Nutrition

What is Processed Food?

April 14, 2016 By Kelly Rogers Victor 3 Comments

We are inundated with the message to avoid processed food, but what does that mean? It obviously refers to fake food-like substances such as chips and soda, but what else? Here are some things to watch out for.

Sweeteners. Any sweetener that has been dried, powdered, and packaged is processed. Stevia, for example, starts out as a plant that looks like this. By the time we buy a packet of Truvia or a clear liquid Stevia tincture, it’s processed. Does this mean it’s unsafe? Not in small quantities. But if you’re mindful of portions and don’t have blood sugar issues, you might as well use a whole food sweetener like honey or maple syrup. These hit your blood stream the same way as white sugar would, but they have other nutritive properties, and you’re better off enjoying moderate amounts of real food.
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Food and Freedom

March 12, 2016 By Kelly Rogers Victor Leave a Comment

“When someone exposes himself as a slave in the market place, what wonder if he finds a master?” —Simone Weil (1909–1943)

I was recently reminded of this famous remark by French thinker Simone Weil, and it got me thinking about Cheetos and Coke. Weil’s remark was part of a lament about modernity’s substitution of utility for truth, but immediately I thought of another application: food. To wit: when we present ourselves as hapless victims at the supermarket, what wonder that Big Food steps in as master?

We allow ourselves to be seduced and enslaved by the food industry in so many subtle ways.

We rely on slogans printed by manufacturers on packages to guide our purchases. “Natural”? Must be good for me. “Whole grain”? Same. Forget about the fact that “natural” can be slapped on any box and literally means nothing, and “whole grain” printed on a loaf of bread can refer to nothing more than some some seeds having been sprinkled on top of what is otherwise merely a loaf made from white flour. Even words like “organic,” which are better regulated, are misleading. I see “organic” stamped on all sorts of things, from cookies to potato chips. Don’t assume that that moniker necessarily means “good for you.”
We get sucked into the center of the supermarket when we shop, oblivious to the billions that have been spent designing it to lure us toward fake food—which it reliably does, especially when our kids are in tow. Did you ever notice what happens during a shopping trip when you remain at the periphery of the store? That’s where the whole food is: produce, dairy, meat, fish, etc. Now picture the center aisles: cereals, mixes, chips, cookies, etc. If you doubt this, form a picture of your own store in your mind and test it out. Know thy store and enter the vortex carefully and only when necessary.
We fall pray to the media’s relentless pushing of this or that fad nutrient, thinking that if we swallow a few supplements, all will be well. But pills cannot deliver nutrition in the intricate manner nature designed, and though they may be helpful in some contexts for certain deficiencies, they can never be a substitute for eating well. Moreover, they pose a distinct health hazard when taken incorrectly.
Our fear of cooking makes us vulnerable to the lure of highly processed prepared food. But always remember that time “saved” with quick, unhealthy food will eventually be lost at the doctor’s office. Those who find home cooking intimidating often just don’t know where or how to start. For ideas, Google “quick healthy recipes” and check out such sites as: bbconline, whfoods, cookingchanneltv, and realsimple. YouTube offers thousands of simple instructional cooking videos. The New York Times has a terrific recipe site, and you can search up “easy” and find thousands of things to try. One concept that I’m seeing a lot of lately is that of a full dinner roasted in one shot on a single baking pan. Finally, a crockpot can become your best friend, delivering a nutritious hot meal the moment you walk in, exhausted, at 6pm.

Gloria Steinem once quipped, “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” Go ahead, get angry at the food culture, at yourself and even at me! But when the dust settles, take heart from George Washington’s observation that “Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.” Getting started is always the hardest part, but once we reclaim our food freedom, rejecting Big Food becomes progressively easier, a simple matter of habit. “Our freedom can be measured by the number of things we can walk away from.” (Vernon Howard)

(P.S. The above photo depicts the brain fuel that was laid out at the snack break at a recent high school debate tournament in which my teenage son competed. Says it all.)

Hello from Sunny L.A.

February 24, 2016 By Kelly Rogers Victor 7 Comments

I have had the great fortune to be in L.A. since last week to attend the Natural Gourmet Institute‘s (NGI) two week intensive Culinary Nutrition program. A dozen of us are in “school” every day from 9-4, where mornings are spent learning nutrition theory, and afternoons are devoted to “culinary translation”—transforming the theories and information into nourishing, delicious, gourmet food. The days are capped with a group feast, where we delight in our creations and discuss and tweak the recipes.

The only way for me to describe how it feels to spend all day every day around this incredible group of of chefs, nutritionists, and other healthy gourmet food enthusiasts is that I’ve found my “mothership.” My gratitude-o-meter has blown up. This almost does feel possible or real.

For those unfamiliar with NGI, it was started in 1977 by the visionary Dr. Annemarie Colbin in her Upper West Side New York apartment kitchen. Colbin was decades ahead of her time in advocating a return to traditional, sustainable natural food preparation that could at once be gourmet and healing. She began a tradition of Friday night dinners that continues at the school despite her unfortunate passing in April of last year.

Today, as the NGI website states, the school is “the leader in health-supportive culinary education and has graduated over 2,500 chefs from over 45 countries.” In my program alone people have come from everywhere from Brazil, the Philippines, and Mexico to New York and Mississippi. We have restaurant owners, health-minded home chefs, writers, a medical student, a movement therapist, and a professional food stylist. An eclectic group, we are united by a passion for Colbin’s 20th century translation of Hippocrates’ ancient dictum, “Let food be thy medicine…”

I highly recommend you check out Colbin’s 2013 Ted talk, in which she presents her philosophy of food. You can learn more about NGI’s mission here. I’m heading off to school now, but please enjoy this gallery of some of the dishes we’ve prepared this week. And, yes, they taste as good as they look!

Teaching Kids to Cook

February 8, 2016 By Kelly Rogers Victor 2 Comments

I ran a cooking lesson yesterday with a group of terrific teenage girls who wanted to learn more about healthy food. They had varying levels of kitchen experience, so I kept it simple and planned a menu geared to develop some basic skills, including how to: (1) prep and roast vegetables (cauliflower and sweet potatoes), (2) blend a basic vinaigrette and prepare a green salad, (3) marinate a lean protein and grill it, and (4) make soup (butternut squash and red lentil). With this arsenal, they could easily put together a healthy, two-course meal for their own families, or just make themselves a great snack or lunch.

The class was really fun for me, and I was in my happy place watching them inhale plate after plate of vegetables. In addition to a host of kitchen skills, I had the opportunity to explain the difference between whole and processed food, the importance of cooking for yourself and not always turning to a package, good and bad fats, hidden sugars, and the reason why people can’t stop overeating the three Bad Boys—white flour, white sugar, and refined oil. (Hint: most all of the water, fiber, and nutrients have been taken out, so your body has no idea how to “read” them. That, and they’re engineered to be physically addictive.)

I think they all went away inspired by how simple it can be to prepare delicious food on your own, and why it’s important to learn this skill early on—to avoid everything from the “freshman twenty” to long-term illness.

At the risk of sounding repetitive, I’ve stressed before that educating your children and teens in this is no less important than teaching them how to bathe, read, or drive a car. Kids who do not develop this basic skill are doomed to become victims of our toxic processed food culture, sentenced to a lifelong struggle with food.

If you don’t cook, view your children’s need as an opportunity for your own personal growth. Go take a few local cooking classes, watch Tasty or other YouTube instructional videos, and tune into food shows on TV. There are cooking teachers, camps, and programs at local community houses that help adults and children alike get comfortable in the kitchen. If you live in the metro Detroit area, Schoolcraft College offers intensive youth culinary programs in the summer—check them out. You can even pick up a class at Sur La Table stores at your local mall.

I do need to enter one caveat about classes billed as “cooking for kids.” Quite often all they propose to teach kids is how to make cookies, brownies, and cake. Steer clear of class menus based solely on white sugar and flour, as though these are all kids could possibly be interested in learning about. The enthusiasm of my students yesterday is sure proof to the contrary.

If you already cook, you are of course your children’s best resource for learning how to prepare food. Invite them into your kitchen space and give them the lifelong tools they will need to feed and care for their own bodies. And, by the way, there is a special kind of bonding that can only occur in this setting. Try it and see.

It is well known to my readers that Americans’ eating habits are fueling the so-called “diabesity epidemic” that is shortening both the quality and length of most of our lives. Children who are not schooled in healthy eating are destined to become a statistic. Get them on the path of good food awareness early on. It’s our responsibility as parents.

I Just Can’t Menu-plan

January 12, 2016 By Kelly Rogers Victor 2 Comments

It’s January and people are trying to clean up their food act after the holidays, so bloggers have naturally started posting ideas for making weekly menu plans. I have tried and failed for years to either create or stick to menu plans. Many people swear by them and insist they are the key to maintaining a healthy home. Why don’t they work for everyone?

The obstacles I run into are:

Something other than what’s on the plan appeals to me at the store, and I want to cook with that.
An unexpected dinner out or change of plans one night throws off the schedule.
I end up with enough leftovers from one night to craft into something good the next, so I toss the plan for that evening.
I forgot ingredients I needed and don’t feel like going shopping again.
My daughter comes home from school and feels motivated to cook, and her agenda doesn’t match the plan.
The kids are craving Middle Eastern, sushi, or some other special food from a favorite local restaurant and want me to carry in.

Do these things get in your way, too? I’ve been a home cook for close to twenty years, I’ve been pretty successful at keeping the fare healthy and fresh, and at this point it’s just time to stop beating myself up for being unregimented. Instead of an ironclad menu plan, here are a few things that help me keep my weeknight cooking simple and healthy.

First, keeping a wide variety of fresh produce in the fridge at all times. Although I hate wasting food, I would rather throw out a couple things than not have them when I’m feeling creative in my kitchen. Some people like to shop every day. I just don’t, so I go about twice weekly and buy tons of produce, most of which I end up using up. Whatever looks a little sad by week’s end generally ends up in a big pot of vegetable soup—one of the best low-calorie, high-nutrient foods to keep on hand for snacks, lunches, and first courses.

I also keep lots of fresh fruit in the fridge, and I always have lemons and limes on hand, both of which enhance so many dishes.

Frozen food gets a bad rap, but did you know that in many cases it retains more nutrients than fresh? Frozen veggies are flash-frozen soon after picking, so their vitamins are locked in. Many “fresh” veggies found at the store were picked weeks ago and sat on a truck, then sat on the shelf at the grocer’s, their nutritional quality diminished by exposure to light and air. Thus, I always keep a selection of frozen produce on hand.

A pantry well stocked with dry goods is another important tool. There should always be a good selection of whole grains, canned tomatoes and beans, dried and canned legumes, good oils and vinegars, and soy sauce. You know what you like, just make sure to have enough stock in your pantry so you don’t get stuck without a necessary ingredient when feeling creative.

Finally, I purchase fish on the day I’m going to use it, and chicken and meat on the day of or day before. For health and convenience reasons, I rely on many nights on plant protein—tofu, legumes, and beans.

I’m constantly reading recipes online and in magazines, and I just think it’s fun to free associate and cook whatever I want that day. I don’t like having a strict plan—it makes the whole thing feel too much like work, and then leads to a guilt-trip when life gets messy and I can’t follow the schedule. If you’ve tried and failed to stick to menu plans, consider that maybe they’re not for you either, and try a well-stocked fridge and pantry as a more creative, liberating approach.

Hungry? How to Get Thinner By Eating More

January 1, 2016 By Kelly Rogers Victor 2 Comments

Sometimes a picture says it all. I can write endlessly about why vegetables should be the foundation of your diet—their nutrient density, ability to fight and prevent disease, low caloric punch, high fiber, unsurpassed deliciousness when well prepared—but none of that may sink in. So consider this neat graphic.

Dieting that leaves you feeling starved is pointless. While you never want to stuff your stomach—consider the Japanese concept of hara hachi bu, eating until 80 percent full—it’s a delight to feel well fed. But if you’re feeling too well fed on the wrong foods, chances are that you’re not happy with your weight. As the image shows, you can eat a much larger, more filling portion of vegetables than either fats or animal foods, even healthy ones.

This gets me to one of my favorite blogger’s best posts of all time. His name is Leo Babuta, and his blog, Zen Habits, offers practical ideas for leading a better existence. Of course, eating well is integral to this, so he talks about food in some posts. His “Simple Health Plan” is this: no matter what other food and exercise mishegas you commit, every day you should be eating, and I quote, “a crapton of vegetables.”

Some clarifications. Can I eat meat? “Yes. Just eat a crapton of vegetables first.” Can I eat sweets? Grains? “Yes. Just eat a crapton of vegetables first.” Fruits? Same reply. Should I count calories? “If you want to. But no, you don’t have to, if you’re eating a crapton of vegetables first.” How much is a crapton? “It’s a scientific measurement that means, ‘A helluva lot.’ Basically, if you’re filling up a plate with food, it should be mostly vegetables. Two thirds is better than half, and three fourths is even better.” Any particular vegetables? “Vegetables are all superfoods. Eat any kind you want. Green ones are the gold standard, but all colors are welcome: white, yellow, orange, red. Eat a lot of the greens, and a bunch of the others.”

The post is not only funny, it’s brilliant because most people are overwhelmed at the prospect of changing their diet. Where to begin? Babuta has reduced all the static to a single simple principle that anyone can follow.

Ah, but what if someone hates vegetables? Babuta suggests trying different preparations, hiding them in soups and other dishes, and so forth.

The truth is, it can take 15+ exposures to a food for your palate to adapt and relent. Don’t give up. And if it’s your kids who hate veggies, don’t give up on them, either! Even small amounts, single bites, steadily repeated, can help tastebuds evolve.

Though my younger three kids are vegaphiles, my teenager has a thing against simple raw vegetables other than salad. At his last well-visit, my pediatrician made him hold up both thumbs and instructed him to take any raw vegetable equal in size to his two thumbs in his lunch every day. The next day I packed two small strips of red pepper. The day after, two baby carrots. Monday I will send two snap peas. Sometimes he brings them home uneaten, but guess what? Some days he eats them simply because the amount is so small. He is far from wanting to munch down on a platter of crudité, but he is on the path.

Final thought for today. Research shows that any diet approach that involves suffering will eventually fail. Human beings are not built for self-deprivation, and why should they be? Willpower is a muscle that fatigues like any other. Find a way to incorporate Babuta’s simple principle throughout your day, no matter what else is happening, and things will begin to change. If you miss a day, as he says, restart tomorrow. This absurdly basic concept may be all you need.

Pretzels are No Mitziya

December 19, 2015 By Kelly Rogers Victor 3 Comments

For some reason, people still perceive pretzels as a healthy snack. This traces back to the low-fat craze that began in the 1980s. While it’s true they do not suffer from the oiliness of foods like potato chips and that they are slightly less caloric, pretzels are no mitziya*.

What is a pretzel, after all? Unless we’re talking 100 percent whole grain or whole wheat, a pretzel is simply ground and baked white flour with a lot of added sodium—often a good percentage of your RDA for sodium in just a single serving. Where’s the health here?

I was at Trader Joe’s and checked out some of their popular varieties.

(1) Honey Wheat Pretzel Sticks.

These look all grainy and brown, and the word “wheat” in the name sounds healthy. The primary ingredient is indeed wheat, but just ordinary wheat flour, which is to say refined white flour. The second and fourth ingredients are sweeteners, and there’s a teaspoon worth of added sugar in every serving. “Whole wheat” makes an appearance on the ingredient list, but only after the refined wheat and honey, and since the fiber per serving is only 1 gram, it’s obviously not a prominent player.

(2) Pretzel Slims.

A person to whom I am married but who shall remain nameless will sometimes eat these and not regular pretzels on what I can only surmise is the assumption that the term “thin” connotes something other than just the shape of the pretzel. The ingredients, calories, sodium, and the rest are identical to traditionally shaped pretzels, however. Sorry, dear.

(3) Gluten Free Pretzel Twists.

I hope people are starting to become more aware that “gluten-free” and “healthy” or “diet friendly” are not even close to being synonymous. In this case, the top three ingredients are corn starch, potato, and rice flour—very refined and nutritionally lame. Sodium is high at 320 mg per serving, about 15 percent of the 2,300mg RDA.

(4) Multi-grain Pretzel Nuggets with Sesame Seeds.

Despite the misleading name, the main ingredients in these, listed first, are white flour and soybean oil, the latter of which is a suspected obesogen. The sodium is better at 180 mg per servings, and the protein at 3g, but there’s still only 1g of fiber.

(5) Trader Joe’s Peanut Butter Filled Pretzels, no salt.

The peanut butter in these gives them 5g of protein, and the sodium is very low, but they are just white flour.

Despite these findings, there is nothing wrong with eating pretzels sometimes for a snack! Today’s post merely aims to tarnish pretzels’ “health halo”—except in the case of some 100% whole grain varieties such as Unique’s Sprouted Pretzels and Mary’s Gone Crackers GF Pretzels. Please click on the Comment button below to share any other whole grain varieties you may have come across that you liked.

*For those lacking Yiddish-speaking grandparents, this translates as, “a find.” And sorry that you don’t have fond recollections of your grandmother snickering and rolling her eyes at the use of this term!

The Four Questions

November 11, 2015 By Kelly Rogers Victor 2 Comments

If you’ve ever attended a Passover Seder, you’ve heard of The Four Questions. They are questions put to adults at the table, inviting them to tell their children the story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt. Today I’d like to suggest that in order to improve your health or weight, you need to ask yourself the following four questions, challenging yourself to articulate your food story so that you can devise your own exodus from unhealthy eating habits and yo-yo dieting. Here goes.

Am I eating fruits and vegetables at most every meal and snack?
Am I consuming healthy fat daily, such as that found in nuts and avocado?
Do I eat whole grains and generally avoid sweetened and processed foods?
Do I limit animal foods, and do the animal foods I eat come from nontoxic sources?

Notice that none of these questions ask about individual nutrients like “omega 3s” or vitamin D, or about particular ingredients like gluten. Fixating on nutrients and ingredients is what the media would have you do, but far more important is the way you eat, or what I call your food pattern.

As an analogy, consider a student who, rather than building good study habits, meeting with his teachers to review tests and papers, and making sure to get enough sleep, focuses on such things as having the fanciest calculator, the best pencil sharpener, and the cleanest laptop. These may all be parts of being a fine student, but they will never earn him the learning or grades he desires.

Now think about how you yourself eat. Perhaps you are like many harried adults who eat a packaged bar or muffin at Starbucks for breakfast on the run, grab whatever you can at lunch, and then arrive home after work starved, digging into whichever chips you can get to fastest. Dinner may be healthier, but often you will be busy with the kids or work late, and just order pizza or Subway. Then you’re hungry and grumpy before bed, so the leftover Halloween candy comes out. Is it clear how adding some omega-3 pills or Vitamin D to this routine, while of some value, is almost beside the point?

Now consider the person who has more successfully tackled the conundrum of modern eating. His quickie breakfast is a banana or orange and a pack of almonds or hard-boiled egg. For lunch, he perhaps finds a salad bar and avoids heavy toppings and too much dressing. Afternoon snack might be a low-sugar yogurt or some veggies and hummus or guacamole. Dinner, again, will hopefully be something healthy and home-cooked, like roasted fish and vegetables, but even if it’s carry-in, it’s not fast food. Again, later at night, he may snack on fruit or popcorn.

Do you see the difference between these two patterns? Back to the four questions then. If you can slowly adopt improvements that will allow you to answer “yes” to each of them, your food pattern, almost unnoticeably, will start to improve. And since whole foods are the unsurpassed delivery system for vitamins and minerals, you will also be addressing your need for most of the fad nutrients you are reading about in the media.

Since even the healthiest of eaters may still be deficient in some micronutrients, if you are concerned about this, by all means, go in for labs with a doctor who has some interest in and knowledge of nutrition. I go to the Beaumont Hospital Division of Nutrition and Preventive Medicine in Troy, Michigan where I was found to be low in B-12, iron, and a couple of other things that I take supplements for.

But I stress that these are supplements. What is a supplement? According to Merriam-Webster it is “something that is added to something else to make it complete.” Supplements are not foundational—rather, they are add-ons that are meant to complete or enhance something else. Don’t try to substitute them for a solid foundation of healthy eating, any more than you’d advise your kid to substitute fancy tech items for good study skills. The principal, and outcome, will be exactly the same.

(Note to my readers: If you like KALEandKANT, please consider forwarding any relevant posts to friends or family members that may also enjoy it, and please encourage them to sign up for updates or have you sign them up for updates directly. It takes but a minute. You would really help the site, and I would gratefully appreciate the support. Thank you! —Kelly)

Gatorade: or How to become a Heavier, Slower Athlete

May 29, 2015 By Kelly Rogers Victor 3 Comments

If you attend kids’ sporting events and pay attention, you encounter Gatorade everywhere. From the tiniest seven-year-old soccer girls to the most hulking teenage baseball players, parents are plying their kids with it, presumably thinking they need to replace the kids’ electrolytes after strenuous exertion.

Two things on that.

1. There is absolutely no science here. In fact, the science shows the opposite: Unless you are doing many hours of intense exercise, plain water is simply the best way to re-hydrate (see more on this in the Harvard Health Journal). And, even then, there are much healthier ways to restore balance in your body because . . .

2. Gatorade drinks and bars are highly processed junk food. Let’s discuss.

First, the drinks. As one of my favorite health bloggers, Yoni Freedhoff, drolly demonstrates in this brief video, they are comprised of water, a few vitamins, some salt, dyes, and tons of sugar. I guarantee if you watch his video, you will not buy them any more, and, in fact, you will kick yourself for ever having bought them in the first place.

Next, the bars. Gatorade has, of course, gotten on the protein bandwagon—not that you can blame them, with the hype. As I’ve discussed, protein bars provide excessive sugar and calories, not to mention far more protein than you likely need in your daily diet. Many of them have nutrition labels that read like candy bar packages. Gatorade’s does for sure: seven teaspoons of sugar, nine grams of saturated fat, and a whopping 350 calories.

Here are some ideas on what to send your child for replenishment after sports. Always: A 16–20 ounce bottle of cold water. Optional: a piece of whole fruit; a small baggie of nuts or sunflower or pumpkin seeds maybe with some raisins or a few dried apricots; a modest portion of 100 percent whole-grain crackers with a low-fat organic cheese stick; a bar that contains only nuts and dried fruit; or a half a peanut butter or sunbutter sandwich on whole wheat bread.

By the way, most people are not very hungry the minute they cease exercising, so you are probably fine with just water and a piece of fruit. When your kid gets home and cleans up and comes down to the kitchen hungry, feed her a wholesome meal that truly replenishes—featuring a salad, a vegetable, some high quality protein, and perhaps a complex carbohydrate like brown rice or whole-wheat pasta.

If you want to help your child stay slim and get more fit and healthy, stay far away from processed junk food marketed to look like medical necessity. As one professor of sports science put it best in this much-quoted remark: For the average person, “if they avoided the sports drinks they would get thinner and run faster.”

Step Away from the Protein Bar

March 23, 2015 By Kelly Rogers Victor 2 Comments

The nation continues its craze with protein everything—bars, powders, drinks, cereals, pastas, and on. The frenzy thrives on the idea that protein is a weight-loss miracle: Just stay away from those awful carbs! Here are a few things to bear in mind.

1. Processed food is processed food. Meaning: the vast majority of those well-marketed “high protein” foods in packages contain sugar and fat-addled, chemicalized forms of protein that are good for neither your weight nor health. Take a hint from the ingredient lists that are a mile long and full of unpronounceables.

Here is a comparison I came across between two popular protein bars and a Snicker’s bar. With the protein data excluded for the moment, can you tell which is the Snicker’s? I couldn’t.

Bar A — 410 calories, 12 g fat, 5 g saturated fat, 28 g sugar
Bar B — 300 calories, 8 g fat, 4 g saturated fat, 25 g sugar
Bar C — 250 calories, 12 g fat, 4.5 g saturated fat, 27 g sugar

(The bars in order are: Met-Rx Big 100 Colossal Protein Bar, Pro-Max Protein Bar, Snicker’s.)

You want more protein? Try nuts and seeds, organic tofu, tempeh, edamame, beans and lentils, or, assuming your diet is not already too rich in animal foods, low-fat cheese, plain yogurt, or lean poultry and fish. Need something to beef up that morning smoothie? Toss in a tablespoon of PB or almond butter, or a plop of unsweetened yogurt. You really need a bar on the go? Make sure its ingredient list is very short and consists only of nuts, seeds, and dried fruit. Or pack a snack-size baggie of these along with an apple or orange to throw in your bag for the day.

Want even more protein? Eat a lot of vegetables. You want a totally crazy fact from Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s, Eat to Live? I have to quote it so that you don’t think I’m making it up. Considered calorie for calorie, “broccoli has about twice as much protein as steak.”

Yes! If you’re doubtful that you can be big and strong without that chicken or sirloin, Fuhrman invites us to consider the physical heft of hippos, rhinos, gorillas, and elephants. They eat no meat. What gives? Their bodies, as ours, are more than capable of manufacturing the needed amino acids from plants. Further, when the lion gobbles up the grass-eating gazelle, whence do you think come his amino acids? If you guessed the plants that the gazelle dined upon, you are correct. “Green grass made the lion.”

2. Americans already eat too much protein. Furhman estimates that the average American consumes over 100g of protein a day—”an unhealthy amount.” To figure out your own RDA, multiply your weight in kg by 0.8. That will give you the approximate number of grams of daily protein you need. For a woman weighing 120, it’s around 44g; for a man weight 150, it’s 55g. Many protein bars and drinks have close to your entire RDA loaded into a single serving. Remember also that the room those nutrient-poor processed high protein foods take up in your stomach could have been filled with healthy food in far greater quantities—because you can just eat so much more volume for the same calories when it comes to plants versus packages.

3. The right carbs will help you stay thinner. There’s no question that white carbs—rice, noodles, breads, pretzels, cakes, crackers, etc.—have played a central role in making us fat. But vegetables and fruits are carbs. As are, of course, hearty whole grains like brown rice, kasha, millet, buckwheat, quinoa, and barley. The difference is that these are all complex. Rather than having their fiber and nutrients processed out of them so that they turn to sugar, and later fat, the minute they hit your bloodstream, they are delivered in the way nature intended—loaded with fiber, water, and a complex of nutrients all of which slow absorption and nourish rather than metabolically hijack the body.

Vegetables are the lowest in calories and nutritionally the most dense of foods, so you can eat them pretty much without limit. (For those who need to lose weight, best to limit the starchier veggies until you hit your target.) Fruits have more calories, but they are high in fiber and nutrients, so a few servings a day is great. They also help with your sweet tooth. Whole grains are the most caloric, but eaten in moderation, they provide longer-term satiety—unlike the whites which make you crash and burn, leaving you hungry an hour later.

Anyone who maintains a healthy weight over time will tell you the same thing: Dieting fads like “high protein” or “low fat” don’t work because they don’t address the underlying lifestyle habits that keep you fat and sick. They are temporary fixes with an expiration date. And they’re bad for you—you need the right amount of protein, not three times that, in your diet, and your body cannot function well without the proper carbs and fats. Change your eating and workout habits for good if you really want to weigh, look, and feel your very best. And don’t stress about protein!