Eat a greater variety of plant foods!

60% of calories obtained by humans from plants come from rice, maize and wheat. That's insane! Why not eat a greater variety of things? So many people ask me what I eat, if I don't eat animal products, wheat, or sugar, while there are literally thousands of plant species left to eat. Click here for a list of what I eat.

[I stole this pic from Dr. Garth Davis]

Carrot Smoothie

I don't have to tell you that carrots are really good for you. So here is a new way of enjoying them: a carrot smoothie.

I have been trying for a while to make one that I really like, but so far most of them where just okay. Finally, I found the perfect combination: Carrots, oranges, and dates.

You need:
- about 200 g of carrots (about 4 large carrots or up to 10 small ones).
- 2 oranges
- about 5 medium sized dates
- about 500 ml of water (or more or less, depending on how thick you like your smoothie)

You do:
Soak the dates, at least for a few minutes (better overnight) - they will blend more easily. Put them into the blender. Clean your carrots and cut them into pieces and add them. Peal the oranges and put them into the blender as well. Add as much water as you like (however, start rather with too little, because you can always add more, but you cannot remove it anymore if you added too much). Blend. You need to blend a bit longer than you do with most smoothies to get it really smooth. Also, if you have a crappy blender, this might be the recipe that will tell you that it's time to upgrade.

Enjoy (if you like it sweeter, add more dates - if it's too sweet, use less next time)!

Michael

P.S. I noticed that I feel really well in the morning if I have this carrot smoothie for breakfast.

Banana Blueberry Almond Pudding

I am told that I mainly post recipes for sweets and treats and HiFi comfort food, even though that's not mainly what I eat. Maybe that is true. The reason for that is that most of my staples are relatively simple and there is not much of a recipe to post. I eat massive about of boiled vegetables and tons of fruit.

Anyway, I promise that I will have more posts on my staples. However, today's post is another treat. It's a banana pudding, and, to be honest, I don't understand yet, why it (sometimes) gets a pudding like consistency. Blending some foods at high speed for a little while somehow does something that I haven't yet fully grasped. It might have something to do with the heat and the fiber. Or the protein. Or not. The important thing is that it tastes nice and feels good.

You need:
- about 6 to 8 ripe bananas
- a cup of blueberries
- about 1/4 cup of almonds
- 1/2 liter (~1 pint) of water

You do:
Throw it all in the blender and blend it. Then fill it in a form or a glass. It will solidify a bit within a minute or so. Or it won't. If it doesn't you will have a nice vegan blueberry milkshake.

Sesame Mucho (Sesame Bars)

In my quest to make healthy energy bars, I had a few breakthroughs in the last couple of weeks. Today, I will give you a quick recipe for sesame bars - really good for trips and for fast energy before, during and after workouts. Because they contain a lot of sesame and sesame is very high in calcium, these energy bars also give you a serious calcium boost. If you eat half of the bars (7) in one day, you have around a quarter of your RDA.

You need:
- 1/4 cup of sesame
- 1 cup of cashews
- 1 1/2 cups of dates

You do:
Grind the sesame into powder in a seed or coffee grinder. Mix all the ingredients in a powerful food processor until you have a firm dough of a somewhat coarse nature. Due to variations in the degree of moistness in the dates, you need to play around with the ingredients a bit. The dough should be so firm that it stays in a shape that you give it. Knead it and form it into a flat brick and then cut off the bars with a big sharp knife. Put them on a tray and in the oven for around 20 min at 200C. After baking, you need to let them cool down for about another 20 min before you eat them or put them in a box. Enjoy.

Basic Orange Smoothie (or "What's wrong with juice?")

One of the HiFi "rules" is to not drink pressed juice. This principle is often met with surprise. "What's wrong with juice?", I am often asked. Well, think about it in the following way:

How healthy a specific food is for you, is relative to what else you eat. If you consume mostly white wheat bread, pasta, meat, coffee, beer, and orange juice, then the juice is clearly the healthiest thing in your diet and stopping to drink juice would be a silly thing for you to do. In particular if juice is the only way you consume fruit. However, if you are a sugar-free, gluten-free vegan, who eats tons of fruit and vegetables and doesn't consume any psychoactive substances then juice might well be the most unhealthy thing in your diet.


The thing with juice and fresh whole fruit is not that juice is bad, but that eating fresh whole fruit is just so much BETTER. Why? Because pressing juice results in an end product that has lost not only most of its fiber, but many other good ingredients.

Let's take a glass of (raw) orange juice (250g). It has a caloric value of 112 and a calcium content of 27g and 0.5g of dietary fiber.

In comparison: 1 cup of orange (sections, 180g, from about 2 oranges) has a caloric value of 85 with 4g of dietary fiber and 72mg of calcium. If you calculate the nutritional value of the fruit with the same caloric value as a glass of juice, you get:  5.3g of fiber and 94mg of calcium, so that's more than 3 times as much calcium and more than 10 times as much fiber for the same caloric value. This holds for almost any other nutrient as well.

However, there is another factor to take into account. Orange juice is so much easier to consume: while people can easily drink a glass of orange juice a day, sadly, not many people are willing to eat 3 oranges a day. But there is an easy solution to that "problem": make an orange smoothie - you don't lose any nutritional value and you still have a refreshing drink. Just throw 3 oranges in the blender and add as much water as you want. Enjoy!

Michael

P.S. Also check out NutritionFacts' latest video on the topic.

Carocolate - Carob Bars

Chocolate cravings? In need for some comfort food or some handy sweets on your road trip or something to give your kids for Christmas?
Try carocolate (carob bars). It's yummy, and according to some of my usual testers, it's the best thing I have ever created. It's vegan (of course) and very healthy 100% HiFi food, meaning it doesn't contain any added sugar, flours, or pressed oils and is high in fiber. It's also high in calcium, which is no surprise, since carob, dates, and nuts are all high in calcium. It's also very easy to take with you on trips, or cycling workouts, that's why you can use it as energy bars.

Since it doesn't need cooking or baking, it's done in about 5 min.

You need:
- 2 cups of dried dates
- 1 1/2 cups of nuts (almonds, hazelnuts or cashews)
- 1/2 cup of carob powder
- 1 vanilla bean
- pinch of cinnamon

You do:
If you want the aroma of roasted nuts in your bars, start by roasting the nuts for a couple of minutes in a oil-free pan or in the oven. Process all the ingredients in a food processor (or with a hand-blender) into a sticky coarse dough. The finer the dough, the finer the final product. Shape the dough into bars, by pressing it down and cutting it with a knife. That's it. Enjoy!

Michael

Vegan Sources of Calcium, a case study (me)

I am always asked a lot where I get my calcium from and I usually say: from dark green leafy vegetables (DGLV), which is where I think I get most of my calcium from. However, I am not really sure how much DGLV actually contribute. I do eat a lot of them, but I don't necessarily eat them every day.

Also, most vegetarian and vegan food recommendation rely a lot on calcium fortified foods, which I don't eat in general. On the other hand, there is a little bit of calcium in most plant-based foods, so it would surprise me if one couldn't get enough calcium from just eating healthy HiFi Foods.

To get a better idea, I ran a little test. I recorded my food intake for on arbitrary day to see whether I actually get the recommended 700mg of calcium a day.

If you want to do the same thing, which I recommend, use this to find out about the calcium content of your food.

So here is what I ate on Wednesday the 30th of October 2013

breakfast (I have breakfast habits that are peculiar to some people):
pea soup - 500g of green peas (120mg),
salt, chili, black pepper, water

lunch:
200g of grapes (20mg)
2 bananas (20mg)
150g cashews (50mg)
250g dates (150mg)

dinner:
100g kale (100mg)
200g broccolli (100mg)
2 tblsp flax (50mg)
2 tblsp sesame (70mg)
4 tblsp nutritional yeast (0mg)
1 cup omega thrice-cream (mango and walnuts, 30mg)

Calcium (sum): 710mg

Conclusion: I have to say that I pulled out some high calcium foods for dinner, because I felt that I might not make the 700mg and even with those foods I barely made it.  Here is what I have learned from this little study:

(1) calcium is something you really need to pay attention to.

(2) If you eat a high fruit diet, fruit (dates, bananas, grapes, oranges) do significantly contribute to your calcium intake.

(3) Nuts are quite high in calcium

(4) My main sources of omega-3 fatty acids (flax, walnuts) are also very high in calcium, so there is a double reason to eat them

(5) Sesame is very high in calcium - a few spoons here and there gives you a significant calcium boost