Real food makes a comeback: Essential Eating, The Digestible Diet

by Ellen Sue Spicer

Real food is making a comeback! With books like Nourishing Traditions, The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth, In Defense of Food, and now Essential Eating The Digestible Diet by Janie Quinn, we can begin to take our kitchens back from Betty Crocker and make them our own once more.

Janie Quinn’s latest book guides us in eating whole foods that are required for better health. Additionally, our Standard American Diet (SAD) is lacking many of the “essential” nutrients we need, because the foods have been over-processed. Quinn guides us even further by suggesting whole foods that are easier to digest until our bodies are strong enough to digest the full spectrum of a healthy diet.

Quinn’s Essential Eating goes one step beyond most books about diet in that the author focuses on two important and practical aspects of food: their digestibility and gearing up your kitchen to enjoy real food. To do this, Quinn has divided the book into three sections:

In the first part of the book, the reader will find a Real Foods & Digestion Chart. I learned something new about the digestibility of foods from this chart and her explanations. If you are new to a real foods diet, this will help your digestive tract adjust to foods you may want to add to your menus. The pages following the chart provide detail about the important role of good digestion in absorbing the nutrients from the foods we eat. As the digestive tract becomes stronger, harder-to-digest foods (but still real foods) will be added. For example, apricots, avocados, bananas, coconuts, dates and figs are easier-to-digest, while most other fruits are harder and should be introduced later.

Near the end of this portion of the book, Janie Quinn gives us practical advice on how to equip our kitchen simply and easily for a doable, hands-on approach to cooking with what she calls the Continuous Kitchen. With lists of utensils and tips on organization, followed by preparing foods for the week, the author helps the reader make a stress-free transition from processed foods to preparing real foods.

The middle section of the book contains the recipes, which use ingredients that are readily available, although the emphasis is on local, organic produce. While I feel some of the recipes have more ingredients than I would normally use in my kitchen, they are not very complicated and are a good head start on real food cooking.

The final section is sources for the foods the author recommends in her book, followed by a helpful appendix and shopping guide. This book is quite complete and a great resource for real food enthusiasts, either new to the fold or already on board.

My main concern with the book was that there were no articles or research journals mentioned. When I called Janie Quinn’s office, I was told that Janie’s 14 years of experience is her research. Each person can try the foods to see how they digest in his or her body and make choices from there. In other words, you become your own research lab and your body’s reaction is the proof. So this book is really a self-help book with lots of resources to guide you along the path back to real foods, using your own digestive tract as your laboratory. Learning to trust your body may be the first step back to enjoying real foods.

If you believe that eating well is “essential” to your well-being, then Essential Eating The Digestible Diet, with its information, charts, resources, and recipes is the next book for you to read and to “digest.” Copies are available at Freshlife for $29.95.