(Not Just) About a Girl

The new year is all about manifesting and living a healthier lifestyle and embracing the medicinal power of clean eating. In a world dominated by fast, inflammatory foods, it is necessary to rethink our diet choices if we want a healthier and more resilient body and mind many years down the road.  It's not too late to eat healthy. Get inspiration from my Manila based college bestie who was able to heal her body through the power of plant-based eating. Read on and enjoy this guest post! Happy and healthy new year everyone!

by Ava the Gardener

When my niece said she was going to stay with us for a week to give eating healthy a try, my husband and I welcomed her with open arms. Little did she know, however, that there was more to our daily regimen than eating plants.  

An incoming college junior, the first lesson we taught her is that food is the body’s fuel. It provides the body with the energy it needs to function. Without food, the body cannot regenerate cells, synthesize hormones, produce antibodies or enzymes, and everything else it does to keep us alive. Our bodies convert any food we eat into sugar, combining it with water and oxygen to transform it into the energy we need to breathe, regulate our heartbeat, digest our food, and function. The pancreas then secretes insulin to control the absorption and release of sugar. Any excess sugar that overburdens the pancreas is stored as fat either in our liver or beneath the skin around our bodies.

Her second lesson is that the closer food is to its natural state, the greater the likelihood it is a complex carbohydrate. Our bodies work harder to digest the chemical structure and fibers in complex carbohydrates and the energy from such food is released over a longer period of time. Natural and whole foods like fresh vegetables have higher water, fiber, and nutrient contents. They also have lower glycemic indexes, which naturally stimulate our metabolism and make us feel full with lesser calories. The Glycemic Index (GI) is a measure of how much a particular food raises our blood sugar levels once our bodies absorb it.

Simple carbohydrates, meanwhile, are composed of smaller sugar molecules that our bodies quickly absorb. They come from processed food that have been stripped of their natural nutrients and fiber. Though edible, they are low in fiber and nutrients yet have high glycemic indexes, which results in higher blood sugar levels that make us feel tired. If not used immediately, the sugar from these empty calories is converted into fat.

Complex carbohydrates provide a slower and more sustained release of energy, thus contributing to long-term health, appetite control, and sustained energy levels. This understanding is necessary in applying the third lesson: preparing and eating meals from fresh vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, and legumes— similar to those our Filipino ancestors ate—to combat obesity, diabetes, and decrease the chance of chronic illness.

Even with my niece asleep on the sofa, my husband and I kept the daily rhythm of our lives. We woke up at 4:30 am to pray the rosary and novena for the dead before preparing breakfast. I bought fresh produce from the wet market after 6:00 am mass while my husband walked the dogs around the neighborhood. We would then have breakfast together before he left for work. Of her own volition, my niece quickly adapted to our schedule. She particularly enjoyed walking her canine cousins and meeting their friends.

For breakfast on weekdays, we would prepare something quick yet filling like avocado on wholegrain toast. We also made scrambled omelette from chickpea flour, often sauteed with garlic, onion, tomato, and mushroom. Sometimes we had wholegrain oats, muesli, and nuts. We also made French toast and pancakes from the same chickpea batter. Rice meals during breakfast were served on weekends or on any day that we knew would be particularly hectic. On such days unpolished rice was made into champorado with unsweetened chocolate or sinangag that was paired with a chickpea scramble, store-bought vegan sausage, or a tomato bean stew. At breakfast, my niece chose from several unsweetened warm beverages: brewed coffee, hot chocolate made with tablea, or rice coffee “kapeng bigas” (unpolished rice dry roasted in a pan).

Except for my husband who usually had a packed lunch, my niece and I seldom ate at noon, engrossed as we were in household chores, working from home, writing, reading, or drawing. We kept breakfast light and fasted for lunch, but dinner was usually a feast centered around eat-all-you-can servings of unpolished rice and vegetables. Preparing for dinner usually began as early as 4:00 pm, when unpolished rice was left to soak while the vegetables bought from the market that morning were washed, peeled, sliced, and diced. To keep the body in balance, dishes constituting different fresh vegetables—sprouts, fruit vegetables, leafy greens, root crops, and beans—should be eaten at each meal to strengthen the body’s major organs.

For instance, to strengthen the weak lungs that my niece has struggled with since birth, we fed her beans by cooking monggo, French beans with carrots and mushrooms, or kalabasa with sigarilyas simmered in coconut cream. “I can eat tokwa every day, I like it even if it’s not fried,” she says. Though beans are a daily staple in our household, neither my husband or I have gout. My niece was also able to walk the dogs daily despite eating beans often. The digestion of beans leads to uric acid buildup in joints only in the presence of excess animal protein and sugar.

When my niece decided to extend her stay for another ten days, my husband and I secretly wept for joy. She has kept in touch and continues to cook and eat healthy upon her return to university, with her landlady and housemates serving as eager guinea pigs for her kitchen experiments: tofu sisig, stir-fried togue with tokwa, beans, and carrots; sauteed vegetables with mushrooms; soy-garlic tofu sandwich with tomato, onions, and cucumber;  kalabasa-kamote mac and cheese.

“They all say my cooking tastes good,” she says.

Her staycation with us has led my niece to discover for herself that beyond serving as fuel for the body, creating healthy home-cooked meals is a sharing of self with family of one’s choosing.   

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ava and her husband have kept the daily practice of cooking and eating local whole grains and vegetables for the past sixteen years. She learned how to do so at the Kitchen Klinik to manage Stevens-Johnson’s Syndrome, a rare autoimmune disorder she was diagnosed with in 2009. Ava’s dissertation on the successful use of plant-based food as medicine received a Highest Distinction merit and earned her a Ph.D. in Applied Cosmic Anthropology.