The Kind Diet: A Simple Guide to Feeling Great, Losing Weight, and Saving the Planet (15 page)

Umeboshi plums:
These super-sour pickled plums are salted and pressed with shiso leaves, which gives them their pinkish red color. Incredibly alkalizing to the blood, umeboshi help to buffer excess acidity from white sugar and alcohol and are even helpful against the common cold. I learned about umeboshi when I was doing
The Graduate
. We had gone out the night before and I had a doozy of a hangover. I had just started the Superhero diet, and someone suggested I suck on an umeboshi plum to speed my recovery. I popped half a plum in my mouth, and after a few minutes, I felt much better! Umeboshi are great for digestion, diarrhea, and recovery from sugar benders. My Cure-All Tea (page
290
) includes umeboshi. Superheroes might have two or three umeboshi a week in various forms. Umeboshi paste and umeboshi vinegar—byproducts of the plum-making process—are really tasty, but not medicinal like the plum itself.

Other pickles:
Pickles deliver amazing digestive enzymes and are really great for your overall assimilation of food. They are also thought to strengthen the immune system, act as antioxidants, and facilitate the absorption of certain vitamins. I’m not talking dill pickles from a jar here; most supermarket pickles are not naturally fermented and are soaked in preservatives and other icky ingredients, including sugar.

I mean homemade, naturally fermented pickles made from a variety of vegetables. Try the recipe on page
276
(they’re incredibly easy to make yourself) or find unpasteurized pickles or sauerkraut in good health food stores!

Most pickles can be stored in the fridge and provide a delicious, crunchy addition to any meal. The Japanese even eat pickles at breakfast . . . and so do I! Pickles generally contain a lot of salt, so don’t go crazy on them; you only need about a tablespoon a day.

Sea vegetables:
Unless you or your parents were born in Asia, chances are you didn’t grow up eating sea vegetables. Me either. But these days, they are a delicious and truly important part of my diet. Sea veggies like hijiki, arame, wakame, kombu, and nori are simply amazing. With tons of minerals and high in protein, they are alkalizing and detoxifying to the blood. But that’s not their neatest trick: Sea vegetables are considered
tumor inhibitors, and researchers at both McGill University and the FDA have found that the alginate present in kombu and wakame naturally binds with and discharges scary radioactive materials such as strontium 90 and cadmium from the body! Other magical qualities: They are anti-inflammatory, antiviral, reduce blood pressure, and make for truly badass skin, hair, and nails. I totally understand that sea vegetables may sound icky, but I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. If you want to experience amazing health while enjoying beautiful skin, nails, hair, and strong bones, consider sea vegetables an important medicinal food to be eaten a couple of times a week. I’ve included some really user-friendly recipes for you to try.

Now that you’ve been introduced to the Kind Foods and their amazing powers, I trust you’re itching to get into the kitchen and whip up some deliciousness. The recipes begin on page
137
. And if you need to make, oh, a Coffee Fudge Brownie (page
181
) or a Thin Mushroom “Pizza” (page
220
) to eat while reading the rest of the book, go for it!

6

Nutritional FAQs

You may hear concerned loved ones urge you to be extra careful to get all your nutrients on a plant-based diet, and it’s certainly true that we should be concerned about eating nutritionally sound diets—but not as vegans, as
people
.

It’s not just your loved ones who have an opinion. As we’ve seen in the previous chapters, the food industry wants to make you feel that meat and dairy are essential to good health and that, by giving them up, you may be punching huge holes in your nutritional safety net. Funny how they forget to mention that meat and dairy create calcium deficiencies and heart disease, contribute to diabetes, are often full of industrial toxins, and that vegetarians live longer than meat-eaters. Huh!

No matter whom you’re listening to, it’s normal to have questions about how a plant-based diet covers all the nutritional bases. Here are the answers to some frequently asked questions that will put you and your loved ones at ease.

WILL I GET ENOUGH IRON?

Many people, especially women, are concerned about becoming anemic. Before you run out and drink some blood, it’s important to understand a few things: A varied plant-based diet is not iron deficient. Although plant-based iron requires a little vitamin C in the same meal for it to be fully absorbed, that’s no biggie; not only does the Kind Diet contain lots of iron-rich foods like whole grains, tofu, pumpkin seeds, lentils, and especially sea vegetables, it’s rich in vitamin C-packed foods as well, like broccoli, fruits, and leafy greens (which contain both!). It’s downright difficult to not get enough iron on the Kind Diet. By eating lots of fresh and delicious foods, your body will take care of its iron levels just fine. In fact, too much iron is as serious a problem as
anemia,
causing free radicals and damage to internal organs. The chief sources of iron overload? Iron supplements and red meat.

Tips for meeting your iron needs:

• It’s important to get lots of good-quality iron if you’re pregnant or menstruating. Sea vegetables, dried fruit, lentils, chickpeas, and many other foods are high in iron. Use a handful of parsley or pumpkin seeds for a quick iron boost. Pregnant women also need lots of folic acid to prevent anemia. Great sources are lentils, black-eyed peas, pinto beans, chickpeas, spinach, black beans, asparagus, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts.
  
• Calcium, when it comes via a supplement, interferes with the natural absorption of iron. It’s best to get your calcium through food to avoid messing with your iron levels. Sea vegetables, green vegetables, sesame seeds, and many beans are high in calcium.
  
• The tannic acid from tea interferes with iron’s absorption as well. Do not drink black tea with meals.
  

HOW WILL I GET CALCIUM?

A varied plant-based diet is packed with calcium-rich foods, including sea vegetables, leafy greens, beans, nuts, and seeds. By eating these foods, you will get more than enough calcium. Just as importantly, you will be abstaining from foods that steal calcium from your body—namely meat, dairy, and white sugar—and it’s these foods that play the biggest role in bone loss. Between adopting Kind Foods and steering clear of the nasty ones, not only will you get lots of calcium, your bones will gratefully hang on to it. For more on how nasty foods deplete calcium, go to pages
38
–
39
.

IS A PLANT-BASED DIET HIGH IN FAT?

Fat is a nutrient and is totally necessary for the body. You need good-quality, unsaturated fat to absorb certain vitamins, make hormones, and insulate your nerves. But fat—as a food category—breaks down into two major groups: saturated and unsaturated. Saturated fats remain solid or waxy at room temperature and are found mostly in meat and dairy foods. Unsaturated fats stay liquid at room temperature and are found mostly in vegetables and vegetable oils. Saturated fats (as well as hydrogenated fats, or trans fats) are the baddies, raising cholesterol and contributing to heart disease, while unsaturated fats contain omega-3, -6, and -9 fatty acids and are believed to actually lower cholesterol. Yes, every fatty food contains both types of fat, but it’s the ratio of saturated to unsaturated that matters. Here’s an easy rule of thumb: Keep choosing plant-based foods and you don’t have to worry about fat.

HOW DO I GET MY OMEGA-3S?

Omega-3 fatty acids are vital to the functioning of your brain and heart. These days, fish oil is a popular source of omegs-3s, but it has its problems: First, like all animal products, fish oil tends to decompose and become unstable rather quickly, producing free radicals. Luckily for us, plant-based sources of omega-3s are much more stable than fish oil and come complete with antioxidants that clean up free radicals! Second, 15 to 30 percent of the fat in fish oil is saturated,
double
the saturated fat content of plant oils. Third, let’s not forget that fish contain industrial toxins, which introduce a host of other nasty problems. Finally, fish make their omega-3s from . . . drumroll . . . the plants they eat, just like we should!
¹

Omega-3 fatty acids can be found in flaxseed oil, hemp seed oil, soybean oil, soybeans, and walnuts. Just a teaspoon of flaxseed oil a day will do just fine. There’s flaxseed oil in the Baby Bok Choy Drizzled with Ume Vinaigrette recipe on page
265
. Yum!

SHOULD I AVOID SALT?

Sodium is absolutely essential to basic, vital functions of your body like digestion, nerve connections, and the contractions of muscles, including your heart! Sodium is found in all organic matter, so we really only need a smidgen more than what we get from food. Good-quality sea salt (sodium chloride) is the best source. Because salt is a crystal that needs to be dissolved, it’s best to cook salt and seasonings into dishes, as opposed to adding them at the table. On the Kind Diet, you will also get good-quality sodium in miso, shoyu, and other condiments. Too much sodium can result in water retention, high blood pressure, and bone loss, so go easy.

FYI: Avoid iodized free-running table salt because it has been stripped of its other, balancing minerals, as has the sodium present in processed foods.

DO I NEED TO TAKE SUPPLEMENTS?

Obviously, you only need supplements if your diet is lacking nutrition, so be honest with yourself: If you’re currently eating crappy food, then you might want to consider a multivitamin. But please don’t start to think that supplements are necessary—or even beneficial—on top of a varied, healthy diet. In fact, your body can get
too much
of some nutrients, which begins a domino effect of imbalance in your body. Over time, these imbalances can stress out your liver. Remember, vitamin pills aren’t found in nature; they aren’t magic. They are the processed and synthesized bits and pieces of real foods. If you are eating whole foods regularly, you are getting the nutrients in the packages made perfectly for your body to absorb. With one exception . . .

WHAT ABOUT VITAMIN B
₁₂
?

You definitely need vitamin B
₁₂
. Long-term B
₁₂
deficiencies are extremely serious, irreversible, and affect brain and nervous system function. But we don’t need tons of this vitamin—just 2 micrograms a day. B
₁₂
is synthesized by certain bacteria, which show up in many places, including the guts of animals . . . which is why meat is a good source of B
₁₂
. Although it’s true that plant foods do not contain B
₁₂
, all plant foods are grown in the soil, which is full of B
₁₂
-rich bacteria. Before the mass commercialization of agriculture, when we were all pulling vegetables from our gardens and the water wasn’t purified with chemicals, the bacteria that synthesized B
₁₂
was available to us through the soil and water. So B
₁₂
deficiencies in vegans are not caused by the diet itself but by the hypersanitization of our modern world. Personally, I’m not a super-clean freak, so I don’t scrub the vegetables from my garden like crazy, and I know that the little bits of soil that remain contain B
₁₂
. Yay, nature! To be safe, I also take a supplement—a low dose either under my tongue or in a veggie cap—every so often. Dr. Neal Barnard recommends taking B
₁₂
once or twice a week.

DO I NEED TO TAKE ENZYMES?

In the Kind Diet, you’ll get lots of amazing digestive enzymes from miso, umeboshi plums, pickles, and other fermented foods. There shouldn’t be a need to take extra digestive enzymes. By chewing your grains and vegetables well, you’ll ensure that your mouth releases its digestive enzymes perfectly, which helps all the enzymes in your stomach and intestines to work even better.

HOW MUCH WATER DO I NEED TO DRINK?