9: The Five Foundational Foods For Healthy Living

0:00 If you want to have an energy field life, where you feel absolutely amazing enough to do all the things that you want to do, you need to have these five foundational foods on your plate every single day. Today on episode number nine. You're listening to the smarter Healthy Living podcast where we firmly believe that getting healthy should never feel like torture, where your host Jarrod and Anita Roussel were college sweethearts, and health professionals who help you redefine what getting healthy looks like using a whole food plant based lifestyle. It's time to hear from the experts and learn the best tips and tricks that helped others get beyond the overwhelm, to create a vibrant life they love. If you're sick and tired of being sick, and tired, you're in the right place. So pull up a virtual chair, grab your matcha latte. And let's get started.

0:53 Let's talk about the five foundational food groups. We came up with this concept of the five foundational food groups to help make it easier to remember the different food groups that we need to get on a daily basis. It's so easy to get into a routine a rut, if you will, where we keep eating the same food over and over again. Oh yeah, cuz you have your favorites. And we may end up neglecting certain things like I know a common one for us. Anytime we we feel like we're not feeling well. The energy's not there. Maybe we're not sleeping? Well, whatever the case may be. It's usually that we're missing our greens. So we like to we do this ourselves from time to time we tell our clients that for three days, take a look at the foods that you're eating, take a bird's eye view, look at the different foundational foods and say, Are you getting that variety? Are you getting a good mix of all the types of foods that really promote our health, When it can be really just as easy as taking a sheet of paper that you keep maybe by your bedside or on your desk?

2:00 And you just jot down what you ate that day? And then you look back over it for a course of three days? Not to go crazy over it or anything just to notice patterns? Am I... What am I getting too much of what am I eating all the time? And what am I not branching out in and getting enough variety in and the things that we find over and over that we're missing at times when we look at it is Oh, hey, you know, where's the purple. And so I've just gotten into the routine of buying some things that are purple and looking for that when I'm in the store because now I know, those aren't the things that we naturally grab. And now we are grabbing them more naturally because we built a new habit, just because we took the time to get that bird's eye view and look at the things that we are eating on a regular basis or the things that are missing more on a regular basis. And with our clients.

2:45 Like Jared said, we've also found that greens are another thing that's missing. So at this point, you may be saying that sounds great. But what are those five foundational foods, so we're now going to tell you Alright, number one, fruits. Number two veggies. Number three are the grains. Number four are the beans and legumes and many people call this kind of the protein group and that would be peas and lentils as well. Right? Exactly. And then number five are the nuts and seeds. And then we have a few tag on so those are the five foundations. No, no, no...those are bonuses. Haha. I like it bonuses, they really are too because when you put them on your food, your food starts to taste amazing.

3:33 But then you have these anti bacterial, anti viral, if you're looking for something to fight bacteria and virus in your life and you want to stay strong and healthy, you get those herbs and spices on your feed. I don't care if they're fresh, I don't care if they're dried, both have their benefits mix it up. They are amazing and your foods will start to taste incredible. I mean we say this so many different times we talk about how with meats I mean you eat meat when we ate meat we would eat it and what made it tastes good when I ever boil a chicken and just eat it plain without putting something on it. The only time I ever would boil chicken back in the day I would have to at least put mayo and a bunch stuff on it and make chicken salad or something which I don't Really dress at all give it some flavor.

4:23 Yeah but you really it's the herbs and spices the sauces right so this is our bonus number one category of a foundational food would be herbs and spices and then of course water you've got to have your liquids many people most people are walking around dehydrated I did it for the majority of my life. Not knowing nobody's telling me Hey, you need to get this or that and just not taking the time to do that for myself and I ended up with kidney stones. And very common side effect of not being well hydrated is fatigue. It's headache. Little fun fact... I don't really know how fun of a fact this is but If you were to go to the ER with a headache, first thing they do is they put an IV and start pumping full of fluids.

5:06 Right, and why is that? Because that is a huge I don't know if I'd say number one, but probably is cause for people to have headaches, just do not drink enough water, Right. And you don't have to just drink big glasses of water. Find other things that you enjoy. If you're starting this journey that are plant based, we have a lot of different drinks that we recommend. And really like just making in our blenders. If you haven't gotten a chance to hear Episode Number eight, go and listen to it. We talk all about our favorite appliance for the kitchen that goes with us everywhere. And you don't want to miss that one. So I'm digressing. Where were we? On the five foundational foods. So again, it's fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts and seeds.

5:50 And oh, that's another one that's often missing. Nuts and seeds, right? Yes. All right. And then we have the herbs, spices and water. Let's go through each of those and talk about just a little bit in each category. So first, we'll start with fruits. Oh, carbs are bad. Duhn, duhn, duhn *sound effect*. Don't eat fruit. No, literally, I have this friend he will vouch for it told me that he had not eaten berries in I believe it was two years. It was definitely years. Mm hmm. And he had so much pain and inflammation in his joints. But he had stopped eating them because he'd been told multiple times in multiple places that carbs were bad for him. And fruits and berries, especially which a lot of people just don't get on a daily basis. Do you get a lot of berries, think about When's the last time you ate berries? And do you get a variety? Or do you just eat strawberries? Right? So you want to get a variety of all these foods and within all these categories, but he had not had berries literally in two years.

6:52 And when he started eating them he started getting some improvements. Well, the reason is they are power packed with nutrients that your body requires on a daily basis. And when you get that the inflammation starts to go down I can tell you want to say something what is it? Just thinking that with blueberries, the the little blueberry chunks in the muffins that you buy, those are not actually real blueberries. Those do not count. Seriously people go and look that up. What is it they're called blueberry? There's a name for him as nuggets, blueberry chucnks, something, if you ever look up the ingredients to those you won't ever want to eat this again, I'm so sorry, We're talking about the real thing. And surprisingly, too, they don't have as much sugar as you might think plus you have the fiber in with that.

7:38 So that slows down the absorption of sugar. So you don't get those high peaks, then you have the benefit of the fibers. But they're really they they're lower in sugar and lower in calories than I think many people realize. And I will say there aren't many supplements. So we recommend that berry powders if you can get we prefer organics when you can get that if it's available to you or if it's within your budget. Definitely the berry powders are very good. They're high in antioxidants. And you can get a lot more in that than you can from just eating enough berries in the day a lot of times because people just don't eat enough berries. But pick your berries in your smoothies. And go ahead and add a bit of berry powder this fun to do that. I mean studies show that that is really, really good for you to get those powders as well. So that's one of the supplements that we recommend just because it is all natural.

8:30 Just check the ingredients and make sure it's just berries and freeze dried is a good way to get those. But all that said don't rely on powders you want to get the real fruit from the real sources fresh as possible. Fresh is always best. So go ahead and in even you don't have to get just fresh. And you can also go frozen. Yeah, that's true Because it's picked fresh and frozen. So what they found is the nutritional value in the frozen section is great. So grab a bag of berries. We keep berries in our freezer and he says in our smoothies all the time We buy bags of blueberries, strawberries from Costco, Blackberries, raspberries, mangoes, (those are not berries, but fruits). Right, But I'll put blueberries on my oatmeal every morning. So just very easy. And like Anita said picked at the peak of ripeness so that they are very nutritionally dense.

9:25 Yeah. And it's great. They're really good to eat. And going on with the greens, vegetables in general, get your cruciferous there are a lot of different things within cruciferous. We could go on and on about this, but get the crucifers get the kale get the cabbages, broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts. There actually are a number of the other other greens that are in the cruciferous. I just I can't think of them offhand. Right now. There's so many different ones bok choy shard and all the different greens but don't just stick with less I mean, get iceberg is fine. Eat it sometimes. But then have the other leaf lettuces like red leaf lettuce and green leaf lettuce and romaine romaine and butter lettuces. And then you go into the other categories of leafy greens get something you're not used to try something new, we'll have the same thing all the time. That's boring, and you're not going to get the variety of nutrients. If you try something new. That's one thing you can do right now, your next trip to the store, put something new from the produce section in your cart, have an idea of how you're going to use it or buy it and go. I don't know what I'm going to do with this and then it rots in your fridge. That wouldn't be good. But one thing just one thing need to get some new nutrients into your body. It can make all the difference.

10:46 Moving on to leggings. What do you want to say there? Jarrod? What are your favorite light games? There are quite a few lentils we like lentils are they're very versatile, but within lentils, they're semi different costs. We've talked about that before. And then beans and beans, Crowder peas, Black Eyed Peas, navy beans, Pintos, kidney beans, black beans. We love garbanzos chychrun. He says, I could talk about those just for hours alone, we want him. They're very versatile. You can do many things with them. Mm, peas, lentils, all that really good stuff, lots of protein there. But you know, you think about well, we'll talk about protein in the future.

11:26 It's coming up very soon for you guys. But just know that plant foods all have a lot of protein in them but beans, especially the category of legumes, you're going to get a great amount of protein eating those, the nuts and seeds. Okay, what's usually missing here because a lot of times people go crazy eating nuts once they start a whole food plant base just replace cheese's and things like that. But what you need to think about is also the seeds. The seeds are power packed with nutrition. So what you want to look at is chia seeds and flax seeds, get those into your smoothies, sprinkle them onto your salads, eat them every day, very versatile as a thickener, we'll even make chia eggs and flax eggs by grounding them up mixing them in water, then using that in recipes and place of eggs as a binder or thickener, yeah, works really great.

12:18 So those are a wonderful thing. But then just sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, all the different seeds that you can put into trail mixes. That's a very simple way to get your seeds. And then moving on into the bonuses, herbs and spices. Like we said get fresh, get dried, it doesn't matter enjoy them. They are so very good for you. And and then the other thing we skipped Oh, we skipped grains and the five foundational foods. Let's go back for a minute. So with grains, this is where it's easy. I think with any category really it's easy to get stuck in a rut but especially the grains growing up especially in the south like I did. It was and we'd have potatoes from the vegetable category and then in grains we'd have rice.

13:02 Well I grew up in Louisiana. So for us our starchy food. Pretty much every meal was rice. We didn't really eat that much potato growing up some but that wasn't our primary starch, but it was just rice but it was always long grain white rice. Right? Right. We never deviated from that. Right? And so within rice, an amazing assortment that you can try. You've got the wild Rice's the black Rice's I mean, I could go on and on rice is so fragrant it when you smell it, it smells almost like a tea. Mm hmm. It is. It's really it. Well, that's you're thinking about I think you're thinking about wild rice. Maybe that maybe it does it smells flowery. It's really good too. That's a great one to try. And the black rice is excellent too. Um, so let's go on into other grains.

13:53 Why don't we just think about rice? It's a shame. We know it's habit. But there are a lot of other grains that we've used that have been that had been amazing barley. That's fantastic. And soup. Sometimes we'll make our grain bowls and do it almost said rice bowls, but a grain bowl and do that with barley has a great chew to it. There's qinhuai fara millet. I mean, the grains are almost endless. It's just why don't we ever use those? Why is it just this same old thing all the time. And these foods are so natural and their form that they were created in that just that's what fuels your body best because it's created. It's how you were created to eat. It's what was created to fuel your body well, and they're easy to make.

14:41 They're simple to get on the table. Just as simple as white rice. Don't be afraid to branch out. You can do this one thing at a time. Pick one new grain to try. Pick one new vegetable to try. Pick one new fruit to try. It's just It's really that simple. Find herbs and spices blingy. Like, if you don't see a blend you like make your own at home, blending a couple that you really enjoy together. And don't be afraid to experiment with the different combinations, just don't be afraid. If it's you find something that you don't like, Well, that doesn't mean that this just doesn't work or that you'll never find something that you do like, just be a little bit of a pioneer, go out there experiment, try new year, try something new.

15:29 It's a new frontier, in you, we promise you, you will find things that you love that fuel your body Well, well. And not only that, as you continue on this journey, and again, we'll talk about this more as we go, your taste perceptions are going to change. So you may try something now and think I don't like that. Try it again. And about three months, you'll be amazed at the taste, you can pick it, because when you stop eating the things that have not fueled your body well, and you eat more and more of the things that are fueling your body well, you'll start to crave those things. And pretty soon, you'll start to taste things in those foods, flavors, you didn't even know where they're like in something as simple as an apple.

16:12 It really is amazing what's going to happen to your body as you start to go on this journey. We talked about a lot today. So let's recap. All right, we have the five foundational foods, you have fruits and berries. We have the veggies including the greens, there are grains. Then you have the legumes and beans, which includes a piece, then you have nuts and seeds. And don't forget the bonuses are the herbs and spices, which are truly bonuses. And then don't forget to get your water your water or your favorite beverage water based beverage, your liquids. Yes. So this is to help you have an overview. But there is actually an app that we have found that is available free. It is Dr.

16:59 Michael gregers. Daily doesn't Yeah, it's really nice. You'll enjoy having that. And I know it's free on the App Store. I'm not sure about Google, but it's on the App Store. And what he does is he has it broken down into more than just those five food groups. But he has it's just little check boxes. So each day when you get one of those servings, you click the box and it just makes it easy. Now before you go we have something very special for you today, so click the link below and grab our exact shopping list for free. We've even included 10 simple meal ideas to get you started. Be sure to take a moment to follow and subscribe and we'll see you again on the next episode.