Category: Uncategorized

We tend to follow the Environmental Work Group’s (EWG) clean fifteen and dirty dozen to select organic produce over non organic. A simple rule of thumb is if you eat the skin prefer organic. For example you can’t scrub a strawberry to get any chemicals off it. So we prefer organic strawberries. But you don’t eat the skin of an avacado so we will use non organic.

We have a hard time finding organic

jalapeno so we use non organic if we have to and wash them.

Nutrition Facts dot org has some wonderful resources on organic foods. Scientifically just eating fruits and veggies outweighs the added risks as pointed out in the conclusion of this video:

If just half the U.S. population were to increase fruit and vegetable consumption by a single serving a day, an estimated 20,000 cancer cases might be avoided each year. That’s how powerful produce may be. But because the model was using conventional fruits and veggies the pesticide residues on those extra fruits and vegetables might result in ten additional cancer cases. So overall, if half of us ate one more serving, we’d just prevent 19,990 cases of cancer a year. Now this was a paper written by scientists-for-hire paid for by the Alliance for Food and Farming, which is a bunch of conventional produce growers, so they probably exaggerated the benefits and minimized the risks, but I think the bottom-line is sound. We get a tremendous benefit from eating conventional fruits and vegetables that far outweighs whatever tiny bump in risk from the pesticides, but hey, why accept any risk at all when you can choose organic? I agree, but we should never let concern about pesticides stop us from stuffing our face with as many fruits and vegetables as possible.

From the Facebook Forks Over Knives group

Does anyone here buy fresh produce from Costco or Sam’s Club and find it to be both cost-efficient and quality product?

My response:

Yes. Costco. We shop the green tags (organics). The bag of zucchini and squash is great. Love the fresh blueberries for my oatmeal.

With that said we bad experiences with avacado and banana from Costco. So we don’t buy those there anymore. I suspect experience (and inventory) could vary from store to store across the country.

For example, as we travel we still cook at friends, relatives and Airbnb. So we’ve been to Costco in different cities and states. Some of them have different inventory than what we find near home.

Costco generally has good value on the things they have. So my suggestion is to try their selection and see what works for you where you are.

Out general rule if thumb is to buy what we can at Costco and then one of the other stores for what we couldn’t get there.

While we also have a Sam’s membership we don’t shop there as often because it’s further from our house. We found slue to be good for what they had in stock.

A question in the Forks Over Knives Facebook group.

Hi there!
I’m very interested in the plant based diet. I’m not there yet, but very interested.
Any suggestions for a new comer? I was supposed to start this weekend, but I’ve fallen short already.
I feel the best way ( for me) is to ease into it, as I am extremely picky with my fruits and veggies. Suggestions?

My reply:

Watch Forks Over Knives and What the Health. Determine your why. If you don’t want to “fall off” convince yourself why you are doing it. Long term health, lose weight, reverse some disease? With a strong why you’ll keep that in mind each time you eat. My friends say they can’t live without bacon. But I can live without the illnesses bacon causes.
Now as for the transition I personally actually did it slowly. I’ve heard of people going cold turkey. But I didn’t. One reason I didn’t is (as weird as this sounds) I didn’t know what I was doing. My goal was weight loss. Initially I set out to eliminate sugar from my diet. I found sugar in cereal, spaghetti sauce, salad dressing, yogurt, granola bars and almost anything else. So I started replacing sugar filled foods with better choices and the weight just came off. About four months into that I learned about How Not to Die, started watching videos on www.nutrionfacts.org and then finally when I watched Forks Over Knives it clicked and I gave up all meat and dairy. Coming up on one year since I had any! One of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

When we travel we like to stay at

AirBNB so we can cook. A few nights ago we made veggie lasagna. So today while driving we reheated it in the portable oven and now can eat hot lasagna but just pulling off the highway. It’s a convenient way to maintain healthy Whole Food Plant Based eating while traveling.

I recently finished listening to the

audiobook Dr Neal Barnard’s program for reversing diabetes. I’d highly recommend you check this book out especially if you have diabetes or pre-diabetic metabolic syndrome or diabetes runs in your family. I also recommend it if you have friends or family with the disease so you can share the information with them.

The latest edition to our travel

supplies is an Icey-Tek cooler to keep our food frozen while on the road. We learned about these coolers as being as good or better than more expensive brands so went with it instead of the more well known brands. When we travel we have a smaller soft sided cooler for car snacks. Then use this one for things that need to stay cold for a day or two. It could actually keep things cold longer we just have not been on the road longer. We keep food frozen in the cooler then put it in the portable oven a few hours before we want to eat.

While traveling recently it was too

cold to think about eating dinner outside at a rest area. So we decided to stop at Starbucks instead. Starbucks allows people to hang out and use WiFi for free even without being a customer. So we bought a coffee and brought in our dinner. Mande had made butternut risotto and we transported it in our portable oven. Very good to have a nice healthy meal just by pulling off the road to eat.

We had these blonde brownies for

dessert. Made from chick peas, oats, honey, coconut sugar, almond milk, baking powder and vegan chocolate. Mixed in Vitamix and baked in the oven. Very good.

A recent post on the Forks Over Knives Facebook group asked

Anyone have any cheap lunch ideas for me? Im on a tight budget and always end up buying supernarket food for lunch which is alot of the time processed but i want some homemade lunch ideas that are affordable and include greens and something filling.

My response

Quinoa and beans. Add a few veggies as you like. Very filling. You can try different beans to change up the flavor like black and pinto and ranchero. Veggies like onion, zucchini, squash, bell pepper. Top with spinach. Spices as desired.

Here is a quick dinner idea on a cold

night. Black beans cooked in the instant pot along with brown rice. Top with tomatilo salsa an cilantro!