, anti-oxidants, and vitamin K. Milk is ‘udderly’ different, in that the “bonus” is saturated butterfat, cholesterol, antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, and pus (pasteurized pus, but nonetheless, pus).

How can you maximize calcium absorption?

• Get sun exposure or take a D3 supplement (2000 IU/day), especially during winter’s short and cold days and covered skin.
• Limit sodium and caffeine, which can leach calcium from your bones.
• Practice resistance exercises to help maintain strong bones.

Simple, delicious BAKED TOFU CUBES

1. Whisk together in a large bowl: 2 tbsp low sodium tamari, 1 tbsp maple syrup, 2 tsp white sesame seeds, and 1 tsp black sesame seeds or chia seeds.
2. Press or squeeze excess water from a block of firm or extra-firm tofu, cut it into ½ inch cubes and toss it into the above mixture. Allow it to marinate at room temperature for an hour or so.
3. Bake in a 375F oven on a parchment-covered pan for 30 minutes.
4. Serve with grains and colorful green and/or orange vegetables. Drizzle with lemon, lemon tahini sauce, or balsamic glaze. I predict that you’re going to love this!

This edition marks the halfway point in this Healthy Fast-Food series.

What would you like to see me address in the next 4 editions?

Keep your ideas coming!

To Your Plant-Powered Health,

Gerri

Edition #5 ..

The POWER BOWL Concept

A bit of history: In the winter of 2021, I enrolled in Cornell’s course: “Network Climate Action: Scaling Up Your Impact” and created a project in which I enlisted 18 people to “Discover [their] Own Power Bowl[s].” Each person created a Power Bowl combination consisting of a whole grain, a legume, cruciferous vegetable, sauce, herbs/spices, and roasted seeds. By compiling each person’s unique dishes, I was able to create the beautiful cookbook you can find HERE. [Note: Thanks to my WFPB cooking volunteers who graciously had given me permission to share their submissions/names and to my marvelous professor, Dr. Marianne E. Krasny.] This spurred me on to teach folks how to batch cook some of the power bowl layers, so that in essence, they became nutrient-dense fast-food components. I covered batch cooking in Edition #1 (above).

A Power Bowl typically refers to a nutrient-dense, balanced meal served in a bowl. It focuses on whole, minimally processed foods. Most often, it consists of a:

• whole grain or complex carbohydrate (ex: quinoa, brown rice, farro, whole-grain pasta)
• bean, tofu, or tempeh
• vegetable or mix of vegetables
• flavorful sauce
• combination of nuts, seeds, herbs, spices

To me, the Power Bowl Concept can be broad, in the sense that layering the components is not essential to its mission of supplying optimal fuel for your health. Its more of a model that simplifies nutritious meal preparation. If you’re starting with, “What can I do with these leftover chickpeas?”, you can say to yourself that this is your high protein component and bring in whatever your shelf, freezer, or refrigerator has to offer from the other categories. Just last night, I experienced this situation right before dinnertime with my nearly bare refrigerator except for a previously batch-cooked storage container of chickpeas. It was one of those times that I considered using a canned soup as a sauce. In this case, I chose Amy’s Organic Chunky Tomato Bisque into which I tossed the chickpeas, and even though this didn’t sound appetizing to me, I remembered some Indian recipes using chickpeas and tomatoes, which took me to the spice cabinet, where I found the requisite excitement supplied by cardamom, coriander, garam masala, and turmeric. Microwaving my wonderful local farmer’s purple skinned potatoes as a base/complex carbohydrate, covering it with tomato chickpea ‘sauce’, and topping it with a dollop of cashew yogurt and parsley resulted in a beautiful, tasty, health-promoting meal in less than 10 minutes! Kitchen Magic! Wish I had taken a photo, but below are some others to whet your appetite. Keeping one foot firmly planted in your own personal healthy food favorites can provide comfort while your other foot steps into exciting new ventures of your radically healthy future!

Breakfast Power Bowl

There’s really no good reason besides comfort and habit that you shouldn’t eat the above vegetable-bean-grain-packed power bowls for breakfast. However, there’s certainly a place for comfort and habit when you’re making big changes, such as scrapping eggs, bacon, basic white bread and cold cereals for more nutritious fare. Here is a breakfast idea that walks that line between familiar and deliciously unique. Dr. Michael Greger bumps processed oatmeal up several notches with his BROL Bowl. BROL stands for Barley-Rye-Oat-Lentil. I have made this for years, switching out the original organic purple barley, organic rye, organic oat groats, and beluga black lentils with various other whole grains. [Perhaps you can locate these grains where you live, but I need to order them online.]

Process: Rinse and add ½ cup of each of 4 types of grain—a total of 2 cups, along with 6 cups of water to your Instant Pot. Pressure-cook 38 minutes (more or less) and allow a natural pressure release. Cool to room temperature before adding 2-3 tbsps each of other nutrient-rich goodies like ground flaxseed, wheat germ, hempseed, and chia seeds, or barberries. Stir and refrigerate for the week. Simply warm up a bowl of this mixture in the morning and top with fruit, nuts, vegan yogurt or plant milk, and a drizzle of maple syrup. Look at it closely and you’ll see that this breakfast has GOOD DAY written all over it!

To Your Plant-Powered Health,

Gerri

Edition #6 ..

Hello everyone! This Tuesday’s topic is “ALTERNATIVE PROTEIN”. You’re right—I’ve already mentioned that we’re too hung up on trying to meet our protein needs, yet here we are again. You can’t spend decades planning meals around meat and dairy and then suddenly shift your mindset to what we know now, which is: If you eat a variety of whole, unprocessed plant foods and consume enough calories, you’re almost certainly getting enough protein. This aligns with research from sources like the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and studies on long-lived populations (Blue Zones).

However, a piece of sage advice from my social work training is, “Start where the client is.” So, in order to honor this mindset, long-term habit, and cultural comfort, let’s consider holding onto BURGERS! You can pretend you’re doing it to meet your protein needs.

What about ALTERNATIVE BURGERS made in your kitchen versus processed burgers, like Impossible Burgers and Beyond Burgers? Some folks say, “What’s the big deal about Processed Foods? When you make your own plant-based burgers, you are ‘processing’ them in your kitchen.”

Response? The key difference is between minimally processed and ultra-processed foods. When you make plant-based burgers at home using whole-food ingredients—like beans, lentils, grains, and vegetables—you are processing them in a way that retains their fiber, nutrients, and natural structure. This is very different from ultra-processed foods, which are industrially made, often using refined ingredients, additives, preservatives, and artificial flavors to enhance shelf life, texture, and taste. Ultra-processed foods are linked to poor health outcomes, including weight gain, heart disease, and inflammation, whereas whole or minimally processed plant foods promote health. So, the concern isn’t about processing itself—it’s how and to what extent the food is processed.

CONTEST TIME!

Let’s compare 4 BURGERS:

• A Homemade Bean Burger, from Be a Plant-Based Woman Warrior Cookbook (Recipe HERE)
• A Casserole Burger – created under the assumption that if a casserole can hold together, so can a burger made with the same ingredients. (Recipe HERE)
• An Impossible Burger – frozen, purchased at Wegmans
• A Beyond Burger – frozen, purchased at Wegmans

 As Maurice Sendak would say, “Let the Wild Rumpus Begin!”

What does Dr. Michael Greger have to say about Plant-Based Protein?
Are Pea and Soy Protein Isolates Harmful? (Pea in Beyond Burgers; Soy in Impossible Burgers)
Michael Greger M.D. FACLM · February 3, 2021
https://youtu.be/bx9hi5hNiaU

How about YUKA ratings?

Impossible Burgers – 75/100 (EXCELLENT), cited for having a bit too much saturated fat.

Beyond Burgers – 69/100 (GOOD), cited for additives with limited risk.

Morningstar Grillers Prime Burgers – 84/100 (EXCELLENT) – cited for excess sodium. [Morningstar wasn’t included in the overall analysis, but I tossed it in here out of curiosity.]

My analysis:

• The Impossible/Beyond Burgers win the higher protein contest if we need our burgers to provide substantial protein. But do burgers need to be protein powerhouses? Whole food, plant-based burgers provide sufficient protein as part of a diverse diet, while also offering micronutrients and no additives.
• Impossible/Beyond Burgers are designed to mimic meat, but they come with the trade-offs of processed ingredients, added fats, sodium and methylcellulose (a thickener). The Impossible Burger contains the questionably harmful heme, produced via genetically modified yeast. Both the Impossible Burger and Beyond Burger are considered ultra-processed, based on the NOVA classification system, which categorizes foods by their level of processing. Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are those that contain industrial ingredients not typically found in home kitchens, such as protein isolates, refined oils, flavor enhancers, and additives.
• Processed oils are main ingredients in the Impossible and Beyond Burgers; thus, the two Homemade Burgers containing no processed oils win here.
• All 4 Burgers provide a bit of calcium and fiber.
• The value of organic, whole foods in a recipe is far greater than what’s captured on a processed food label because of the phytonutrients, antioxidants, anti-inflammatory properties, and cofactors that enhance nutrient absorption—things that make whole foods superior to processed versions.
• I see the two Homemade Burgers as superior to the Impossible and Beyond Burgers, but if caught off-guard, without a supply of Homemade Burgers, the store-bought burgers may be a reasonable substitute, perhaps deserving a grade C- for human health, a grade A for climate health, and a grade A for animal health.

Anybody care about FLAVOR?

Although I would have loved to prepare and perform taste tests on all 4 Burgers simultaneously, I was unable to swing that, so apartment-mate Wes and I arranged to cook one of these Burgers each day. In order to eliminate variables, the same embellishments were used all 4 days…a toasted sesame seed bun, tofu mayo, sliced tomato and sweet onion, kimchi, and romaine lettuce. Day 2, we enjoyed feeding two unanticipated guests as well, who taste-tested just that one day, which happened to be the day my Bean Burger failed to hang together due to excessive kale. C’est la vie. My guests were gracious and said they liked the taste.

Overall Results? This is, of course, a subjective experience. Between the not-as-good-for you ultra-processed burgers, both Wes and I preferred the Beyond Burger, due to its smoky, grilled flavor. This Burger also happens to be quite a bit less expensive than the Impossible Burger. The Homemade Burgers each had their unique, interesting flavors, but the Bean Burger (the first time I made it with the right amount of cooked kale in it) had a very nice sausage flavor and was easier and faster to make than the Casserole Burger. So, for us, there’s a tie between the Bean Burger and Beyond Burger. Adding in the criterion of “contribution to optimal health”, the Homemade Bean Burger is the clear winner!  Go Esselstyn family! See their amazing cookbook HERE. And guys, you’ll love it too!

To Your Plant-Powered Health,

Gerri

Gerri Wiley, RN
Public Health Nurse
Owego, NY
607-342-3159