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Most people who decide to eat better begin with subtraction. Less sugar, less saturated fat, less sodium, less processed food, fewer restaurant meals. There is good reason for much of this, but after a while the whole project can begin to feel like an exercise in removal. You stand in the kitchen thinking about what you cannot put on the plate.
There is another way of looking at it that I have found much more useful, both for myself and with clients at Wholly Mountain: once you have a reasonably healthy meal in front of you, how much more nutrition can you get into it without making the meal harder to prepare?
I am not talking about supplements or exotic powders. I mean ordinary foods that require almost no additional work. A tablespoon of ground flaxseed. A handful of frozen blueberries. Some spinach dropped into soup. Chickpeas dumped onto a salad. Green tea used as the liquid in a smoothie. Mushrooms chopped into pasta sauce. Herbs blended into a dressing.
These additions look almost trivial individually. Repeated over hundreds of meals, they are not trivial at all.
This is also where some of the healthiest ways of eating become much more practical. You do not have to prepare broccoli, lentils, kale, berries, flaxseed, mushrooms, whole grains and herbs as eight separate dishes. Certain meals are unusually good carriers of nutrition. Soups, salads, sauces, smoothies, oatmeal, grain bowls and bean dishes allow several foods to occupy the same meal without much extra cooking.
I think of this as nutritional architecture. Build a simple structure and then use the empty spaces.
Here are ten easy ways to do it.
This is one of those ideas that sounds strange until you realize how simple it is.
Dr. Michael Greger has talked for years about the remarkable antioxidant and phytonutrient content of tea, and he has also discussed incorporating tea directly into foods such as smoothies. You can brew green tea, let it cool and use it in place of some of the water in a smoothie. Hibiscus tea works beautifully with berries because its tartness already fits the flavor.
Another approach Greger has discussed is using a small amount of the actual tea leaves. When we make ordinary tea, we steep the leaves and throw most of the plant away. Consuming a small amount of finely ground tea means consuming the leaf itself.
You do not need much. This is an enhancement, not a challenge to see how bitter you can make breakfast.
A basic smoothie might contain blueberries, mango, banana and soy milk. That is already decent. Now add a handful of spinach or kale, a tablespoon of ground flaxseed and some green tea. You have barely changed the amount of work involved, but you have substantially increased the diversity of plant foods and phytochemicals in the glass.
This is one reason I like smoothies. They are not inherently healthy. A smoothie made from sweetened juice, flavored yogurt and a scoop of sugary protein powder can become dessert with a health halo. But the format of a smoothie is incredibly useful because it can carry foods people otherwise struggle to eat consistently.
Frozen berries. Greens. Flax. Chia. Soy. Tea. Even a little broccoli or cauliflower can disappear surprisingly well when the fruit is doing most of the flavor work.
There are foods I like because they are healthy, and then there are foods I like because they solve practical problems. Ground flaxseed does both.
Flax provides fiber, lignans and the plant omega-3 fatty acid ALA. More importantly for everyday life, it requires essentially no preparation.
The important word here is ground. Whole flaxseeds are difficult for the digestive system to break down completely and can pass through relatively intact. Grinding them makes their nutrients much more accessible.
Once you have ground flax in the refrigerator, it can become almost automatic.
Put a tablespoon into oatmeal. Blend it into a smoothie. Stir it into overnight oats. Mix some into hummus. Add it to a homemade dressing. Sprinkle it onto an unsweetened yogurt bowl. It can even disappear into thicker soups and bean dishes.
This is the sort of nutrition habit I want people to build because it does not depend on motivation. Nobody needs to wake up inspired to eat flaxseed.
You open the refrigerator. There it is. Scoop. Done.
The same idea applies to chia seeds. They can go into oatmeal, smoothies and overnight oats and add another source of fiber and ALA. You do not need huge quantities of either. A tablespoon here and there is enough to turn them into regular parts of the diet.
One of the most common things I hear is some variation of, "I know I need to eat more greens, but I don't really like salads."
Fine.
You do not have to eat salad.
Leafy greens are among the most nutrient-dense foods we have, but there is no rule requiring them to arrive in a wooden bowl with cucumbers and dressing.
A large handful of spinach can disappear into a berry smoothie. Frozen chopped kale can go straight into lentil soup. Collards can cook into beans. Spinach can be stirred into pasta sauce during the last few minutes of cooking. Arugula can sit underneath a warm grain bowl and wilt from the heat. Chopped kale can go into chili. Frozen spinach can be added to almost any vegetable soup.
This works especially well with foods that cook down. A large pile of raw spinach looks like a serious commitment. Cook it and suddenly it occupies a small corner of the meal.
Frozen greens deserve more respect here too. People sometimes assume fresh automatically means superior, but frozen vegetables are tremendously useful. They last. They are already washed and chopped. You can grab a handful instead of watching another $6 container of organic greens slowly turn into swamp water in the refrigerator.
For clients who rarely eat greens, I would rather see frozen spinach added to four meals every week than an ambitious fresh-kale plan that lasts until Wednesday.
If I could get the average person to make one major change to the American diet, eating legumes more often would be high on the list.
Beans, lentils, chickpeas, split peas and soy foods give us fiber, plant protein, minerals, resistant starch and a remarkable amount of food for very little money. They are also much more versatile than the traditional picture of a side of baked beans next to dinner.
The easiest approach is to start looking for places where legumes can simply be added to something you already eat.
Put cannellini beans into vegetable soup. Add lentils to tomato sauce. Put chickpeas onto salads. Add black beans to tacos and burrito bowls. Mix edamame into a grain bowl. Blend white beans into a creamy vegetable soup. Mash chickpeas with mustard, celery and herbs for a sandwich. Add red lentils to soups because they soften and almost disappear into the broth.
You can even blend beans into sauces. White beans have a mild flavor and can create body and creaminess without requiring a pile of oil or cream.
This solves another problem I see frequently: the healthy lunch that is not actually a meal.
Someone brings lettuce, cucumber, tomato and a low-calorie dressing to work. Technically, everything in the bowl is healthy. Two hours later they are starving and standing in front of the vending machine.
Add chickpeas or lentils, a whole grain, some seeds and a good dressing and the situation changes. There is more fiber, more protein, more carbohydrate, more volume and more staying power.
Eating healthy does not mean trying to survive until dinner on leaves.
This is one of the easiest pieces of kitchen engineering I know.
People buy flaxseed, chia seeds, hemp hearts, pumpkin seeds and sesame seeds with good intentions. Six months later there are five half-used bags scattered around the pantry.
Make one jar.
Depending on what you like, it might contain ground flax, chia and hemp hearts, with pumpkin or sesame seeds used separately when they fit the meal better.
Then you have one thing to reach for.
A spoonful can go onto oatmeal. Another can go into a smoothie. Seeds can finish a salad or grain bowl. Pumpkin seeds work particularly well over chili, soups and Mexican-style bowls. Sesame seeds make sense with Asian-inspired meals.
Seeds bring useful unsaturated fats, fiber, minerals and some protein, but this is also a place where more is not automatically better. Nuts and seeds are calorie dense. For somebody working on fat loss, there is a meaningful difference between adding a tablespoon of seeds for nutritional value and turning every bowl into a 500-calorie nut-and-seed festival.
Use them as an enhancement rather than the meal itself.
This one can change healthy eating considerably because vegetables are rarely the real problem.
People usually do not dislike every vegetable. They dislike eating dry vegetables.
Sauces matter.
Unfortunately, many commercial sauces and dressings are built around oil, sugar and salt. That does not mean sauce needs to disappear. It means we can make the sauce itself more useful.
Tahini, lemon juice, garlic and water make a simple dressing. Hummus can be thinned with lemon or vinegar and used over bowls and salads. White beans can be blended with roasted red pepper, garlic and herbs. Basil can be blended with walnuts, greens, lemon and garlic for a pesto-style sauce. Salsa can be combined with beans or avocado depending on the meal. Fresh parsley, cilantro, dill, basil and mint can turn a very plain sauce into something worth eating.
This is an excellent place for foods that otherwise get forgotten.
Have half a bunch of parsley? Put it into the sauce.
A handful of spinach? Blend it in.
Some roasted peppers? Blend those too.
Leftover white beans? They can become the creamy base.
Now the thing making your broccoli, grain bowl or salad enjoyable is also contributing fiber, minerals, herbs, seeds, legumes or vegetables.
This matters because a sustainable healthy diet has to taste good. I have no interest in teaching people to spend the next thirty years grimly chewing plain steamed broccoli in the name of longevity.
If breakfast needs something sweet, berries are one of the easiest upgrades available.
Keep frozen blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, cherries or a mixed berry bag in the freezer. They do not need to be washed, chopped or eaten before Thursday.
Put them into oatmeal. Blend them into smoothies. Thaw them overnight and spoon them onto whole-grain toast with a little nut butter. Add them to unsweetened soy yogurt. Heat frozen blueberries for a minute and they become almost sauce-like over oats.
This gives you sweetness along with fiber and a broad range of polyphenols rather than sweetness arriving alone.
It also changes the construction of breakfast.
Think about a bowl of plain oatmeal. Perfectly respectable.
Now make the oats with unsweetened soy milk, add blueberries, cinnamon, ground flaxseed and a few walnuts.
The work difference is perhaps sixty seconds. Nutritionally, it is a different breakfast.
You have a whole grain, a legume in the form of soy, berries, seeds, nuts and a spice before you have left the house.
That is the basic philosophy behind all ten of these ideas. We are not looking for one miracle ingredient. We are accumulating good things.
This may be the most important idea in the whole article.
Certain meals have an unusual ability to carry a lot of different foods without becoming complicated.
Soup is perhaps the champion.
Start with onions, carrots and celery. Add lentils or beans. Add barley or another whole grain. Add tomatoes. Add mushrooms. Throw in frozen greens. Add garlic, herbs and spices. Maybe there is leftover broccoli in the refrigerator. That can go in too.
You can easily end up with eight or ten different plants in a bowl without preparing eight or ten dishes.
Chili works the same way. So do grain bowls.
A grain bowl can start with brown rice, quinoa, barley or another intact grain. Add lentils or beans. Add broccoli or roasted vegetables. Put greens underneath. Add cabbage for crunch. Finish with seeds and a good sauce.
A salad can become a real meal when you stop thinking of it as lettuce with toppings. Greens are the base. Beans or lentils provide substance. Cruciferous vegetables add another category of plant food. Whole grains make it more satisfying. Seeds provide texture. Herbs add flavor. A bean-, tahini- or herb-based dressing ties it together.
Smoothies work at breakfast in exactly the same way.
These are what I call carrier meals. Learn four or five of them and healthy eating becomes much easier because you stop needing a separate recipe for every healthy food you are trying to eat.
The spice cabinet may contain more plant diversity than almost any other part of the kitchen, yet most of us use the same two or three things repeatedly.
There is no need to turn spices into medicine or pretend a teaspoon of turmeric will erase an otherwise poor diet. That kind of thinking misses the point.
They are simply another easy source of plant compounds, and they make healthy food taste better.
Put cinnamon into oatmeal and smoothies. Ginger works in smoothies, soups and sauces. Turmeric fits lentils, chickpeas, rice dishes and soups. Garlic and onion can form the beginning of almost every savory meal. Cumin changes a plain pot of black beans. Smoked paprika can make lentils and potatoes far more interesting. Oregano belongs in tomato sauces and bean dishes. Rosemary and thyme work beautifully with roasted vegetables.
If you regularly use turmeric, adding a small amount of black pepper makes sense because piperine can markedly increase the absorption of curcumin.
Fresh herbs deserve a place here too. Cilantro, parsley, dill and basil are not merely garnishes put on the plate for a photograph. Use handfuls.
A bowl containing beans, brown rice and vegetables becomes much more appealing when there is garlic, cumin, lime, cilantro and salsa involved.
Good nutrition becomes easier when good food actually tastes good.
This is the habit I would most like people to take from this article.
Do not rebuild the meal.
Just look at it for five seconds and ask:
What is one more whole plant food I could add to this without making my life harder?
Oatmeal? Add blueberries.
Smoothie? Add spinach.
Salad? Add chickpeas.
Soup? Add lentils.
Sandwich? Add greens.
Pasta? Add mushrooms.
Rice bowl? Add edamame.
Tacos? Add black beans and cabbage.
Potatoes? Add broccoli.
Yogurt? Add berries and flax.
Chili? Add another variety of bean.
Toast? Add berries on the side.
Frozen vegetable dinner? Throw another bag of vegetables into the pan.
You can take this a little further by thinking in categories. If the meal already contains a whole grain, can you add a legume? If it contains a legume, can you add greens? If you already have vegetables, could one of them be cruciferous? If breakfast contains fruit, could some of that fruit be berries? If you are making a sauce, could an herb go into it? If you are having oatmeal, could seeds go on top?
You do not need to check every box at every meal. The point is to develop an instinct for adding nutritional diversity to food you already like.
Over the course of a week, those small decisions begin to accumulate.
Instead of eating "healthy food" in some vague sense, you find yourself eating beans, lentils, whole grains, berries, greens, cruciferous vegetables, mushrooms, nuts, seeds, herbs, spices and other fruits and vegetables with surprising regularity.
And none of this requires becoming a gourmet cook.
There is one final piece to making this work: set up your kitchen so that the healthy choice does not require much thought.
Keep frozen berries and greens in the freezer. Keep several kinds of no-salt-added or low-sodium canned beans in the pantry for nights when you are not cooking dried beans. Keep lentils and split peas around because they cook quickly and do not require soaking. Keep ground flaxseed in the refrigerator. Have frozen vegetables available. Keep whole grains you actually enjoy eating. Put your spices where you can see them. Keep lemons or limes around if you use them often.
This is much more important than having a collection of complicated healthy recipes.
A person gets home tired on Wednesday night and does not need another recipe.
They need ingredients that cooperate.
Heat some leftover brown rice. Open a can of black beans. Microwave frozen broccoli. Put greens underneath it. Add salsa, lime, cilantro and pumpkin seeds.
Dinner.
Or put lentils, frozen vegetables, tomatoes, greens and spices into a pot.
Dinner.
Or blend frozen blueberries, mango, soy milk, spinach, flaxseed and green tea.
Breakfast.
This is why I keep coming back to soups, salads, sauces and smoothies with clients. They give us somewhere to put all of this stuff.
A smoothie can carry berries, greens, flax, chia, soy and tea.
A real salad can carry greens, beans, cruciferous vegetables, whole grains, seeds and herbs.
A soup can carry lentils, beans, barley, mushrooms, tomatoes, greens, garlic and spices.
A sauce can carry beans, seeds, nuts, vegetables, herbs and garlic.
There is no single superfood hiding in any of this. That is part of the point.
Nutrition gets distorted when we isolate one food and ask what miraculous thing it can do. Human beings eat diets, not nutrients, and health is built from the pattern that develops across thousands of ordinary breakfasts, lunches and dinners.
So do not worry about doing all ten of these tomorrow.
Start with the easiest ones.
Put ground flax in the refrigerator. Buy frozen blueberries and spinach. Keep beans in the pantry. Learn one sauce you love. Make soup once a week. Put cinnamon on your oatmeal. Throw mushrooms into the pasta sauce.
Then get into the habit of looking at an ordinary meal and asking whether there is room for one more good thing.
There usually is.