Consume foods your gut will love
Experts advise eating plant-based items. Boudicca Fox-leonard offers some tips.
In a world filled with choice I have sought comfort in the reassurance of simple food decisions. The same office lunch nearly every day of a mozzarella-and-sun-dried-tomato wrap followed by a reliably delicious yogurt. Or, a homemade lunch featuring the usual roasted vegetable suspects, accompanied by halloumi and couscous.
It’s not that I don’t have an adventurous palate, but rather that I am time-poor and information-overwhelmed. I easily eat my five veggies a day, but it’s generally from the same cast of characters. If I buy a cauliflower, then that’s the central performer of my cooking week. Next week butternut squash might be in the starring role.
Eating five servings of vegetables each day is based on advice from the World Health Organization, which recommends eating a minimum of 400g of fruit and vegetables a day to lower the risk of serious health problems, such as heart disease, stroke and some types of cancer. However there’s a new mantra on the chopping board: 30 a week.
Epidemiologist and nutrition expert Dr. Tim Spector, and author and nutrition specialist Dr. Megan Rossi, a.k.a. The Gut Health Doctor — both authors — aim for 30 different plant foods a week. This is the variety needed, they say, to ensure that we have good gut health.
Studies have shown that people who eat at least 30 different plant-based foods a week have more diverse gut microbes than people who eat fewer than 10. “It’s certainly not as black and white as a single number, but in my clinic 30 has shown to be an effective target to increase gut microbe diversity,” Rossi says.
The more varied our diet, the stronger our microbiome will be.
“Basically different types of fibre and polyphenols feed different microbes and that is the reason why we need variety,” says nutritional therapist Eve Kalinik, author of Happy Gut, Happy Mind.
Spector says our gut microbiome is closely linked with inflammation, immune system function, mental health and metabolic health.
“Because of these interactions, good gut health is a must for a long and healthy life,” he says.
I calculate I hit closer to 20 than 30 on the variety scale most weeks. So I challenged myself to a week of doing better. The good news is that 30 a week offers a broader choice than just fruit and vegetables. Basically, any plant-based food counts, says Dr. Hazel Wallace, founder of educational platform The Food Medic.
“What that means is any food that comes from a plant,” she says. “Yes, fruit and veg, but also beans and pulses, nuts and seeds, grains such as oats, quinoa and brown rice and whole-grain cereals.”
They all merit one point, but herbs and spices count only as a quarter of a point. They also don’t need to be fresh. Plantbased food can come from a can, a jar or the freezer. Spices and herbs can be dried.
News that the mint in my julep and the paprika on my couscous are a quarter point each is gratefully received. Having recently worn a glucose monitor for a different article and seeing how fruit can spike my levels, I was wary about rummaging around for my 30 a week from Carmen Miranda’s hat.
My experiment starts well, forcing me to break out of my daily rut with subtle changes, such as a grab-and-go muesli from a café instead of yogurt with passion fruit and mango. Still, by mid-week I am seeing some repeat invitees. “You’ve already been checked off the list!” I tell tomatoes and spinach, like a frustrated bouncer.
There are barriers to achieving such variety. We are in the middle of a cost of living crisis. Unless you are a large household, buying a wide range of ingredients each week leads inevitably to food waste.
It’s something Kalinik is aware of with her clients. She suggests people start using more frozen vegetables, as well as cans and jars.
“Things like spinach and berries are much higher in their nutritional value when they are frozen because vitamin C degrades after a vegetable or fruit has been harvested,” she says.
My go-to homemade breakfast smoothie of banana, chia seeds, oats, flax seed and peanut butter is a pain to change up, but having berries, mango, spinach and kale in the freezer helps me broaden my repertoire.
It’s a similar story for batch-cooking devotees. Creative additions are key. Instead of eating the identical leftover stir fry for lunch for two days, on the first day I shake a pot of mixed seeds and nuts over it (Kalinik’s top tip), and on the second day I bulk it up with some canned lentils.
One evening my roommate cooks up a feast of Burmese salads; I add tofu, white cabbage, sesame seeds, broad beans, ginger and coriander, among other things to my burgeoning list.
A simple mid-week supper of scrambled eggs on toast gets a makeover by adding turmeric, cumin and dried chili, another Kalinik favourite.
I’m struggling to keep count, but fortunately, the experts aren’t fans of a rigorous approach anyway.
After doing the math, I’m teetering on Day 6 at 27. So I take myself to a trendy salad bar near work that lets me pick my own ingredients. I rack up sweet corn, black-eyed peas and kale.
On the seventh day I rest, certain that 30 a week can be done economically and easily. It might also break me out of my boring habits.