Alejandro Junger - Clean Eats: Over 200 Delicious Recipes to Reset Your Bodys Natural Balance and Discover What It Means to Be Truly Healthy

Dedicated to all who teach that food is medicine.

CONTENTS

There is an old proverb: Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day. Teach a man how to fish and you will feed him for a lifetime.

After many years of helping people become healthier, I know firsthand that what happens in the days and weeks following any health program can determine the long-term results. It can be the difference between looking and feeling amazing for just a few weeks and a complete health transformation that reverberates positively, affecting your family, friends, and community. That is why I am tremendously excited to share this book. These pages offer the tools, knowledge, and recipes to make eating clean part of your life for good.

Years ago, after moving to the United States from my native country, Uruguay, I got sick, really sick. The drastic change in lifestyle, especially in my diet, left me with severe allergies, irritable bowel syndrome, and depression. These three diagnoses led to my being prescribed seven medications indefinitely, which did not feel right. So I started an intense search for a different, more natural solution. I tried everything I could find. My search took me around the world. I found many things that, alone or in combination, helped a great deal. But it wasnt until I stumbled upon the concepts and practices of cleansing and detoxification that I completely restored my health. Within ten days of an intense cleansing-detox program at the We Care Spa near Palm Springs, all my symptoms completely disappeared. Not only was I suddenly symptom-free, but I also felt and looked years younger.

In the days and weeks after the cleanse, everybody asked me what had changed. They wanted to do what I had done. I started guiding my family and friends through cleansing and detox programs that I designed, observed, and improved on. Soon after, my patients demanded the same. Wherever I went, I put people on cleansing programs.

After Palm Springs, I moved to Venice, California. The cleansing wave followed me wherever I went. I found a great property, three blocks from the beach, with three small craftsman cottages that shared a garden. I lived in one of them and my guests stayed in the other two. The cottages all had blenders, juicers, and water filters. My guests stayed for some time and followed the programs I designed for them. Soon my neighbors started stopping by. We prepared smoothies, juices, and all kinds of healthy foods. Many great chefs came by and prepared food for whoever was there at the time. And it was always packed with people. They started coming to me from all over the world.

Anyone who started a program would be glowing just a few days later, which prompted people to ask them what they had done. Next thing, their friends would show up in my Venice cottages, and then their friends. Everyone was welcome, and the results were astounding. Some had such a profound transformation that everybody noticed. Those people brought me their family and friends by the dozens. Or they went on to create their own wave of healthy living. Many of them became well known and are doing amazing work.

Day and night I discussed good nutrition, explaining the value of protein, fat, carbohydrates, fiber, minerals, and vitamins. I suggested books on nutrition and asked people to watch the many great educational movies about food from which I had learned myself. I suggested they buy a blender, a juicer, and a few other tools that I use every day. Countless times I went with patients to the supermarket to help them shop, and to the natural pharmacy to help them choose the right supplements.

No matter the specific results, as they came to the end of their programs, every single patient asked, So, Doc, now what? How do I keep the results? What do I eat? How do I prepare healthy meals?

Clean eating isnt just one thing. It is not a straightforward list of foods to eat and not eat. It is a way of thinking about food and how it makes us feel. Clean eating does have a foundation based on whole foods, but what makes it work is personalization. It cant be as simple as just stay away from gluten or stop eating sugar forever. Im not a fan of gluten, and I know processed sugar isnt healthy, but blanket statements like that dont give us the tools we need for our complicated lives. What we need is template recipes to get us started but also strategies to help us figure out what works for us in the long term.

So I started showing people what to eat and how to prepare it. Or I told them to come and learn from the great chefs that continually visited the cottages. This was the most effective way of helping people maintain the benefits of a cleanse, and it often went way beyond what they had already achieved. People started taking notes, and so did I. After collecting a number of recipes, I started sharing recipes by e-mail. These were passed around and soon a community grew, discussing, changing, and developing recipes.

These days my team and the community are much larger, and we are all still collecting and coming up with great recipes. My friend, the talented chef Frank Giglio, has prepared 180 recipes inspired by the Clean community. We also have many fantastic recipes contributed by our community of friends. These dishes not only taste great but also provide the nutritional punch that will help your body thrive. Whether you are using this book to help you through one of our programs or whether you are totally new to Clean, youll find the recipes in this book simple and straightforward.

In addition to the recipes, the book offers some amazing insights from my team members Dhru Purohit and John Rosania on the key principles to better navigating the world of food, cooking, and clean eating; some invaluable tips for setting up your kitchen; and several meal plan options for anyone wanting additional guidance.

Our goal is to make this book an important tool in your journey to lifelong health. Enjoy these recipes and, like the proverb we started with, happy fishing.

This book is a celebrationa celebration of great-tasting food and of the power of whole foods to heal us. This book is also a tasty guide to taking back your health. By making the incredible meals developed by chef Frank Giglio and our guest contributors, you are upgrading the quality of your food with every bite. Recent nutritional science has taught us that food is not just calories; it is information. This information is telling our bodies how to run and which genes to turn on and off. With every dish prepared, smoothie blended, or salad created from this book, you are upgrading the quality of the information you are sending your body. Weve seen it happen over and over again; when people eat clean, true health becomes a possibility. Our hope is that using this book will turn that possibility into a reality.

The Recipes: Gluten- and Dairy-Free

All the recipes in this book are made from whole plants and animals. We focus on unprocessed, organic ingredients, free of chemicals and preservatives. The recipes are also gluten- and dairy-free. We have removed gluten and dairy because we have found they are the two foods that give people the most trouble with their health. Simply removing gluten and dairy for a period of time can produce impressive health benefits. Lets recap some of the reasons why taking a break from these foods is beneficial.

The Problem with Gluten and Dairy

Gluten is the protein found in wheat and other cereal grains, such as barley, rye, spelt, and kamut. The list of syndromes and diseases associated with gluten sensitivity seem to be endless. It causes irritation and direct damage to the gut, contributing to a host of problems in the body. Gluten triggers autoimmune responses and thyroid issues and creates the conditions for leaky gut. Gluten sensitivity has been associated with chronic headaches, cancer, type 1 diabetes, neuropathy, and increased mortality rates. With our clients at Clean, we see gluten contribute directly to indigestion and bloating as well as fatigue and brain fog. While some people may have a serious allergy to wheat, nearly everyone has an immune response to it. This immune response can create a cascade of negative reactions that we are only beginning to understand. As opposed to foods like fish and vegetables, gluten-containing foods, such as cakes and cookies, are also more likely to be highly processed and contain chemicals, preservatives, and sugar.