Kumai - Clean green eats: 100+ clean-eating recipes to improve your whole life

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WHOLE FOODS MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD,
AND, WHEN YOU FEEL GOOD, YOUR WHOLE
LIFE STARTS TO IMPROVE.

I grew up eating wholesome, fresh Californian produce, and learned to cook super-nutritious Japanese cuisine, compliments of my Japanese mom. Today, my primary job as a chef, food writer, and health journalist is to share what I know and love about food, culture, heritage, sustainability, and health. I love food, real and clean food, from the heart. And after almost two decades of working in the food and health industrylearning new culinary techniques, cooking in restaurants, tasting food prepared by accomplished chefs, developing fresh and healthy recipes for magazines and books, traveling the globe in search of new cultures and ingredients, and working with organic farmers across the countryIve found that I have come full circle: back to simplicity, back to cooking real food. Trends are nice and all, but real food is here to stay, forever.

Ive seen, touched, sampled, and tested enough to know what tastes amazing, looks gorgeous, and nurtures your body back to health, and it all starts with clean, green food. Green foods nurture your body and mind with vitamins and nutrients like calcium, fiber, potassium, and magnesium. By eating more real, whole foods, you will help to protect your body against disease, reduce inflammation, and simultaneously, youll look and feel absolutely radiantand you dont have to have the same boring salad every day to reap these rewards. Who doesnt want a sweet potato burger with sliced avocado or a hot bowl of kale fried rice? This isnt about eating health food: its about eating real food, prepared deliciously.

I have to give all of the credit for the way I eat to my beautiful mother. It took me a bit of time to realize, but through all of her scolding, she was always right. Fresh fruits and vegetables are the best options to nurture your body. Adding fresh fruits and green brassicas (thats fancy talk for veggies) into your diet will make you glow inside and out. Once you start cooking more often, and adding more greens to your diet, you will never look back. In fact, you will start to crave more greens. That chemical-laden processed junk food you used to crave wont even taste good.

Beautiful women dont diet, beautiful women learn to cook. Pass it on.

There is no place for dieting in my life anymore. And theres no place for it in your life anymore. Lets get back to our mothers way of eating. When you eat real food, you never have to count calories, worry about fat grams, stress over portion sizesfood should not be about guilt or anxiety. The experience of cooking and eating food should be about pleasure. Whole foods make you feel good, and, when you feel good, your whole life starts to improve. Its time to stop worrying about food and start savoring it.

Heres the thing: youre already beautiful, inside and out. But how do you feel? Do you feel energetic, positive, productive, and light... or do you find that you are often fatigued, quick to get sick, headachy, bloated, grumpy, and overall not your best self? Food can change all of that (and help you zip up your favorite jeans, total bonus!). No matter how old you are, good health habits matter, and the sooner you start caring for your body, the larger the rewards. My beautiful Japanese mother has always drunk green tea and eaten fresh fruit and greens dailyand she is healthy and radiant in her sixties. And my dadwho has benefited from my mothers cooking for all of these yearsstill rides his bike 10 miles a day.

My point is, the decisions we make every day matterthey are cumulative. The best prescription I know for a long, happy, and beautiful life is this: Educate yourself about where your food comes from, grocery shop often, cook most days, exercise, sleep, and enjoy the meals you prepare with the people you love. I hope this book will become your best friend to nurturing yourself back to health and happiness.

THE DOCTOR OF THE FUTURE WILL GIVE NO MEDICINE, BUT WILL INTEREST HIS PATIENTS IN THE CARE OF THE HUMAN FRAME, IN DIET, AND IN THE CAUSE AND PREVENTION OF DISEASE.

Thomas Edison

CLEAN EATING: A lifestyle that involves consuming real food in or as close to its most natural state as possible. Eating to nourish and cleanse the body and mind. Educating yourself on where food comes from. Purchasing or growing foods that are nutritious, unprocessed, and sustainable. Being more mindful of your overall health and the environment in which you live. Clean Eating is a choice and a way of life.

Maybe youre someone who doesnt like to cook. I hear youlots of people tell me they want to eat more healthfully, but they dont like spending time in the kitchen. Well, honey, let me tell you something: Cooking can be fun, cooking can be graceful, cooking can make you feel good, cooking can be the best gift you give yourself every day. It is your greatest resource to finding true healthand delicious food.

Okay, so you know that eating clean is good for your body. That should be enough to make you turn the pages and start cooking. But if you need more convincing, consider this: Eating clean and cooking green is your new beauty cream. Forget all of the oils and potions, you green beauty queen. Here are three more reasons to eat clean:

Beauty is an inside job. Greens are packed with beauty benefits like antioxidants and vitamin C. Antioxidants are also natures sunblock/beauty serum! They help to prevent free radical damage to your beautiful skin, which may also help to prevent wrinkles. The vitamin C in greens is essential for the formation of collagen. Collagen keeps your hair, skin, and nails strong and even helps keep your body flexible. Yoga, anyone?

Greens are naturally packed with massively powerful antioxidants (vitamin E, folic acid, lycopene, and alpha- and beta-carotene, and more). Antioxidants are substances that protect the body from damage caused by harmful molecules called free radicals. Studies consistently suggest that people whose diets are rich in antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables may have a lower risk of developing certain types of cancers. So eating more greens helps you look like a beauty queen