Tired of being sick and sick of being tired? Follow this comprehensive guide for smart eating for an invigorated and healthy life. Current research concurs the plant-based, whole foods diet awakens your genes to better health. Smart Eating made Simple provides: • A step-by-step guide of what to eat • Scientific understanding of every plant nutrient • Information regarding the healing power of plants • An extensive list of evidence on disease prevention • An abundance of plant-based recipes Learn the best nutrition-based approach to healthy eating that you follow and enjoy day after day, year after year, putting an end to life-threatening diseases, and requiring less expensive medical procedures or medications. Good nutrition is 20% knowledge and 80% action.

Smart Eating Made Simple

By Jane Ibbetson

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2012 Jane Ibbetson
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4685-6659-8

Contents

Acknowledgements.............................................................................xviiAuthor's Preface to the Recipes..............................................................xixForeward.....................................................................................xxiPrologue by the Author.......................................................................xxiiiTime to Eat Plants: What Does That Mean?.....................................................1Minimally Processing of Foods................................................................2About the Green Revolution and Mass Production...............................................4Organically vs conventionally grown..........................................................5Wild/sustainable grown.......................................................................7Non-GMO......................................................................................8Foods That Heal..............................................................................13Dark Leafy Greens............................................................................17Cruciferous Vegetables and Herbs and Spices..................................................17Fish.........................................................................................19Nuts and Seeds...............................................................................20Legumes......................................................................................21Whole Grains.................................................................................21Root Vegetables..............................................................................21What Is Currently on the Table?..............................................................27The Healthy State of Living..................................................................27Health is a Choice...........................................................................30Hazards of Food Choices......................................................................36What Should Be on the Table..................................................................45How to Select the Right Foods................................................................45What You Get When Eating Plants: An Excursion into the Science of Plants.....................61Plants Provide Macronutrients................................................................61Plants Mostly Provide Micronutrients.........................................................97Recipes Using Plants.........................................................................123Breakfast....................................................................................123Main Dishes..................................................................................131Sides........................................................................................151Dips, Dressings and Sauces...................................................................175Salads.......................................................................................187Soups........................................................................................207Drinks.......................................................................................227Something Sweet or a Snack...................................................................231Appendix A: Ingredients and Sources for Recipes..............................................249Appendix B: A World of Flavors seasoning chart...............................................255Appendix C: Whole Grains chart...............................................................257Appendix D: Food Additives chart.............................................................259Appendix E: Nutrient Profile for Cooked Dry Beans............................................261Subject Index................................................................................267Bibliography.................................................................................279

Chapter One

TIME TO EAT PLANTS

What Does That Mean?

Clara was a hard-worker. She went to work everyday feeling tired; in fact, if given the opportunity, she would have slept 24/7. Going anywhere would be a chore. She dragged one leg while complaining of diarrhea and a hurting hip. This woman quit walking three miles per day for the fear of falling. Finally, after seeing many doctors, radioactive iodine zapped her thyroid. She quit dragging her leg but could not shake off the tiredness. Yet another doctor told her that she had the beginning of osteoarthritis. Over a period of ten years, she continued on the downhill slide resulting in a knee replacement. She could hardly walk six months after surgery. At this point, Clara was desperate and thought, "How can I continue to work like this?" She had to put her hand on the wall as she walked with every movement painful.

After changing her eating habits, Clara noticed with amazement that she was able to get up from her chair easily and walk without pain. In addition, she had a desire for sex that had previously been missing. Experiencing a good night's sleep and minimal urinary tract infections added another advantage. Recently, she walked a couple of miles to the beach with her son. Clara can now visit her grandchildren and play with them. Yes, all because of her diet. Do you believe Clara will continue eating this way? You had better believe it! I am Clara, Clara Jane Ibbetson, and plants have changed my life.

A person's food choices have a great deal of effect on day-to-day health and in the prevention of chronic disease as experienced. In today's medical world, evidence shows that many people eat foods daily that are not good for them. Eating whole, fresh, unprocessed foods provides better health. Thinking back, when was the last time your diet was even half plant-based? Do not stress, as a little meat will not kill you, though better eaten as a side dish than as a main dish. For health reasons, Thomas Jefferson treated a little meat as a flavoring for his vegetables.

When speaking of plants, I do not mean potato chips and ketchup despite the fact they are plant-based. Eat unadulterated plants as close to creation as possible because no one can make anything better than God, which means a raw plant is already as good as it will ever get. In addition, the plants provide such a variety—think vegetables, think nuts, think grains, think beans, think fruit. The greater the variety one eats, the more likely he will cover all the nutritional bases.

For health purposes, we need the unadulterated, unprocessed foods, not the edible food-like products in the supermarket. These edible, appealing products come in packages promoting health claims with a long list of ingredients. One should probably avoid food products like these because a multitude of substances is a good indication that something is not a true food. Reach for the plant-based diet.

Minimally Processing of Foods

In the quest to identify unwholesome food, one has to look beyond the list of ingredients. For example, did you know that manufacturers recently began adding lutein to processed foods, cereals, cereal bars, aged cheeses, and now we can get lutein-enriched eggs? This type of food processing started in the late 20th century. These invisible substances confer health benefits as "twice the antioxidant power", "less saturated fat", "fiber-rich", "cholesterol-free", "may help reduce risk of heart disease", to name a few. Highly processed foods are generally missing many of the whole nutrients that were in the original food before it went through processing.

Lutein may help protect the eyes especially macular degeneration. Nevertheless, why does man feel a need to add this to our food? Consider getting this antioxidant from dark green leafy vegetables, cold-water fish, beans, nuts, and citrus fruits. The good news, those foods benefit not only eye health but also total body health without additives. The effect of food processing on lutein or any other nutritional additive still lacks proper research.

Other food additives cause the human body to suffer. Reading the ingredients on each food item purchased will help identify some of the most common ones as follows:

• Nitrates/nitrites

• Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT)

• Propyl gallate

• Benzoates

• Monosodium glutamate

• Trans fats or hydrogenated oils

• Aspartame, and other artificial sweeteners

• Food colorings

• Olestra (Olean)

• Bromates and sulfites

• White sugar, fructose, dextrose, high fructose corn syrup

• Processed vegetable oils

Since the presence of these overlooked additives, coronary heart disease and other chronic diseases including obesity have soared. Whereas, during the war years of the early 20th century, heart disease plummeted with the rationing of meat and dairy products. Manufacturing can turn any good food into a bad food by destroying its natural and beneficial qualities. An example would be whole grains turned into 60% extraction grain flours in which the majority of original vitamins and minerals are lost along with the germ and bran of the grain kernel. Another example, 100 percent orange juice, not made from concentrate, may at first appear healthy, but have you ever wondered why it all tastes the same. Special processing removes the oxygen allowing storage of the juice for a year, then flavor added back into the juice before marketing.

Speaking of flavors, most processed foods contain artificial and natural flavors intended to make one crave a particular brand of food. These flavors are chemicals that enhance the taste of sweet, salty or savory giving a pleasant, cooling taste sensation. Sad but true, these chemical compounds hide behind "artificial or natural flavors" on the ingredient list.

Being a lover of cooking good food, back in the 1970s, I excitedly bought some "Tender Quick®" salt, used in the making of summer sausage and beef bologna. This salt along with liquid smoke allowed me to cure meat in my own kitchen. Unknowingly and being a busy mother of six, I did not think to read the ingredient list of salt, sugar, sodium nitrate, sodium nitrite, and propylene glycol. Oh yes, anyone loves to eat a tender piece of chicken or steak. Now, we need to ask ourselves, "Is this healthy for the family to eat"?

This brings us to the whole point of eating: promoting bodily function. Avoid chemical preservatives and harmful fats. Most preservatives are respiratory poisons resulting in a blockage of fats interaction with oxygen, quite simply on life itself, every organ affected. The chemical additives turn fats into breathing inhibitors instead of breathing activators for the body. Hippocrates may be right with his famous injunction to "let food be thy medicine". People worried about their health, or anyone for that matter, might be wise to eat foods that are minimally processed. (See chart Appendix D)

About the Green Revolution and Mass Production

The Green Revolution refers to the transformation of agriculture especially the impressive increase in grain production—wheat, corn, and rice. Due to the effects of the Green Revolution, farmers increased synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides, and distribution of hybridized seeds bringing about increased food production. This production helped to feed billions of people and avoid famine.

However, farming according to a good natural plan will mean fewer chemicals, healthier soils, and in the long haul maintaining food production. In the Bible, God told Israel to let the land lay idle every seventh year to re-establish its own mineral and nutrient content. This would mean healthier plants and animals and, in turn, healthier people. After all, quality is just as important as quantity (or more important) in feeding billions of people healthy food.

Farmers should return vital elements back to the soil by methods such as crop rotation. Biodiversity and rotating crops away from monoculture agriculture plays a large part in better nutrition by using less chemical fertilizers. Intelligent agriculturists do not always know the proper ratio of nutrients (fertilizer) to replenish the soil. As a result, many of our plants may be lacking in some essential minerals.

The chemical fertilizer, in turn, infiltrates the water supplies, poisoning and killing animals and fish. Areas surrounding cattle feedlots have a big problem with nitrates in the water supply, thus compromising water quality.

To explain, let us look at the story of white bread. During the 1950's some used bread as a euphemism for money. Passing a bakery smells like money, no one could resist. The white flour goes through a bleaching process for a longer shelf life, the vitamins and minerals removed, and digestibility increased. Most manufacturers remove the germ because the oils present make rancidity possible. Thereby, it eliminates vitamin E along with other vitamins and minerals. After removing the germ or embryo, the living part of the grain, makes it difficult to claim white bread as the staff of life. This nutrient-deficient bread does not service the body's needs even when enriched by man. Would it not have been better to leave the wheat grain alone in the beginning?

As a note of interest, I can remember buying grain sorghum flour and triticale flour (a cross between wheat and rye), developed during the Green Revolution of the 1960s as a miracle grain to end world hunger. Although it did not fulfill its projected mission because of poor baking characteristics, it is a nutritious product for both humans and animals. It bakes satisfactorily when combined with wheat flour.

The Green Revolution led to a change in dietary habits, allowing hunger and starvation to affect less people, however malnutrition was apparent. For example, grains developed had inferior flavor, less savor and more glutenous than the traditional food crop.

As the saying goes, what goes around comes around. In other words, what is good for the soil is good for the people fed from the soil. A homegrown product can be special and different, just like the home-baked bread; each batch turns out unique in its own way. Mass manufactured products seem uniform, a little unnatural. Cheap, mass-produced food is not worth much in health, taste or even satisfaction.

Organically vs. conventionally grown

Several decades after the Green Revolution, a small percentage of farmers chose to employ organic farming methods in response to side effects from the previous agricultural techniques. Once considered a specialty item, organic food moved into the mainstream.

Organic refers to health promoting methods of farming and processing foods. Any food item with a long list of ingredients whether organic or not, I would hesitate to purchase. Most organic foods usually contain fewer toxins and better nutrition. The USDA found that even after washing, some fruits and vegetables consistently carry much higher levels of pesticide residue than others do.

Occasionally, my husband wants a dish of fried potatoes but only organic fingerlings. Oh, they make the best-fried potatoes, retaining their shape and rich in flavor. Those fried potatoes remind him of the good old country cooking he enjoyed as a child. As a farmer, he knows the toxic, carcinogenic chemicals used in conventional potato growing, like an anti-sprouting chemical, for example.

Researchers at the Environmental Working Group have developed the "dirty dozen" fruits and vegetables that they say one should always buy organic. Referring to fruits and vegetables, here is what organic and other terms mean legally:

• Organic fruits & vegetables grown without synthetic pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, or sewage sludge and not genetically engineered or irradiated.

• Natural (or All Natural) Not necessarily organic, though some supermarkets try to make them appear to be. Processed foods labeled as natural do not need to go through a verification process to use the term. For example, processed foods may contain high-fructose corn syrup/corn sugar and partially hydrogenated oils.

Packaged Foods

• 100% Organic. All ingredients are organic.

• Organic. At least 95% of the ingredients are organic.

• Made with Organic Ingredients. At least 70% of the ingredients are organic.

As of this writing, mandatory country-of-origin, labeling commodities becomes law of the United States. The U.S. has the most stringent health and safety standards in the world. The "immediate containers" for fresh fruits and vegetables require country of origin labels; e.g. for cartons of tomatoes from Mexico or a box of oranges from Australia. Processed foods that contain ingredients from abroad do not have to indicate country-of-origin. Barcodes can help determine the origin (country) of a product. The first two, sometimes 3 digits of the barcode, indicate in what country the barcode originates. Look online for this information. However, the barcode does not indicate what country the product was produced.

Virginia Worthington, as a part of her doctoral dissertation at John Hopkins University reviewed the literature produced over the last 50 years comparing the nutritional quality of organics with conventional crops. She found a trend in the data indicating a higher nutrient content in organic crops such as:

• 27% more vitamin C

• 21.15% more iron,

• 29.3% more magnesium

• 13.5% more phosphorus

A second consideration regarding organic foods pertains to the absence of unwanted contaminants such as nitrates, 5% less than conventional foods. Most studies indicate organics contain less pesticide residues. When considering all research, it shows the nutritional advantages of organic foods.

Wild/sustainable grown

"Sustainable" does not mean the same thing as "organic," although the two go hand-in-hand. According to a 1990 U.S. law, the term "sustainable agriculture" means "an integrated system of plant-and animal-production practices". Sustainable agriculture provides having a site-specific application that will, over the long term:

• Satisfy human food and fiber needs

• Enhance environmental quality and the natural resource based upon which the agricultural economy depends

• Make the most efficient use of nonrenewable resources and on-farm resources

• Integrate, where appropriate, natural biological cycles and controls

• Sustain the economic viability of farm operations

• Enhance the quality of life for farmers and society as a whole

According to Melinda Hemmelgarn, an investigative nutritionist, "Today, it is critical for one to ask a series of questions" to educate one self about the origin of our foods. She has actually developed such a series to promote what she calls food system literacy. The questions are as follows:

• Where does my food come from and who produced it?

• Under what conditions did production occur?

• Who owns and profits from technology used?

• What is in my food or what is not in my food?

Some prefer to buy locally produced goods and services. Buying locally is an alternative to the globally produced foods that go through a chain of manufacturers, shippers and retailers. Local foods usually represent more variety including wild foods.

Wild foods include plants (leaves, berries, nuts, and sap), fungi or animals that are edible with no management to increase its production. Plants grown in the wild grow in nutrient-rich soil as opposed to crops grown on land cultivated year after year. Most wild foods are rich in vitamins and minerals.

A simple search will help one find fresh, locally grown food. The Eat Well Guide is a free online directory of family farms, restaurants, markets and other outlets of fresh, locally grown food throughout the United States and Canada (www. eatwellguide.org).

Non-GMO

Genetically modified organisms (GMO), very new to the world of agriculture, comprise the most serious threat to sustainable agriculture. Contrary to popular belief, organic agriculture may actually increase food yields beyond GMO's. In addition, even if GMO's were to generate a higher crop yield, risking the health of the world population should not occur. Just as our grandparents would teach about looking before leaping—the only course of action is NOT to proceed with something having potential risks. Health dangers and risks that include toxic and allergic reactions in humans, along with sick, sterile and dead livestock and laboratory animals, provide irrefutable, overwhelming evidence of unsafe foods.

Like, for example, eating a genetically engineered corn chip might turn intestinal flora into a pesticide factory. How, the GMO corn creates Bt toxins and the corn chip contains the toxin. The same with soybeans, equipping our DNA within the bacteria living in our intestine with genes that produce Bt toxin, which is designed to kill insects.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Smart Eating Made Simpleby Jane Ibbetson Copyright © 2012 by Jane Ibbetson. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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