Simplifying the Whole Food Plant-Based Menu

April 26, 2020 Off By Deby Jizi

Just yesterday I was talking to a friend about the need to clean up our diets in light of the current Coronavirus pandemic, and she was honest with me, “There is just so much! I get overwhelmed by it all!”

As I thought back to my first encounters with the WFPB way of eating, I have to admit I felt the same way. Even though I had followed Dr. John McDougall’s program back in 1999, I treated it like any other diet. I quit when I lost all of the weight I wanted to lose. I was not looking at it as a way to overall health.

Fast forward to 2003 when my mother’s breast cancer metastasized to the rest of her body, I rushed to read anything and everything I could about using diet to heal her. I read about juicing, so we did that, but after a month of juices, my mom was hungry for other foods.

Her face glowed like it did when she was a young mom, but all my attempts on the Internet to find a diet she could use to turn her cancer around left me confused. Eventually, she gave up and started eating the Standard American Diet, and before long she was gone.

Now, I can find dozens of examples of people who used food to turn around even dire cancer diagnoses, some whose doctors sent them home to die. The same goes for heart disease and type II diabetes. Still, people think changing to this way of eating is too restrictive.

I have to address this because if someone finds eating the WFPB way too restrictive, they just won’t do it. Then this morning on Facebook, I was resading on McDougall Success Stories group, and a one contributor, Nadia Garcia-Cho, got my attention. She has a simple way of approaching this way of eating that embraces the variety that humans crave while simplifying the basics to keep hunger at bay.

Her approach is to base her diet on three starches: oatmeal for breakfast, brown rice for lunch, and potatoes for dinner. How she used these three basics is the key to success. She changes up the fruits and vegetables she fixes with each meal, depending upon taste and seasonality.

For example, during apple season, oatmeal with apples and cinnamon could be the fare, but during blueberry season, berries are used. All the while, oatmeal is the base. Using a starch as the base of a meal is practiced all over the world in some of the healthiest cultures.

My mother was hungry because fruits and vegetables alone, without a starch element, left her feeling empty. I’ve always thought if I understood the importance of starches when my mother was alive, she would have lived a lot longer. Most of all, now that I know this, I realize that the switch from a meat and dairy based diet to a whole food plant-based diet feels like a giant leap to many people.

Making starches the base of each meal is key. This doesn’t have to be time consuming. This morning I put six russet potatoes and two sweet potatoes in the oven to bake. I made two cups of brown rice in the Instant Pot, which gives me about five cups of cooked rice.

Also, I started a cup of steel cut oats by bringing four cups of water to a boil, adding the oats, and letting them boil for one minute. I then turned off the burner and I put on the lid to let the oats soak up the water.

This is the most economical way to make steel cut oats because it makes four cups out of one due to the soaking time. I usually do this at night, and in the morning I just turn the stove on medium-low and cook them for about 10 more minutes until they are creamy.

I have loads of WFPB No Oil cookbooks on my Kindle, and I use them from time to time, but making sure I have these staples cooked and ready in my refrigerator is the best way I know to help me stick to the foods that sustain my health.

I said this in my book, The Whole Foods Plant-Based Mindset; when we are hungry, all bets are off. Haven’t you heard the advice that you shouldn’t go to the grocery store on an empty stomach? Because when we are hungry, we crave the fattiest, saltiest, sweetest, and, most of all, fastest food we can get.

If we can remember that we can satisfy that hunger with healthy foods and score a win-win for taste and health, we will resist the urge to binge on unhealthy choices.

Because of the Stay-At-Home order, I didn’t feel like cooking last week. When I went out for my once-a-week trip to the grocery store, I bought pre-packaged vegan junk food, pizza and dairy-free ice cream. While this is no great crime, I didn’t sleep well from all of the sugar, and the next day I didn’t have the energy I usually do.

Paying attention to how I feel when I eat something is one way I know what foods give me energy and which ones drain it.

This week to avoid binging in unhealthy foods, I prepared my starches all at once, so when I am hungry, I can go to my fridge and make a quick meal. This lifestyle is a big change from the Standard American Diet, and it is important to be kind to ourselves as we learn a new way of eating, especially when we get derailed a bit.

In time, the proof that plants are what power the human body will be evident in our health and vitality. Health is the motivation, I believe, and health leads to beauty and vibrancy.

So base your meals on a favorite starch. If you like one starch enough to eat it all the time, go for it. If you like variety, Mother Nature has plenty to choose from. Go to the Free McDougall Program and pick your favorites.