Chapter 4

Food

So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God
(1 Corinthians 10:31).

M ost Americans are confused about food. Should you eat like a caveman and stick to meat, vegetables, and fruit and avoid all grains and dairy? Or eat only fruits, vegetables, and herbs like a gorilla? Low-carb or low-fat? What about food labels and calorie counts? What about all the health claims on the label? Or low-calorie or diet foods? What is the right diet?

Can we make sense of it all? It is not very easy, because the food and diet industry makes billions — in fact, more than $1 trillion — by keeping you guessing. It is good for them, but bad for you.

When you provide the conditions for a thriving human being and you remove the impediments to health, disease often simply goes away as a side effect. When you focus on health, healing and weight loss happen automatically. That is exactly what happens in The Daniel Plan.

The Daniel Plan was not designed as a weight-loss program. In fact, we never focused on weight, but on health. How do you create a healthy human? When we started the program at Saddleback Church, we designed it as a wellness program, combining the Essentials of faith, food, fitness, focus, and friends into a powerful potion of renewal and healing. Not only did the original participants lose more than 250,000 pounds in the first year, but they also reported improvement or resolution of chronic symptoms and diseases, including asthma, allergies, headaches, irritable bowel syndrome, acid reflux, autoimmune diseases, depression, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, acne and skin issues such as eczema and psoriasis, brain fog, fatigue, and insomnia. They reported fuller engagement with their families, friends, church, and community, being better able to serve a higher purpose. Many lost well over 100 pounds and many type 2 diabetics got off insulin and multiple medications. We didn’t have to treat all their diseases individually. Most chronic diseases and symptoms arise from the same common causes: imbalances in the five core Essentials.

Have you ever stopped to think about what food is, why we eat it, and what it does to us when we eat it? The link between food and our well-being is so immediate, so profound and direct, yet most of us have no idea that how we feel is linked to what we eat, that our various complaints and conditions and moods and energy (or lack of it) are driven by the fuel we put into our body.

Doctors rarely ask the simple question, “How do you create a healthy human?” Veterinarians study nutrition extensively. How do you get a horse to win the Kentucky Derby? You learn how to optimize its metabolism and health by the quality of the food you feed it.

That is what we want for all of you — to optimize your health. We want you to love, enjoy, and celebrate food and use it to enrich and enliven you. Food can transform your health within a few weeks through the simple principles of The Daniel Plan.

“Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.”

— Hippocrates, the ancient Greek physician

The Daniel Plan is a way of life, or as some have called it, a healthstyle that takes the guessing out of eating and cooking. You can actually eat anything based on one rule: Eat real, whole food. Eat a colorful variety of real, whole foods from real ingredients that you can make yourself — or that are made by another human nearby.

If you want French fries, then make them yourself from whole potatoes and unrefined, unprocessed oil. Chances are you won’t eat them every day, but you will enjoy them more and they will be much better for you.

Simple, real, fresh, delicious, nutrient-packed foods that are easy to cook, foods that come from a farmer’s field rather than a factory, food that traveled the shortest distance from the field to your fork — that is what we should eat.

That’s it — you can skip to the next chapter .

Well, maybe not yet. Unfortunately, most of us never learned what real food is, so just in case, we are going to lay it out for you in this chapter: What food is, what I should avoid, how I find the good stuff, and how I make my own meals.

FOODS THAT HEAL:
SO WHAT SHOULD WE EAT?

WHAT IS FOOD? NOURISHMENT? A source of energy or calories? A delightful pleasure?

Yes, it can be all of those things. But as a doctor who has dedicated his career to studying how food affects the body and contributes to or prevents disease, Dr. Hyman has a slightly different take on food: Food is medicine.

Food has the power to heal us. It is the most potent tool we have to help prevent and treat many of our chronic diseases — including diabetes and obesity. Truly, what you put on your fork dictates whether you are sick or well, slim or fat, depleted or energized.

How does food do all this? Through the groundbreaking science known as nutrigenomics . The molecules in your food do much more than provide fuel for your body. They provide instructions that tell every cell in your body what to do every moment. More than 95 percent of chronic illness is not related to your genes, but to what those genes are exposed to in your lifetime. We call that the exposome .

Food is medicine. It is the most powerful tool we have to combat chronic disease.

The exposome is the sum of everything you eat, breathe, drink, think, and feel, plus the toxins in our environment and even the 100 trillion bacteria that live inside your gut. This is good news because it means that you have almost complete control over your health. And the most important thing you do every single day to interact with your genes is eat.

So the next time you put something on your fork, imagine what your genes might feel. Would they like that extra large soda or cheesy corn chips, or would they prefer some sweet blueberries or sautéed broccoli with garlic and olive oil?

We want to teach you how to treat your body with respect and kindness. We will teach you what foods to choose to nourish yourself and which ones to avoid. Most of all, we will show you how to create a nurturing, peaceful relationship with food and cooking that will automatically lead to weight loss, radiant health, and an overall sense of well-being.

“Food is our common ground, a universal experience.”

— James Beard

The Scriptures teach us how to live and love fully. But somehow we skip over the parts that instruct us to honor the vessel of the Holy Spirit, our body. Being in a food coma from eating sugar and junk food, having your brain chemistry hijacked by hyper-processed, hyper-palatable, hyper-addictive foods prevents you from fully inhabiting your body and your mind. If the food you are eating is making you sick and unfocused and makes you so sluggish that if you happen to get the urge to exercise you instead lie down until it goes away, living a fully engaged and God-honoring life is difficult.

Real food has the power to give you your life back and more fully engage in the purpose for your life. The reason to do it is not to fit in your jeans or look good in a dress, but to be awake to the beauty and miracle of life, to be able to live with purpose, to love, serve, connect, and celebrate the gifts God has given you.

If you nourish your body with high-quality ingredients from real food, not only will you increase your energy, lose weight, and reverse many chronic illnesses, but you will also feel lighter and more motivated to exercise, your mood will lift, and your brain will have better clarity, allowing you to clear out the debris in the way of your relationships with others and God.

So what do we mean by “real” food? Anything that is whole, fresh, and unprocessed. Stuff that your great-grandmother would recognize as food. A chicken, a vegetable, a bean, a nut, a grain, a fruit, an egg. Everything else is fake food that depletes energy and health. Real food heals. Real food nourishes.

Changing Control

“My biggest health achievement so far has been to lose over 150 pounds,” Chloe Seals says. “I didn’t know it at the time, but my doctor told me I was considered diabetic in 2010 when I weighed 277 pounds. Changing my eating habits and making healthier food choices has resulted in completely eliminating diabetes. I feel like I’ve gained my life back, and I feel more in control over what I eat instead of comfort and the lure of foods controlling me.

“I have learned to enjoy a variety of foods that I prepare for myself as well as my two kids. I feel better about myself instead of always feeling self-conscious. My greatest motivation comes from my kids and wanting to be healthy as long as I can so I can be there for them.”

The good news is that the list of real food is short, easy to understand, and easy to identify. Unfortunately, though, many of us are not well acquainted with real food. We have outsourced our cooking to the food industry for packaged, processed, and prepared convenience foods and to fast-food restaurants and convenience stores. But there is nothing convenient about feeling disconnected, sluggish, slothful, foggy, or depressed or having the diseases you get and medications you have to take when you fuel up with “convenient food.”

Let’s debunk one myth up front. We have been led to believe that eating well is expensive and that cooking your own food takes too much time. The facts are quite different. The research shows that you can eat well and in less time for less money than buying processed foods. ¹ With a few simple tricks, you can shop well, cook simply, and eat better for less in the same time it takes to hit a fast-food drive-through window and eat your meal. More importantly, real food tastes better and is more nourishing and satisfying. It can even eliminate your cravings.

The Daniel Plan focuses on the core food groups of healthy carbs, healthy fats, healthy protein, healing spices, drinks, and super foods. And The Daniel Plan gives an easy guideline to use for any meal:

• 50 percent non-starchy veggies
• 25 percent healthy animal or vegetable proteins
• 25 percent healthy starch or whole grains
• Side of low-glycemic fruit
• Drink — water or herbal teas

THE GOOD CARBS

The Daniel Plan is a high-carb diet. In fact, carbs are the single most important food you can eat for long-term weight loss and health. Does this mean load up on cereal, bread, rice, pasta, cookies, cakes, and donuts? Sorry, no. All plant foods contain carbohydrates. You want the right carbs: unrefined, unprocessed carbs, otherwise known as vegetables and fruits. Whole grains and beans are also carbs, but since they are a little more starchy should be eaten in moderation.

Unfortunately, less than 10 percent of Americans eat the recommended five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day. (A serving is generally half a cup or one piece of fruit.) Yet scientific research overwhelmingly tells us that the single most important thing we can do for our health is to eat more vegetables and fruits. In fact, it is about the only thing that every nutritional philosophy agrees upon.

Plant foods contain a rich combination of blood-sugar-balancing, anti-inflammatory, detoxifying compounds called phytonutrients. Inflammation has been linked to most of the diseases of aging, including heart attacks, diabetes, cancer, and dementia. In fact, being overweight is a chronic inflammatory state. Vegetables and fruits contain nature’s most powerful anti-inflammatories.

Plant foods are the main source of vitamins and minerals in your diet. These vitamins and minerals run every chemical reaction in your body; they are the grease that lubricates the wheels of your metabolism. The fiber in plant foods is necessary to keep your digestive system healthy, feed the good bacteria that keep inflammation down, and help balance blood sugar. Most Americans get 8 to 12 grams or less, while we really need 30 to 50 grams of fiber per day.

“Then God said, ‘I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food’” (Genesis 1:29).

The good news is that you get unlimited refills on vegetables. Think “binge on broccoli.” (Okay, so broccoli may not sound that exciting, but stick with us!) When thinking about dinner, think about cooking two or three different kinds of vegetables or trying some raw varieties with a delicious dip, such as hummus or homemade salsa. (See chapter 10 for recipes.) When eating out, order two or three sides of vegetables and skip the bread and pasta, which are proven to pack on the pounds and cause diabetes.

Boost Your Fiber

Add the following to your diet to increase your fiber:

• Whole grains such as quinoa or brown rice
• Vegetables, vegetables, vegetables
• Flax seeds (grind them and sprinkle on salads or fruit)
• Legumes — also known as beans and peas

In fact, these plant foods should make up 50 percent of your diet. It’s a big change for most people, but the closer you can come to upsizing the veggies and complementing with fruits, the more you will improve your health (and the health of the planet to boot).

When you get used to real foods, then we encourage you to focus on one simple principle: Focus on foods that don’t raise your blood sugar or don’t raise it quickly. This concept is called the Glycemic Index or glycemic load of foods. For example, white bread is a carb that raises your blood sugar more and faster than even table sugar, while crunchy green veggies barely make a dent in your sugar levels. Both are carbs, but act very differently calorie for calorie.

THE GLYCEMIC INDEX

The Glycemic Index (GI) is a nutritional tool to identify how carbohydrates affect our blood sugar levels. Carbs with a low GI (55 or less) don’t make our blood sugar levels rise too high, but provide sustained energy. Carbohydrates with a high GI (70 or more) cause our blood sugar levels to rise higher for a longer period. One of the best strategies for keeping blood sugar low is to incorporate low GI foods into your daily eating plan. These are some of the health benefits:

• Helping you avoid getting into a food emergency because you feel satisfied
• Keeping your insulin levels low, which helps burn fat easier
• Helping you to release body fat and keep lean muscle tissue
• Reducing your triglycerides, total and bad (LDL) cholesterol
• Increasing your levels of good (HDL) cholesterol
• Lessening your risk of developing type 2 diabetes
• Limiting your risk of developing cardiovascular disease
• Sustaining your energy levels longer, ultimately enhancing your mental and physical performance

Top 10 Tips for Low-Glycemic Eating

1. Follow The Daniel Plan plate.
2. Fill half your plate with colorful vegetables.
3. Limit starchy vegetables such as potatoes, winter squash, or cooked beets (only ¼ of your plate).
4. Limit (or eliminate) sugar and flour products.
5. Eat protein for breakfast such as a whole food protein shake (see here for a recipe), whole eggs, or an omelet, or have dinner for breakfast. Or incorporate more nuts and seeds into breakfast.
6. Add good fats to your diet such as extra-virgin olive oil, avocados, nuts and seeds, and extra-virgin coconut butter.
7. Replace starchy pasta choices with some gluten-free grains such as buckwheat, black or brown rice, or quinoa.
8. Eat beans such as lentils or chickpeas.
9. Choose a lean protein source (animal or plant) at every meal.
10. Carry snacks such as nuts and veggies with hummus to avoid a food emergency.

Breakfast Swap: Choose a whole grain breakfast, such as steel-cut oats with almonds and berries, instead of your favorite boxed cereal.

THE CALORIE MYTH

Now is the time for us to blow up the calorie myth. Here’s the myth: All calories are created equal.

The lesson we have all learned is that calories are a form of energy, and according to the laws of physics, a calorie is a calorie — the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one liter of water by one degree centigrade. This law is true for physics, but all bets are off when you put biology in the mix. If it was all about “eat less, exercise more,” we would all do it and be skinny and fit. But there are different kinds of calories: healing calories and disease-causing calories. Let us explain.

Let’s compare a 20-ounce soda with 240 calories to the equivalent number of calories from broccoli (which is about 7.5 cups). The soda has no fiber and no vitamins or minerals, but has 15 teaspoons of sugar in the form of high fructose corn syrup, caffeine, and phosphoric acid — which causes osteoporosis. The sugar in the soda spikes your insulin, causes a fatty liver, increases triglycerides, lowers good cholesterol, raises bad cholesterol, increases cortisol (the stress hormone), and causes diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and dementia.

The broccoli (if you could actually eat the 7.5 cups!) has the same number of calories but about ½ teaspoon natural sugar and 35 grams fiber and is rich in vitamins and minerals, including folate and magnesium. Broccoli also contains powerful phytonutrients, which are healing plant compounds that help reduce your risk of cancer and boost your detoxification capacity. And broccoli has very little ability to raise your blood sugar. In fact, when it enters your body, the broccoli has the exact opposite effect of the soda. It creates health rather than destroys it. Same calories — very different results.

Clearly, all calories are not the same. It is a matter of quality. So we want to help you focus on becoming a “qualitarian.”

LOW-GLYCEMIC VEGETABLES

Low-glycemic vegetables are your new best friends. Go ahead and fill up on these life-giving plants. They should make up 50 percent of your plate. Keep a list of these as you walk through your grocery store, which is your new FARMacy, where you will find the best medicine for body and soul. Have two or three veggie dishes at dinner. Make a salad with arugula, artichokes, and avocados, and have a side of sautéed zucchini with garlic and olive oil and some roasted mushrooms. Go crazy!

Try some unusual and rare vegetables; they have much higher levels of nutrients and healing phytochemicals than the most common domesticated varieties.

Choose heirloom varieties when possible. Heirloom vegetables are unique varieties that predate all the major plant breeding of the last hundred years. For example: Cherokee purple tomatoes, Touchon carrots, or Black-seeded Simpson lettuce. They pack a more nutrient dense punch. You can often find them at farmer’s markets or community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs.

Mushrooms

Most of us are familiar with white button mushrooms and often use them raw in salads. Don’t do that. They contain cancer-causing toxins when eaten raw. But there are other wonderful members of the mushroom family that have powerful antiinflammatory, cancer preventing, and immune boosting properties. They are also full of minerals and are the best (and one of the only) vegetable sources of vitamin D. Try different and unique mushrooms. They have wonderful textures and flavors. Dr. Hyman puts them in a pan, drizzles with olive oil, garlic, and salt, and roasts them. They are amazing!

Try these mushrooms: oyster, porcini, shitake, maitake, and enoki. You can get these from Asian grocers and in many supermarkets today.

The one type of vegetable you can never get enough of is the cruciferous vegetable family, which includes kale, collards, broccolini, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and bok choy. They contain powerful detoxifying chemicals called glucosinolates that prevent cancer and support your health. We recommend a cup or two every day.

Sea Vegetables

Before you think this is too weird, you have probably already tried seaweed in sushi rolls. It’s that black wrapping around the rice. Seaweed is one of the most nutrient dense, mineral rich, anti-cancer foods on the planet. If you have never tried sea vegetables, be adventurous. Try Seasnax, yummy, crunchy flavored nori snacks. You can add seaweeds such as kombu, arame, and wakame to soups and stews.

Look for them in the international or ethnic foods aisle of the grocery store; for more varieties check an Asian grocery or health food store. Adding kombu when you cook beans reduces their gas-producing effects.

STARCHY VEGGIES

Most of us grew up on peas, carrots, and sweet corn as our side vegetables. These starchy plant foods have a place in a healthy diet. You still want to think of them as a side dish. They are sweeter, and for some people, they can raise blood sugar. But they are full of antioxidants and healing phytonutrients. Use starchy veggies — including beets, carrots, corn, green peas, Jerusalem artichokes/sun chokes, parsnips, potatoes, pumpkin, rutabagas, sweet potatoes or yams, turnips, winter squash — in a larger proportion to grains on your plate.

PHYTONUTRIENTS

Now let’s go back to phytonutrients. Your body is lazy — biochemically, that is. It doesn’t do things one way that it can get done by some other means. The magic of your body is that you can use the power of plants to run important functions that keep you healthy. There is an entire class of compounds (phytonutrients) in our plant foods that work hard to reduce inflammation; rid our bodies of toxins; improve the way our bodies metabolize food and boost calorie burning; optimize immune function; prevent cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and dementia; and contain powerful antioxidants that literally prevent our bodies from rusting and aging too fast.

Detoxifying foods: Cruciferous vegetables are the super detoxification foods. Other natural detoxifiers are green tea, watercress, dandelion greens, cilantro, artichokes, garlic, citrus peels, pomegranate, and even unsweetened cocoa powder (not the sugary hot chocolate kind).

For anti-inflammatory foods, think dark berries and cherries. Eat dark green leafy vegetables and orange sweet potatoes to cut down on inflammation. Curcumin is found in the yellow spice called turmeric and is used in curries and mustards. It is nature’s ibuprofen and the most powerful anti-inflammatory. Add it to stir fries or when you cook grains or make curries.

The Rainbow of Food

Eat from the rainbow of colors (and no, we don’t mean Skittles) in the plant world, and you will be covering all the phytonutrient bases. Think reds, orange, yellows, greens, purple, blue — the darker and deeper the colors, the better they are for you.

Eat at least five to nine servings a day from the rainbow. Explore your supermarket and farmer’s market to find unique and rare or heirloom vegetables. They pack more phytonutrient power in every bite.

Antioxidant-rich foods: These foods prevent aging and promote overall health. They are found in dark berries, black rice, beets, and pomegranates; orange and yellow vegetables such as winter squash; dark green leafy vegetables such as kale, collards, and spinach; and resveratrol-containing fruits such as purple grapes, blueberries, cranberries, and cherries.

Hormone-balancing foods: Foods such as miso, tempeh, and tofu (all of which are whole soy foods) and ground flax seeds help balance hormones and prevent cancer.

Many foods high in phytonutrients are also considered super foods. These are foods richest in high-quality protein, good fats, vitamins, and minerals. These are among the most health-promoting of all the foods you can eat. Visit The Daniel Plan website ( danielplan.com ) for a list of super foods.

GRAINS

Whole grains can be part of a healthy diet, but in moderation. For some, grains can trigger spikes in blood sugar. The key is the amount and what you eat them with. The ideal serving size for grains is ½ cup for men and ⅓ cup for women. You may tolerate more if you are a marathon runner, but for the average Joe or Joanna, the extra sugar can trigger insulin, weight gain, and inflammation.

Give Us Our Daily Bread

Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Eating bread is almost a religious commandment. Unfortunately, the bread we eat today is not the bread of biblical grains. Most bread now is highly processed and made from a different genetic strain of wheat that is higher in starch and contains gluten, a known inflammatory agent. (We will cover this more here .)

Have you ever found yourself overeating from the bread basket? Processed or refined grains have all the fiber and nutrients stripped out of them, so they act just like sugar in your body. If something is made from flour (whether with gluten or gluten free), start thinking of it as a super sugar. If you want to lose weight or have known inflammatory health problems, it is best to eliminate it for a while or keep your intake to a minimum.

Here are a few tips to enjoy better quality bread:

• If you are not gluten sensitive (see here ), then the best bread is whole kernel German rye bread (also made with flax and spelt), made from whole kernel grain, not whole grain flour. It is great toasted with anything on top.
• If you want regular flour bread, be sure that it contains no white flour (also labeled as “wheat flour”) and is made from coarse whole grain flour, with extra protein and fiber ingredients such as nuts and seeds.
• Try sprouted whole grain breads such as Ezekiel 4:9 Whole Grain Sprouted Flax bread by Food for Life, if you are already healthy and fit.
• Change the way you think of bread. Think of it as a treat, to be used sparingly, ideally no more than one slice a day.
• Minimize flour-containing foods such as waffles, muffins, donuts, pretzels, and crackers.
• Try some of the non-flour crackers made from seeds and nuts.

The key is to eat only whole grains, not processed in any way. That means you buy them in their original form, such as oats, wheat berries, and even popcorn. Many packaged foods say “whole grains,” but it is often a little whole grain flour mixed into white flour, sugary cereals, or other products. The ingredient list will tell you what’s really in there.

If you have diabetes or pre-diabetes, you may not even be able to tolerate significant amounts of whole grains in your diet until you correct the underlying metabolic imbalances. So the best grains are the gluten-free grains. Try low-glycemic grains such as black rice (also known as the emperor’s rice), brown rice, red rice, buckwheat, and quinoa. Pastas cooked al dente (cooked just enough to retain some firm texture) are lower glycemic, but flour products should be considered a special treat that you only eat occasionally.

FRUIT

Fruit is a wonderful source of powerful anti-inflammatory, antioxidant phytonutrient compounds. The darker and richer the colors, the more unique and wonderful the fruits, the more power-packed nutrition they contain. We focus on the lower sugar fruits such as berries and apples and pears and use the others as treats in smaller quantities. The average serving size is ½ cup or one piece of fruit. (If you are overweight or have blood sugar issues, then you want to be careful with fruit intake and limit it to one serving a day.) There are plenty of low-glycemic fruits.

• Dark berries. Blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries are rich in phytonutrients. You can get frozen organic versions and put them in shakes or even make great frozen desserts by putting them in the blender.
• Stone fruit. Plums, peaches, nectarines, cherries, and their variants are known as “stone fruit.” They are healthy and full of fiber and healing chemicals and not too high in sugar.
• Pomegranates, kiwis, papayas, and mangos are also wonderful healing fruits.
• Citrus fruits such as grapefruit, oranges, lemons, and limes are great, but it’s best to stay away from juices. They often have as much sugar as soda. (We will explain why when we talk about sugars.)

Limit high-sugar fruits. Melons, pineapple, and grapes are wholesome, but it’s best to eat them in small quantities because of their high Glycemic Index. Also, dried fruit such as apricots, raisins, and currants are the highest in sugar, so use them sparingly. Many dried fruits also contain added sugar. Have one or two figs or dates or 2 tablespoons of raisins or currants as a treat, or mix a small amount with nuts and seeds to make your own trail mix.

POWER UP WITH PROTEIN

The secret to optimal health, fewer cravings, balanced blood sugar, and losing weight is getting high-quality protein in every meal. But where should you get your protein? Americans have come to equate protein with beef, pork, or chicken, and meat is still the centerpiece of most dinner plates at home and in restaurants. The whole debate over veganism or paleo diets confuses people even more.

Science on both sides backs up the health claims. Some studies show that too much animal protein and dairy can cause heart disease and cancer. However, if you compare Spam or deli meats or even feedlot factory-farmed beef to wild and lean buffalo/bison, grass-fed beef, or cage-free chicken, the effects are quite different.

The ironic thing is that vegan and paleo diets are closer to each other than the standard American diet full of sugar, trans fats, and processed foods. Vegan and paleo diets both emphasize whole foods, with lots of fruits and veggies, nuts, and seeds. Some people thrive on vegan diets, and some do poorly. Some feel weighed down by meat. We are all biochemically, metabolically, and genetically quite different.

Each of us has to listen to our own body and honor its uniquenesses. The body never makes a mistake. When we mindlessly put food in our mouths without considering if it is offering our body nutrition or healing, we compound our health issues. So we have to learn what our bodies thrive on and buy the best quality of it.

Bottom line: You want to include good quality protein with every meal, and it should make up about 25 percent of your plate or meal. A serving size is 4 to 6 ounces or about the size of your palm.

What follows are the best sources of protein in your diet.

1. HEALTHY ANIMAL PRODUCTS

If you enjoy animal proteins, whenever possible you want to choose the animal products that have the most to contribute to your health (and the least impact on the planet). You can’t always find the cleanest or lowest impact, most humanely raised animal protein sources, but following these guidelines will shift the food production system, improve your health, and reduce negative environmental impact.

Pick the right poultry. Choose organic, grass-fed, free-range, and hormone-, antibiotic-, and pesticide-free poultry whenever you can. Chicken and turkey are good inexpensive sources of protein. A roast chicken dinner is cheaper than a trip to a fast-food joint for a family of four. Buy higher quality poultry; it should be available at your mainstream grocers. Why not even try ground turkey for your burgers once in a while? For turkey burger recipes, go to danielplan.com or The Daniel Plan Cookbook .

Enjoy omega 3 eggs or free-range eggs. Eggs were given a bad rap for a long time. Omega 3 eggs contain DHA, the ultimate omega 3 fat and brain food. Eggs do not raise your cholesterol; they do just the opposite. Egg yolks also contain choline and B vitamins. Stick with whole eggs, not egg whites.

Go fish. Fish is one of the best sources of protein and omega 3 fats. However, because of the contamination of our oceans and farmed fisheries, finding safe fish is not as easy as it used to be. The best fish to eat are wild-caught and smaller, toxin-free fish such as sardines, tilapia, crawfish, and freshwater trout. Think small fish. If the whole fish can fit in your frying pan, it is probably safe to eat. It is best to stay away from fish with high mercury levels. For a handy wallet card listing fish with the lowest mercury content, go to nrdc.org/health/effects/mercury/walletcard.PDF .

Safe Fish and Meats

Download the app or reference card from seafoodwatch.org , or visit cleanfish.com to find fish companies and types of fish that are sustainably farmed and harvested (not overfished) and low in toxins.

See the Environmental Working Group’s Meat Eater’s Guide at ewg.org/meateatersguide to help you pick the best meat sources for you and the planet.

Get shelled. Shrimp and scallops are also healthy forms of seafood low in toxins and high in good quality protein and minerals. Oysters are among the highest sources of zinc.

Downsize your meat. Choose quality over quantity. Small amounts of lean, organic, grass-fed, and hormone- and antibiotic-free lamb or beef can be a part of a healthy diet. You can even think about buying and freezing a whole animal with your extended family, friends, or church group. Consider trying leaner, more sustainably raised or wild animal products such as bison or buffalo or venison. Eat red meat no more than once or twice a week and no more than 4 to 6 ounces per serving. There are good sources at local health food stores, and many grocery stores are starting to carry better options.

Pork is the least healthy meat. Excess meat consumption has been associated with cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. Avoid charred or blackened meat, which causes cancer because overgrilling creates carcinogens.

2. VEGETARIAN SOURCES OF PROTEIN

Go nuts. Nuts can be part of your protein intake. They are a wonderful source of protein, fiber, minerals, and good fats that satisfy your appetite and reduce the risk of diabetes and heart disease. Nut butters are a great snack. Keep bulk nuts tightly sealed in the pantry or fridge. Eat walnuts, almonds, pecans, and macadamia nuts. Watch portion sizes. A serving is a handful or about 10–12 nuts. Buy raw or lightly toasted, unsalted nuts. Avoid nuts fried or cooked in oils.

Seed your health. Seeds are easy to add to salads, bean or grain dishes, and smoothies, or just enjoy a handful. Try pumpkin, sunflower, and sesame seeds, or add unusual seeds to your diet such as black sesame seeds. (Sprinkle them on eggs or into a stir fry.) Experiment with hemp, chia, and flax seeds; they are rich in omega 3 fats, minerals, and fiber.

Enjoy soy. This is a controversial topic, and many are worried about the harmful effects of soybeans on our health. But the science is straightforward. Stick with traditional whole soy products. These include tempeh, tofu, miso, and natto. They are broken down or fermented to make them easily digestible. Modern industrial soy products, extracted from soybeans in the process of creating soybean oil (which is then used to make trans fats), cause cancer and should be avoided. More than 90 percent of soy in the typical American diet is hidden and made from genetically modified or industrially refined soybeans. So avoid processed soy products, such as those found in deli-meat replacements, soy cheese, or meal-replacement bars.

Beans

Baked beans full of sugar being served as a side to a processed hot dog is how most of us first “tasted” beans. But beans are a wonderful, inexpensive, power-packed source of protein, fiber, vitamins, and minerals. They don’t spike blood sugar for most people, and some simple strategies can make them easier to digest. Buy canned precooked beans (preferably in BPA-free cans), or buy them in bulk and cook them yourself. If you cook them, add a piece of kombu (a seaweed), fennel seeds, or fresh ginger slices to the pot while the beans boil to improve digestibility. You can also take digestive enzymes to help your body digest the beans.

Try different varieties, such as chickpeas, adzuki, Anasazi, mung, kidney, black, or pinto beans, in soups, stews, and in salads. Lentils cook quickly and come in many varieties, including French, red, and regular.

Bulk up on beans or legumes. You can prepare these with a little planning by soaking them overnight and cooking in batches. This is the cheapest bang for your buck. Or you can buy canned beans in toxin-free (bisphenol A-free, or BPA-free) cans for a quick meal or addition to salads, soups, or stews.

HEALING FATS

On The Daniel Plan you get to enjoy many healthful fats. We used to think that fat is all bad and causes heart disease. Here’s the skinny on fats. The good fats such as omega 3s from fish, nuts, seeds, avocados, olives and extra-virgin olive oil, and coconut butter (a plant-derived saturated fat) have been proven to reduce diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and dementia. They lower cholesterol and triglycerides. And they are powerful anti-inflammatory compounds. But more important, they make your food tasty and satisfying.

In one dietary study in Spain, researchers split the study population into three groups. They were all told to eat a basic Mediterranean diet, but one group was given a liter of extra-virgin olive oil a week, another was given 30 grams (about an ounce) of nuts a day, and the last group had only the diet. The groups who had the olive oil and nuts had over a 30 percent reduction in heart attacks and death. ² This is a better result than statin drugs — without any of the side effects. More fat was better.

Fighting Cholesterol

When Tracy Keibler started following The Daniel Plan, her cholesterol dropped. Her total cholesterol dropped from 260 to 207, with an LDL/HDL ratio of 1.6 and Total/HDL ratio of 2.5. Her triglycerides were 48. “All this happened without the use of a statin drug — or any drugs at all!” Tracy says. One of her doctors even told her she was a model patient. But that’s not all.

“More significantly, my arsenal of medications is gone. I no longer require inhalers for asthma, my gastrointestinal issues are gone, and my eczema problems and sinus allergies are substantially better.”

If you eat good quality fats with every meal, you will leave the table satisfied and without cravings. Your blood sugar will be balanced, and your brain will be happy. In fact, 60 percent of your brain is made from fat, specifically DHA. You can get DHA from fish and algae. Every one of your 10 trillion cells is wrapped in fatty membrane. The health of your cells determines your health, and the good fats make healthy cell membranes. (We discuss your brain health in chapter 6 .)

We basically all need an oil change. Swap out the bad fats for the good and watch your health improve, your mood lift, your memory improve, and your skin, hair, and nails glow. So stock your pantry with a variety of healthy fats. Learn to use them. It can be as simple as grabbing a handful of nuts, opening a can of wild salmon, taking a spoonful of creamy coconut butter from the jar, or pouring extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO) over your veggies or salad.

Our favorite sources of good quality healing fats include foods we have already told you about. Fish and seafood are great sources of omega 3 fats (as well as protein and minerals). The best sources of omega 3 fats are sardines, herring, and wild salmon. Keep several cans in your pantry at all times. They are great on salad, or try them with a squirt of lemon and your favorite herb or spice. Nuts and nut butters (without added sugar, salt, or hydrogenated fats) provide monounsaturated fats. Make sure they are raw or lightly roasted. Grab a handful of nuts, or dip apple slices into a nut butter as a snack. Seeds are a fabulous food few people eat. They aren’t just for birds.

Other healthy fats come from olives, avocados, and coconut. Olive oil and olives are rich in monounsaturated fats as well as antioxidant, anti-inflammatory polyphenol phytonutrients. Extra-virgin olive oil, cold-pressed, is the primary oil you should have on hand in your pantry. You can put it in salads or over vegetables, and cook with it on low to medium temperatures; at high temperatures it can oxidize and burn. For high-temperature cooking, use avocado oil or coconut butter/oil. For flavor in cooking, such as in a stir fry, you can use unrefined sesame oil.

Avocados are a wonderful and unusual fruit that contain good monounsaturated fats and powerful anti-inflammatory compounds. Cut one in half and drizzle some balsamic vinegar on top. Put chopped avocados in salads, or mash them into guacamole with some lime juice, chopped tomatoes, diced onion, salt, and pepper. Avocados can make smoothies creamy and can even be used to make a healthy chocolate pudding. (Visit danielplan.com for the recipe “Amazing Avocado Gelato.”)

Extra-virgin coconut butter or oil is an extraordinary super food that contains a special kind of anti-inflammatory saturated fat called lauric acid. It is the best source of the fuel your brain prefers, and it boosts your energy and brain power.

Change Your Oil

Stock your pantry with the following unrefined oils that are good for your body and your brain:

• Extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO), cold-pressed: for dressings, marinades, and cooking over low to medium heat
• Extra-virgin coconut oil, cold-pressed or unrefined: for cooking even at medium high temperatures
• 100% avocado oil: for cooking at higher temperatures, less of this oil goes further than EVOO
• Sesame oil: for cooking when you want to add a bit of flavor

WHAT ABOUT DRINKS?

We are going to have to tell you that your taste buds have been hijacked. Soda, sports drinks, flavored syrup-filled coffees, sweetened teas, juices, diet drinks, and energy drinks are super highways to obesity, cravings, and brain chemistry problems.

The single best and easiest thing you can do for your health is to recalibrate your taste buds and learn to enjoy pure clean water. You can add lemon or lime or herbs, have it sparkling or still, but you need about six to eight glasses of water a day.

Water should be your staple. The ideal water is filtered (to remove chlorine, pesticides, and other chemicals and bugs), comes from your tap, and is stored in a glass or stainless steel container.

Other drinks to enjoy if you want a little variety:

• Herbal teas. Simply put a few bags in a big glass jar, pour boiling water on top, let it steep, and then put in the fridge.
• Green tea. Plain iced green tea is a refreshing drink and packs a powerful healing punch.
• Mint leaves, orange wedges, or cucumber slices. Add them to your water for a little flavor.
• Coffee. A cup in the morning is an okay way to start the day, but too much coffee can raise your blood pressure and heart rate, increase anxiety, cause bone loss, and lead to even greater fatigue and insomnia. (See here for more on coffee.)

DON’T EVER BE IN A FOOD EMERGENCY AGAIN

We understand that busy lives make it challenging to find and eat good whole foods. We are on the go constantly. Every day, most Americans live in a constant state of busyness. They often skip breakfast or are at the mercy of the local coffee chain that offers high-sugar coffees and donuts or muffins or scones (which sound like a health food but are really giant sugar cookies in disguise). Then, at work there are bowls of candy and vending machines full of soda. On the way home, fast- food restaurants and convenience stores lure you in with a “quick fix” for your hunger. We live in a toxic nutritional wasteland, so the last place you want to find yourself is in a food emergency.

What is a food emergency? When your blood sugar starts to drop, you are hard-wired to eat anything (and everything) in sight. To think you can use willpower to control your hunger or cravings contradicts the science of how your brain controls your behavior. The more willpower you try to use, the more it backfires eventually. How often do you find yourself automatically overeating and bingeing, or just eating whatever happens to be in front of you?

But there is a solution — a simple, practical idea that most of us never think about: planning and bringing food with us. If you were a type 1 diabetic, you would not leave the house without your insulin syringe or a packet of sugar. If you did, your life would be at risk. If you had a severe peanut allergy, you wouldn’t go anywhere without your Epi-pen. One sniff of peanut dust, and you could die without your protection.

While you may not die in an hour when you get hungry, you will get sick and fat and live a shorter, poorer life if you regularly find yourself in a food emergency. You will repeatedly choose poor quality, high sugar, refined foods and eat more than you need. A few things that will keep you from a food emergency include starting your day with a healthy balanced breakfast, eating every three to four hours, hydrating your body throughout the day, and stocking an emergency food kit.

We recommend that everyone create an emergency food pack; it will be your food safety net. Find your favorite things to include; the choices are plentiful. Stock these packs in your home, your travel bag or purse, your car, and your workplace with key rations for any food emergency. If you didn’t have time to eat breakfast, what could you grab for the car? Or if you get busy at work, what can you find in your drawer to get you through the day, or what is at the ready in the late afternoon if you start to droop?

We recommend protein for many of the choices, because protein controls your appetite and balances your blood sugar over long periods of time. Protein snacks keep on giving, but without the quick rush and crash we get from most “snack foods” that leave us more hungry and tired. If you wait until you are hungry, you will make irrational decisions. So set yourself up to make better choices by having nutritious choices around you.

Dr. Hyman’s Go-To Travel Food Emergency Pack

When I am on the road, my health is in jeopardy every time I step out of my controlled environment. Airports, hotel minibars, and bad restaurants are often food deserts. So I bring food with me and make it a rule never to eat on planes or in airports (although increasingly you can find edible whole foods in airports; you just have to know how to hunt and gather!). I never leave home without these things, and I keep a good stock in my pantry, so I can just throw them in my bag. They take up little space and pack a powerful nutritional punch.

• Wild salmon jerky
• Grass-fed beef or turkey jerky
• Packets of coconut butter and macadamia nut butter
• Raw protein food bars
• Organic almonds
• Organic macadamia nuts
• Organic dates

With a little bit of planning and shopping, we can stay healthy and out of food emergencies. Get a few glass containers with lids and sandwich baggies to put your snacks in. Buy an insulated lunch box or mini-cooler to put your food in. These are just ideas, and you can innovate, but make sure you include food with good quality protein, good fats, and low sugar content.

Snack Items

Stock these items in your pantry; they keep forever:

• Canned wild salmon or sardines
• Flax or seed crackers
• Jerky (bison, grass-fed beef, or turkey)
• Salmon jerky
• Nuts and seeds
• Nut butter packets
• Coconut butter packets
• Whole food or raw food protein bars
• Artichoke hearts
• Roasted red peppers

Prepare a few easy, on-the-go snacks:

• Garbanzo beans with olive oil, lemon, garlic, and salt
• Hard-boiled eggs
• Hummus
• Cut-up carrots, cucumbers, peppers, and celery
• Apples or pears

It is also a good idea to stock a few treats:

• Dark chocolate (70%)
• Dried figs
• Dates

WHAT ABOUT VITAMINS?

Overwhelming basic science and experimental data support the use of nutritional supplements for the prevention of disease and the support of optimal health. Vitamins don’t work for everything, but they are critical for every chemical reaction and physiologic function of your body.

There are thousands of nutritional supplements on the market. Which ones should you take? Just trying to figure it out can be confusing, but it is actually quite simple. For most of us, a simple multivitamin and mineral, an omega 3 fat supplement, and vitamin D3 are all we need. There are other supplements that can benefit people as they age or for those with different conditions. You can read more about those online on danielplan.com .

FOOD CRAVINGS AND ADDICTION

If I asked you to hold your breath underwater for fifteen minutes and promised to give you $1 million if you did it, could you do it? Of course not! We can’t live without oxygen. Our brains are hardwired to crave it. Most of our brains also crave sugar. It is simply a survival mechanism. So if you believe willpower can rescue you from bad eating habits and cravings for junk food, sugar, or refined carbs, forget it. You might as well try to hold your breath for an hour.

It is a matter of hormones and brain chemistry. Fix those two things, and your cravings will go away in a couple of days (not for oxygen, though!). It is hard to imagine but true.

In the book Salt Sugar Fat , Michael Moss reveals that the food industry has intentionally and scientifically designed the hyper-processed, hyper-palatable, sugar-laden food to make us addicted — not metaphorically, but actually physically addicted. Think heroin lollipops or morphine muffins. The industry designed “craving experts” to find the “bliss point” of foods. Brain imaging studies confirm that these foods light up the parts of the brain that respond to opiates like heroin and stimulate hunger and cravings. In fact, sugar is more addictive than cocaine. ³ No wonder we have cravings!

Tame the Four Hormones of the Apocalypse

It’s easy to get your key hormones in balance. Here’s how to cut the cravings:

• Cut out sugar and white flour. Go cold turkey.
• Cut out all artificial sweeteners.
• Increase fiber.
• Eat protein for breakfast.
• Eat a handful of nuts 15 minutes before a meal to cut your appetite.
• Stop night-time eating and bingeing.
• Focus on portion size. Learn appropriate portion sizes for lean proteins and whole grains.
• Wait 20 minutes before eating a second portion. It takes that long for food to hit the lower part of your small intestine and trigger PPY, the hormone that is a powerful brake on your appetite.
• Put your fork down between bites. It will slow you down, and by the time you get to seconds, you won’t want any.
• Increase exercise, which you will read about in the next chapter .
• Sleep at least 7 to 8 hours a night. Those who lost even one or two hours of sleep a night craved more carbs and ended up eating more during the day. ⁴
• Breathe. The simplest and fastest way to relax and reduce cortisol is to take five breaths. Count to five on the in breath, and count to five on the out breath. Do it five times.
• Play, which is a form of fitness, is something we do without thinking when we are young. It is a wonderful way to lower cortisol.
• Give and receive — one of the most powerful healing and restorative things in the world.

There are four key hormones that drive our brain chemistry and control our appetite and metabolism. We call these the “four hormones of the apocalypse.” If you learn simple tricks to regain control of these hormones, your cravings will vanish quickly, usually in less than forty-eight hours. If you get these hormones under control, all the rest often resets automatically:

1. Insulin is produced in large quantities by the pancreas in response to sugar or starch that triggers fat storage in the belly and interferes with appetite control centers in the brain, making you hungry and craving more sugar and carbs.
2. Ghrelin is the hunger hormone produced in the stomach. Most of the ways we eat and live cause this hunger hormone to spike.
3. PYY (peptide YY) is produced in the intestine and puts the brakes on your appetite.
4. Cortisol is the stress hormone produced by the adrenal glands and during chronic stress causes hunger, storage of belly fat, and loss of muscle.

The beauty of adding food that heals, nourishes, and satisfies you deeply is that it will almost effortlessly shift your body and mind into a different state — a state where your cravings are gone, where your willpower is not needed because you naturally crave what makes you thrive and feel good. By adding simple habits — sleeping a bit more, moving your body, calming your mind, breathing, playing, serving — you will gradually, day by day, shift into a profound capacity for self-care and healing. Fulfillment, living with purpose, and well-being are the natural result.

Now that you have learned that food is medicine, that real food has the power to create a healthy life, and exactly what foods you can eat for the most powerful, life-giving energy, it is time to have a look at what we have been eating that we thought was food, but isn’t, and how to avoid life-robbing, disease-promoting, obesity-inducing foods.

The Cravings Stopped

Pastor Tom Crick had heard other people on The Daniel Plan say things like “You know, you will get over that after a little while. You’ll stop craving sodas or sugar.” Yeah, right, he thought.

As he focused on eating The Daniel Plan way, it started to change. “I found out that it’s really true. I started to not crave those things anymore. I could taste the natural sugars in fruit and things like that. . . . Wow, a strawberry is really sweet! I never noticed before, because I was so used to artificial sugars.”

FOODS THAT HARM:
WHAT SHOULD WE AVOID?

JUST AS FOOD HAS THE POWER TO HEAL US , it also has the power to harm us. The single biggest cause of our chronic disease epidemic, of a nation that is no longer thriving, is the poor quality of our food. It’s hard to imagine that we feed ourselves and our children food that we wouldn’t even feed our dog. Would you give your dog a cheeseburger, fries, and a soda? We hope not. Then why would you feed them to your kid? Why is there even such a thing as “kid’s food” or a “kid’s menu”? Guess what kids eat in Spain. Spanish food! What do kids eat in Indonesia? Indonesian food.

We have been convinced that changing what we eat is hard. No wonder! In many communities in America there are ten times as many fast-food joints and convenience stores as supermarkets or produce markets. The average American consumes ten pounds of chemical additives a year. The more additives, typically the fewer the nutrients.

“My house had only two things on the menu: take it, or leave it.”

— Dr. Hyman

So we also want to educate you about the non-food or food-like substances that are hiding in the things we eat every day. Here’s a simple way to know whether a food is non-food: If it takes longer to read and understand the label than to eat it, it’s probably not food. If it has “ingredients” that your great-grandmother would not have used in cooking meals for her family, then likely it is not food.

Food contains calories, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, fiber, vitamins and minerals, phytonutrients, and plant genes where the sum of the whole food is far greater than any one ingredient. But over the last century, our food has been overthrown by anti-nutrients — food-like substances that often were never or have never been proven safe, such as chemically altered sugars; addictive, inflammatory super starches containing genetically transformed flour; processed fats, preserved with chemicals to make them last for years and colored with dyes to make them enticing. Factory foods are loaded with toxic fats, sugars, and salt.

These may seem convenient and inexpensive, but the real cost of eating these foods is depleting our health and human capital, not to mention what a chemically dependent agriculture system does to the environment. One pound of factory-farmed meat requires 2,000 gallons of water and produces 53 times as much greenhouse gases as a pound of vegetables. ⁵ (Both the Environment Working Group [ ewg.org ] and CleanFish [ cleanfish.com ] offer more information on how to reduce the environmental impact by intelligently choosing your food.) So what you eat is way more than just about your hungry stomach or your waistline. It affects everything!

THE WHITE MENACES

One of the biggest threats to our health is the dramatic increase of sugar in all forms in our diet in the last hundred years. Hunter-gatherer populations consumed about 22 teaspoons of sugar a year; now the average American consumes 22 to 30 teaspoons of sugar every single day. ⁶ In 1800, the average person consumed 5 pounds per year; ⁷ now we average 152 pounds a year. ⁸ Our bodies are not designed to handle that amount of sugar. Paracelsus, the ancient Greek physician said, “The dose makes the poison.” At the current dose, sugar is poison. The average 20-ounce soda has 15 teaspoons of sugar. Would you put that much in your cup of coffee or tea?

Sugar has many names: cane sugar, evaporated cane juice, brown sugar, dextrose, agave, maple syrup, honey, and of course, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), which is now the single biggest source of calories in our diet. All of these are harmful when eaten in excess. Sugar-sweetened drinks like soda now make up 15 percent of the calories consumed by the average American. One can of soda a day increases a kid’s risk of obesity by 60 percent and women’s chance of getting diabetes by more than 80 percent. ⁹

Other dangers are refined or processed white foods that spike blood sugar, but we don’t think of them as sugar. They are white flour, white rice, and white pasta. These white foods act like sugar in the body. We should substitute with better options, such as bread made from whole kernel rye, or black or brown rice.

Since 1950, more than 600,000 packaged and processed foods have been introduced into the marketplace. Eighty percent of them are full of sugar, often tablespoons and tablespoons, hidden and disguised by all sorts of names. ¹⁰ It is in bread, ketchup, and salad dressings. In fact, the average serving of commercial spaghetti sauce has more sugar than a serving of chocolate sandwich cookies, which is why later in this chapter we will show you how to effectively read labels.

The Varieties of Sugar

Familiar Sugars (not healthy, just real)

Hidden Sugars or Toxic Sugars

WHY SUGAR IS THE MAIN CAUSE OF DISEASE

Since low-fat dietary recommendations in the early 1980s (which we all thought were good for us at the time), we have doubled our rates of obesity in adults and tripled it in kids, and the rate of type 2 diabetes around the world has increased sevenfold. In fact, today in America, one in two people have pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes. We have seen the number of people with heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, dementia, depression, and infertility skyrocket. (Actually, to diagnose cancer, doctors give patients radioactive sugar. The sugar then goes straight to the cancer, and it lights up on the PET scan.)

Sugar triggers a cascade of changes in your body that make you sick and fat. Here’s what happens:

1. You eat quickly absorbed sugar or refined carbohydrates (like white flour).
2. Your blood sugar spikes.
3. Your insulin levels spike.
4. Insulin triggers the storage of belly fat and increases your appetite and sugar cravings.
5. The sugar (particularly the fructose in high fructose corn syrup) turns on a cholesterol factory in your liver (called lipogenesis), increasing LDL (bad cholesterol), lowering HDL (good cholesterol), and raising triglycerides.
6. This leads to a fatty liver (now affecting 60 to 90 million Americans). ¹¹

All of this increases something called insulin resistance , where your cells become numb to the effects of insulin, requiring more and more insulin to keep your blood sugar normal. This is the major cause of all age-related chronic disease (such as heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, cancer, type 2 diabetes, and dementia.)

Your body makes more and more insulin, triggering more and more belly fat and inflammation. This inflammation is at the root of most chronic diseases. Whew! Even if someone doesn’t yet have type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance is the major cause of heart attacks, strokes, many cancers, and even dementia (now called type 3 diabetes).

Bottom line: Sugar is an occasional treat. When you have sugar, stick with traditional, natural forms: raw sugar, raw honey, natural fruit sugars, pure maple syrup. Stay away from all the rest. Use it in things you make yourself, but sparingly, and use The Daniel Plan recipes on the website and in The Daniel Plan Cookbook as a guide to healthy desserts. Avoid all hidden and added sugars by carefully reading labels.

You can use whole fruit or fruit juices in small amounts as natural sweeteners in healthy desserts. As you start to eat real food, your cravings and addiction will be replaced by deep pleasure and satisfaction for naturally sweet things.

Liquid Death: Don’t Drink Your Calories

If there was one thing you could do to dramatically improve your health and lose weight, it would be this: Don’t drink liquid sugar calories. This means soda, sports drinks, flavored coffees or teas, energy drinks, and juices (except fresh-made green vegetable juice).

Here’s what liquid calories do:

• They get deposited and become that dreaded belly fat.
• They turn your liver into a fat factory triggering more insulin resistance and starting a vicious cycle.
• They mess with your head by increasing your appetite and keeping you from feeling full, so you eat more than you normally would in a day.

Bottom line: Stick to water or unsweetened, non-caffeinated teas.

THE SPECIAL CASE OF FRUCTOSE

We can tolerate sugar in small amounts and as an occasional treat. One good source of sugar is real whole fruit (not juice or concentrate). The truth is, fructose that you get from eating fruit is fine because it is packaged in fiber and full of vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients.

The problem is when the fructose is taken out of the fruit — which is how we get high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Avoid HFCS at all costs. If you do nothing else to change your diet, make this one change and be relentless about it.

ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS

Since sugar causes so many health problems, why not switch to artificial sweeteners and diet foods made with these alternatives? If losing weight were all about the calories, then consuming diet drinks would seem like a good idea. A fourteen-year study of more than 65,000 women found that the opposite seems to be true. Diet drinks may be worse than sugar-sweetened drinks. ¹²

There is no free ride. Diet drinks are not good substitutes for sugar-sweetened drinks. They also increase cravings, weight gain, and type 2 diabetes. And they are addictive. Watch for the hidden names of artificial or non-caloric or non-absorbed sweeteners such as aspartame, acesulfame, and sucralose; and sugar alcohols such as malitol and xylitol and anything else that ends in OL.

WHAT ABOUT STEVIA?

Stevia seems like the perfect alternative to help avoid the dangers of artificial sweeteners such as aspartame. It comes from a plant. It’s all natural. It has no calories. The Guarani Indians in Paraguay have used it since the sixteenth century. It sounds perfect. Until 1995 it was banned from the United States because of heavy lobbying by the makers of aspartame, an artificial sweetener. When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finally acted on it in 1995, it was approved as a dietary supplement sold in health food stores. This form of stevia is a good alternative.

However, read labels carefully, since some manufacturers have found a way to extract the bitter parts of the plant and keep just the sweet taste, turning what was potentially a better sweetener into a refined food substance. They isolated the sweet chemical called “rebauside A,” or “reb A” for short.

Instead, go for the original whole plant extract, which you can find in health food stores or supermarkets. It comes in liquid or powder form. Keep in mind that sweets are treats, not staples.

As you follow The Daniel Plan, your taste buds will wake up to the wonderful taste of real food, you won’t feel deprived, and your daily cravings will go away.

At this point you may be thinking you want to give up right now. No sugar? Really? The fact is, natural sugars found in fruit and some vegetables can taste incredibly sweet once you reclaim your taste buds. Life can still be very sweet without highly processed, refined sugars and artificial sweeteners. If you focus on real foods — foods that are naturally sweet such as fruit and even sweet vegetables — and learn to enjoy them, you won’t miss the junk. And if you try junk again, it will taste extremely sweet. Try roasted vegetables or sweet potatoes. Even kids love them. Dark chocolate is also a wonderful treat in small amounts. There is always room for sweet treats in moderation.

THE BAD FATS

The science of fat is so mixed up that it’s no wonder everyone is confused. Thankfully, the new U.S. Dietary Guidelines are moving in the right direction, encouraging us to eat the right kinds of fats — which we already covered — and to avoid the bad ones.

There are two main classes of fats that are bad for us: trans fat, and processed and refined vegetable oils. Think of clear or yellow oils sold in big jugs used by most Americans and sold as vegetable, soybean, corn, or canola oil (previously called rapeseed and not a human food until recently). These are called omega 6 oils or polyunsaturated fats. They are inflammatory. And by now, you know what inflammation leads to in your body!

Switch out these oils for ones that benefit your body and brain (see here ). The exception is that you can use small amounts of unrefined oils — often called cold-pressed or expeller-pressed — such as from grape seeds, sesame seeds, or walnuts for cooking at home. And, of course, you can use extra-virgin olive oil and coconut oil.

Trans fats are poisons and, next to high fructose corn syrup, the most deadly ingredient in our food supply. There is no safe limit. There is no reason to ever eat them.

They are made in a factory where liquid vegetable oil (usually from soybeans) is chemically treated under high pressure to make it solid at room temperature. It improves shelf-life dramatically, which is why cookies can stay on the shelf for years and shortening is perfectly good to make piecrust from after thirty years in the cupboard. Yes, it improves shelf life. But do you know why they call it “shortening”? It shortens your life!

Trans fats increase your risk of the following health problems:

• Increased bad cholesterol and lower good cholesterol
• Risk of heart attack
• Obesity and type 2 diabetes
• Cancer
• Impaired brain functioning and dementia
• Increased inflammation

You will find trans fats in packaged baked goods, cookies, cakes, crackers, fried fast foods, chips, and popcorn. Walk down the aisle of any supermarket and try to find any food without “hydrogenated fat” on the nutrition label. Yes, trans fats are now labeled, but the food policy permits the label to say “zero trans fats” if the product has less than 2 grams per serving. Frozen whipped topping is made from water, hydrogenated fat, and high fructose corn syrup as the main ingredients, yet the label says “0 trans fats” because a serving has less than 0.5 grams. Call it legalized lying.

How Does What We Eat Affect the Planet?

The things you put on your fork have the power to affect not only your health, but also agricultural practices, climate change, and even our economy. One church member told us about Nigerian farmers he met who were given seed by a large agricultural company at a cheaper price than their regular seed, but then the seeds from that crop couldn’t be replanted. (They are designed that way.) The farmers then were forced to buy the seed from the same company at a higher price the next year and eventually couldn’t afford to farm.

This pattern of industrial agricultural practices not only has impacted the quality of the food you eat, but also creates hunger in little children in Africa. When you stop buying industrial food, it has an enormous ripple effect. The power of your fork can change the world.

When it comes to our health and the health of the planet, we have a lot more to learn and study, but we don’t need all the answers in order to take action. We can each make choices to buy more whole foods, sustainably raised animals, locally grown produce, and more. Just as we’ve learned that certain fats are good for us and others are destructive, we can learn what agricultural and food practices are best for us, too.

FACTORY-MADE SCIENCE PROJECTS

Other than getting rid of high fructose corn syrup and trans fat, the best thing you can do for your health is to avoid factory-made science projects with weird and strange molecules that haven’t been made by God in nature.

Many common food additives cause everything from uncontrollable hunger and binge eating (blame MSG), to headaches, allergies, and damage to your gut. A few simple rules will protect you and your family from fake food substances.

Eat under five. Check a label for less than five ingredients that are all real foods such as tomatoes, water, and salt.

Beware of MSG in all its hidden forms. It not only causes headaches and brain fog, but is also used in animal experiments to induce overeating and bingeing in mice and rats to fatten them up to create an animal model to study obesity. MSG makes you hungry and binge, and it triples your insulin production, leading to storage of belly fat. Hidden names for MSG include . . .

• Any “flavors” or “flavoring”
• Anything containing “enzymes”
• Anything “enzyme modified”
• Anything “hydrolyzed”
• Anything with the word “glutamate” in it
• Autolyzed plant protein
• Autolyzed yeast
• Barley malt
• Bouillon and broth
• Carrageenan
• Gelatin
• Glutamate
• Glutamic acid sodium
• Hydrolyzed plant protein (HPP)
• Hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP)
• Malt extract
• Maltodextrin
• Monosodium glutamate
• Natural seasonings
• Protease
• Stock
• Textured protein
• Umami
• Vegetable protein extract
• Yeast extract
• Yeast food or nutrient

What Am I Eating?

“I had to eat an MRE — meals ready to eat — while I was working after the earthquake in Haiti. When I read the label of the chicken and dumplings, there were more than 50 ingredients. I recognized almost none of them and couldn’t pronounce most of them. In fact, I couldn’t find chicken on the label — it was a ‘chicken-like substance.’”

— Dr. Hyman

Eat organic , if you can afford it, to avoid pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics in food. Plenty of evidence reveals that pesticides and herbicides harm your brain and cause cancer. While you can’t avoid all chemicals, you can greatly reduce your exposure by eating more organic foods. It is a bit more expensive, but being selective here can help the budget and your health. See the list here for the best foods to eat organic. For dairy, we suggest buying organic and eating less. Organic foods have about 25 percent more nutrients than conventionally grown plant foods. Beef, poultry, and eggs are also items that are better for you if organic or sustainably raised. If more people used organics, the prices would come down.

Eat sustainably . Try to buy sustainably raised animals and animal products when you can. This will help you avoid pesticides, antibiotics, and hormones. Look for the terms grass fed , pasture raised , freerange or organic, or made without hormones and antibiotics . Ask your butcher where things come from and how they were raised.

Avoid the Most Common Additives and Chemicals in Food

• MSG (monosodium glutamate)
• Artificial sweeteners
• Soy protein isolate (processed soy extract that causes cancer in animals)
• Sodium and calcium caseinate (toxic dairy extract)
• Phosphoric acid (dipotassium phosphate and tricalcium phosphate)
• Artificial flavors (often containing MSG)
• Carrageenan (can cause leaky gut and inflammation)
• Colors and dyes (yellow dye #5 or tartrazine and others)
• Sulfites (cause allergies and inflammation)
• Nitrites and nitrates (in processed and deli meats and causes cancer)

WHAT ABOUT CAFFEINE?

Most Americans, along with millions of people around the world, love coffee. It is made from coffee beans, a plant food. There are pros and cons of coffee.

The Cons:

• Increases stress hormones, anxiety, and irritability
• Increases blood pressure and heart rate
• Increases insulin
• Being addictive, can cause headaches in withdrawal
• Interferes with sleep and causes insomnia
• Can cause acid reflux and heartburn
• Can cause palpitations
• Can cause loss of minerals, such as magnesium and calcium, in the urine
• Being a diuretic, can cause dehydration
• Causes short-term energy but increases fatigue later

The Pros:

• Increases focus and concentration
• Enhances sports performance
• Can help constipation
• May be linked to lower risk of prostate cancer, dementia, stroke, and heart failure
• May lower risk of diabetes
• Smells good and tastes great

Bottom line: If you enjoy a cup of coffee in the morning, enjoy it. But we are talking real, fresh coffee — not the sugar and dairy-laden large mocha latte. Be mindful of what you put in it, and we recommend no more than one to two cups a day. Everyone has a different tolerance and response to coffee. Notice yours. The only exception is that we encourage you to try The Daniel Plan Detox recalibration. That’s when we suggest you avoid stimulants and sedatives to see how you really feel. (See here for information on the detox plan.)

What about Alcohol?

Wine, beer, and spirits have been around almost as long as the human race. But it is controversial for moral, personal, and medical reasons.

Be aware that in doses of more than one or two glasses, alcohol becomes a poison, and it is a source of high calories and sugar that can significantly contribute to weight gain. Too much alcohol causes damage to your gut lining, damages your liver, and increases blood sugar and insulin. It can also cause inflammation, disrupt hormones, cause brain atrophy, and deplete your vitamin levels. One glass may bring health benefits, but more than two can bring harm.

Unfortunately, alcohol addiction is common and robs people and their families of their lives. For those with addiction or prone to addiction, abstinence is the best medicine. (If someone you love is struggling with an alcohol addiction, you can find out how to help them at celebraterecovery.com .) Also, if you have a high risk of breast cancer, are prone to mental health problems, have liver or digestive problems, have a personal or family history of alcoholism, or are allergic to sulfites in wine, then you shouldn’t consume any alcohol.

FOOD SENSITIVITIES AND ALLERGIES

The old saying goes that what is one man’s medicine is another man’s poison. Nowhere is this truer than when it comes to our different responses to food. And nowhere in medicine is there more controversy, superstition, and confusion than there is surrounding the subject of food allergies, sensitivities, and illness.

As a doctor in active medical practice, Dr. Hyman has had at his disposal two powerful medicines for treating, reversing, and even curing hundreds of diseases. These medicines are (1) addressing hidden food sensitivities and food allergies, and (2) getting people to eat real foods. The science of functional medicine (his specialty) is about connecting the dots and treating your body as a holistic system, not just focusing on symptoms.

The two most common foods that trigger reactions are gluten (found in wheat, barley, rye, spelt, and oats) and dairy. These foods trigger inflammation, which is the root of autoimmune diseases (suffered by 24 to 50 million Americans); ¹³ arthritic, allergic, and asthmatic diseases, which are all on a steep rise; diabetes; dementia; obesity; depression; heart disease; and autism.

So why are we seeing an epidemic of inflammatory disease in this country? Is it a sudden genetic mutation that has millions of us overreacting to foods we have apparently eaten for thousands of years?

The answer is no.

We have to start looking for delayed or hidden food reactions that cause inflammation. These reactions might be hard to detect. If you eat bread on Monday, you might get a migraine on Wednesday, or just generally feel bloated, or have brain fog, or gain weight and become pre-diabetic. The symptoms can be vague: fatigue, bloating, brain fog, food cravings, sinus congestion or post nasal drip, acne, eczema, psoriasis, irritable bowels, acid reflux, headaches, joint pains, trouble sleeping, asthma, and more.

The food allergies we are referring to are different. They are lowgrade reactions that cause problems over a long period of time and lead to chronic rather than acute illnesses. These may affect up to 50 percent of the population.

There are blood tests for these reactions, and if you are concerned that you have a serious gluten sensitivity or celiac disease, you should get the proper blood tests. However, for most of us a two-to-six-week trial of eliminating these foods will tell you more than any tests. Your body has infinite wisdom. Listen to it. What symptoms get better? How do you feel? Do you lose weight?

The rise of these food sensitivities now is directly related to what we’ve been eating. Our processed, low-fiber, high-sugar diet alters the bacteria that live in our digestive system. You have 500 species of bugs in there. The bacteria outnumber your cells 10 to 1, and you have 100 times more bacterial DNA in you than your own DNA. What research shows is the existence of “leaky gut,” where food proteins leak across a damaged intestinal lining and activate your immune system. When you eat processed food, you change your gut flora and foster the growth of bad bugs that promote inflammation. Add to that the gutbusting drugs we use — antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, acid blockers, and steroids — combined with our stressful lives, and we have the perfect environment for a leaky gut.

What about Dairy?

Americans have been taught that we need milk, that without it kids will not grow up to be big and strong and old ladies’ bones will dissolve in a heap from osteoporosis. We have been taught that milk is nature’s perfect food. It is. For a calf! Humans are the only species that drinks milk after weaning. More than 75 percent of the world’s population is lactose intolerant (having the inability to digest the sugar in milk), and dairy causes bloating, gas, and diarrhea. Beyond lactose intolerance, the adverse immune responses to the proteins in dairy abound, including congestion, asthma, sinus problems, kids’ ear infections, rashes and eczema, autoimmune diseases, and type 1 diabetes. We encourage everyone to take a dairy holiday and eliminate dairy for at least ten days but up to forty days to see how you feel. Along with gluten (see here ), dairy is one of the most inflammatory foods in our diet.

Some people may tolerate dairy in small amounts. If you want to include dairy and find that you tolerate it, here is how to minimize your risk:

• Try sheep or goat milk or cheese.
• Choose dairy products that are organic and from pasture-raised animals.
• Stick with hard cheeses rather than processed cheeses.
• Use more easily digested forms of dairy such as kefir or plain yogurt, which contain beneficial bacteria.

Then you get a stomach flu or traveler’s diarrhea or take one more course of antibiotics, and — wham! — suddenly you get a leaky gut. Your immune system (60 percent of which lies right under your intestinal lining) gets exposed to food and bacterial particles. Your normal balance is disrupted. You can’t digest food properly or determine friend from foe, and your immune system creates an abnormal reaction to something pretty normal — the food you eat.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HEAL

We can do many things to deal with delayed food allergies or sensitivities, rebalance our systems, and get rid of our chronic symptoms.

Here are a few things you can do to heal your leaky gut:

1. For ten to forty days, stop eating gluten and dairy 100 percent. Even 99 percent won’t do the trick. Your immune system responds to microscopic things. We designed The Daniel Plan Detox to give you a meal plan that cuts out dairy and gluten (see here ).
2. After you have been off those foods for ten to forty days, add one back in every three days and monitor your symptoms in The Daniel Plan Journal to track what causes symptoms that can be delayed by two-to-forty-eight hours after eating the food.
3. Take a probiotic (healthy beneficial bacteria) to help regulate your immune system. Look for brands in the health food store or online from reputable sources that contain a mixture of beneficial bacteria, including Lactobacillus rhamnosus and Bifidobacterium, with at least 30 to 50 billion organisms per dose. Foods that contain probiotics include sauerkraut, kimchi, miso or tempeh, and kombucha. Unsweetened yogurt and kefir are fine if you are not sensitive to dairy.
4. Add more fiber to your diet (see here ).
5. Digestive enzymes help break down food and make it less likely to cause an allergic reaction. Look for broad-spectrum enzymes that contain proteases, amylases, and lipases. They can be either plant or animal derived. There are natural enzymes in your digestive tract, which is how you break down food, but when you have a leaky gut, they may not work as well.
6. Take a good multivitamin and fish oil (1 to 2 grams a day, certified free of metals and other toxins), which contains nutrients that help the digestive system heal.
7. Other nutrients can be helpful to heal a leaky gut, including zinc, vitamin A, evening primrose oil, and glutamine.

If problems persist, consider testing for IgG allergens with a blood test and working with a doctor trained in dealing with food allergies. (See functionalmedicine.org to find a doctor trained in Functional Medicine.)

IS WHEAT DANGEROUS? THE PROBLEM WITH GLUTEN

The heirloom biblical wheat of our ancestors is something modern humans never eat. Instead, we eat dwarf wheat, the product of genetic manipulation and hybridization, that created short, stubby, hardy, high-yielding wheat plants with much higher amounts of starch and gluten. The man who engineered this modern wheat won the Nobel Prize because it promised to feed millions of starving people around the world. Well, it has. But it brought some issues with it.

The average American eats 146 pounds of flour a year. ¹⁴

This type of wheat also contains special forms of a protein called gluten , the glue-like protein that makes dough sticky. Gluten is found in wheat barley, rye, spelt, oats, and kamut and holds bread together and makes it rise. The dwarf wheat grown in the United States has changed the quality and type of gluten proteins in wheat, creating much higher gluten content, and creating a supergluten that causes celiac disease and autoimmune antibodies.

Combine this with the damage our guts have suffered from our diet, environment, lifestyle, and medications, and now you know why gluten intolerance is on the rise. This super gluten crosses our leaky guts and gets exposed to our immune system. Our immune system reacts as if gluten is something foreign, and it sets off the fires of inflammation in an attempt to eliminate it. However, this inflammation is not selective, so it begins to attack our cells.

Low-level inflammation from gluten that is not celiac disease has been shown to increase heart attacks by more than 35 percent and cancer by more than 70 percent. ¹⁵ That is why elimination of gluten and food allergens or sensitivities can be a powerful way to prevent and reverse obesity, diabetes, and so many other chronic diseases.

Gluten-Free Worked for Me

On a visit to Saddleback Church, Dr. Hyman talked about how you could be following the principles of The Daniel Plan and still feel unwell. So if that was the case, you should try going off gluten. When Cindy Sproul heard him say that, she perked up. “A little bell went off in my head. That’s why I’m still not feeling well , I thought. I had been having migraine headaches probably weekly for three or four years. That day, I went off gluten and within three days, I didn’t have a headache left.

“I was thinking clearer. I didn’t have stiffness and swelling in my hands and joints. I had more energy and felt reignited.”

Bottom line: If you have any chronic illness, are overweight, or just want to see how good you can feel, try a gluten-free diet for ten to forty days. It is a powerful way to identify the cause of chronic health problems. Combined with dairy elimination, it can cure many diseases, accelerate weight loss, and renew your body and mind.

THE DANIEL PLAN DETOX

We recommend that everyone start with a ten-day (which you can extend to forty days) Daniel Plan Detox to jump-start the healing process, reboot your system, and discover the power of reclaiming your body and mind by letting go of the things that can harm you and adding in the things that can heal you. Using the power of healing foods, your body and mind will quickly transform, and you will realize just how well you can feel and how quickly it can happen.

Why Should I Do The Daniel Plan Detox?

Many of us usually feel less than fully healthy. We either have nagging complaints such as fatigue and brain fog or more serious illnesses. By giving your body a chance to reset for a short period of time, you will learn firsthand the power of food to heal and the abundance, energy, and vibrancy that can come from a healing way of eating.

Here are the benefits you can experience in just a few weeks:

• Weight loss of 5 – 10 pounds or more
• Better digestion and elimination
• Fewer symptoms of chronic illness
• Improved concentration, mental focus, and clarity
• Improved mood and increased sense of internal balance
• Increased energy and sense of well-being
• Less congestion and fewer allergic symptoms
• Less fluid retention
• Less joint pain
• Increased sense of peace and relaxation
• Enhanced sleep
• Improved skin

It is as simple as taking out the bad stuff and putting in the good stuff. Dr. Hyman and Dr. Amen have seen patients recover from a long list of chronic diet-related symptoms and diseases quickly, problems they had never before connected to what they were eating. If you have any of these symptoms or diseases, consider doing The Daniel Plan Detox for ten days or extending it to forty days.

• Arthritis
• Autoimmune diseases
• Bad breath
• Bloating, gas, constipation, or diarrhea
• Canker sores
• Chronic fatigue syndrome
• Diabetes or pre-diabetes
• Difficulty concentrating
• Excess weight or difficulty losing weight
• Fatigue
• Fibromyalgia
• Fluid retention
• Food allergies
• Food cravings
• Headaches and migraines
• Heartburn
• Heart disease
• Inflammatory bowel disease (Crohn’s or ulcerative colitis)
• Irritable Bowel Syndrome
• Joint pain
• Menopausal symptoms (mood changes, sleep problems, hot flashes)
• Menstrual problems (premenstrual syndrome, heavy bleeding, cramps)
• Migraines
• Muscle aches
• Puffy eyes and dark circles under the eyes
• Sinus congestion
• Postnasal drip
• Skin rashes (eczema, acne, psoriasis)
• Sleep problems
  
  

The Daniel Plan Detox includes the fundamentals laid out in the entire Daniel Plan: faith, food, fitness, focus, and friends. The only difference is that for a short time you stop anything that could potentially trigger health issues. Even if you think you don’t have a problem, you might see a big difference. If a horse has been standing on your foot your whole life, then you may not know how bad it feels until he gets off your foot. Most of Dr. Hyman’s patients say, “Dr. Hyman, I didn’t know I was feeling so bad until I started feeling so good!” That is our prayer for all of you.

Eating Away the Pain

“The Daniel Plan was really pretty simple, but at first not easy,” Latrice Sarver recalls. “I had developed so many bad food habits and had yo-yo dieted for my entire life, there was a lot that I needed to change.

“I never dreamt that my pain would be affected in any way. When we did the detox at the very beginning, I soon discovered that I had decreased pain when I avoided animal protein and that my pain increased significantly when I added it back into my diet. By focusing primarily on fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, and whole grains, I had so much less pain, improved energy, improved blood sugars, and gradual weight loss.”

We hope you will give yourself the gift of this powerful healing kick-start to The Daniel Plan. Real food, infused with spices and cooked or prepared, simply tastes far better than any processed food. It may take a week or two to reclaim your taste buds, but they will come back! And you will start to crave real, fresh food. Yes, really!

The Dirty Dozen

The latest research reveals that pesticides and herbicides harm your brain and cause cancer. While you can’t avoid all chemicals, you can reduce your exposure by eating some organic foods. Every year the Environmental Working Group, a consumer advocate group, ranks the fruits and vegetables that are the most contaminated with pesticides (The Dirty Dozen) and those that have the least amount of pesticide residue (The Clean Fifteen). Go to www.ewg.org/foodnews/for the annual lists. In 2020, the Dirty Dozen included the following:

Strawberries

Spinach

Kale

Nectarines

Apples

Grapes

Peaches

Cherries

Pears

Tomatoes

Celery

Potatoes

Check the list each year and make sure to buy organic versions of The Dirty Dozen foods.

DESIGNING
YOUR EATING LIFE

NOW THAT YOU HAVE LEARNED what to eat and what to avoid, how can you make the shift? The sad reality is that it’s easy to eat poorly. Health is not something that happens automatically. We are very good at planning for some areas of our life: vacation, parties, and maybe our financial future. But most of us rarely plan for our health.

Eating for health takes some work at first, but once you know the basics, you can be mindful and intentional pretty easily. Start by setting up your environment so that healthy choices are not just easy, but automatic. The Daniel Plan sets you up for success so that after forty days, you won’t even have to think twice about it being your ongoing lifestyle. The key is to design your life to succeed. You will be ready for all that God has planned for you.

Imagine if at any time you were hungry, the food that nourishes and heals and satisfies you was right there at hand. Imagine if you knew exactly how to manage eating when on the road or when eating out or just surviving the average day at work.

The idea of designing your life applies to all the Essentials. Living life The Daniel Plan way takes you on a journey to restore not only your physical health, but your spiritual, mental, and relational health as well.

With food, we will show you how to design your eating life for success, how never to be in a food emergency, how to shop and read labels, how to eat well for less, how to remake your pantry, kitchen, and freezer, a few simple cooking ideas, and even ideas for growing some of your own food. You will learn how to make your home, work, social life, and even the neighborhood safe food environments.

Before you change anything, it is a brilliant idea to start using The Daniel Plan Journal . Write down everything you eat: portion size, type of food, time, how you feel when eating it (stressed, hungry, bored, fatigued). Writing down what you eat does two things: It makes you conscious of what you really are eating, and it helps you shift and change your habits. Share your journal with your friends, buddy, or small group. You will learn a lot about yourself, and as you do, you will be able to easily make changes that bring healing to your body and mind. If you would rather use your tablet or phone, create your own virtual journal.

People who keep food journals lose twice as much weight as those who don’t. ¹⁶

DESIGN YOUR KITCHEN

Health starts in the home — in fact, in the kitchen. You have to do a makeover of your kitchen. You may need to learn a few cooking skills. Most Americans spend more time watching cooking on television than actually cooking. We think that it is difficult and time consuming. Soon you will see that that is just a myth.

So it is time to have an honest look into the cupboards, keep all the good stuff, and dump the bad. Get out your magnifying glass.

KITCHEN MAKEOVER: THINGS TO REMOVE

Start with things you should throw in the garbage because they should never be eaten by any human or any other living thing. There is a reason that flies won’t land on a tub of margarine. If a fly wouldn’t even eat it, should you? Look in your fridge, freezer, and pantry to identify processed foods, containing any of these three ingredients: high fructose corn syrup, trans fat, and monosodium glutamate (MSG) — which you’ve already learned about in this chapter.

Pantry Makeover

Watch Dr. Amen and his wife, Tana, make over someone’s pantry. Go to danielplan.com to watch the video “What Is in Your Pantry?”

Also take an inventory of the packaged foods you have. There are colors, dyes, additives, nitrates, and other chemicals in most packaged foods. There are alternatives to your favorite foods in the average grocery store. It will take a little detective work, but learning to be a smart label reader is one of the most important things you can do for your health and the health of your family.

KITCHEN MAKEOVER: THINGS TO ADD

Start a shopping list of pantry staples that you should always have on hand. Pick and choose items based on your taste preferences, but don’t be afraid to try new foods.

CANS OR JARS

BAGS

BOTTLES

BULK ITEMS

SPICES

NUT BUTTERS (without added sugars or fat)

SWEETENERS

CONDIMENTS AND SAUCES

EVERYDAY INGREDIENTS

Having the right things on hand equips you to succeed and is essential to your culinary success. Of course, the foundation of your basic pantry is complemented by an abundance of fresh, real, whole foods, but there are some everyday ingredients that will save you in a pinch and ensure that you are prepared to put together a quick, healthy meal in a matter of minutes.

Stock your kitchen with everyday foods — namely, an abundance of fresh, non-starchy vegetables, lean protein, beans and legumes, whole grains, and seasonal fresh fruit.

CHOPPED VEGETABLES

Choose your chopping time and be ready for healthful snacking anytime. Fresh, raw veggies pair deliciously with hummus, guacamole, and salsa and amplify your dose of nourishing food. Cut up the classics such as carrots and celery, but give some others a try, such as red peppers, cucumbers, cauliflower, and snap peas. If you are feeling adventurous, try jicama, a Mexican standard that is a good source of fiber.

FRESH GREENS

Because they are a must for every vibrant kitchen, explore the wide array of greens at your local market, from the classic, well-loved baby spinach to lacinto kale and collards. Fresh greens provide your body with an abundance of nutrients that boost your energy and literally take your eating lifestyle up to a whole new level. Grab a handful to complement your morning smoothie, make your own custom mix of greens for salads, or sauté them with a little extra-virgin olive oil and fresh garlic. Your taste buds will explode! Bottom line: You can never have too many greens.

BERRIES

Make berries the star of your smoothie and invite them into your morning oatmeal and as an embellishment to salads. An economical way to go organic is to buy frozen organic berries. Blueberries are one of Dr. Amen’s top fifty brain foods and contain vital antioxidants. Strawberries are packed with vitamins, fiber, and high levels of antioxidants.

AVOCADO

Keep your kitchen stocked with delicious and nutritious avocados on a daily basis.

ALTERNATIVE MILKS

Many people have discovered they are sensitive to dairy, and if you are one of them, say hello to your new best friend — almond milk. This wonderful, nourishing liquid is a blessing in your kitchen and can be used wherever you would have previously used dairy milk. Use it as the base for your morning smoothie. If you are a coffee drinker, try an almond milk latte. Another milk alternative is hemp or coconut milk; be sure to buy the unsweetened kind.

Homemade Hummus

Start buying garbanzo beans and tahini. This dynamic duo sets you up for success. Having them on hand equips you to make your own hummus in a snap. In a blender or food processor, mix the following:

2 cans of garbanzo beans (buy organic if you can) 2 tablespoons tahini

6 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil

2 teaspoons ground cumin

Juice from one lemon

1 teaspoon salt

Dash or two of ground pepper

Get the texture you like by adding in a little warm water to blend. Have fun experimenting by adding in fresh minced garlic or your favorite herbs. This will become a mainstay in your kitchen portfolio.

DESIGN YOUR WORKSPACE

Most of us live our lives in a fairly small circumference: home, work, church, friends, neighborhood. It’s where we spend most of our time. That is why it’s important to design your life for success. If you had a GPS tracker on you and could watch where you spend 90 percent of your time, you would be surprised. That is why setting up your work environment for success is key.

Whether you work at home, work in an office, or travel around in your car, designing your work life to include real, fresh, whole food — knowing what to bring, where to shop, or where to eat in your immediate area — is essential for success. There is free or cheap processed food everywhere at work: donuts, bagels, candy jars, sodas. And most likely, fast-food restaurants surround you.

The solution is easy. Get your emergency food pack (see page 98 ) together and have a version for home, for work, for your car, for your travel bag. If you start to get hungry, have something. If you wait until you are starving, you will overeat. Grab a handful of nuts, a piece of jerky, a packet of nut butter. You will feel better and do better! If you do crave something sweet, have a piece of fruit or a piece of dark chocolate.

Some other simple ideas can make being at work healthier:

Have a lunch club. Find a group of five to ten co-workers and agree to have one person bring in lunch for everyone once a week or every two weeks. You get real fresh food and only have to make something once every month or two.

Create a salad club. Get a group from work to sign up to bring salad ingredients to work once a week. Keep them in the fridge, and share. Post a checklist of salad ingredients such as greens (no iceberg lettuce), crunchy option (carrots, cucumbers), protein (nuts, hard-boiled eggs, or canned salmon), and items for homemade dressing such as balsamic vinegar, extra-virgin olive oil, Dijon mustard, and ground pepper; or extra-virgin olive oil, lime juice, cumin, and cayenne.

Find a Daniel Plan buddy. If you are doing The Daniel Plan through your church or on your own, it is still essential to try to find a buddy at work or in your neighborhood who can do it with you. (We will cover this more in chapter 7 .) Getting healthy is a team sport, and being accountable to someone else and helping motivate and being motivated by a partner can double your success and make the changes stick.

DESIGN YOUR SOCIAL LIFE

Part of life is going out and being with friends, going to events, eating at restaurants, and traveling. The good news is, you can eat almost anything occasionally and be fine — as long as it’s real food, such as real pizza or French fries (not fast-food fries that have about thirty ingredients) or a piece of cake or cookies, and as long as you or someone you know made them from real ingredients.

So if 90 percent of the time you eat well, you can have treats and party food 10 percent of the time. To stay focused on eating well and still enjoying a vibrant social life, here are some basic strategies:

Never go to a party hungry. If you have a snack before, you won’t be tempted to eat every greasy, fried, or sugary food.

Eat before you travel. Never go to an airport, a ball game, or a public event hungry.

Bring your food. If you are going to a picnic, bring healthy choices to eat if there is nothing else worth eating.

Start a trend with your friends. See who can find the best real food in your town. You can read menus online and make sure there are healthy choices.

Stock up on the road. If you are traveling, stock up on healthy snacks or restock your emergency food pack.

Start a supper club with your friends or church group. Rotate hosting the meal once a month between friends. Do a potluck or cook recipes from The Daniel Plan, which are available online and in The Daniel Plan Cookbook .

Say no to food pushers. These are people who say, “Come on, just have one bite” or “One can of soda can’t hurt you.” They might feel bad about themselves and want you to join. But have more respect for yourself and just say, “No thanks!”

ENJOYING RESTAURANTS

Eating out is one of life’s great pleasures. A server treats you like a king or queen. No fuss. No washing dishes. Our overall suggestion is to eat out less often and choose higher quality food when you do go out. When you go out, enjoy great food and feel great, too. Here’s how to eat well, feel well, and have fun eating out while still following The Daniel Plan.

Look online before you get in line. Check out menus online and look for healthy choices, good quality protein, simple dishes, sides of vegetables, clues such as local , seasonal , organic , grass fed on the menu, as well as gluten- or dairy-free options, which are becoming more common. Try apps like Google Plus or Yelp to see how restaurants are rated and what they serve; type in the words organic , natural foods , vegetarian, slow food, or whole foods .

Try ethnic restaurants such as Thai, Japanese, and Indian that use fresh ingredients. Sometimes they add a lot of sugar, fat, and salt, or even MSG, so you have to be discerning with their menus.

Be annoying. You can ask for substitutions or changes.

Skip the bread. Don’t let them put bread and butter on the table.

Avoid drinking alcohol before you eat. Alcohol makes you hungrier and less inhibited.

Drink water, at least a glass or two, before you eat. You will likely eat less.

Skip the white sides, and ask for extra vegetables.

Order two or three sides of veggies. Go crazy!

Dress yourself. Ask for extra-virgin olive oil, vinegar, and fresh pepper for your salad instead of dressings.

Think about the perfect plate. How can you order to have a smaller protein and starch portion and more veggies? Have salads and sides of veggies, share an entrée. Skip the white flour, white rice, and white potatoes.

Avoid foods associated with certain words, such as glazed , fried , crispy , breaded , and creamy .

Choose foods associated with good words, such as roasted , broiled , baked , grilled , seared , steamed , and sautéed .

If eating breakfast out, order the omelets or two poached eggs over steamed spinach and skip the white toast. You can ask for a bowl of berries.

Share one dessert with the table or order one that contains real fruit, is 70 percent cacao, and is free of refined sugars.

Skip the appetizer.

Follow the “hari hachi bu” rule. The Okinawans from Japan live well over 100 years old and eat until they are 80 percent full.

Eat on time. Don’t go into a restaurant really hungry. You will order and eat more. Have a handful of almonds before you go. Eat three meals a day at regular intervals to balance your blood sugar and hormones.

Bring leftovers home. If the restaurant has large portions, ask for half the meal to be packed up before you even start eating. You will have lunch for tomorrow.

Share entrées with a friend or companion. Often portions are double what a normal person should eat.

Be mindful. Slow, conscious eating will allow you to really taste your food and your body to register that it is actually full — which takes twenty minutes from your first bite.

DESIGN YOUR MIND

There are two reasons to be mindful when you eat. First, you will eat less and enjoy your food more. Second, you will metabolize and burn food better rather than store it in your belly. Study after study shows that when we eat unconsciously, we eat more. ¹⁷ In one study, participants were given snack food bags that automatically refilled from a secret compartment under the table. They were compared to folks who just had a single bag full. The group that had the auto-refillable bags just kept eating. ¹⁸ If you have a bigger plate, you will put more on it and eat more than if you had a smaller plate. If you savor every bite, you will eat less because you will enjoy your food more. Have you ever mindlessly finished a giant bag of buttered popcorn at the movies and then felt sick afterward? We have!

Studies also show that when you eat in a stressed state, you store fat in your belly and don’t metabolize your food well. Same food, but more weight gain and inflammation. ¹⁹

Eating is a sacred, wonderful experience that can connect you to your senses, your body, and the extraordinary flavors in real food. One of Dr. Hyman’s patients said he wanted to lose weight but couldn’t change his lunchtime habit of two big cheeseburgers that he ate in the car before he got out of the parking lot. Rather than telling him to stop eating the burgers, Dr. Hyman suggested that he simply go inside the restaurant, sit down, breathe deeply, close his eyes, and savor every single bite. At his next appointment he told Dr. Hyman that he never would eat a fast-food burger again, because when he really tasted it, he realized he actually didn’t like it.

Are you starting to see how your mind can make such a big difference in your eating habits? That is why focus, the topic of chapter 6 , is so important. There are a few simple things you can do to eat more mindfully, get more pleasure from food, and design your habits, your environment, and your mind to work on autopilot so that after a while you don’t have to think about what you are doing. You will naturally just do the right thing.

Say a blessing of thanks before each meal. Gratitude and prayer honor God and help focus the mind and bring you to the present moment.

Always sit down and sit still. While eating, eat! Skip watching TV, talking on the phone, driving, standing, or walking down the street with food in your mouth. In Europe you can’t actually get a to-go coffee; coffee is served only in ceramic cups at tables or the espresso bar.

Eat from smaller plates. Eating out of a package, bag, or container is a sure way to overeat and eat unconsciously. Use a 10-inch plate or bowl whenever you can.

Stop and breathe before eating. Take five deep breaths in and out through your nose before every meal.

Create a peaceful environment. Soft light, candles, quiet music, flowers. Any of these encourage attention, slow eating, and pleasure, all of which will lead you to eat less — as much as 18 percent less! ²⁰

Start with healthy foods first. Starting with a salad or grilled veggies will lead you to eat less.

Chew each bite multiple times. You will improve digestion of your food and your enjoyment of it.

Serve food before you put the plate on the table. Leave the serving dish on the counter rather than in the center of the dining table.

Don’t reward exercise by thinking, I just walked 3 miles, so I can have a [fill in the blank] . Exercise is its own reward. Plus, if you have one 20-ounce soda, you have to walk 4.5 miles to burn it off. If you eat one super-sized meal, you have to run 4 miles a day for one week to burn off that one meal. You can’t exercise your way out of a bad diet.

Don’t shop hungry. If you are hungry when you shop, you will buy more junk, quick snacks, processed foods, and fewer fruits and veggies.

Buy in bulk, but then put food into small bags or containers. We tend to finish whatever size we start.

Make your home a safe zone. Don’t keep tempting junk food, bad snacks, processed food, cookies, or cake in the house. If you want something, make it from scratch with real ingredients. You will eat less because you won’t make it as often.

SHOP BY DESIGN

Shopping is a habit. You tend to habitually look for and buy the same few foods. The Daniel Plan launches you into a new mode of discovery, planning and rethinking how you shop for food. Once you learn what to look for and how to shop, how to “hunt and gather,” how to learn what’s available in the small radius where you live, then you can reclaim your health and vitality and live an abundant and full life.

A few key skills you need to shop well: (1) Learning to be an expert label reader; (2) finding the real food sources in your neighborhood; (3) learning how to navigate a supermarket, how to buy good food for less money, and how to use your grocery store as your “FARMacy.”

WHERE TO SHOP

Most Americans spend less than about 6 percent of their income on food, while Europeans spend 9 to 13 percent. ²¹ Rethinking your budget to include higher quality food is something that will pay off much greater dividends in energy, long-term health, and lower health care and prescriptions costs when you get older. You can pay a little more now or pay a lot more later. What is the real long-term cost of that French fry or soda for your health, your family, your neighborhood, and even the environment?

You will have to venture into new stores or into new places in your supermarket.

Farmer’s markets: More and more communities have farmer’s markets. They are a great place to see the face that feeds you and to find much more nutrient-dense, better-tasting food. Vegetables are no more expensive there than in most supermarkets and are often local, organic, and fresh and include unusual and funny varieties that pack more phytonutrients and taste. Fruit can be more expensive there, but once you try a fresh strawberry or peach from a farmer’s market, you may never want to eat the store version again. Local and sustainably raised meats and organic cheeses and eggs are often available at farmer’s markets. Find the one near you. Check out localharvest.org to find a market near you.

Community-supported agriculture (CSA): In most communities now, you can buy a “subscription” for the season to a local farm. Every week or month, depending on what you choose, you can pick up or have dropped off at your house a box of local, delicious organic fruits and vegetables for a fraction of the cost. Some CSAs also have eggs or sustainably raised meat or chicken. For cold climates, the season is shorter, but it is a fabulous way to eat well for less. You don’t get to pick the food items, so view it as a great food adventure that will help you experiment with new vegetables and fruit. Check out localharvest.org to find and sign up for one in your community.

Produce markets and ethnic grocers: Look for produce markets or ethnic grocers in your neighborhood. Asian markets often have wonderful vegetables, including unusual varieties.

Food co-ops: These are found in communities and provide good, fresh, local food. You can buy items in bulk such as whole grains, beans, nuts, and seeds.

Supermarkets: The key here is to shop around the perimeter of the store. That is where you will find the produce, meat, fish, eggs, and dairy. It is not danger-free, but it is where you should spend most of your time. The aisles are “danger zones,” so try to find anything that doesn’t contain sugar, salt, or trans fats. You will be hunting a long time. Sometimes you need to venture down the aisles to find the beans, nuts, whole grains, salsa, hot sauce, olive oil, vinegar, condiments, and spices. Visit The Daniel Plan website for “Supermarket Savvy — The Good Stuff” and “Supermarket Savvy — The Bad Stuff.”

Grocery Shopping Tip

The ends of the aisles display the worst foods, such as 2-liter sodas, giant sugared cereal boxes, and worse. In the aisles, the worst food items are at eye level; the better-for-you foods are often on the bottom or top shelves.

Big ticket stores: Wal-Mart, Costco, Sam’s Club, BJ’s Wholesale, and Trader Joe’s all have great buys at good prices. Explore yours. They increasingly have organic foods. You must be careful not to buy more than you need. It is a great way to stock up on organic olive oil, nuts, sardines, and even fruits and vegetables. Being a smart shopper in these stores can help you feed your family well for less.

Convenience stores: The only safe thing to buy at these stores is water, toilet paper, and fresh fruit, which many of these stores have started to carry.

HOW TO READ LABELS

Becoming an expert label reader is your most essential shopping skill. There are two parts of the label: the nutrition facts, which are not that helpful; and the ingredient list, which is what you need to study.

The main thing to know about the nutrition facts is the total calories and serving size. A bag of whole grain baked chips may say 4 servings, but who shares? The calorie count is per serving, so multiply the serving size by calorie count to get the true amount you are eating. Look for total carbohydrates and carbohydrates from sugar. It should have less than 10 grams or consider it dessert. More than 5 grams of fiber is good, and more than 10 grams of protein is also good.

The real place to look for what you are actually eating is on the ingredient list. The good news is that more and more manufacturers are packaging real, whole food that is convenient and good to eat. If you follow these simple rules, you will stay out of trouble:

Choose only real food. If there are any words on the label that you don’t recognize or can’t pronounce, are in Latin, or sound like some science project, then put it back on the shelf. A jar of tomatoes, a can of artichokes, a curry sauce, a bottle of balsamic vinegar — they are examples of real food.

Think five or less. If it is a real food product, it usually has less than five ingredients. Some newer, healthier products contain more, but they are all real food.

Don’t buy anything with the three most dangerous ingredients. (You have them memorized by now, don’t you?)

Watch out for health claims. Anything with a health claim is almost guaranteed to be bad for you — diet this or low-fat that or trans fat free or low calorie or cholesterol lowering.

Be alert to pseudonyms for sugar. There are more than 250 names for hidden sugar in our food supply. Often packaged foods will contain four to six (or more) forms of sugar. Read carefully.

What comes first? Ingredients are listed in order of quantity. If you see sugar or salt as the first or second ingredient, then it’s probably not a good idea to eat it. If it has more than 15 grams of sugar, it has more sugar than a glazed donut.

Visit The Daniel Plan website ( danielplan.com ) for more guidance on understanding labels.

Health Food Imposters

• Sweetened yogurt has more sugar than the average soda.
• Watch the soy. Most processed GMO soy foods are harmful, not healthy. Traditional soy products such as tofu, tempeh, and miso are fine.
• Meat alternatives or fake meat such as hot dogs or burgers often contain gluten, processed soy, and bad oils.
• Protein bars often contain trans fat, high fructose corn syrup or sugar substitutes, and a load of weird ingredients.
• Eat only whole food bars made from nuts, seeds, and fruits.
• Fruit juice is liquid sugar — a treat, not a health food.

HEALTHY EATING ON A BUDGET

Making real food from scratch from real ingredients is cheaper and tastier than outsourcing our food making to the industrial food system. In terms of cost per nutrient, processed foods are infinitely more expensive. We often crave more food because we are nutrient deficient.

You have to be smart about your choices. There are valuable resources for those who want to find better food at a lower cost. The Environmental Working Group ( ewg.org ) created a wonderful guide called Good Food on a Tight Budget . Here are a few ideas that can save you money and save your health.

Eating nutrient dense food will naturally cut our cravings and our appetite and lead to deeper satisfaction with food and eating.

Buy things in season. Getting foods in season will always be cheaper. Buy strawberries in June, not January, when they have to be shipped from Mexico.

Get frozen fruits and veggies. When foods are not in season, frozen is the next best thing.

Eat beans and whole grains. These are good foods that feed most of the world for less than a dollar a day. Include more of them in your diet.

Cook in bulk. Make stews and soups, and store extra beans and grains. They store well in the fridge for three to four days.

Freeze it. If you make extra food, you can freeze it for later. Soups and stews are great for this.

Stock up on staples. When things such as olive oil, vinegars, and frozen foods are on sale, get them.

Buy bigger sizes. Divide what you buy into smaller containers and store or freeze.

Cut it up. Buy fruits and veggies you can cut up and store in containers in the fridge ready to eat. You will tend to eat what is easy, so taking a few minutes for slicing, peeling, and storing will help you make cheaper, healthier choices when you want a snack.

Go green. Eating big bunches of greens is a cheap way to get a filling, power-packed meal. We recommend eating 2 cups a day of some types of greens — salad mix, arugula, spinach, kale, collards, dandelion greens, and escarole.

Make soup. When veggies start to get a little old in the fridge, it is time to make soup. A few beans, some spices, and a good recipe can turn questionable vegetables into an unquestionably good meal.

Stock up on long-lasting veggies, including carrots, fingerling or small red potatoes, sweet potatoes, winter squash, onions, celery, and cabbage.

Get protein for less. Get good local or low-mercury small frozen fish or shrimp from big-ticket stores. Buy a whole chicken or turkey, roast it, and eat it over a few days.

Get nut butters in bulk, which you can find at food co-ops.

COOKING BY DESIGN

“I first learned about food from my mother,” Dr. Hyman says. “I want to celebrate my mother because she taught me something so essential and enduring that it has become my greatest passion: food and cooking. And through cooking, touching, feeling, preparing, and savoring good, real food made from real ingredients, I get to fully inhabit my kitchen; heal my body; and connect with friends, family, the Earth, and the larger community in which I live.”

Mothers are exactly the allies we need to lead this food and cooking revolution. Cooking is a transformational act. The closer we can get to the food we eat, the shorter the link between field and fork, the better off we will all be. We have outsourced our cooking to the industrial food system. By taking back our kitchens — which we can do simply, easily, and inexpensively — we can create a tidal shift in our food system, homes, and communities.

Who Knew?

The Kluge family grew up in homes where things were either fried or eaten out of a box or can. They made only two vegetables: boiled cabbage and canned green beans. They didn’t have basic cooking implements, such as proper cutting boards to cut vegetables or even meat. They had some old, dull knives they never used hidden under the cupboard. Tinna, the mom, didn’t know how to chop a vegetable or sauté it. They spent about $1,000 a month on food, half of it eating out in fast-food places.

So when Dr. Hyman visited the Kluge family, he realized the best way he could help them was not to prescribe medication or tell them to eat less and exercise more, but to teach them to cook real food from scratch. He got the whole family cooking, washing, peeling, chopping, cutting, and touching real food. He showed them how to peel garlic, cut onions, and snap asparagus to get rid of the chewy parts. He taught Tinna how to sauté them in olive oil and garlic, to roast sweet potatoes with fennel and olive oil, and to make turkey chili from scratch. They even made fresh salad dressing from olive oil, vinegar, mustard, and salt and pepper.

After a happy, filling, healing meal of real food, one of the teens said in disbelief, “Dr. Hyman, do you eat real food like this with your family every night?”

Five days after Dr. Hyman’s visit, Tinna texted Dr. Hyman that her family had already lost 18 pounds, and she was making his chili from scratch. After three months, Tinna lost 47 pounds, and her husband and son both lost 30 pounds — from cooking their own meals at home from scratch.

“My mother was given the gift of knowing food through her mother, which she then gifted to me, helping me learn the beautiful connections between gardening, cooking, eating, and wellness,” Dr. Hyman says. “And I have taught that to my children who have become wildly gifted cooks — making delicious home-cooked meals from real ingredients.”

The most important food skill you have to create a rich, abundant, healthy life is this: cooking. Cooking at home can be faster and cheaper than eating out. Cooking a meal at home with family or friends, sharing the meal, and celebrating life and food together is one of life’s greatest pleasures.

Cooking is one of those acts that we have been doing for thousands of years. Ritual, tradition, and connection around food are part of every culture. In the time it takes to cook most packaged foods, you can make yourself a simple, delicious, healthy meal from real ingredients. You just have to have them in the house ready to go.

To succeed in the kitchen:

Get the right equipment. A few sharp knives will last a lifetime and make easy work of chopping and cutting vegetables. Good pans are easier to use and create better results.

Learn basic cooking skills. You can take a class, but today you can learn almost any basic cooking skill online.

Start with knife skills. YouTube is a great place to start.

Plan ahead. Set time aside for shopping every week. Plan your meals, and make your grocery list. Ideally you can shop just once a week if you plan your weekly meals and snacks. We are all busy, but shopping for real food is the best hour or two you will spend every week.

Prepare well. If you can read, you can cook! Getting all the ingredients out, even measured, before you start to cook makes quick work of any meal. Read the recipe carefully. Check out danielplan.com for new recipe ideas.

Know when it’s done. The hardest part of cooking is learning when something is done. The vegetables should still be crisp, not soggy and limp. Overcooked chicken, meat, or fish is chewy and tough. You want to cook it until the pink is just gone. Fish is ready when it starts to flake apart when touched. Red meats should be cooked medium rare or medium.

If you are new to cooking from scratch, start with simple meals. Use just a few ingredients. Once you find a few quick simple dinners or lunches that you and your family like, keep the ingredients in your fridge or freezer so you are never stuck. Use the forty-day core meal plan in chapter 10 to get started.

Another thing is to make the kitchen fun. Put on great music, listen to podcasts of your favorite show, and invite family members and friends to share the preparation and cooking. If you have fun in the kitchen, you won’t be afraid to get in there and cook more often.

Take baby steps, start simply, and realize that in very short order you can become comfortable in the kitchen and prepare quick, inexpensive, delicious meals to feed yourself and your family.

GROW YOUR OWN

While not everyone can grow their own food, most of us can do something to include fresh, local food in our lives. Have a pot of herbs on your windowsill. Put a few simple plants such as cherry tomatoes or peppers in a pot in your backyard or on the deck. Raised bed gardening is easy and can be done in a small area. Urban rooftop agriculture is an emerging trend.

While you may not want to become an organic farmer, growing a few things that you can watch grow, tend, and eat will connect you to real, fresh food in a way nothing else can. It is the best way to get kids excited about eating vegetables. Start small, get help from someone who has done it, get a book, watch a few online videos, or join a local community garden where you can share in the work and rewards. The Daniel Plan website offers several cooking demonstration videos.

TAKING BACK YOUR HEALTH — AND THE WORLD’S

There are personal reasons to do The Daniel Plan: to feel better, to lose weight, to support those in your family or faith community. Food is a personal issue tied to our culture, habits, and preferences. But the implications of what we eat are much greater. How does what we eat connect to our values and purpose in life? How do the choices we make affect our family, our neighborhood, and our society?

When a twelve-year-old needs a liver transplant from drinking too much soda, it’s an indication that our food choices have moved beyond the realm of individual personal responsibility. Faith-based communities have been among the first to act when human rights are violated. No one wants to see our human communities eroded by disease and disability. No one wants to see us destroy our own backyards and the very land that sustains us. The erosion of our health has become a social justice issue, a human rights issue. The right to health is among the most basic of human rights.

Individuals and their communities, social networks, and connections have tremendous power to change everything about our food system. Aligning what we eat with who we are and our core values will make it much easier to change our habits. That is why all five Essentials are so tightly connected.

The solution is actually in each one of our hands. Literally. It is the power of your fork! What you choose to put on your fork is a powerful influence to change our individual health, food production practices, food policies, health care costs, and the health of the environment. By making simple changes in your food choices and cooking real food made from real ingredients, you will not only restore your health and your family’s health, but can also contribute to changing what is wrong with our food and health care system.

The Daniel Plan is about taking back your health. But it is also about the health of your family, your church, your community, and your world. That is why we believe that once The Daniel Plan is embraced by the faith community, it will spread the gospel of health and change through America and the world.

Reflect and Take a Step . . .

So your goal is to eat real, whole food. Food that grows on a plant versus processed foods that do your body harm. It’s all about learning to love foods that love you back. Make it your goal to follow The Daniel Plan plate 90 percent of the time. And always remember: It’s about progress, not perfection.