Fruit and Stuff

Category: RESOURCES

• What should I eat?

  Posted at 12:43 pm by Mary Ann Lesh

  Jan 4th

  Some people experience an immediate and dramatic improvement when they give up animal foods and their toxins, but the truth is that, along with the toxins, animal foods have been providing important nutrients which must be replaced with food from plants.

  

  Giving up animal products and consuming only plant food does not guarantee good health. Optimal health requires choosing and balancing high-quality plant foods every day. There are a number of effective eating plans for general good health as well as treating specific conditions.

  Dr. Michael Greger’s Daily Dozen is a plan that is easy to follow. The number in parentheses indicates the number of daily servings. You can see more specific information here.

  1. BEANS (3): baked beans, soybeans, chickpeas, peas, kidney beans, lentils, tofu, hummus
  2. BERRIES (1): grapes, raisins, blackberries, blueberries, cherries, raspberries, strawberries
  3. OTHER FRUITS (3): apples, tomatoes, avocados, bananas, oranges, grapefruit, melon, lemons, limes
  4. CRUCIFEROUS VEGETABLES (1): broccoli, cauliflower, kale, arugula, brussels sprouts
  5. GREENS (2): spring greens, kale, spinach, swiss chard
  6. OTHER VEGETABLES (2): carrots, sweet corn, zucchini, garlic, mushrooms, onions, pumpkin, sweet potatoes
  7. FLAX SEEDS (1): 1 tablespoon daily
  8. NUTS AND SEEDS (1): peanut, almond, brazil, walnut, pumpkin seed, sunflower seed
  9. TURMERIC (1): 1/4 teaspoon daily, plus any other spices you love
  10. WHOLE GRAINS (3): brown rice, quinoa, wild rice, oats, whole wheat pasta
  11. LIQUIDS (5): water, coffee, tea, hibiscus extract
  12. EXERCISE
  Posted in RESOURCES

• BTW what’s WFPB?

  Posted at 12:30 pm by Mary Ann Lesh

  Nov 11th

  

  BTW ICYMI, SAD is a questionable WOE. ISO a better WOE? FOK or WFPBSOS may be right for you.

  Newcomers to plant-based chats sometimes feel lost and bewildered by acronyms and abbreviations for often-repeated short (and not-so-short) phrases. This tendency started long before the digital age with things like NATO, UNESCO, NASA, NAFTA, POTUS, FLOTUS, and SCOTUS. With internet chat came the emoticons and LOL, BRB, and other shortcuts. This glossary focuses on vegan / vegetarian / plant-based phrases, but I’ve included a few more that are useful. Just yesterday, after feeling like a clueless outsider for a few hours, I learned that F in a comment means Following, which puts the commenter in the loop for notifications. (I also learned that there is a better alternative to avoid clogging posts with too many comments. I’ll let someone else explain that.)

  Here is a mini-glossary (a work in progress). Please feel free to comment on this page or send a note through the Contact page if there is something you want to ask about or contribute. You can search for all kinds of abbreviations at https://www.abbreviations.com/

  VEGAN / VEGETARIAN

  • FOK / Forks Over Knives (a book, a movie, a WOE, a website, a movement)
  • GFO / gluten-free option
  • HCLF / high carb low fat
  • MM / meatless Monday
  • SAD / standard American diet
  • WFPB / whole food plant-based
  • WFPBNO / whole food plant-based no oil
  • WFPBSOS / whole food plant-based salt-free, oil-free, sugar-free
  • WOE / way of eating
  • NO / no oil
  • SOS / salt-free, oil-free, sugar-free

  GENERAL

  • BTW / by the way
  • FYI / for your information
  • ICYMI / in case you missed it
  • ISO / in search of
  Posted in RESOURCES | Tagged acronyms, glossary of acronyms, wfpb

• Living meatless in a meat-driven world

  Posted at 11:08 am by Mary Ann Lesh

  Aug 27th

  Animal products are bad for everyone’s health, but eliminating them flies in the face of thousands of years of habit, tradition, and even religion. It takes courage, patience, and tolerance to live a meat-free life in a meat-driven world. I try to not make a big deal of it. Good manners require me to respect others’ decisions about what to eat and what to serve, but they also require others to respect my choices when I say, “No, thank you.” I don’t define myself by a label. I am not A Vegan or A Vegetarian or A WFPB. I am a human being who most of the time chooses to eat plants and nothing else.

  Fruit and Stuff is mostly about improving health through food choices, and this blog has the Do-It-Yourself Plant-Baser in mind. My hope is that everyone will switch to plant-based and make it their way of eating for as long as they live. In addition to personal health, there are moral, spiritual, and environmental reasons to do that.

  Whether you follow someone’s plan or make it up as you go, you will benefit from becoming conscious of everything you take into your body. Ask yourself what it is doing for you and what it is doing to you. Acknowledge your reason for taking it in, whether you eat it as food, drink it as beverage, or swallow, inject, snort or smoke it as therapeutic or recreational drug.

  If you are following a prescribed plant-based diet for a specific health outcome, by all means you should comply with the requirements of that diet and the recommendations of your health care provider, but long-term success is more likely if you assume responsibility for your health and your choices. You may choose to adhere strictly to a prescribed eating plan, but that is YOUR choice, and YOU, not the experts who designed the plan, must make decisions every day about what you eat, what you think, and how you live. You alone will enjoy or suffer the consequences of the plan you choose.

  Posted in RESOURCES | Tagged compliance, eating plan, health, health care provider, plant-based, requirements, responsibility

• 7 Steps to a plant-based life

  Posted at 1:31 pm by Mary Ann Lesh

  Aug 9th

  1. Accept responsibility for your health and your choices. Advice from others, including health professionals, is helpful, but you have the final say about what you eat and how you live.

  2. Eliminate animal products from meal plans. Do what works for you, and take as much time as you need.

  3. Be conscious of EVERYTHING you take into your body–what it is doing FOR you and TO you and WHY you are taking it in. If you eat it as food, drink it as beverage, swallow, inject, snort or smoke it as therapeutic or recreational drug, be conscious of what you are doing.

  4. Start with what you know. Meat-based meals and fast food culture make us settle for potatoes as just about the only vegetable, but most of us are familiar with many edible plants. Some are delicious with no more preparation than washing. You can try new foods as you’re ready, but don’t get overwhelmed by making too many changes or trying to understand too many requirements.

  5. Eat a variety of foods. Eliminating animal products clears the way for health-building foods to do what they do best, but you have to provide those foods.

  6. Keep learning. The more you know about nutrition the more you will be able to choose foods that build and maintain good health. Don’t settle for distorted studies as reported on social media. This Resources link will lead you to some reliable videos, books, studies and articles.

  7. Have fun! If for you that means keeping it simple, then keep it simple. If it means learning about new and exotic ingredients or making gourmet plant-based meals, go for it!

  Posted in RESOURCES | Tagged advice, drugs, fast food culture, RESOURCES, vegan, whole food plant-based

• When I switched to plant-based living after a lifetime of meals planned around a main course of meat, I immediately felt positive effects and found it surprisingly easy, even fun, to change my habits and explore new ways of enjoying food. Fruit and Stuff is a collection of some of the many things I have learned since I started the journey.

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