Eating 30 Plants Per Week - Expert Tips & Simple Shifts to Support Your Gut

Hello and welcome, everyone. I think we'll go ahead and kick off with some introductions with our team. So, Amy, I'm going to have you go first. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Sure. My name is Amy, and I'm a microbiome specialist here at Tiny Health. Been working here about two and a half years. I have a background in nutrition and culinary education and functional medicine, health coaching. So I really love kind of tying in all the microbiomes science with a lot of the action plans in terms of how to do some of these actions and a lot of what we'll be talking about today with the 30 plant challenge.

And I am obviously not Sarah Tate. My name is Hannah Gehring. I work for the marketing team here at Tiny Health. I'm the person that's really coordinating a lot of our webinars and and different community events for Tiny plus members. And I work on the email marketing front here too, so you may hear from me from time to time in your inbox. But our moderator, Sarah Tate, unfortunately, there's a mass power outage and Internet outage in her area, and so she hopefully will be able to join us in a little while and take over. But in the meantime, we're just gonna keep pushing forward and. Yeah.

Welcome, everyone. Excited to kick off the beginning of the challenge this week with you all. In terms of just, you know, our 30 plant challenge, the overall goal is to incorporate 30, 30 unique plant foods into meals throughout your week. Right. So we can dive in a little bit today about what a plant is, how little tips and tricks I've learned along the way in terms of how to do this, because I know at first sounding point that can sound overwhelming or unachievable, but when you break it down, it can be pretty simple to do in a way. So I want to bring two things to this challenge. One is curiosity, and the other's fun around it. I don't want it to be stressful for people. So curious and fun are the two words I want you to think about when starting this challenge. And along the way, you'll get daily updates. There's different ways to give entries in, and you can win a Tiny Health gut test and a $50Amazon gift card. So incentives are always nice when you're doing a fun challenge like this.

Yes. We could always use a little bit of extra motivation. I would actually love if we could open up with a poll, poll for our audience, because I would love to know about how many different plants you think you currently eat.

Per week.

So I'm gonna really quick send you all a poll. So keep in mind that fruits, veggies, grains, nuts, seeds, herbs, spices count. So give us a quick estimate of what you think you currently consume, because the whole idea, like Amy said, is be curious, have fun with this, and, like, let's see if we can improve that number throughout. So I would love for you all to share. Okay, we got some results coming in here. Oh, we're kind of like split between this, like, 11 to 15 plants. 15 to 20. 20 to 25. Oh, we do have some over 25 here in the room. Amazing. All right. It does look like the. The biggest category here that we have in the room is the 11 to 15 plants. And then we're kind of spread out between these other numbers here. So I'm going to go ahead and close the poll.

All right, so now we'll dive a little bit more and kind of learning about what those things are in terms of plant foods. In terms of starting the challenge, there's some resources that when you signed up, you would have been sent. Our guide that has some recipes, our rainbow food tracker, which a lot of you would probably be familiar with from our action plan. And then there's a Pinterest board as well with some recipes on there. So lots of ways to support you along this week. Now, next, I like to kind of start at a really high level in terms of when we think about doing 30 plants, I like to ask why. Why do we want 30 unique plant species? There's a lot of great studies out there showing the benefits of microbiome diversity. So I like to kind of think first in terms of who we're feeding. Right. There's about two to six pounds of bacteria in our microbiome. So the next time or even this week when you're shopping for your challenge, if you're at the store and you pick up a pineapple, right, that's around that size. That's about the amount of the weight of gut bacteria in our ecosystem. And we know that microbial diversity is really important for overall health and wellness and is a diverse ecosystem, is a resilient one. So I love showing this picture of Costa Rica and I always see some of you. I recognize some of the names from people I've met with in the chat, too. And we always talk about wanting that, you know, really diverse microbiome ecosystem and eating that 30 unique, unique plant species is how we get that is one of those ways. So we know that individuals who eat 30 unique plant species per Week have higher microbiome diversity. The benefits of that are enhanced digestion, nutrient absorption, protects against pathogens, lowers our risk of chronic disease, supports immune health, metabolic health, longevity. The list goes on. So you can see the kind of overall health benefits of this deep why, why we want to try to attain that food diversity in our diet now is the how, right, and the what. So what is a prebiotic? When we talk about plant foods, we're not just talking about vegetables. Yes, veggies are a plant food. That's a prebiotic. Fruits, as Hannah mentioned, this includes seeds like hemp seeds, flax meal, chia, pumpkin seeds, a lot of your nuts, different grains, spices and herbs count too. And even your morning cup of like tea or coffee or afternoon tea, like that all counts as a plant food because our gut bacteria like to eat these prebiotics. They need to eat just like we need to eat. Now, when we think about these prebiotics, this is not what the gut bacteria see them as. So in these plant foods, the b, the gut bacteria thrive off of the prebiotics in those foods. And those are things you might see on your report, like pectin, cellulose, beta glucan, a lot of your complex sugars, like your phosph, imos, inulin, polyphenols, resistant starches. So this is the kind of variety I always like to say. We don't want, you know, us to be picky or our kids to be picky, but the gut bacteria are a little bit picky. They want. They eat different things and they have different preferences for prebiotics. So this is the kind of deep why of eating across the rainbow. Because if you eat by color, then inherently you're getting the different variety of prebiotics. And when we eat foods, when we feed the gut bacteria their favorite ones, they thank us, right? So I kind of like to joke around that they, they give rent back to us by coexisting by way of making gifts for us. And those are different metabolites you might see on your report. Short chain fatty acids. That's a big one there in terms of what they give back that fuel the energy for, you know, the cells that line our gut wall that keep inflammation though, right, that help with so many different processes. Okay, now with the rainbow food tracker, right, you can print this out. I say tack it on the fridge. This is something I keep on my fridge is that regular reminder, you know, to kind of have that diversity within the diet as you go to the grocery store. My simplest tip is just get two new Foods a week to kind of keep that diversity going and just remind yourself too of different things that are available. So you can track, I use with little kids stickers, they can track as they eat the colors. You can track in numbers on that sheet as you go through the week. If you have little kids, I like doing like a grocery store scavenger hunt or farmer's market scavenger hunt to kind of find one of every color. So like I said, have fun with it. I don't want this to be stressful, but just, you know, that's one resource you can use to get you going this week.

I know my two kids, when I've printed off the rainbow food tracker and put them on the fridge, they like compete to see like who can get the the most rainbow foods each day and make sure that, you know, they've got the edge over their siblings.

So sibling rivalry used to advantage. You have them close in age. Mine used to duke each other out on sauerkraut. I'm like, I think that's too much in terms of like how much one could eat. So yeah, in terms of that little healthy competition is great for that like intrinsic motivation, you know, against the sibling, definitely. And you could do it as a family too. I love having like family try nights where you all try something new or any way to get them involved and kind of have fun with that, with that part of it. Okay. Plan and prepare. So in terms of this, there's different ways you could go about it. I like to think about habits as engineering your environment to make it as easy as possible. So my kind of favorite quote when I think about like a healthy habit is if I had eight hours to cut down a tree, I'd spend seven sharpening my axe. Right. So here I think about a. You can do food prep. You know, one of my simplest tips is just chopping up a bunch of veggies, having them ready to go. I make this be one of my kids chores. He enjoys chopping. I'm like, this is your chore. Then that's great. You can help chop some veggies for the week. Otherwise I know that's not always the case to have that extra time or at least when you're starting out, you can get some of these other pre ready foods. But having those. I love this new like antioxidant fruit blend mix. It's four different berries all in one bag. So you're already getting four different plant foods from something like those frozen berries, chopped butternut squash or I love these tiny sprout brain boosters. It has a mix of like flaxseed and chia and kind of different seeds already there. So in terms of preparation, you know, if you can do any like, pre prep, kind of get the fridge loaded for the week with some of these different things that can set your, you know, environment up for success in terms of just having them at the ready to go like once the week starts too, and every night so busy. So if you can do a little bit of that pre planning work to have that things ready to go for weeknight meals, it just makes it a little bit more doable and achievable over time. Yeah.

If I might ask a question, Amy. So when it comes to like frozen versus fresh versus canned versus, you know, like the, the different formats that you can get your, your foods in, is is there one that's better than the other? Like, am I getting less nutritional value out of doing a bag of frozen vegetables that I steam, or can you shed some light on that?

Yeah, I mean, in terms of, you know, fresh versus frozen, often with frozen veggies and fruits, they're picked at their peak kind of nutrient value and then flash frozen, so they retain a lot of the nutrients sometimes too. Like in the summer, I don't mind kind of getting berries fresh because they're. They haven't traveled very far. But if you're in the depths of winter especially, I would get my berries frozen right. If they've been on the shelf traveling a long time, sometimes they don't have a lot of nutrient density. They don't have a high profile. So frozen is great. Canned, you just have to kind of be wary of, you know, bpa. Even though some of them say BPA free. I'm just kind of always like hesitant with some of like the canned goods too, overall. But definitely like frozen, pre chopped. I love that they like, pre chop some of the veggies at stores these days too. So do both, like have some of those at the ready for meals where you're like, I need something in a pinch. You know, it's definitely easy to have some of those like Frozen on hand 100%. Next. This is the habit that I recommend everyone do just every week try two new plant foods you don't normally eat. So this brings that, like, ease in. Sometimes when we get really excited to start eating healthy and try to like, buy a bunch of groceries. And then I always hear like, we didn't know what to do with it. Some of the food went bad. It was too hard to kind of start you know, cooking all at once, or I call it the motivation monkey. You get really excited about something and then just drops you right off. So in terms of this, this is one habit I like to do that's a tiny habit that means sustainable. It's easy just to grab two unique things that you didn't get the week before. So, like, coming into season now is like pomegranates. They'll be here at the. The shelves soon. Leeks. They're a great substitute for onion. And recipes just swap them out pretty easily. Even, you know, herbal teas. You know, teas, teas and coffee in general count as that plant food. I put that frozen cauliflower rice in there. I always keep a bag of frozen cauliflower rice. You can add it to regular white rice. You can add it to smoothies. It's always like a good extra plant food in a pinch to have on hand. And when we're at the store and when we're in our day today, I like to share with people that 92% of your day is habit. Right. So this is why a lot of people kind of have the guilt on themselves of like, oh, I just always get the same thing. I'm so bad I don't get new things at the grocery store. It's not you not being intentional, it's just that we run a lot on habit to save energy for other things. So the tiny habit I like to build in is just getting. Getting yourself out of that habit cycle in the grocery store. I even love when I bump into a friend at the store and I see some things I've never even seen before or noticed in the shopping food aisle. So just that kind of habit of grabbing those two new things is something I even do to this day weekly to kind of help with my diversity.

So even you, Amy, the. The microbiome diversity expert, you're even challenging yourself on a weekly basis to add an extra thing or two that you haven't done.

Yeah. You know, we're not really meant to kind of like, put so much effort into thinking about food so much because we have so many other things to think about. We're busy. So, like this week I went to the farmer's market and I got these cute little fun pears, and I think I got some like, like Romanesco does that was out. So that was my two new things this week.

Okay.

And then try a new recipe. You don't, you know, in terms of some of these things, I like to think in seasons. Right. So as we're coming into fall, people think I, like, spend a lot of time in the kitchen cooking, and I don't. I kind of just have, like, a lot of recipes on rotation for that season. So the beginning of the season, I like to think, okay, well, what are my recipes going to be? And I like to kind of get inspiration every once in a while. So we made this Pinterest board that incorporates some of our, like, top recipes. So that will be sent to you as part of the challenge if you're looking to kind of, like, get a few new tips and ideas. We have some, my favorite, the squash waffles, the squaffles, the fermented honey, the overnight oats. So lots of really yummy, tasty foods in there. Yeah.

I would be really curious if anybody here has some really great resources of where they look for. For new recipes and things like that. Like, drop that in the chat, share with the group. Kind of where you look for inspiration. I know I'm kind of browsing Pinterest sometimes based on, like, I've got a particular ingredient that I'm like, I want to use this up before it goes bad for my fridge. And just like, you know, what other things can I do with carrots? What other things can I do with the lentils that are in my pantry?

Oh, yes. Mitten Kitchen. I love that one. That's a good resource, Rachel. And the next question I like to bring, I bringing that curiosity factor back. Sometimes just start with meals you're already making. Right. Doesn't necessarily need to be a brand new recipe, but you can boost meals. So I say, how can you turbo boost meals you're already having? So, for instance, something like rice and beans with garlic. Right. A plant count of that would be three unique plant species. If you swap it in with some of that frozen cauliflower, rice, some chopped kale, maybe some cumin. I always love adding chopped sauerkraut at the end to my rice and beans. You can add some guacamole, maybe some nutritional yeast. Then you're already up to eight unique plant species in that one meal. Yeah, I like that. Go wild with creativity, Kathy. Exactly. Like, for me, sometimes I don't even do recipes in terms of new things I love with a lot of kids I've been working with who aren't kind of having a lot of, like, plant foods yet. We do the ground beef, but you can add in diced mushrooms. It looks exactly like the ground beef. Right. With some chopped greens, maybe oregano. Serve it with, like, a chickpea pasta. Red sauce and you're going from a meal of two plant foods with just like regular pasta with ground beef to seven. So just get creative with ways and that curiosity. What can I add just to this meal I'm already having?

Oh, so many great tips. Also in the chat, guys like using AI for recipe generation. Ryan shared the Zero waste recipe generator. Really great, great resources. So thanks for sharing.

Oh yeah, I haven't heard of the zero waste one. Thanks for that, Ryan. That's great. And fermented foods too. I would say affirmative. It's the new apple a day keeps the doctor away. I like to say a fermented food a day keeps the dis ease or disease away and attaining health. We always say, you know, aim for variety. It's about that diversity of fermented foods. Swap brands, you know, try to get three different types of fermented foods and get curious. How can you incorporate these into daily meals? And I'll show in a minute the next slide in terms of my tips and tricks I've learned that make it easeful and doable. But I like to give the example. If you're starting a fermented food and boosting, you want to go low and slow, right? So my dad here on the left decided to try sauerkraut for the first time. I think he's like so 66 when he tried it and he put a quarter of a cup in. Do not go that quickly. You're not going to feel good. I do like that you can start something like this at any age and stage. In terms of getting curious about fermented, a lot of cultures have had fermented a long time as part of their culture. And you know, we have yogurt that's like one. But really that, really that diversity. Each different type of fermented food brings a different gift for us in terms of our health and wellness. For that gut microbiome, I'm insert them young too. This is one of my kids. I couldn't find the sauerkraut pictures where they're like drinking from the sauerkraut. But, you know, start them young. I start babies as young as six months with the juices from sauerkraut. You know, a little bit of like kefir early on. Super helpful to start them super young. And then these are my little swaps with ferments. Right. So just for, for me, you don't really need recipes, but this idea of a swap. So for kefir or yogurt, you can use sort of in exchange for like mayonnaise, sour cream and recipes. So I love, I just shared with something right. Right before here, my kefir ranch dip, right. You can put kefir in smoothies. You can drizzle it into like an apple pear sauce. Sauerkraut you would use in recipes that would typically use like lemon or vinegar. Right. So chop and add to guacamole. It's my simplest way to get in more sauerkraut. Chop it and put it in rice and beans. Top it on soups, tacos, salad dressings. Kimchi, same thing. Swap it in any recipe calling for hot sauce, salsa or chili flakes. I was recipe testing this weekend and I did one with cottage cheese blended with cream cheese, not cream cheese instead of cream cheese with kimchi to make a dip. So kind of playing around with that creativity part for me is fun. And then you can easily kind of make some of these swaps, right. Instead of the sour cream or mayo, put in something healthier like the cottage cheese for like the protein. I love kimchi and my ramen greens scrambled eggs. I know my colleague Julian loves it on pizza. So kimchi does pair well. And like quesadillas or grilled cheeses are on top of pizza too. Provides that nice complement miso using it like parmesan or butter for adding umami to foods. A lot of people know miso is like miso soup. That's one way. But spreading it directly on like sweet potato, salmon, a toast, right. Or mixing it with a little water. I even do this with some kids who are only eating boxed Mac and cheese and you can add a little bit of that like Japanese parmesan that miso in for that umami flavor and they can't really notice it.

I want to share my favorite way to enjoy miso is just putting a little dollop of miso on top of a hard boiled egg and then sprinkling it with like sesame seeds, spice blends like just like it's a perfect protein like snack with the right amount of that savory.

So. Oh yeah, that sounds so good too. Yeah, just nice and simple. This doesn't have to be hard. Like I said, bring curious curiosity and the fun with it too. And then store bought ferments as well. Like pickles. You want to get the bubbies. Most pickles aren't really fermented, they're just pickled. But bubbies is, is good. Kombuchas, tempeh, water keeper. You know, kind of just have fun experimenting and then finally you'll get some daily Support as part of this challenge. So today's meatless Monday. That's an easy swap, an easy thing to kind of build into your weeks. Try something new Tuesday Rainbow roots Wednesday. So you'll get kind of daily inspiration throughout the challenge. I just encourage people remember to go low and slow. So say if you're like, plant intake at the beginning of this is like a 10, maybe of what you're regularly have, we may not want to bump up the quantity right so fast. You can focus on the diversity piece. Right. Getting curious about adding in that wider variety. But we, some of our belly buddies may not be quite caught up yet in terms of all that fiber extra ferment. So just focus on diversity over, like, quantity this week and then use these practices after this week to kind of go low and slow on boosting up that, you know, quantity factor. And that's all I had in terms of, you know, just getting us started. Kicking off this challenge is eat the rainbow and the reminder to be curious and have fun this week with it.

Okay, so we've got a few questions from the audience. So thanks to those of you who've been submitting a few throughout. I'm going to go ahead and share some of these questions with you.

Amy.

So this is a great question from Alex. How much of something do you need to eat for it to count, like, tomato slices and a hamburger? Is that enough to count for a tomato, as was one of your plants during this challenge?

Yeah, I mean, a little bit of what I just alluded to in terms of you're not doing a lot all at once. I focus more on just kind of focusing on the diversity piece this week. Overall, you want to make sure, you know, you can't just kind of have all just herbs and spices or tea. That's not going to be enough in terms of, you know, that variety. So I like to kind of recommend people look up, like, their fiber intake based on gender, based on, you know, age, to make sure we're getting that. That kind of wide amount of fiber. And in terms of that, yeah, a tomato slice on a hamburger. Great. That counts in terms of, like, this challenge for a week that's going to make its way, like, down to, you know, our belly budd and help serve as a prebiotic for them. So I think in terms of getting that 30 unique plant species, but also making sure we're getting our, like, fiber targets is a good way to think about quantity.

Great question. Thanks, Alex, for that. Okay, so Sherry says I don't. I typically don't like the taste of fermented foods. I like hearing about starting slowly. Any more ideas?

Yeah, I mean, fermented are strong. I did not like sauerkraut. I did not grow up on fermented foods. I was like a boxed Mac and cheese kid, you know, so it took me a while. So there isn't this notion called flavor stacking, where you can slowly add foods, a new taste and slowly integrate it over time. And then our taste buds kind of readjust to it. I also love. And I was talking to a friend about this of sauerkraut. She's like, I didn't even think of chopping it up. That's brilliant. Right? So chopping up these stronger flavors and kind of diluting it, just dispersing it in a rice and beans, you know, kind of dispersing it in a meal is a way to kind of integrate that. So a little bit of going low and slow kind of flavor stacking. I've seen Dr. Elise's book where she just, like puts sauerkraut juices in like a condiment, like a barbecue sauce or ketchup to start, and then like, slowly increases it over time. So low and slow as you need and then find ones that you do, like, you don't have to have sauerkraut. Maybe miso's your jam. You know, maybe you can try like, water kefir. There's other ones out there if you just are like, I don't like sauerkraut.

Yep, great tips. We were talking about the frozen foods earlier and. And your recommendations there. Remy had a couple questions along that line. One, are you. Should you wash stuff that you get that's frozen, let it defrost, wash it, or. Or what are your recommendations?

Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I typically don't wash frozen ones. I do try to get organic. Right. In terms of when we're getting foods, there is the environmental working group that shows Clean 15 Dirty Dozen. To get a better sense of what we should prioritize getting organically. But in terms of, like, if you get the frozen fruit, I put it right into my yogurt, right into my chia bowls, frozen, let it thaw out overnight, and then just eat it as is. So I tend to not wash it any of the frozens.

Sarah has this question. Do you have tips for someone on a tight budget?

Oh, yeah. I mean, I used to run a challenge on $4 and 50 cents a day when doing work for the food bank, and that was a big one. Where actually plant based is pretty easy. I recommend getting, you know, bulk lentils or beans. You can get them, they're often cheaper in like the bulk food bins at stores. Making them yourself and then in terms of that, you know, you can, there's different sometimes like frozen is a little bit more affordable. You know, buying in season as best and kind of just the sale items can be really helpful to keep, keep it on a budget. And then for ferments, they last a long time. You don't need a lot of something like sauerkraut or miso. So even though it's kind of like an initial investment, you can kind of build that in over time gradually in terms of those and then, yeah, getting frozen even. I've coached a lot of people like college kids and they have to shop at Trader Joe's and we can get the micro greens, you know, at Trader Joe's they're $3, whereas you go to any other store they're 6. So, you know, you can find some good products at a cheaper level and it's going to be beneficial. Great tip.

All right, so Amanda says do you have ideas for increasing stomach acid when stomach acid is low to improve digestion besides apple cider vinegar?

Great question. Yeah, I mean, this one, you definitely want to work alongside provider just in terms of like knowing what the root of that is to do something like that safely. So definitely recommend kind of working with provider in terms of that. But there's other, you know, kind of things like the sauerkraut juices is really helpful overall in terms of boosting digestion. There's often digestive enzymes, digestive bitters, but you can use kind of like foods and spices to kind of kickstart digestion too. And sometimes just working on the microbiome can help. Right. Everything's connected in the system too. So getting that system in balance can help.

Further upstream, I do see some great comments in the chat. Laura says it is hard to find more cost effective items when it needs to be certified gluten free. And Rachel says hot sauces may be fermented. Read the bottle, maybe you can sneak it up on yourself.

I know my local company, wise Go Organics, they just make tons of fermented, fermented salsas and hot sauces. So it can be little swaps like that. I say get curious at the store. I was even going in to see like what new things they had and I feel like it because it's, it's so popular now. You might see more pop up in terms of your local grocers that have things like fermented hot sauces. That's great.

I want to do a quick poll, actually, while we still have a good group of people here hanging on with us, I want to ask how. How confident do you feel now that you've had this webinar in your ability to eat at least 30 different plants a week? It looks like most people are feeling moderately to very confident. I know I felt really overwhelmed when I first started working at Tiny Health and was told, like, 30 plants a week. But then when I started tallying it, I was like, oh, okay. You know, I use enough cinnamon throughout the week, and cinnamon is a plant. And, you know, adding in things to a smoothie, you can. Can get eight different plants right in one smoothie. So they do add up. That's amazing. Make sure that you're signed up for the. For the challenge, if you haven't already. I assume everybody here that's in the webinar is already signed up. And there's lots of different ways for you to earn entries through the challenge week. So sharing with friends, you get a special link, and you get entries for every single friend that uses your link to sign up. We have a blog post for you to read about eating 30 plans. There's the Pinterest board following us on social media. Like, lots of ways for you to join in, earn more entries for your chance to win the Gut health test and a $50Amazon gift card.

Yeah, like I said, just have fun with it, because I feel a lot of people are sometimes stressed when they think it's another thing to do on their to do list. Right. So it can feel a lot right in this very week. So bring the fun curiosity to it, and then think of how you can then integrate it more slowly over time. And then I want to see some of your ideas, too. I love getting inspiration from other people. I saw someone's comment earlier, like, go wild and just have fun. Right. In terms of just, like, adding in that creativity yourself. So I definitely want to see people's, like, pictures, ideas, inspiration, because I think we can all learn from each other. We're all in our, like, spaces of our, like, saving energy. So this is the time to put a little bit of our. I call it gold coin of energy, precious energy this week to kind of that creativity piece. Yeah.

If you guys want to share, like, if you're on Instagram, if you tag Tiny Health, if you use hashtag 30Plan challenge, we'll reshare the ideas that are shared there. So we'll be engaging in the challenge all week long on our socials, and we hope that you all will help contribute and and provide inspiration for other people.