Our first #WFPB/Suppers meeting at St. Helena

Today was our first #WFPB Suppers meeting at St Helena's

The idea of The Suppers Program is a communal meal preparation and meal, usually at someone's home, in which there is room for people's personal dietary needs, whatever they are. Our meeting in particular was focused mostly on learning more about the Whole Foods Plant-Based lifestyle. But some of us were selective because of their specific needs and none of that is a problem.

We had a group of 8 people, from eleven to seventy years of age and lots of fun was had by all.

The feedback was generally good and several people want to do it again, and the date will be announced soon on our Meetup site for this program.

The program was rich, for we wanted to emulate a whole day of living with a Whole Foods Plant-Based diet. Lots of people learned new things and folks were excited to discover different ways of preparing food they thought they knew and did not like but suddenly they liked it.

Note: Berries with breakfast are particularly emphasized, and 4-6 "fist sized" portions of green leafy vegetables during the day. It can be cooked kale, collard greens, swiss chard, spinach etc. or salads, but leafy greens are particularly beneficial for epithelial health. Dr. Robert Ostfeld tends to recommend "at least four" portions per day, but Dr. Esselstyn would recommend six.

Recipes: A Day of #WFPB food

For reference the recipes are provided here in order.

Breakfast:

Note: We had Bob's Red Mill Steel Cut Oats.
We cooked some steel-cut oats, and added some finely shredded apple (with a mandolin), some blueberries, some cinnamon, and some raisins. Let it simmer a few more minutes till the apple gets soft and the raisins absorb some of the cooking liquid as well.
We served it topped with extra cinnamon and balsamic vinegar.

A side of cooked kale, dressed with balsamic vinegar.

Notice that the cooking water from kale or any vegetable can be used as is for e.g. cooking grains, or to create a more elaborate vegetable bouillon.

Lunch:

• Red leaf lettuce
• Green leaf lettuce
• Some spinach leaves
• Tomatoes
• Peppers in three colors (red, yellow, green)
• some Chia seeds, some ground flax seed (good for those Omega-3's)
• some cooked Quinoa (cooked in some home made vegetable bouillon, made of cooking water from kale with some Marmite or some Braggs Liquid Aminos
• Jane Esselstyn's 3/2/1 dressing: 3 measures of balsamic vinegar, 2 measures of dijon mustard, and 1 measure of maple syrup.
• some olives, some capers, some artichoke hearts in water.

Take Out: Collard Green Roti's

Take a boiled leaf of Collard Green and put a bit of hummus along the stem, add in some rice, add some vegetables, which can be boiled, or sometimes raw.
Today we used some grated carrots, some chopped scallions, some cilantro and parsley, a bit of kimchi. For our rice we used Lundberg's Sprouted Brown Basmati. Roll it up, and I prefer to roll it in a half sheet of paper towel and put it in a sandwhich bag, so I come prepared to every meal.
We also used some nutritional yeast for seasoning.

Oil-free hummus is easy to make. Leave out the tahini, use a little liquid from the can of chick peas, the juice of one lemon, 2 garlic cloves minced, and add a splash of Braggs liquid aminos. Obviously, you can make hummus with various spices, parsley, cilantro, jalapeno, pimento... as you wish the number of variations is endless. A Nutribullet or similar food processor makes it all easy as pie.

Dinner: 

Note: We fudged it a little bit, but the meal plan for the dinner was Rice (Lundberg Sprouted Brown Basmati), with Lentil Stew, and Side dishes of cooked spinach, and Citrus Berry Salsa. In this case, we did not quite make the spinach.

Suppers Breakfast Challenge Lentil Stew
See the full recipe on the link above.

Suppers Citrus Berry Salsa
Again, see the full recipe at that link.

We forgot to make the spinach with the dinner, but it should be noted that generally the #WFPB recommendation is to have green leafy vegetables 4-6 times a day, so normally you would always have a salad with every meal or some green leafy vegetable as a side dish.

In all, with the massive amount of food we had, the bill was only $11.50 per person, good for an $3.50 refund and there were plenty of leftovers.

Interestingly, two of us go to Dr. Robert Ostfeld, the cardiologist at Montefiore who teaches this diet, but one other person had already heard about the diet from a friend in New Jersey, who in turn got it from their cardiologist.

WE had a visit from a journalism student from NYU, and we eagerly await her report as well.

Summary of #WFPB Principles:

The Whole Foods, Plant-Based lifestyle is a new nutritional paradigm, as defined by T. Colin Campbell in his book Whole, and based on the research that was published in The China Study. The principles are simplicity itself:

• Eat only plant-based, whole foods (cooked or raw is fine)
• Do not worry about proteins (protein deficiency does not exist if you follow this program). You need only 5-10% of calories from protein, and even plant-based many get closer to 15%. Overall, circa 10% of calories should come from protein and 10% from fat.
• Do not use added oils or sugar, go light on salt or even oily fruit (avocado, nuts, coconut). Serious heart patient may have to avoid all oily fruits. 
• The only supplement you ever need is B12, which nobody gets in sufficient quantity, usually one every other day is all you will need. All other supplements are good only for expensive urine, unless specifically medically indicated. The #WFPB lifestyle provides an abundance of nutrients, anti-oxidants, vitamins, and aside from B12, supplementation is moot.
• Dieting does not exist in #WFPB. Dieting means tinkering within a dysfunctional nutritional paradigm. #WFPB provides whole nutrition automatically, so eat to your heart's content and you will revert to your optimal weight by default. Start eating garbage and the weight will come back. Of course there are exceptions like food allergies, or simply preferences, but within the paradigm there is no dieting, such as portion control, etc.
• It is recommended you get some berries every day (blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries) preferably with breakfast, work some chia seeds and or fresh-milled flax seed into salads, etc. for Omega-3s and 4-6 fist-sized portions of green leafy vegetables, such as kale, spinach, swiss chard, etc. for epithelial health.

Bonus: here is the account of an FDNY firefighter on a plant-based diet: https://www.forksoverknives.com/rethinking-my-health-after-september-11-exposure/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_content=vegan&utm_term=plant-based#gs.4aqcY_g