Cooking to Live can be simple or gourmet. You do not have to be a chef and have a lot of time to cook wonderful meals. On the other hand, if you do enjoy preparing food, there is no need to stifle your culinary creativity.
I have included a variety of recipes in this cookbook; some are quick and easy and others, developed by world-class chefs, are worthy of the finest gourmet restaurant. Some of the recipes were contributed by participants in the Member Support Center at my website (DrFuhrman.com).
HELPFUL TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES
There are a few tools and techniques that you will find helpful in preparing my Eat to Live Cookbook recipes. Take a few minutes to make sure you are familiar with these important basics:
• GOOD KNIFE SET
Invest in a good set of knives and keep them well-sharpened. Sharp knives are safer and easier to use than dull ones. A food chopper is also a time-saver for chopping and dicing vegetables and fruits.
• WOK WITH COVER OR LARGE PAN WITH COVER
Water-sautéing (also called sweating or steam-frying) is used instead of cooking with oil. Water-sautéing is simple and easy to use for stir-fries, sauces, and many other dishes. To water-sauté, heat a skillet, wok, or pan on high heat until water sputters when dropped on the pan. Add a tablespoon or two of water and, when hot, add the vegetables and cook, covering occasionally and adding more water as necessary until tender. Do not add too much water, or the food will be boiled not sautéed. To develop flavor in the onions, garlic, or other vegetables you are cooking, let the pan get dry enough for the food to start to brown just a little before you add additional water. No-salt-added vegetable broth, coconut water, tomatoes, wine, or unsweetened fruit juice may also be used for sautéing stir-fries and vegetable dishes.
• HIGH-POWERED BLENDER
Some of the recipes in this cookbook require a powerful blender. Even though it’s an expensive piece of equipment, it is well worth the investment because it produces smooth and creamy salad dressings, sauces, dips, smoothies, sorbets, and blended salads. It is ideal for pureeing vegetables and nuts into soup and grinding nuts and seeds. The Vitamix brand blender is a good choice.
• VEGETABLE JUICER
Although not as critical as a high-powered blender, a vegetable juicer is a useful addition to your kitchen. Fresh-squeezed juice is more flavorful than canned or bottled juice. Using freshly juiced, organic carrots in my soup recipes that call for carrot juice will optimize the flavor of these recipes. Consuming a beverage made from a combination of fresh-squeezed vegetables is an effective way to boost your nutrient consumption.
A juicer is different from a blender. When fruits or vegetables are put into a blender, the end product contains everything that went into the blender, but a juicer will separate the juice from the pulp. With juicing, you retain many of the phytochemicals and other nutrients, but lose some beneficial components like fiber. Juicing should not replace eating fruits and vegetables in your diet, but it is an effective way to increase your nutrient absorption because it allows you to easily consume a lot of nutrients from vegetables.
• PRESSURE COOKER
Steaming vegetables with a pressure cooker preserves more nutrients than regular steaming because the vegetables can be softened in a significantly shorter cooking time, with less water and without excessive heat.
When pressure cooking vegetables, add carrots, garlic, peppers, mushrooms, or onions for more flavor. Do not discard the liquid at the bottom of the pot. It contains valuable water-soluble nutrients. Simply stir it back in with the rest of the veggies before serving. Cooking soups and stews with a pressure cooker produces a healthful and tasty meal in half the time.
SPICES, HERBS, AND CONDIMENTS
Season your foods with fresh or dried herbs and spices instead of salt. They contribute unique flavors as well as color and variety. Experiment with a wide variety of seasoning options and soon you will not even miss the salt you used to pile on your food.
I do not use salt in any of my recipes and I specify low-sodium versions of ingredients, such as store-bought vegetable broth and tomato sauce. Any excess salt added to food, outside of what is contained in natural foods, has the potential to increase your risk of developing disease. High sodium intake is linked to high blood pressure and is predictive of increased incidence of death from heart attacks, strokes, and stomach cancer. A high sodium intake also causes increased loss of calcium in urine, which may influence bone loss and contribute to osteoporosis.
Using a lot of salt in your diet dulls your taste buds and makes you feel that food tastes bland unless it is heavily salted or spiced. It takes some time for one’s salt-saturated taste buds to get used to a low-sodium diet. When you avoid processed foods or highly salted foods, your ability to detect and enjoy subtle natural flavors will improve.
I recommend that you keep your overall daily sodium intake under 1,200 mg and preferably under 1,000 mg. Natural foods contain less than 0.5 mg of sodium per calorie. If a serving of food provides 100 calories and contains 400 mg of sodium, it has excessive levels of added salt. Since you get 400–700 mg of sodium daily from natural whole foods, you don’t want processed foods to push you over the limit.
When using condiments, mustard and salsa are okay, but choose low-sodium versions that are available in health food stores and many supermarkets. Avoid pickled foods and olives; they are usually too high in salt. Soy sauce, even low-sodium soy sauce, is high in sodium. I use a small amount of Bragg Liquid Aminos in a few of my recipes, but this product also contains sodium and should only be used in limited quantities.
When cooking without salt, you can increase flavor by adding a moderate level of heat with ingredients such as black pepper, cayenne pepper, or crushed red pepper flakes. Vinegar, or citrus ingredients, such as lemon, lime, or orange, also enhance a recipe. These acidic ingredients activate the same taste receptors as salt. I also like to use raw or roasted garlic to kick up the flavor in my recipes.
Each spice or herb has a distinctive flavor. Consider the flavor of the main ingredient in your recipe. In general, the weaker the flavor of the food, the less seasoning you need to give balance to the recipe. Dried herbs are stronger than fresh herbs because the chemicals that produce the characteristic flavor are more concentrated. Powdered spices are stronger than crumbled spices since they can more easily mix with the food. A useful guide is:
¼ teaspoon powdered = ¾ to 1 teaspoon crumbled = 2 to 3 teaspoons fresh
In dishes with shorter cooking times, crush dried herbs first to release some of the oils. When using fresh herbs, chop the leaves very finely. The more cut surface exposed, the more flavor will be released. Cook heartier herbs—such as thyme, oregano, and sage—along with the other ingredients in the recipe. Add the more tender herbs like basil, parsley, and chives at the end for fresher flavor.
Spices and herbs can be grouped together based on the strength of their flavor. When using more than one spice or herb, it is usually best not to mix very strong-flavored herbs together. Combine one strong-flavored with one or more milder-flavored herbs to complement both the stronger herb and the food. Medium-flavored seasonings can be used in moderate amounts. Delicate-flavored seasonings may be used in large quantities and can be combined with most other herbs and spices.
FOOD SHOPPING
It is easy to shop for nutrient-dense foods. They are found mostly in the produce aisle.Since it is necessary to consume a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, I recommend that you shop twice a week. You can use the main shopping trip of the week to stock up on staples and enough produce for three or four days. Your second trip of the week can be a short run to restock fresh fruits and vegetables. You will spend most of your time in the produce, health food, and perhaps frozen food sections. The supermarket is filled with temptation, so try to avoid certain aisles. The center aisles of most stores contain the most heavily processed foods; they should be avoided.
With the exception of unprocessed frozen fruits and vegetables, most foods that come in boxes, bags, and jars are highly processed and low in nutrients per calorie. Don’t be misled by the writing on the package. It is essentially advertising and tells you little, if anything, about the nutritional content of the product. The ingredient list contains the most important information. Read it before putting an item into your shopping cart. You will probably end up putting it back on the shelf.
Ingredients are listed on the label according to quantity, in descending order (from most to least) based on weight. This means the first three ingredients in the list are what you are primarily eating. Avoid products with ingredient lists that contain long chemical words that you don’t understand. Stay with ingredients you recognize. Avoid foods that list any type of sweetener, such as sugar, sucrose, dextrose, or corn syrup, or use white flour (often called wheat flour) instead of 100% whole-wheat or whole-grain flour. Partially hydrogenated oils are the primary source of trans fats, which have been shown to be potentially more harmful to arteries than saturated fat. If a food lists partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, hydrogenated vegetable oil, or shortening among the ingredients, it contains trans fats.
When looking at labels, be aware of sodium levels. Large amounts of sodium are “hidden” in processed foods, such as pasta sauce and canned soup. If you do buy processed foods, look for products that are labeled “low sodium” or “no salt added.” Foods that are labeled as reduced or less sodium are not low sodium. It only means that they contain 25 percent less sodium than the regular product.
SHOULD I BUY ORGANIC PRODUCE?
It is better to eat fruits and vegetables grown and harvested using pesticides than not to eat them at all, but it is also wise to minimize your pesticide exposure.
Every study to date on the consumption of food and its relation to cancer has shown that the more fruits and vegetables people eat, the less cancer and heart disease they have. All these studies were done on people eating conventionally grown, not organic produce. Although the health benefits of eating phytochemical-rich produce greatly outweigh the risks that pesticide residues might pose, recent studies have documented a link between certain diseases and pesticides ingested from foods.
When possible, peel fruits and do not eat potato skins, unless they are organic. If not organically grown, remove and discard the outermost leaves of lettuce and cabbage, as well as other surfaces that cannot be peeled or washed with soap and water or a commercial vegetable wash.
If you are concerned about pesticides and chemicals, keep in mind that commercially raised animal products, such as dairy, fish, and beef, contain the most toxic pesticide and chemical residues. Because cows and steers eat large amounts of tainted feed, certain pesticides and dangerous chemicals are found in higher concentrations in animal foods. For example, dioxin, which is predominantly found in fatty meats and dairy products, is one of the most potent toxins linked to several cancers in humans. By basing your diet on unrefined plant foods, you automatically reduce your exposure to the most dangerous chemicals.
The Environmental Working Group provides a list of produce called the “Dirty Dozen” (those highest in pesticides) and the “Clean Fifteen” (those lowest in pesticides). These are their most recent lists:
HIGHEST IN PESTICIDES – Buy organic if possible
| Celery Peaches Strawberries Apples |
Blueberries Nectarines (imported) Bell peppers Spinach |
Lettuce Cucumbers Potatoes Grapes |
LOWEST IN PESTICIDES – Buy either organic or conventional
| Onion Avocado Sweet corn Pineapple Mango |
Sweet peas Asparagus Kiwi Cabbage Eggplant |
Cantaloupe (domestic) Watermelon Grapefruit Sweet potato Mushrooms |
When we buy organic, we minimize our pesticide exposure, and we also minimize the amount of pesticides that our environment is exposed to. In addition, organic produce usually has more nutrients, especially mineral and antioxidant nutrients, than conventional produce.
GET ORGANIZED!
The more thoroughly you plan your weekly schedule in advance, the easier it will be to keep to this healthy eating style. Make a weekly plan and decide:
If you plan out your week and design satisfying meal plans, it dramatically increases the probability that you will eat well. Cook enough to enjoy leftovers for several days. Soups can last up to five days in the refrigerator or even longer if you freeze them. Salad dressings will last three days in the refrigerator and still taste fresh. If you are cooking for a family, double the size of the recipes supplied here so they’ll last for more than one meal.
It is important to stock your pantry with a good variety of healthy foods, prepare delicious recipes, and remove poor food choices from your home. Always keep a good assortment of the right foods in the house. When you leave home for work, travel, or leisure, pack food to take with you so that you are not stranded with unhealthy choices.