Tim Spector, the ZOE supremo, is now flogging a Daily30+ supplement which is supposedly a scientifically researched product aiming to boost gut health and make the dream of eating 30-up plants a week come true.
A monthly subscription costs £39. Forty quid for a sachet of seeds, nuts and vegetable powders which would probably cost you a fiver, if you ganged up with a few friends and bought the individual ingredients to mix yourselves. Because the main reason why gullible people will cough up the money is that hardly anyone stores all those various herbs, seeds and spices.
But I really don’t think it is even necessary, which I have said before. If you eat well, cook at home and your diet is varied and balanced, you’ll get thirty various plants a week in your menu easily. Consider for instance my turkey schnitzels with dukkah coating: dukkah has ten ingredients and you can easily add more to it. If you have a couple of vegetables on the side with the schnitzels, that’s half of the prescribed 30 already, in just one dish. An average stir fry will incorporate at least 10 and a jambalaya has a whooping 20 different plants in it! All delicious, easy to make dishes.
What we can do to make sure that plant variety is boosted, is to use more spices. Even the ZOE people recommend ginger, turmeric, chillies and cloves as valuable antioxidants that might also reduce blood sugar, cholesterol and inflammation. After all ancient medicine was largely based on spice and herbs, before penicillin and vaccines were discovered.
My spice cupboard is naturally quite extensive as it's largely my livelihood. If you’re interested, here’s the savoury shelf followed by baking spices (though the twain do meet).
I also make my own mixes, with the pork rub, Creole spice and Baharat for Middle Eastern dishes the most common. I strongly encourage you do the same: shop bought mixes contain a lot of anti-caking agents and preservatives, plus they never taste quite spot on to your liking. And once you’ve tried adding cinnamon to your noodles or a pinch of cloves to your chicken, you won’t look back, I promise.
Mr Ottolenghi is obviously the Spice Maestro, with unexpected combinations and wonderfully exotic flavours to copy so reach to the website, watch Test Kitchen videos – or follow my Ottolenghi-inspired recipes. More and varied plants, more flavour and more interest! A winner all round.
This concept is in straight opposition to the ‘three ingredients’ nonsense – and I’m happy to see that folks are starting to discern the benefits of more ingredients in a dish. As I repeat ad nauseam, it’s not like you have to memorise the ingredient list and thus the fewer means the better.
Finally, below there are a few more recipe suggestions with lots of various plants, seeds, herbs and spices in the ingredients. Happy spicing!