The Kind Diet: A Simple Guide to Feeling Great, Losing Weight, and Saving the Planet (14 page)

Organic foods outperform their conventional cousins like this:

• 63 percent more calcium
  
• 78 percent more chromium
  
• 73 percent more iodine
  
• 59 percent more iron
  
• 138 percent more magnesium
  
• 125 percent more potassium
  
• 390 percent more selenium
  
• 60 percent more zinc
  ⁵
  

And remember, nonorganic food is not only sprayed with nasty chemicals, it comes from soil
filled
with them, so they actually get into the vegetables as they grow. There’s no escaping the chemical cocktail.

Uniquely beautiful:
I know that sometimes organic vegetables and fruit look a little funny or imperfect, but I love that. Organic apples are cute! And the spots won’t hurt you. In fact, I think it’s a shame that we have become accustomed to food that looks so uniform. I love to find the character and charm of every specimen.

If you can’t find organic foods in your area:

• Ask your local grocer or health food store to start carrying them. Get some friends to ask, too, and the store should respond.
  
• Investigate Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA). By joining a CSA, you receive a beautiful basket of vegetables every week during the growing season. Not all CSAs are organic, but many are. To find a CSA farm near you, go to
  www.thekindlife.com
  and type in the keyword
  CSA
  .
  
• If the only organic vegetables you can get your hands on are carrots, onions, and maybe broccoli, don’t become an organic Nazi, forgoing all variety. Eating many different foods is not only fun for your tongue, it’s really important for your health. Just make sure to clean conventional vegetables well, and do your best to keep finding more and more organic veggies.
  
• You can type in the keyword
  organic
  at
  www.thekindlife.com
  for more information and listings about organic retailers and wholesalers in your area.
  

KIND FOOD #4: DESSERT

You may not think of desserts as health foods, but I beg to differ. By eating scrumptious, sexy, vegan desserts on a regular basis, I maintain my
mental
health, for there is no life without dessert! Desserts help me to relax and prevent me from overeating because I don’t feel deprived when I know there’s a yummy sweet thing in my future. To follow restrictive, calorie-obsessed diets that wag their finger at delicious desserts is not only torturous, but downright unnecessary. Let’s get real: Who would want to live in a world without chocolate peanut butter cups?!

Refined carbs like white sugar and white flour are not only full of empty calories, they stimulate insulin production, which causes the body to store fat.
⁶
With kind desserts made from whole grain flour and sweeteners like complex carbohydrate-rich rice syrup, your body won’t go into storage mode as quickly or easily. You will actually use the dessert’s calories as useful, vital energy instead of crashing for a nap. Of course, gorging on any dessert is never the route to your skinny jeans, but enjoying moderate portions of healthy desserts will keep you happy on your way to a thinner you.

Superhero: Tevia Celli

At 41 years old, Tevia Celli began to experience blurred vision and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Deciding to forgo conventional medication, she eliminated red meat, dairy, all refined sugars, and artificial sweeteners from her diet. Within 30 days, Tevia noticed a lessening of her symptoms, including what had been excruciating nerve pain in her feet. Soon, she gave up chicken and fish, and she has experienced only a few days of mild MS symptoms—usually brought on by stress or a cold—in the last 3 years. In fact, Tevia’s doing great; she teaches eight Spinning classes a week and is an all-round badass athlete. Having always had a sweet tooth, she learned to bake using only natural sweeteners, oils, and flours. She started her own business, The Lil’ Vegan Baker That Could, in Los Angeles. For more about MS or Tevia, visit
www.thekindlife.com
.

So I vote for having a healthy dessert three or four times a week. Okay, when you’re trying to get into a dress for an event—like a party or a wedding—don’t have the more decadent desserts that week! But when you’re just living your day-to-day life, and you like the way your body looks (and after eating the Kind Diet for a while, you will), I say treat yourself like the goddess you are and indulge. It will not hurt you.

If you’re accustomed to refined sugar and dairy-based desserts, your body is basically on drugs. This means your tongue is like an extremist drug addict, looking for strong hits instead of rich, deep, subtle tastes, and your brain is expecting its daily dose of opiates. Dairy actually coats your tongue in a funky white gunk that inhibits your tastebuds’ ability to do their job. After giving dairy the heave-ho, your tongue will start to wake up and these desserts will taste even more amazing. These days, when I have a “normal” dessert, even at a really good restaurant, it’s generally a disappointment. Of course the first bite wows me, but very soon my tongue is overwhelmed and the tastes are harsh and obvious. When I go back to my groovy desserts, the flavors of the most simple ingredients just burst on my tongue.

If you think you can’t be trusted with sweets and that I’m one of those naturally skinny people who pushes away their chocolate cake after two bites . . . you’re wrong. I used to go crazy with sugar, chocolate, and desserts, and truth be told, I still have nutty moments with healthy desserts. When I do, though, I don’t end up sad, hung over, and mad at myself. By making whole grains, beans, and vegetables the center of my diet, my body is truly satisfied and nourished. Desserts are now the icing on my cake, not the cake itself, and that switch just happened naturally.

Here are the ingredients that are going to make your life amazing because they are kind to your body:

Brown rice syrup:
I strongly encourage you to get to know brown rice syrup. It’s my favorite sweetener in terms of how it makes me feel. Sweet and loyal, it brings the blood sugar up, without sending it crashing down. Brown rice syrup is made from brown rice cooked with special enzymes until it breaks down into a liquid. Because it’s made up of more complex carbs, brown rice syrup delivers a mellow, gentle, yet complete sweet taste. I include it in many recipes in this book.

Barley malt:
This dark, intense sweetener is also made from complex carbs and is as gentle to the metabolism as brown rice syrup, but with a stronger, darker character.

Maple syrup:
Mmmm . . . maple syrup. Renewable, natural, and comes-from-a-freaking-tree maple syrup! In springtime, as temperatures slowly rise in the Northeast, the sweet sap of the maple tree rises as well. When the trees are tapped, this sugary water drips out, and harvesters boil it down to maple syrup. Very concentrated (it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup), this delicious nectar is high in minerals, so it doesn’t deplete yours. I love maple syrup in baking and indulgent desserts.

Agave syrup:
Made from the agave succulent plant, this syrup is very sweet. Because it grows in semidesert conditions, agave is an appropriate sweetener for people who live in warmer climes, but might be weakening for people who have to make it through long winters. I find agave syrup very yummy in super sweet desserts, but for regular use, rice syrup is a smoother, calmer ride.

Molasses:
Even though it’s made from sugar cane or sugar beets, blackstrap molasses is processed in such a way that it retains tons of its minerals and vitamins, so the body can handle it much better. I use it sparingly in baking.

Fruit:
Think of fruit as God’s candy. Even if you love fruit now, once you say good-bye to white sugar and dairy products, you will really appreciate these natural treats.

It’s best to eat fruit when it’s in season, not only because it’s more appropriate for your body, but because fruit grown out of season is rarely organic and isn’t nearly as delicious.

Stevia

An extract from the stevia plant, this sweetener has been used medicinally for centuries in Central and South America. Highly refined and 150 to 300 times sweeter than sugar, stevia contains zero calories and is great for people who use artificial sweeteners. Personally, I think stevia tastes a little like NutraSweet, which I’m not crazy about. But if that’s your thing, stevia is a much better, more natural option than an artificial sweetener.

Fruit-sweetened jam:
All-fruit jams are far better for you than sugar-sweetened ones and they taste just as good or better.

Nondairy malt-sweetened chocolate:
These days, chocolate is getting some really good press. It’s practically being marketed as a health food, along with red wine and other questionable treats with good public relations firms behind them. Now I’m not saying that chocolate is the worst thing you can put in your body, but even the top-quality dark chocolate is sweetened with cane juice and is high in saturated fat and caffeine. I understand that we all love chocolate, and every once in a while we need a fix, but the malt-sweetened kind is your best option. Made without dairy and sweetened with corn and barley malts, this chocolate is dark but really, really yummy. You will find bags of chocolate chips made by Sunspire. They carry malt-sweetened, nondairy carob as well. To lighten them up into milk chocolate, heat over a double boiler and stir in soy milk as it melts. Try dipping a strawberry in
that
!

A plant-based diet includes such a huge variety of healthy, delicious desserts and fun foods that it puts white sugar to shame. And there’s another bonus: When I choose a healthy dessert over an addictive, harmful one, I feel better not only physically but emotionally. I’m being kind to my body, the animals, and the planet. Talk about win-win.

MAGIC FOODS

Some foods are good for you, some are bad, and some are downright magical! Having grown up in a world of abundant, processed foods, you may have never thought of food as anything but yummy or filling, but nature has actually endowed certain foods with ridiculously nutritious properties designed to keep us healthy and happy. Here are some of the
magic foods
I encourage you to get to know:

Miso:
Made from a bean (often soy but not necessarily), sometimes a grain, salt, and a special bacteria called koji, miso is a salty fermented paste used in miso soup. It can also show up in sauces and condiments, but it is in soup that it is most powerful and healing. Because it is a fermented, unpasteurized food, miso is full of live enzymes that are great for digestion and bacterial flora (like acidophilus), which are basically the natural digestive critters in your gut. In this respect, miso is like yogurt without the dairy. Miso soup is great for the immune system and has been associated with longevity in Japan. In fact, studies done at Hiroshima University show that miso has a protective effect against radiation; and other studies, reported by the
New York Times
in 1993, showed that miso contained a substance called
genistein,
which blocked the blood flow to tumors. High in protein, vitamins, minerals, and alkalizing to the blood, miso keeps the body balanced and happy, so it’s fine to have miso soup every day. Miso made with barley and aged at least 2 years is considered preferable to other misos in terms of its medicinal properties.

Although the miso soup served at Japanese restaurants is super tasty, the miso it’s made from is extra salty, usually pasteurized, and the broth may even contain MSG (and is often made from fish stock), so don’t rely on restaurant miso soup as a magic food—it’s not. The same goes for packets of powdered miso, which should be reserved for travel. Fortunately, miso soup is ridiculously easy to make, so check out my recipe on page
249
.