Eating seasonally provides all the variety we need in our diet, we just need to widen our horizons and avoid getting stuck in a rut. By Suzanne Wynn
Two things happened last week that gave me cause to update my thinking on how we achieve Maximum Variety in our diet.
The first was the launch of Professor Tim Spector’s Dukkah style mix of 30 plus dried plant foods designed to be sprinkled on any meal. It is available from Waitrose at £2.25 for a single 15g sachet or £13.50 for a seven-day pack. This is an interesting development from a man who thinks nutritional supplements are unnecessary, as essentially a nutritional supplement is exactly what it appears to be.
The second thing was hearing that a friend was suffering with Shingles, which had arrived closely following another period of illness. This friend is currently living in a caravan whilst renovating a property. It is easy to imagine how his immune system is suffering from a lack of variety in his diet; even the vegetable patch he used to maintain has been subsumed into the building site around him. So, I decided to buy him a week’s supply of Tim Spector’s Zoe Daily 30+ to kickstart the rebuilding of a more diverse gut biome. I also took the opportunity to give it a try myself whilst reviewing the whole ‘30 plant foods a week’ mantra and the lifestyle this entails.
Tim Spector says that he initially came up with the idea for the dried food mix for when his business trips might not provide the opportunity to eat as he would normally choose. Presumably the supplement is not intended to be taken on an on-going basis, and one is intended to return to obtaining a diverse diet from the meal ingredients themselves.
When I wrote the original Maximum Variety post, I had totted-up my own weekly consumption of plant ingredients and I found that it exceeded 30 quite easily, but I can see how that might be more challenging with a different lifestyle. The original post included foraging for wild foods, crypto nutrients (those little things that make a huge difference, e.g. herbs and spices), adding ingredients rather than excluding, and herbal teas. All of this is still relevant and, I think, worth rereading, but I pick up from there with further ideas that should be achievable even in constrained circumstances.
Misconceptions
Before moving on to further recommendations, I want to clarify some of my own, and I believe others, misconceptions around a varied diet.
Not so long ago, Jamie Oliver’s books began focusing on meals that only required 5 ingredients. His wife had convinced him that people would not make any recipe that required them to buy more. Several other authors have adopted a similar pared back principle, although some have gone up to 10 ingredients. This is of course contrary to Tim Spector’s ethos, which we are now seeing that reflected in cookery books and also in pre-prepared foods – there are more mixes rather than single ingredients. Unfortunately, this leads to a hybrid approach where recipes can be kept to 5 ingredients provided those ingredients are a tin of this mix and a packet of that mix. Recently I was surprised to see a “sachet of pre-cooked mixed grains” listed as one ingredient. As different grains usually require different cooking times, and possibly even different methods, most people would tend to make, for example, a rice salad or a bulghur wheat salad but not a mixture of the two. I’m not really sure why mixing them for one meal is deemed more beneficial than eating one on one day and the other the next, and I certainly won’t be buying sachets of pre-cooked mixes to achieve this, but they are out there.
If you are looking for proper from scratch recipes that aim to reach the 30 a week target, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s latest cookery book How to Eat 30 Plants a Week might fit the bill. There is however, one point that I should make clear: whilst Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall himself does eat meat and fish, this book is essentially full of vegetarian recipes, I presume in order to maximise the number of plants eaten. The point that I want to make clear is that it isn’t necessary to eat a vegetarian diet in order to eat 30 plant foods a week. I try to eat three portions of different fish each week and meat on most other days. My breakfast, and usually my lunch, are mostly plant based, and breakfast in particular accounts for a good proportion of my plant consumption, but Maximum Variety is what I aim for, which includes game, wild fish and thoughtfully reared livestock. I fear that many are ignoring the 30-plant foods a week advice on the assumption that it is not for meat eaters. Although I do think that our “meat and two veg” culture needs amendment, I envisage this being achieved by additional courses or ingredients.
Despite having read Tim Spector’s book Food for Life, I still don’t fully understand the significance of a week, but how I think it came about was as an extension to the 5 per day target. This, as Tim points out, has very limited benefit if people consume the same 5 plant foods every day, so the weekly goal means that you can’t recount the same plant food for a second time in the same week. Fair enough, but I wonder how many different plant foods should be consumed over a year, that period representing the timescale within which a seasonal ingredient might become available again. As things stand, it reads to me as though provided you eat 30 different things in one week it would be ok as far as Tim Spector is concerned to stick with these same ingredients every week. That would actually still result in a pretty limited diet. Nature provides variety throughout the changing seasons. You don’t need a diet of “rainbow” foods every week. As we move through the year we move from early green shoots to full ripeness (often red) and on to brown seeds and nuts. We don’t need to eat strawberries in the winter to achieve a varied diet.
It is worth keeping a record for a week to see how close you are to the goal already. Then you know whether just a minor tweak is required or something more fundamental. Don’t forget to include what you drink as well as eat: I clocked up 7 different red wine grape varieties (easy when wines contain a blend), plus coffee, and the more virtuous herb teas (many of which also contained a blend of spices). The amounts for each ingredient might be quite small but if they are typical, and even better, varied, all are doing a great job in giving you a more diverse gut biome. When I counted my consumption, the whole fruit and vegetables that we more often think of when we hear the term plant-based foods, did actually add up to 30 on their own, with the herbs, spices, nuts and grains bringing the total for the week to 70. You might also be pleasantly surprised at the variety in your diet.
Spices are an example of the type of imported food I do include in my diet (the only spice we really grow here is saffron, but even that is not in large enough quantities to match consumption). Luckily spices are dried and weight little, so transportation is not much of an issue, but I avoid eating imported fresh foods. I hate how avocado and imported blueberries have become breakfast staples.
It isn’t necessary to import food in order to achieve 30 plant-foods a week. I’ll admit that this isn’t always easy, but not an 80% British diet should be achievable and compatible.
Practical Application
Some tips that might help you achieve your goal even in constrained circumstances:
Growing Food
When fresh food is right in front of your eyes, you are likely to eat it. For those with limited space my priority would always be herbs, they are a prime example of crypto-nutrients, and have been used medicinally since antiquity. You can even buy some herbs already growing, basil is one of the best to keep this way, I saw a very impressive pot at a friend’s house this weekend which nearly reached the ceiling. It had, apparently, been cropped many times already having started out as just a basic £1.79 supermarket buy which had subsequently been re-potted. Annual herbs are the ones to grow on a windowsill, the biennials or perennials are better grown outdoors but growing in large pots is fine. Keep them close to your backdoor and you are more likely to raid them even in wet weather!
After herbs, I would prioritise salad leaves, which again can be grown in containers. Buy seeds containing a mix of leaves and remember to make repeated sowings throughout the summer so that you maintain a plentiful supply. One salad leaf that you could sow right now is Rocket. Although the seedlings will appear this year, you won’t really be harvesting the leaves until next year, but rocket makes an early appearance that is much appreciated during the spring.
If you have more space, think about foods that keeps giving year after year. Raspberries do particularly well where I live, they even grow in the wild. Berries are also expensive to buy and they don’t keep for long, so two more good reasons to prioritise these.
Veg-Box delivery
Many people have said that being forced to use whatever was delivered in a veg box helped them discover new vegetables or new ways of cooking them. The cheapest option, and in my view the best, is to take whatever is available from the field (i.e. truly local, no imports). If you have a delivery on a different day to your normal weekly shop you can buy anything else you can’t live without at that time.
From the Freezer
I realise that if space is really limited you might not even have room for a freezer, but if you have one, no matter how small, make good use of it. Always on my shopping list are onions, carrots and celery, the core flavouring vegetables for so many dishes, called a soffritto in Italy, this ready chopped mixture can be found in the freezer of many food stores. If I was being a purist, which I cheerfully admit to being, I prefer to cook onions slowly first before adding the carrots and finally the celery; but if you don’t cook as often as I do, keeping a fresh supply of these ingredients could be wasteful. If, however, they are always to hand you will find that you start most savoury dishes with this mixture, which gives you three plant ingredients straight up.
A mixture of frozen berries is another good freezer standby. Again, the purist in me says you should only be eating them in season, yet if I’m honest, I freeze my homegrown surplus to help me through the lean times. If I have them separately, I cook blackcurrants with a little sugar first and then add redcurrants and raspberries without any further sugar. They won’t need further cooking and the residual heat should be enough to thaw them. Surplus blackberries we have picked also get kept in the freezer, especially good for adding to apple dishes.
Dried Foods
One of the things I liked about the Daily 30+ mix, was how little space it took up and how easy it was to incorporate it into a variety of meals. I referred to it above as a type of Dukkah, which is a Middle Eastern mix typically comprising 65% toasted seeds (sesame, coriander and cumin) 25% toasted nuts (almonds and hazelnuts), the remaining 10% will definitely include salt and thyme and possibly other spices such as sumac, pepper and caraway. This is typically eaten by dunking pieces of olive oil-soaked bread, although Dukkah also finds its way onto salads, yoghurt-based dips and over eggs and fish. It doesn’t contain 30 ingredients, but it is a very useful mix to keep in your cupboard at a fraction of the price of the Daily 30+ mix on an ongoing basis. I give the typical composition so that you also have the option to make your own.
Seeds are also an important store cupboard staple without the spices. Delicious though Daily 30+ was, I did get bored by the end of my week’s supply and would prefer to vary the flavourings. I use un-spiced seeds to add to homemade bread, my own muesli mix, and porridge as just some of the examples where a savoury spiced mix doesn’t really work.
Last, but certainly not least in my store of dried food recommendations, are wild mushrooms. Some dry better than others, and top of my list would be dried cep (porcini) which reconstitute beautifully, but use them with a light hand, as a background ingredient not the main one. Different fungi have different nutritional benefits and dried is good way to incorporate a wider variety into your diet.
Conclusion
I found that whilst recording what I ate, I consciously added an extra herb or spice to dishes and that is a habit that we could all benefit from. A simple salad can actually be so much tastier when you make the effort to incorporate fresh herbs, and more satisfying when you add some texture via seeds or nuts. By all means add a ready- made ingredient, fermented foods such as Kimchi are great for the gut, but don’t let any of these things alone become your “go-to” for health.
Remember it is all about variety and that nature provides this in abundance. I was delighted to find that even when dealing with a glut, resulting in the same ingredient being eaten every day, I still easily exceeded the 30 plus variety. We just need to widen our horizons and avoid getting stuck in a rut.
Recipe – Zucchini alla Scapese
My recipe for this article features my current glut – courgettes. Although it only counted once towards my weekly plant foods total, it is an example of serving vegetables as a snack (with drinks before a meal) rather than a side or main dish. If I had an air fryer I would try cooking them in that. Zucchini alla Scapese, is a Neapolitan speciality of courgette “crisps” with vinegar, mint and chilli. It reminds me of our habit of sprinkling vinegar on chips and should win over even those who think they don’t like courgettes!
Serves 6 as a snack
Very fresh courgettes (about 1.5 kg)
Fine sea salt
For the dressing
Clove of garlic, crushed to a paste with sea salt
2 tbsps good red wine vinegar
Fresh red chilli, deseeded and cut into fine slices
10 mint leaves
Sunflower oil for frying
Slice the courgettes very finely using either a food processor with a 5mm slicing attachment or just the slicing blade on an ordinary box grater. Spread the slices out on a large tray and sprinkle with 2 teaspoons of sea salt and leave for 10 minutes to draw out excess water. Rinse well in a large colander then spread out the slices again, this time on a clean tea towel, topped with another, to dry.
Heat the sunflower oil in a deep-fat fryer to 180˚C.
Cook the dried slices in several batches until they are lightly golden and crispy. Place them on a wire tray covered with kitchen paper.
While the oil is heating combine the dressing ingredients in a large bowl – the garlic paste, sliced chilli, chopped mint leaves and red wine vinegar. Alternatively, if you have a container with a sprinkler lid, you could mix the garlic paste and vinegar in this, the aim is to coat the fried slices briefly, not cause them to go soggy.
Briefly toss the fried slices with the vinegar, garlic, chilli and mint. Transfer to a large plate and serve immediately.
