Contents
- Healthy soils are the basis of a healthy diet –
- Four levels of plant metabolites
- Five challenges that short-circuit our dietary senses
- Six recommendations for a regenerative diet
- Closing on a personal note
A regenerative diet consists mostly of food that is wholesome and nutrient dense, because it contains the full diversity of ingredients that the human needs to thrive. In this blog, I first lay out why a diet that is fully regenerative for our own health simultaneously regenerates soil health. Then, I lay out five challenges that the current food system poses to those who want to eat more regeneratively, and offer five recommendations on how to address these challenges. Finally, I conclude by offering a personal note of caution, gratitude, and pragmatism.
*Disclaimer – This blog reflects the current state of my knowledge. It does not reflect the opinion of any institution, and my understanding will change as I learn more. The purpose of this blog is to summarize information, stimulate thought, raise conversation, and serve as a basis for further studies.
Healthy soils are the basis of a healthy diet
Food plants are nutrient dense if they grow on soils with rich, diverse and thriving soil biology. This is a big step in my reasoning and deserves further explanation!
Plant metabolism is progressive
Plants invest the energy they derive from photosynthesis for a progression of four levels of metabolic activity that correspond to four levels of plant health (Phillips, 2017):
Level #1: Basic building blocks of life.
The first metabolic level targets basic growth – the building blocks of cells and cell walls, flowering and fruiting bodies. Plants can synthesize all basic building blocks of a cell – sugars, amino acids, and lipids, a component of fat. These basic building blocks make cell walls and DNA and new cells – the plant’s need for rapid growth.
Level #2: Cell proteins.
The second level of synthesis produces complex proteins such as enzymes – strings of amino acids wrapped around a micro-nutrient (usually a metal). Proteins form the plant’s metabolism, some even protect against some pathogens.
Level #3: Fats and waxes.
The third level of plant synthesis are fats and waxes. Plants use these metabolites for storing energy for hard times, and for building a thick wax layer (or “cuticle”) that envelopes their outer skin (“epidermis”) and gives them a shiny look. The cuticle provides protection against airborne fungal parasites (e.g. mold and rot) and some insects.
Level #4: Terpenoids, phenolics, and alkaloids.
The fourth level of plant health is achieved when plants have sufficient energy and well-balanced nutrients. Plants then form chemicals of three classes: terpenoids, phenolics, and alkaloids, in millions of variations. These level-four metabolites may either taste bitter to herbivores to avoid grazing, they may help the plant during environmental stresses, are vitamins, have antibiotic powers that counter bacterial diseases, provide communication with soil organisms or other plants, or are toxic to specific parasites.
Wholesome food contains all levels of metabolites: The first level forms the basis of food that provides us with energy, the carbohydrates and amino acids. The second and third level augments our diet with more complex ingredients, including essential micro-nutrients. Level four metabolites empower our immune system and invigorate us – it makes food wholesome and nutrient dense.
Nutritious plants need healthy soil
To achieve full health, plants must access a plethora of micro-nutrients at the right time of their development. In nature, plants achieve access to the full range of micro-nutrients by forming partnerships with soil microbes – bacteria that can synthesize nitrate fertilizer from the nitrogen in the air, and fungal networks (or “mycorrhiza“) that supply the plant with phosphorus, micro-nutrients, and microbial vitamins. Plants synthesize level-one components for growth, even if their metabolic progression is limited by lack of a micro-nutrient. The plant then accumulates sugars and amino acids in its sap, leaving them susceptible to insects. To access the missing micro-nutrients for metabolic progression, plants “exude” sugars from their roots into the soil together with communication molecules. Together, root exudates attract and feed mycorrhizal partners and communicate exactly what the plant needs. In most cases, mycorrhiza possesses the chemical apparatus to “mine” whatever the plant seeks from the soil matrix, and transport it to the root – in exchange for more sugars and more requests. In this mutually beneficial relationship, plants and soil microbes together ensure that plants are achieving the best health possible while also regenerating healthy soils.
An imbalance of micro-nutrients on poor soils also limits the synthesis of more complex plant compounds. Still, plants continue to grow new cells. Because the metabolic progression is inhibited, plant sap is increasingly filled with sugars, lipids and amino acids. Plants become highly susceptible to insects and disease: their sweet sap is attracting pests while the plant is lacking the higher-level metabolites that protect against these pests. Only agrochemicals – fertilizer and pesticides – can ensure the plant’s survival and continued growth, because plants are unable to create the immunity that healthy soil biology would foster.
Five challenges that short-circuit our dietary senses
Today, we pay farmers for the weight they grow, not for the nutrient density of the food they produce! And our food labeling does not indicate Level 4 metabolites. So most foods are optimized for the first three metabolic levels, but lack in more complex components.
Our ancestors had developed senses that directed them to healthy foods:
- Our flavor senses detect many level-four metabolites, but certainly not all. For example, tomato flavor is a combination of several hundred chemical compounds, even though our taste sensors mainly respond to a handful of these (Wang 2017).
- The taste buds of our tongues detect sugars, acid, and salt, and protein – all precious in the wild. Humans react with instant craving!
- Our gut microbiome communicates through the microbiota-gut-brain axis, shading our mood and mental health (Berding 2021). This axis offers us another sensor for the overall quality of our food!
Together, these senses were designed to direct us toward a diversity of foods from healthy soil that make up a healthy diet that “we” thrive on. “We” as our body, our mind, and our gut microbiome. Yet, our mainstream food system has short-circuited our senses that once directed us toward healthy foods. We are now tricked toward unhealthy, highly processed foods. The food industry does that in several ways:
Challenge #1: Food ingredients are depleted in higher-level metabolites
Modern greenhouse tomatoes were long perceived as bland and flavorless, because their production prioritized rapid weight gain from the level-one plant metabolism (Tierman et. al., 2012). Meanwhile, plants lacked the symbiotic relationships of healthy soil and were thus unable to synthesize level-four metabolites that we perceive as flavorful. Modern plant breeders have studied this problem extensively, identified the one or two flavor molecules that create the strongest flavor response in humans, and then used precision breeding techniques to create new tomato varieties that produce excessive amounts of these perceivable flavor components. In addition, breeders fostered plants with excessive sugars. The resulting greenhouse tomato variety is still depleted in hundreds of level-four metabolites, but the augmented plant now tricks us humans into perceiving its tomato as sweet and flavorful. This tomato gives us the gratification of a sweet and tasty treat, but nevertheless lacks the wholesome nutrition of a traditional tomato. Unfortunately, tomatoes are but one example how modern plant breeders and flavor chemists are tricking our taste perception.
Challenge #2: Food processing masks low nutrient density with strong tongue-signals and artificial flavors
Processors receive basic foods, such as corn, soy, tomatoes, or milk. They take these apart into compounds, and market these compounds separately. Whole milk is separated into fats, different proteins, and water – and recombined or sold separately to maximize profits, while meeting minimum legal requirements for “milk” or “butter”. Then, flavors, salts and sugars are added – and the odd vitamin for marketing purposes. Today, food scientists have optimized modern processed foods for “crave-ability” and “snack-ability” – strong stimuli that please our senses (link), yet entirely overwrite our birth-given sensual compass to healthy food.
Challenge #3: Distracted eating deafens us for the messaging of our gut-brain-axis.
We can only listen to the language of our senses and our gut if we pay attention and listen to our body. Hasty eating, or eating in front of screens or while reading, takes away this attention. For most of human history, food served a cultural function: the celebration of relationships when eating in company. Families and friends ate together and reconnected after a day apart while giving their bodies and guts time to digest. Today, more than half of American households have ditched the dining table for the couch (The Atlantic) and turn their mind to a screen. We give little awareness to eating and how our food impacts us.
Challenge #4: Nutritional-ism
As consumers became increasingly confused about how to eat healthy, food industry responded with a smart marketing strategy: the idea that correct food supplements (e.g. adding specific vitamins) can address dietary imbalances. Accordingly, the food supplement industry enjoys continued growth, with very little science to support it. Industry successfully shifted our problem perception away from understanding healthy diet as a complex mix of nutrient-dense natural ingredients that are prepared with skill, toward a complicated self medication with expensive supplements (Hire a nutrition consultant!). It also shifted our food skills from sensual awareness and cooking, to counting calories and checking off vitamins.
Challenge #5: Disconnect between knowing and acting
Education in food can only go so far. Today, people who still don’t know about the health and ecological impacts of food and agriculture are hard to reach: these people were successful in blocking this information to reach their cognition (“wilful ignorance“). Other people know about the impacts of industrial food on biodiversity and climate, on their health. But they don’t act on it – cultural norms, convenience, lack of access to healthy options, false perfectionism, and ingrained behaviors create blockages between information, cognition, and action.
Despite a myriad of food products, the food industry is not providing human bodies with the diverse, nutrient-dense diet that our bodies have evolved with. Instead, foods provide excess of some food compounds (e.g. calories from sugars and other carbohydrates, or salts), while not meeting our need for other essential compounds. Our body-minds react by craving for more and more, without realizing that a nutrient-depleted food is unable to ever satisfy this craving. This not only causes diet-related diseases (e.g., obesity, hypertension, heart disease, and cancer), but also the destruction of soil and habitat, and the pollution of air and water.
Five recommendations for a regenerative diet
Wendell Berry advised us that “eating is an agricultural act” – the way we eat determines how we farm and how farming impacts the soil and the biosphere at large. Food writer Michal Pollan has taken this one step further: “Eating is also a political act” – Pollan points out how our food choices have co-created the food sector as we know it – a huge part of our economy and a driver of modern politics. Of course, how we eat also influences our bodies, our mood, and – through the guts-brain-axes – our mental health. So how can we eat regeneratively?
Recommendation #1: From-scratch cooking
Michael Pollan summarizes the main step towards a regenerative diet: “Eat anything you want, just cook it yourself.” (Pollan 2014). From-scratch cooking impacts all five challenges and renders food supplements (e.g. vitamins) unnecessary. From-scratch cooking also fosters slow, aware eating in company with friends and family – thus revitalizing the social and cultural dimension of food, and fostering awareness for the guts-brain axis. Finally, from-scratch cooking enables households to choose nutrient-dense ingredients that are grown in healthy soil – whether from the home garden, from a trusted local farmer, or based on a label that certifies regenerative production methods. Choosing ingredients that grew in healthy soil will provide the body with a truly nutrient-dense food, while also giving eaters agency over their impact on agriculture, the environment, the economic sector, and even the politics of the food system.
Recommendation #2: Choose diversity in staples
Generally, diversity enhances our diets and also improves soil management. Most food items consumed in the US rely heavily on only three staple crops: wheat, corn and soy (these are also the main animal feed). Regenerative crop rotations should include many more crops, including nitrogen-fixing legumes (e.g. chickpeas, kidney beans, peanuts, peas, lentils) and a diversity of grains (rye, oats, barley, buckwheat, etc). Diverse staples are also inexpensive protein and vitamin sources.
Recommendation #3: Avoid foods on the Dirty Dozen list, especially if you don’t know the farmer
Every year, the non-profit EWG publishes the Shoppers Guide to Pesticide in Produce. This report identifies the Dirty Dozen TM – a list of those twelve common grocery items that contain the heaviest pesticide load, ordered by the level of contamination. In 2022, this list was spearheaded by strawberries, spinach, kale & collard greens, then nectarines, apple, grapes, peppers, cherries, peaches, pears, celery and tomatoes. We recommend buying these goods only with organic labels, or seasonally local. The report also contains a list of the Clean Fifteen TM – the produce with lowest pesticide loading. In 2022, this list included avocados, sweet corn, pineapple, onions, papaya, frozen sweet peas, asparagus, honeydew melon, kiwi, cabbage, mushrooms, cantaloupe, mangoes, watermelon, and sweet potatoes.
Recommendation #4: Avoid commercial animal products and choose regenerative ones.
Most meat and dairy sold in the US was grown in very large, Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). Whether it is cattle, pigs, or poultry – animals are fed with feed grown in large monocultures, and these monocultures are often far away from where animals are raised. Because feed and feeding is spatially distant, a natural solution – the cycling of plant nutrients by animals – is separated out into two problems. Animal manure becomes a problem where animals are fed, contaminating water and air. Where feed crops are grown, compost/ manure is not available and farmers rely on chemical fertilizer. The result is large areas of monocultures, degrading soils, and contaminated waterways.
Increasingly, selected ranchers graze cattle regeneratively by moving animals rapidly and giving pastures long recovery periods. Dairy farmers can pasture their animals, improving animal wellbeing and milk quality while benefiting soil. Cattle and sheep can graze cover crops on cash crop land. Also, selected poultry and pig farmers use whole-farm management that emphasizes local nutrient cycles, usually by providing animals with access to pastures. These strategies can drastically reduce the environmental impact of animal farming. Unfortunately, few labels guarantee regenerative meat – the Land to Market program and the Regenerative Organic Certification lead the way. Also, smaller and independent farms rely on smaller and more costly abattoirs, often have better labor conditions and pay higher wages, and lack economies of scale in transportation. In their market niche, regenerative meat and dairy remains more expensive.
Recommendation #5: Buy from small farms or garden yourself
Local farms can be as problematic as grocery products, but usually they are not. Most small farmers sell directly to consumers and focus on quality and flavor, so they integrate practices that also help regenerating soil health. Small farmers also sell products seasonally, which drastically reduces food’s overall footprint. Many small farmers are transparent about their practices and invite eaters to tours, farm dinners, and other events that connect eaters and farmers – this is the best opportunity to learn what your farmer does to protect soil, foster biodiversity, and grow nutrient-dense food. So whenever you can, buy local and support local food hubs!
More and more people enjoy gardening at home, on their balcony, or in a community garden. It is the best way to build deep connection to food and soil, educate children, and create the tastiest produce ever. Kiss The Ground offers several gardening resources to help you!
Recommendation #6: Avoid food waste and compost the remainder
Few processed foods warm well, and restaurants and fast food joints usually serve far larger portions than recommendable for an average eater. Americans have gotten used to throwing away leftovers – according to USDA, more than one third of food goes to the waste dump. Annually, that is $162 billion nationally, or 220 pounds per person in every household. Reducing waste is the easiest and cheapest way to reduce negative impacts from food production, and composting food scraps can help you (or your community) grow healthy food at home. Check out the MakeSoil app for finding an accessible composting site near you!
To reduce food waste, combine several strategies. Smaller portion sizes at home, meal sharing when eating out reduces leftovers altogether. Adequate storage keeps leftovers tasty for the next day. And: leftovers from from-scratch food taste much better than from processed food, so Recommendation #1 will also reduce your waste!
Pollan summarizes: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.“, defining “food” as anything with five or less ingredients that “our grandmother would recognize as food” (Pollan 2008). An excellent buying guide is available from Kiss The Ground’s free resource collection.
Closing on a personal note
Eating is a deeply personal and private activity. As author, I would thus close on a personal note. We operate a regenerative, organic-no-till market garden. We produce almost all veggies that we eat, and many of the fruits and meat products. We consume these products all year – in summer fresh, and in winter from storage, frozen, dried, pickled, or canned. This means we gorge on tomatoes when they are ripe in our field; we jar lots of sauce, and otherwise almost never eat fresh tomatoes between November and July. Also, we can conveniently purchase from fellow regenerative farmers in our region through an online farmers market co-op. We work from home, which gives us the agency to cook fresh and eat together around a table four times per day. In short, we are grateful to enjoy a very privileged lifestyle which enables our mostly regenerative diet – mostly seasonal, local, and organic. We do enjoy occasional food sins and are pragmatic when eating out! By getting used to such a diet, my family’s bodies have recuperated the ability to sense wholesome and nutritionally dense foods: whenever we eat out for a few days, our senses ring alarm and our guts-brain-axes rebel. Store-bought tomatoes are just not cutting it for us – we enjoy ingredients when seasonally available and at their best. And we have become pretty skilled in transforming first-class ingredients into simple, easy-to-prepare, wonderful meals – “You learn cooking from the poor and saving from the rich” is what our Grandma always said. Especially since COVID, friends admire our 2009 lifestyle decision – others envy it, usually unaware of the renunciations and the hard work that it entails every single day.
Today, I don’t believe that a fully regenerative diet, as we enjoy it as market gardeners ourselves, is feasible for most Americans. Most of us are trapped in a large-scale anonymous food system that puts hundreds of barriers in our way – knowledge, skills, prohibitive costs, physical and financial accessibility. So “eating regeneratively” should not be a competition and much less a dogma. For now it is a practice in preparing seasonal meals and eating in community, a shopping riddle, a privilege, a rebellion to celebrate our full humanity, and at times a political act that absorbs considerable energy.
I recommend pragmatism, self-forgiveness, and focusing on the next little step that is suitable, tasty, and impactful within our current circumstances. We can build food literacy and skills in food preparation, we can seek connections to our local food system, we can host simple but fantastic meals in our community, we can be mindful about our food waste, and we can garden in and around our homes and in a community garden. We can avoid CAFO-grown meat, we can learn how to cook deliciously with lentils, chickpeas, dry beans, and peas for plant-based proteins– while saving considerable money. Money that we may invest in a better and more equitable food system in our community. It is more important to make some permanent changes than going “all regenerative” for a little while, before feeling defeated and returning to Business As Usual, full of guilt and shame. We need to learn to love ourselves and the entire living world. Then we eat as a way to share this love, practice love, in all our imperfections.
References
Berding 2021. Berding K, Vlckova K, Marx W, Schellekens H, Stanton C, Clarke G, Jacka F, Dinan TG, Cryan JF. Diet and the microbiota–gut–brain Axis: Sowing the seeds of good mental health. Advances in Nutrition. 2021 Jul;12(4):1239-85.
Phillips, 2017. Phillips M. Mycorrhizal planet: how symbiotic fungi work with roots to support plant health and build soil fertility. Chelsea Green Publishing; 2017.
Pollan M. In defense of food: An eater’s manifesto. Penguin; 2008.
Pollan M. Cooked: A natural history of transformation. Penguin; 2014 Apr 29.
Tieman, Denise, et al. “The chemical interactions underlying tomato flavor preferences.” Current Biology 22.11 (2012): 1035-1039.
Wang 2017. Wang D, Seymour GB. Tomato flavor: Lost and found?. Molecular plant. 2017 Jun 5;10(6):782-4.
Well said, Thorsten. “Food for thought!” How would you feel about me possibly editing this and abridging it for elementary &/or high school students to read? I’m hosting a high school class this week who seek to learn about permaculture and farm-to-table paradigms.
I thought your paragraph about tomato chemistry was particularly apt and insightful. Do you have a reference for “precision breeding techniques to create new tomato varieties that produce excessive amounts of these perceivable flavor components”? That’s the kind of thing I’ve long suspected but had no concrete references for (I probably just have to look harder).
Keep up the good work.