Dr Tim Spectre - aim to eat 30 plants a week

[Footgoose]

Other than maybe the obvious , please share with me your list of what plants you would include in your weekly diet . Maybe even a suggestion of how you would prep them .

anyone who has followed him for a long time , what would you / he not include .

oh I forgot about nuts:
cashews
pistachios
pumpkin seeds
sesame seeds
pine nuts
poppy seeds

that makes my total 45

Someone mentioned counting 'points'. Is this still about Tim Spector's work? I ask as I have never heard him mention points before.

It isn't about portions, it's about foodstuffs that come from plants and are not therefore animal or mineral. It's trying to improve the microbiome in your gut, so herbs and spices count towards your 30, as do oils. Think on the microbial level.

It’s interesting because some people on this thread are double-counting their plants e.g. if you eat onions in 2 meals (or quinoa or garlic or peppers or whatever) you don’t get to count them twice, so actually while your first meals of the week start off really racking up the 30 different plants it can definitely slow down as the week goes on. Most people do repeat vegetables and fruits because that’s how we shop and cook.

Still, it’s not as daunting as it first appears, I agree. 30 isn’t an unrealistic number over a whole week.

Isn't most people's diets plants?

Yesterday i had

1. Home made oat porridge, a slice of ryvita and an apple
2. Chicken soup with a salad of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber and olives with some buttered crackers. Plus an apple and an orange.
3. Pasta with roasted tomatoes, broccoli, courgette slices, garlic and a small amount of Italian sausage, an orange.

Today I will have the same breakfast then couscous with roasted Mediterranean vegetables for lunch and then smoked mackerel with stir fried rice for dinner (the rice will have spring onions, tender stem broccoli and peas in it) plus fruit at each meal.

My cat is years ahead of this game. I thought my plants had a terrible disease…

@NoSquirrels indeed. And of course in winter there is a more limited range of affordable fruit and veg available. I don't eat soft fruits in winter as what is available is expensive and not that nice. Ditto some vegetables.

I just wrote a list of plants we eat regularly (so at least once a week) and came to 30 no problem (and stopped counting).

It is useful to think about as expanding the list is easy to do (add seeds to my porridge) so may inspire me to do better.

I would say that if you eat only seasonal fruit and veg, there will be a fair amount of repetition meal to meal. But 30 different plants is still easily possible.

He also includes coffee.

He's interviewed by Stephen Bartlett on Diary of a CEO but actually I found him incredibly uninspiring on there. It's the first CEO interview where I was bored.

PLANTS not vegetables. Coffee from a single origin is considered a 'plant' according to him. It's about diversity of bacteria and encouraging a healthy gut, not a 5 a day thing.

This is interesting. I always thought we had a reasonably healthy diet as we don't eat much processed food due to allergies. However, ive just added up my list for the week so far including tonight's planned dinner and I'm only at 20. Will have to put a bit of thought into how to increase this - can't have nuts or several seeds. Will have a listen to the podcast today.

I think it's easy on a varied and mostly vegetarian diet.

my DC teen with food anxiety has a much more limited diet and cycles between a small number of accepted meals

total list would be:
wheat
potatoes
rice
tomatoes (in ketchup form or on a pizza base or as baked bean sauce only)
olives
carrots
peas
peppers
baked beans
bananas
apples
pistachio nuts
chickpeas and sesame in the form of houmous
soya (in the form of tofu chunks)
quorn - if that counts a it is made of processed fungus.
hazlenuts in nutella spread

total 17. not much hope of near doubling that!

I'm not convinced Ketchup counts... needs to be a whole ingredient

Ditto nutella..

Last two days for me
broccoli,carrots, red peppers, cucumber, salad leaves, tangerine, mushrooms, peas, coffee, tea, bran, tomatoes, potatoes, garlic, olives, wheat, blueberries, sage, onion, basil. Plus I was off food yesterday and skipped a meal completely.

This piece is aimed at those who have restricted monotonous food on repeat and the poorer they are the more likely it is. Also children and adults with food issues. I have known two young adults who though undiagnosed with anything had really restricted diets, eating less than a dozen things. They both had a sort of grey pallor to their skin tone, their respective Mother and partner were always worried about them.

An easy way to increase your number is to try to diversify away from wheat - to buckwheat, rice, barley, oats, potatoes - and millions more. The tendency to select pasta or bread is strong in our house!

Surely a mumsnet massive salad would cover 30 plants no problem
🤔

Frozen food is your friend here, Dr Tim has pointed out before how it can retain more nutrients than fresh sometimes, don’t be afraid of buying frozen fruit & veg.

breakfadt his morning is some Kefir yogurt with warmed up frozen berries, dead quick and delicious. Big fan of frozen cherries too 👍

Animal foods are extremely nutrient dense. Let’s not forget that. Vegans tend not to do well after 3/4/5 years. When they return to eating meat everything gets better. (Search for ex vegans on YouTube) Meat/ dairy isn’t the enemy!

I think avoiding highly processed “beige food” is the way forward. Cooking from scratch makes so much difference too. (Worth noting that many people will not have the money, time or energy to avoid processed foods and cook from scratch, so this is an extremely privileged stance. Lots of people on this country cannot buy food at the moment.)

I guess 30 plants is as good a goal as any. Although including a sprinkle of paprika as one seems really odd!

@watchfulwishes you could add cinnamon to your crumble, if you like it.

Slaw (grated salad) is really good for upping your quota of veg. It doesn't have to be just white cabbage, carrot and mayo, a la Boots plastic tub.

I sometimes makes a slaw of grated raw beetroot, apple, carrot, celeriac ... or pear, fennel, spring cabbage, walnuts ... sesame seeds are a good addition too.
If you don't like mayo it's perfectly good with ordinary vinaigrette.

I should add mixed spice as that will be five

I have been doing this with my kids for years. We each keep a list on the fridge and it gets quite competitive.
Average is about 45 a week. Sometimes it goes up to 70.
Once you are aware it's really easy to do. We started when my children were about 10, they are now 15.

I just analysed my breakfast, it contained wheat, chickpeas, sesame seeds, olive oil, cumin, paprika, garlic, pear, kiwi, coconut.

Once you count everything you can see how easy 30 is to reach across 21 meals.

A vegetable curry gets in a lot. (Designed for getting lots of veg in kid rather than authenticity)
Cauli, courgette, onion, carrot, sweet potato, butternut squash, tumeric, cumin, garlic, ginger, spinach, coriander, tomatoes, seeds:sesame, pumpkin, sunflower, chia, poppy. sometimes I put in chopped up Brussel sprouts) chick peas, peas

Veggie chilli with peppers, lentils, onions, kidney beans, black beans.

Fruity curry, (which is definitely get stuff in kid) has dates, apricots, sultanas, pineapple, apple, raisins hidden in it. Plus aubergine, and veg mentioned above.

Sweet and sour:carrots peppers, onions, mange-tout baby sweetcorn.

Stir fry:
Bean sprouts, Chinese stir-fry mix, (water chestnuts and bamboo shoots, a couple of leafy veg) carrots onions, mange-tout baby sweetcorn ,peppers, edamame beans,

Stews would be good too. . I'm going to read back others ideas too.

He was my next Diary of a CEO to watch. Wasn’t sure whether to.