Ensuring the food we eat provides the nutrients that nature intended is challenging, given the widespread use of industrial farming methods, depleted soil and synthetic inputs, and falling nutritional standards in the American diet. The presence of these negative influences on food quality suggest that we need to pay attention to both nutrient content and nutrient absorption from our food, now more than ever. My cookbook – eat + absorb – contains recipes and cooking instructions so that the reader maintains and absorbs optimal nutritive food quality.
The book begins by providing a basic overview of how nutrients are absorbed in the human body, how some of the most important vitamins and minerals perform, and instructs on specific complementary ingredients that allow for better absorption. This cookbook contains recipes intended to inspire home cooks in the kitchen, allowing them to create delicious offerings with the added benefit of boosted nutritional qualities. Each recipe features the primary nutrient complex of a base recipe, along with recommendations for further ingredient combination, which may help increase the absorption of a designated micronutrient.
Layout of the book
Foreward: Why this book and why now?
The cookbook opens with a brief introduction, written in the first person, in which I discuss why I wrote the book. The reasoning includes: deficiencies in the American diet, growing health concerns surrounding chronic disease and diet, and food system nutrient loss. The foreward then gives an overview of the most at-risk populations for nutrient deficiency, including those on special diets, postpartum mothers, and those with little access to fresh ingredients.
Opening chapter: What is Bioavailability?
The first chapter introduces the science behind nutritional absorption and the benefits of essential micronutrients, focusing on those that may be deficient in a traditional American diet.
Section: Essential Vitamins and Minerals
The book continues with a brief overview of the vitamins and minerals that the book will focus on, and their primary uses throughout the body. A reference table is included for easy reader access, which provides nutrient-to-nutrient interactions and how the highlighted micronutrients interact with one another on a cellular level.
Section: How To Use This Book
This section highlights methods on how to use the book as both a nutritional resource and a guide in the kitchen.
Section: Recipes
Following a classic cookbook format, recipes are divided into appetizers, mains, snacks and sides, each with a primary base recipe for the cook to use. Each recipe notes the chief nutrient complex of the base dish, indicating the primary micronutrients obtained when eating the prepared recipe. Additionally, variations are given for each recipe with the intention of maximizing the nutritional value of a particular vitamin or mineral, depending on the needs of the cook.
eat+absorb in practice: Curry + Mustard Halibut with Celery Salad
An example of a recipe, and subsequent nutrient-maximizing variations included in the book, is Curry + Mustard Halibut with Crunchy Celery Salad. The recipe and the recommended modifications for increased absorption of specific micronutrients appear below, along with a breakdown of how these ingredient synergies work:
eat+absorb in practice: Recipe Explanation
This particular recipe, Curry + Mustard Halibut with Crunchy Celery Salad, was developed to allow for elevated nutrient absorption, as explained here. Halibut contains high levels of vitamin E, a fat-soluble essential micronutrient with antioxidant properties which are important for protecting the body from free radicals. These free radicals in turn help provide relief from oxidative stress, reduce cellular damage, and support the immune system. Vitamin E enhances the absorption, storage, and utilization of vitamin A, so increasing the amount of vitamin A in a recipe, by way of carrots, will heighten the available vitamin A available for absorption in the small intestine.
Lemons, an ingredient rich in vitamin C, help to increase the absorption of iron while simultaneously helping to overcome the inhibition of iron absorption by phenols and phytates, both of which are commonly found in plant materials. The addition of iron-rich pumpkin seeds combined with an additional boost of vitamin C from jalapeños, helps mitigate any iron absorption obstruction from other plant materials in the recipe and allows for maximum iron absorption. Further, for those eaters looking for a folate boost, the recipe recommends substituting an orange for a lemon. Folate-heavy and vitamin C-rich oranges, combined with additional vitamin C from the other lemon helps maintain folate storage throughout the body and reduces folate excretion. The combination of folate and vitamin C from both the lemons and oranges will allow for maximum folate absorption and maintenance.
Conclusion
Our contemporary food landscape is littered with cookbooks composed of themes ranging from diet books to instructional entertaining to ethnic cuisines to comfort food. Most have the simple intention of providing one thing: recipes. And, while a simple recipe book is a literary genre that is quite useful in many ways, it can also be quite limiting. While a good recipe may provide the cook with step-by-step instruction on how to create a dish, it fails to teach them how that dish will truly impact their body and its ability to function. For those individuals who are either mildly curious or already vastly interested in a focus on how their food impacts their health, this is a pitfall missing in the current cookbook lineup.
eat + absorb walks the line between science and food storytelling, with a focus on tested recipes that are delicious to a wide-range of palates, while also providing guidance for those looking to obtain the most nutrition from the food that they eat. The beginning of the book provides basic knowledge needed for ingredient combination, allowing each individual to utilize this knowledge to cook for their own personal or familial nutritive needs. The recipes that follow are simply suggestions and examples, which the cook can use when beginning a nutrient-focused cooking journey. My hope is that the information given will inspire the home cook to utilize these resources to further create their own nutrient-rich dishes outside the confines of the book, whether that is the postpartum mother looking for more iron, the father looking to boost his omega-3 intake, or the exploratory home chef aiming to cook a flavorsome meal with a healthy secret.