LOVING THE FOODS THAT LOVE YOU BACK

10 dreamy dinners and 6 salads for feeling your best every day

Feb 24, 2024

Let Food Be Thy Medicine and Medicine Be Thy Food.” Hippocrates, 400 BC

Hello!

Wow, what a stretch these last two weeks have been—from Lunar New Year to Super Bowl Sunday to Fat Tuesday and, of course, Valentine’s Day; it’s been one non-stop joy and dumpling or donut-filled fete, with a lovely trip to see my sister in Escondido, California, in the mix (heaven!). While there’s love in the air and the kiss of Cali sun on my skin, I want to talk about loving the foods that love us back—foods that are color-rich and nutrient-dense, foods that satisfy the senses and the soul—while nourishing the gut, our body’s second brain.

Over the last six months, I’ve been baking tons for a project for King Arthur Flour—everything from three-layer cakes to monkey bread and hand pies; by early February, my body was feeling it! That project and my forever obsession with travel and central European cooking/culture have lent my diet (and my writing) a fair bit of indulgence lately. The luxury of an excellent home-baked dessert or a Schnitzel dinner is not lost on me.

But many of you probably do not know that nutrition and the science behind how food affects our bodies, minds, and moods are the spark behind how I came to food as a profession in the first place. Obsessing about food and how it makes us feel has been a passion of mine for as far back as I can remember.

As a young child, my preferred food was raw fruit: watermelon, peaches, strawberries, apples, cherries—you name it (well, fruit plus dairy: ice cream, milk, and cheese in all its forms); I declined McDonald's breakfast sandwiches on road trips, I had little to no craving for pasta or mac-and-cheese until later in life, never ate burgers and skipped pizza lunches during our high school’s open campus lunch in favor of going home with a few friends to cook out of my parent’s fridge.

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy sweets and treats; I have always loved my mother’s cookies and cakes with abandon (baking/consuming pastry is a lifestyle!). And, like most kids born in my era, I’ve slurped down my fair share of Kool-Aid and Tang. I often thought about my next meal and loved growing or making it. But, very early in my life, I learned that my body mostly craved fresh, natural foods—as close as possible to how nature made them.

Then, around age 8, I had a profound and lasting aha when my third-grade teacher asked what I ate for breakfast in front of a room full of my classmates. The heat rose into my face until I was burning bright red. Were there stains down the front of my shirt? Or worse, did I smell like my breakfast (my sisters and I still joke about the times we got a whiff of maple syrup from our hands during a morning test)?

Eggs, I replied.

I’d eaten two whole eggs and half a grapefruit, as we did many winter mornings (bacon or sausage was often also on offer). Sometimes, there was oatmeal or hot cereal instead —or occasionally, pancakes.

“Wonderful, that’s it!” She replied, turning toward the rest of the class. “I’d like you all to eat two eggs and some fruit for breakfast from now on.”

She later told me she used me as an example because I was one of the few students who seemed alert and focused until lunch and rarely complained about hunger or headaches throughout the day. She was sure it was because of my breakfast (note: We’re setting food insecurity aside for a moment. This was a small private school where all families had the means for healthy meals).

While it was embarrassing to be put on the spot, this moment served as a window of discovery for me: maybe what we eat can affect how we show up in our life (and bravo to my teacher for making the mind-body-brain connection way back in the late 1980s!).

This connection is due to several factors: satiation, obviously (we often feel full and satisfied thanks to fiber, fat, and flavor), but also due to the way certain foods release energy (slowly and steady or all at once?), and the way our body absorbs and uses various nutrients in our food as it digests.

You’ve probably heard a lot about the gut microbiome; it’s powerful. But it’s only recently that science and language can put the two things together in a way that’s easy to understand. In short, what we put into our bodies directly affects everything about how we live our lives—and how long we get to live them.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a lot of living left to do, so every once in a while, I need a reminder of how a big part of that goal is my job: feeding myself well.

Growing up as the children of two medical professionals who faced illness (and sometimes death) daily in their work, we often heard that you buy almost anything except good health. We understood that feeling good in your body was a precious gift—not to be wasted.

Watching my father care for thousands of patients as a beloved family doctor got me interested in helping others, but it took me a few detours to figure out just how. In college, I pursued medicine like him (as a pre-med student). Eventually, I switched to and graduated with a degree in journalism and then attended culinary school. Still, my mission remained the same: to help people live better lives—if not through medicine, then through food and story (a vital piece of human connection).

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But it was later, after culinary school, in my mid-20s, when I studied nutrition science and wholistic nutrition at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (under greats like Dr. Andrew Weil, father of the Anti-Inflamation Food Pyramid, Dr. Frank Lipman, Functional Medicine Pioneer, and Deepak Chopra), that I found the final piece of the puzzle and my experience in the third grade came full circle.

My mission to help people (something we can all do in a thousand different actions or professions every day) or to help sick people get well, as I might if I had pursued medicine, evolved to be something more micro and specific but deeply fulfilling: to help people be/get/feel and stay well in their bodies through nourishing, natural and homemade food so they can pursue the lives of their dreams.

Hippocrates nailed it: Let Food Be Thy Medicine and Medicine Be Thy Food; this is still true 2,000 years later.

From that early seed in third grade to today, I’ve learned again and again from my studies and my own life experience that eating well is related to feeling good, and feeling good is related to being able to do all the things you love in your life, whether that’s skiing, traveling, writing a book, running after your young children, getting out of bed easily in the morning, and so much more.

Do you want to climb Kilimanjaro? Become an award-winning travel photographer? Have a baby after 40? Run a marathon —or even just a half-mile? What things can you eat to help you get there? What kind of health do you need to be in to do that? And, as importantly, what would it feel like to live in that body every day—(hint: amazing!).

I’ve gotten off this path several times, consumed by croissant culture (we do love our croissants ), busyness, laziness, or sometimes sheer defiance (I want my daily sugar rush—and don’t I deserve it!?).

But, lately, I’ve been dipping heavily back into my nutrition training and digging into the latest research on vitality and longevity. I particularly love reading and learning about people who live in the blue zones, parts of the world where people live the most active, healthy lives well into their late 90s and beyond (Icaria, Greece, Okinawa, Japan, and Loma Linda, California—to name a few).

These people do a number of simple yet remarkable things as a regular way of life: Most of them move every day as a habit (often out of necessity—a walk to get water or see their grandchild, gardening, working in the fields or other chores) they cook and eat mostly at home. They drink herbal teas and natural wines (or no alcohol at all). They are often in committed relationships, have deep family bonds, and have strong faith. They laugh a lot. Some of them eat fish; many eat fermented foods.

There is one thing almost all of them have in common: they all eat a lot of plant-based, fiber-rich food. Often, it is food grown or raised close to home, the old-fashioned way.

Look, there’s a lot of noise about what we should and shouldn’t eat. Most of it is confusing; often, it is contradictory. And let’s be honest, there is no one-size-fits-all prescription for all humans: everything depends largely on your lifestyle, your environment, and, to a smaller extent, genetics (though science now tells us that genetics can be reprogrammed based on what we eat).

But what almost all experts (doctors, scientists, longevity experts, nutrition scientists, RD’s, and anti-inflammation and anti-cancer experts) tend to agree on is this:

The more plants we eat, the better.
The fresher and the greater the variety of plant-based foods we eat, the better. (Aim for 30 different plant foods, every week)
The less packaged, processed foods we eat, the better.

As journalist Michael Pollen said, summing up thirty years of research on the human diet and its effects: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for all the other wonderful things we love, including cheese, pastry, chocolate, and other lovely things I often write about. Still, it means that the more plant foods we consume (mixed with small amounts of fish and occasionally organic and humanely raised meats, for some folks), the better we are likely to feel.

It’s the ordinary things we do on a daily basis that have an extraordinary healing effect. ~ Frank Lipman, M.D.

No matter how deeply I lean into new whims and fancies—I always return to the place of knowing that learning to love the foods that love us back is the ultimate gift. It’s worth the time and pursuit every time. And retraining our brains to find pleasure in the world’s healthiest food is nothing but a win.

I want to do a better job sharing this passion with you here—woven in with the pursuit of deliciousness, family connectedness, and travel—so we can all benefit.

This week’s recipe links are dedicated to LOVING THE FOODS THAT LOVE YOU BACK. These foods are plant-rich, nutrient-dense, antioxidant-loaded foods that nourish your body, your brain, and, importantly—your gut health since that’s where many diseases start, but also where healing can begin. They are also wildly delicious—the foods I would gladly eat with abandon any day of the week and do!

I hope you find these recipes every bit as indulgent to the senses as the chocolate offerings of my letter past. It’s a different but equally vital love language, and it’s important to know how to speak them both.

These meals don’t promise to fit every other so-called health-food label (like low carb or Vegan)—that’s not the goal here, though some of you may need to eat this way for specific medical conditions (this is not medical advice!)*. But they promise to be heavy on vegetables, flavor, and life-giving energy.

Some of these dinners boast rich in anti-inflammatory ingredients like ginger and turmeric. Others have heart-healthy nuts and seeds. Most get their fats from unsaturated plant foods like avocado, olives, and olive oil. You will find dollops of leaner dairy items like ricotta or plain yogurt here (yah, probiotics!), used sparingly but with ultimate satisfaction and total health in mind. I hope you find these recipes every bit as indulgent to the senses as the chocolate offerings of my letter past. It’s a different but equally vital love language, and it’s important to know how to speak them both.

What we eat is only one piece of the equation, but it might be the most vital piece and, frankly, the only piece most of us can control (since environmental factors, genetics, and other influencers are often out of our reach). So let’s do this—it’s an act of great love.

Finally, ✨ One of my missions this year is to love and serve everyone in my life better—including you. After you explore the juicy recipes below, please take a minute to respond to this short survey so I can learn more about you and what you look for when you come here to my newsletter. Your feedback can help me reach you where you crave and need it most! Thank you! ✨

Sarah

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EDIBLE LIVING by Sarah Copeland

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