Jonny Bowden - The 150 Healthiest 15-Minute Recipes on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth about How to Make the Most Deliciously Nutritious Meals at Home in Just Minutes a Day

Text 2011 Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S., and Jeannette Lee Bessinger, C.H.H.C.

First published in the USA in 2011 by
Fair Winds Press, a member of
Quayside Publishing Group
100 Cummings Center
Suite 406-L
Beverly, MA 01915-6101
www.fairwindspress.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

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ISBN-13: 978-1-59233-442-1
ISBN-10: 1-59233-442-3

Digital edition: 978-1-61059-516-2
Softcover edition: 978-1-59233-442-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

Cover design Fair Winds Press
Book production: Sporto
Photography: Richard Fleishman
Food stylist: Rachel Sherwood

Printed and bound in Singapore

The information in this book is for educational purposes only. It is not intended to replace the advice of a physician or medical practitioner. Please see your health-care provider before beginning any new health program.

From Jonny:

I dedicate this book to everyone who is working to improve the health and welfare of our children with better nutrition. And to Michael Pollan, whose work has been so important in raising our consciousness about food. And to nutritionist and humanitarian Robert Crayhon, who continues to inspire so many people every single day.

From Jeannette:

I dedicate this book to my Real Food Moms partner Tracee Yablon Brenner, to my cousin Jodi Bass, to my bestie Lisa Kerr, and to all the other moms and wives like us who are doing what we can to keep getting delicious, nourishing food on the table night after night (after night, after night!).

Clockwise from top left:
A Healthier Meatloaf with Chutney,

How to Create the Healthiest, Quickest, and Most Delicious Meals on Earth

If youre reading this book, there are two things I know about you:

One, youre interested in healthy food for you and your family.

Two, youre in a time crunch.

Usually, healthy and fast dont go together. Healthy fast food is almost an oxymoron, and most people have to choose one or the other. And when youve got a family to take care of, guess which one wins most often?

Years of private practice with nutrition clients (and even more years speaking to audiences around the country, writing books, and running a website that gets a ton of mail) have taught me that people are genuinely perplexed when it comes to food. They truly want to make smart and healthy choices, but those choices are usually very labor intensive (and often, though not always, expensive to boot).

Jeannette Bessinger has had the same experience, and shes even more in the trenches than I am. She works with busy families, providing nutrition education, and helping them improve both their eating habits and everyday food preparation. Many of these families are also on a budget, and all of them are time-crunched, stressed out, and overcommitted. They dont have time to investigate every food, read up on every health benefit, dissect every label, evaluate different claims, and then cook every meal from scratch. So Chef Jeannette is all-too-aware of the day-to-day challenges faced by the average person wanting to feed his or her family the best food possible in the least amount of time.

Hence, this book.

Let me say right off the bat that youre not crazyits sometimes very difficult to make healthy food quickly. You didnt imagine that, its a fact of life, and we need to acknowledge that from the beginning.

But its not impossible.

Far from it.

So we approached this cookbook as a huge challenge. How do we put together meals that are rich in nutrients (like vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals from plants, omega-3 fats, and so on), contain a good mix of protein, healthy fat, and good carbohydrates, dont break the caloric bank, and can still be assembled from start to scratch in a reasonable amount of time?

We think we solved the problem.

Is every single recipe perfect? No. Occasionally theres a shortcut or two (like using a prepared store-bought sauce or dressing). Not every single ingredient is organic (doesnt really have to be, actually). And once in a while the recipes will spill over 15 minutes a bit, but this is, after all, real life!

So let me tell you some of the things we looked at when we created these recipes. It may help you to understand why its actually possible to eat healthy food that can be prepared in no time. You just have to know what youre looking for.

Heres what we were looking for:

When I evaluate a food, Im looking at the costs versus the benefits. Chocolate cake has a very high cost: lots of calories, lots of sugar, and almost nothing thats nutritionally good for you. Now granted, it does have the benefit of being delicious, but thats what evaluation is about: weighing the benefits against the cost.

When you think about it, evaluating food isnt much different than evaluating anything else you shop for. If I go into the store and see a nice shirt, I might look at the price and say, Hmm, the shirt is okay, but Ill only wear it twice a year and it costs $300. The benefit of looking nice twice a year is not enough to compensate for the outrageous cost, especially when I can find an equally nice shirt for a fraction of the price.

To put this way of thinking into the context of food, I might think to myself, Chocolate cake tastes really good (benefit) but really screws up my blood sugar, gives me no nutrients to speak of, and is very high in calories (cost). Now if there were no other way to get that delicious taste, I might splurge and go for the cake. But the fact is that with some creative recipe development (the kind in which Chef Jeannette excels) I can get fabulous taste at a fraction of the cost. Not only that, but I can get nutrients that support my health, protect my waistline, and give me the building blocks for everything my body needs.

So when we nutritionists speak of nutrient density were talking about the balance between nutrients and calories.

Heres an example. Spinach is a really nutrient-dense food. One cup of raw spinach has 30 mg of calcium, 24 mg of magnesium, 167 mg of potassium, 8.4 mg of vitamin C, 1,688 mcg of beta-carotene, 2,813 IUs of vitamin A, and a whopping 3,659 mcg of lutein and zeaxanthin (two superstar nutrients for eye health).

Want to know how many calories that cup of spinach has?

Seven.

See where Im going with this? When you can eat a few cups of a food for fewer than 50 calories and get a ton of minerals, vitamins, and phytochemicals, youre eating a nutrient-dense food. There are a lot of nutrients densely packed into a small caloric package. Compare that to a tiny serving of commercially prepared chocolate cake that has about 54 IUs of vitamin A and not much morenot a single milligram of C, D, E, K, or any B vitamin (except for a tiny amount of folate). Its got a ton of sugar, 35 grams of processed carbs, and comes at a caloric cost of about 235 calories, and thats for a serving that wouldnt satisfy anyone but a squirrel.

So maybe spinach and chocolate cake represent two extremes. But the best-kept secret in the world is that when it comes to healthy food, you can actually have your cake and eat it too. Chef Jeannette has worked her kitchen magic to concoct recipes that feature nutrient-dense food at a reasonable caloric cost and that taste delicious too.