Last week, I finally got around to doing the 30-Plant Challenge, which is pretty simple: Eat 30 different fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, and seeds per week. (Herbs and spices contribute to the total, too, as do garlic and coffee, but I decided to count those only in emergencies.) Essentially, the more diverse range of plant foods you can add to your diet, the better for your gut microbiome. The better your gut microbiome, the better your overall health.
I’m not vegetarian and I have a wicked sweet tooth, but I’ve convinced myself I eat pretty healthily otherwise. However, I am all for good microbiomes, and I wanted to do the challenge to see if it would be a challenge. I started on Sunday with a breakfast smoothie (spinach, banana, blueberries, cinnamon), followed by a curried chicken salad for lunch (made with celery, carrots, currants, red grapes, and almonds), with some cherries on the side. For dinner, it was pasta with cherry tomatoes, red onion, garlic, basil, and mascarpone, along with a salad made with mixed greens, pear, walnut, and goat cheese. Total for Sunday: 14 plant foods, not counting herbs, spices, or garlic. Or the coffee in the affogato I had after dinner, which was delicious. It’s too bad ice cream is not a plant food….
I thought, “This will be easy; I ate almost half of the total in one day!” For the next five days, I added new plant foods to my list if I happened to eat any, but I wasn’t really planning meals around new foods. I did notice that I repeated a lot of the plants on my list throughout the week, making it harder to find new things the farther along I got. Plus, I didn’t eat pure vegetables and fruits at every meal. At one breakfast, it was just coffee and a cinnamon roll; not a plant that I could count in sight.
By Friday, I was at 24 plants, so had to make a concerted effort to add 6 new items by end-of-day Saturday. Luckily, I made it. But I learned I need to plan a bit more, and have a few more things easily on hand (like pre-cooked lentils, more seeds and nuts, etc). I also learned I should incorporate more beans, legumes, and grains into my meal planning, and that I can’t have very many cinnamon-roll-only breakfasts without risking failing the challenge. 😦
Here was my total list from last week (in mostly chronological order):
- Banana
- Spinach
- Blueberries
- Celery
- Carrot
- Red grapes
- Currants
- Almonds
- Cherries
- Cherry tomatoes
- Red onion
- Lettuce
- Pear
- Walnuts
- Avocado
- Black beans
- Pineapple
- Cucumber
- Red bell pepper
- Green bell pepper (different colors of same thing count separately)
- Zucchini
- White mushrooms
- Broccoli rabe
- Potatoes
- Red cabbage
- Mango
- Quinoa
- Grapefruit
- Lentils
- Yellow tomatoes
In addition to the meals mentioned above, others included:
–Burrito with beef, black beans, avocado, lettuce, tomato; sliced pineapple
–Creamy chicken, zucchini, and mushroom pastry puffs; garden salad
–Roasted red pepper bruschetta, pork chops, mashed potatoes, broccoli rabe
–Egg salad on whole wheat, with lentil salad and sliced mangoes
–Other salads
Perennial Pastimes 