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Home › Articles › Nutrition and Your Health › The Whole Story on Whole Foods

The Whole Story on Whole Foods

Why They're Important for a Healthy Body

By Elizabeth Yarnell

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The opposite of whole foods are processed foods. The more steps away from the original plant, the more processed the food is and the fewer nutrients remain. Processing increases our ability to store food for later use, allowing communities to live farther away from the source of the food.

Let's look at the transformation of the whole food of a potato into a highly processed potato chip: First, the potato is peeled, losing fiber, iron and calcium along with the skin. Then it is washed, rinsing away carbohydrates, vitamin C and minerals. It's sliced, washed again and fried, removing water and destroying B vitamins while adding fat. Then it is salted, flavored with spices and given artificial colorings, and finally it is preserved with chemical preservatives.

The result of all this processing? Shelf-life, crunch and convenience, along with 70 times the fat, 20 times the salt, half the carbohydrates and less than one-third the fiber, iron, vitamin C and thiamin of a baked potato.

And we haven't even begun to look at partitioning, which is when some part of the food is taken or separated from the rest, such as sugar from beets, oil from peanuts or refined flour from whole grains. Nearly 70 percent of the U.S. food supply consists of partitioned foods that are almost completely devoid of fiber, vitamins and minerals.

Adding whole foods to your diet enables you to enjoy all the nutrition offered by nature's bounty, leading to better health and better eating habits.

Cajun Fish
This recipe uses only whole foods and is a flavorful, satisfying and nutritious meal.

1 potato, russet or sweet or half of each
1/4 onion, peeled and sliced thinly
10 to 15 green or string beans, washed and trimmed
1/2 to 3/4 pound white fish (catfish, sole, cod, halibut)
Creole or Cajun seasoning
3 to 5 whole garlic cloves, peeled
4 small Roma tomatoes, washed and quartered

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Spray inside of a 2-quart cast iron Dutch oven and lid with olive oil or canola oil spray. Scrub potato well and cut out any bad spots or eyes. Cube potato into 1-inch cubes. Halve beans or leave whole, as desired.

Line base of pot with onions. Rinse fish and pat dry with paper towels. Lay the fish over the onions in the bottom of the pot. Sprinkle the top side liberally with Cajun seasoning mix according to taste, and then sprinkle with garlic. Make a layer of potatoes and then one of green beans, interspersing sprinkles of spices as desired. Tuck the tomatoes around the top. Cover and bake for about 40 minutes, or until fish flakes easily and potatoes are fork tender. You should smell the aroma wafting from the oven that tells you everything is done. Serves two.

Tips: We love Tony Chachere's Famous Creole Seasoning, but any Cajun or Creole seasoning mix from the grocery will do, or mix together equal parts paprika, salt and a dash of cayenne to make your own. Careful with the cayenne as a little goes a long way and you may find that this unique cooking method intensifies spices.

This cooking technique will accept any frozen elements without any change in cooking time or flavor. Feel free to substitute frozen green beans and frozen fish filets straight from the freezer.

Don't feel like having fish? Just substitute the fish layer for chicken pieces, turkey tenderloin or pork tenderloin.

Elizabeth Yarnell is a certified nutritional consultant and the author of Glorious One-Pot Meals: A New Quick and Healthy Approach to Dutch Oven Cooking (Pomegranate Consulting, 2005), a guide to a guide to preparing quick, healthy and balanced one-pot meals. Visit Elizabeth online at www.GloriousOnePotMeals.com to subscribe to her free newsletter. The Glorious One-Pot Meal cooking method is unique and holds US patent 6,846,504.


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