The Plan:
Day 1: Unstuffed cabbage, Dark velvet beet cookies
Day 2: Butternut squash sheet pan pancakes with maple butter, Frozen fruit smoothie w/ super greens powder
Day 3: Homemade pizza
Day 4: Beef pot roast, Roasted root vegetables with garlic thyme dressing
Day 5: Tuna salad with radish and carrots, Orange slices
Day 6: Ratatouille (frozen supply), Baked apples
Day 7: Broccoli cheddar frittata, Cranberry orange muffins (using this lemon blueberry recipe)
This meal plan was curated using local foods that are in season now or preserved during the peak growing season in the U.S. Midwest. The plan is an exact replica of what our family is eating this week unless we are out of town. Meal plans are developed using whole foods and my meal planning system (click here!) and are meant to be healthy and easy to prepare. Most recipes will take no more than 30 minutes of active cooking time. Occasionally meals may require all day slow cooking, advanced prep, or some oven time. Recipes are provided when available. I sincerely hope this will help with your own meal planning!
Pantry Shuffle:
Out of Storage: (preserved when in season and coming out of my root cellar, freezer, canned, or dehydrated stash)
- Green cabbage, beets, apples, carrots, radish (refrigerator “root cellar”)
- Butternut squash, onions, potatoes (root cellar)
- Ratatouille, strawberries, blueberries, broccoli, cranberries (freezer)
- Super greens powder (dehydrated)
Into Storage: nothing this week
Notes: The Cooking Oil Debate
If you have been cooking with my recipes, you know that most of them call for olive oil, coconut oil, or butter. This is no mistake. I have purposefully omitted most vegetable and seed oils from my diet and today I’m going to tell you why for the second installment of my series on the five main dietary principles that I follow to eat a healthy diet.
Last week the focus was on eating a Whole Foods Diet. This week it is cooking oil which is a little trickier because some of these oils at first glance are “whole foods”.
Now here comes my disclaimer: this is my opinion that I have formulated based on my extensive research in the topic. You should do your own research and talk with your own healthcare providers about the right diet for you. I am well aware that vegetable oil is a controversial topic and that there are many on both sides of the argument. I am a scientist by training and so it shocks me that this is so controversial because the evidence very strongly leans in the direction of vegetable oils as unhealthy. I always come back to the question of what would you feed your children? And when it comes down to it, I avoid vegetable oils at all costs and work really hard to make sure my own kids don’t eat them too. That is why I feel it is so important to share this information with you. I get nothing out of it, I am not sponsored by anyone.
Monounsaturated Fats | Polyunsaturated Fats (PUFAs) | Saturated Fats |
Fruit, nut, and peanut oils | Vegetable and seed oils | Animal oils and others |
|
|
|
Good | AVOID! | Good |
You might be really confused at this point. Here I am constantly raving about getting vegetables from a farm and loading them up on your plate and now I’m saying I avoid vegetable oil?
The short version of why vegetable and seed oils are bad:
Vegetable and seed oils are processed foods that cause inflammation which leads to tissue damage and disease.
Inflammation is the latest buzz word in the health conscious world and for good reason. Inflammation is a natural body defense against harmful substances, pathogens, or injury. We need inflammation to begin the healing process. However, when there is chronic inflammation, not only are the unwanted substances damaged, so are your own body tissues. Some diseases that are considered to be diseases of chronic inflammation include diabetes, heart disease, COPD, autoimmune diseases, and arthritis.
The main point is that we should avoid a diet that causes chronic inflammation and that means we need to avoid polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) which are vegetable and seed oils.
That is really all you need to remember, but I’m going to lay out why this is, because I think it is important. So read on if you are interested!
The long version of why vegetable and seed oils are bad:
To start, you have to understand that oils are the fats from food. It is no secret that fat has been a polarizing topic for some time now.
There is now an overwhelming amount of evidence and overall consensus that trans fat (ultra-processed, partially and fully-hydrogenated oils) is quite toxic and needs to be avoided. It has even been banned in many countries, including the United States. But to get to this point it took over 70 years and the bravery of many doctors and science writers to call out that there was actually no evidence to say that trans fat is safe, and in fact there was plenty to say that it is toxic.
The American Heart Association (AHA) is finally on board with banning trans fats after fighting it for decades. They no longer promote butter substitutes like Crisco and margarine (hydrogenated oils). Sadly, the AHA still promotes a low saturated fat diet and even goes as far to say that polyunsaturated fats like vegetable oils should be used in cooking as a part of a heart healthy diet! Check out their Eat Smart page, it is right there. So I get why this information may seem new and controversial to you. However, the actual evidence that is available points towards vegetable oils as a major cause of disease.
Doctors and other health professionals learn very little about nutrition during their schooling so they rely on major organizations, like the AHA, to give unbiased, scientifically-based dietary recommendations. I’ve learned that this isn’t always what you get and it is really important to do your own research.
Here is why:
Although oils appear to be whole foods, there is actually quite a bit of processing from the raw vegetable/fruit/seed/nut/milk to get to the oil form. Butter requires the least processing – think about the hand churning our ancestors used to have to do! Now there are machines, but churning or whipping is really all the processing that is needed. Vegetables, fruit, seeds, and nuts have to be pressed to get the oils extracted and in many cases refined with chemicals so that they reach the consistency and properties that we are used to for cooking.
Fruits like olives and avocados (yes they are fruits!) more readily release the oil upon pressing so they can be extracted at lower temperatures. Same with nuts and peanuts. Vegetables, on the other hand, which have polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) require not only heat, but also chemicals like hexane (found in gasoline) to start the process. Many more chemicals are needed to bleach and deodorize the extracted vegetable oil.
The problem with PUFAs is that they are very heat-sensitive. When they are heated during the refining process or when cooking they oxidize very quickly into toxic compounds that contain trans fat and free radicals, both of which are highly inflammatory in the human body causing direct damage to our blood vessels, gut lining, immune system, and other cells. Yes you read that right, trans fats – the substance that even the American Heart Association agrees is bad for us. So even though the vegetable oils do not say that they contain trans fat on the label, they very quickly turn to trans fat after production and with cooking.
It is not a problem to eat the raw seeds from corn, soy, sunflowers, etc because the natural form has built in antioxidants, but when the seeds go through the pressing and refining process, the antioxidants are removed. Theoretically, if you could use a cold-pressing process without any of the chemicals, the oil would be fine to eat raw. But it would have to be refrigerated and protected from light and consumed almost immediately so that it doesn’t oxidize.
The food manufacturers have found that PUFAs makes a cheap substitute for saturated fats. At this point it doesn’t really matter if they are healthy or not. If PUFAs are cheaper that is what the companies will buy to make their processed foods. But don’t take my word for it, simply read the ingredients on almost any processed food including chips, snacks, granola, cereals, bread, salad dressing, sauces, roasted nuts, french fries, anything fried, crackers, baked goods, and many, many more. When you go out to eat, your food will be cooked in vegetable oil.
The tides are turning and more healthcare professionals and scientists are understanding the consequences of using vegetable and seed oils so widely in our Western diet. The problem is that you won’t hear much about it from nutritional publications, government nutritional guidelines, or possibly even your own doctor. I think we are starting to see the general public understanding that there are “good fats” and recognizing some of the foods that contain them like olive oil and avocados. However, I think there is a long way to go to make it general knowledge of the bad fats.
My recommendation: if you have a bottle of vegetable oil sitting in your cupboard, go right now and throw it away. Replace it with olive oil and coconut oil. Butter and peanut oil can be used for high heat cooking. I also recommend to read labels on everything you buy. I have bought avocado oil mayonnaise before only to read the label later on and find out that canola oil was actually the main ingredient. The food industry can be tricky to navigate!
References:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493173/
Deep Nutrition by Dr. Catherine Shanahan
Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes
Eat Fat, Get Thin, by Dr. Mark Hyman
