Why food quality is everything
Low fat? Low carb? Low calorie? Forget all that. It's time to focus on good fat, good carbs and good calories.
At its core, the Spartan Diet is devoted to the importance and centrality of food quality. That means not only eating the most nutrient rich and very best quality food at every meal through food selection and cooking methods, but abstaining from junk food, industrial food, packaged food and even food of moderately high quality. It means you'll be cooking from scratch and abandoning the factory-made processed foods of convenience that more than degrade people’s health and makes so many people fat, sick and weak.
In order to create the healthiest diet in history, I've had to break with the conventional wisdom on what's healthy and what isn't. Orange juice, protein shakes, bottled water, health bars, granola, frozen yogurt, cow’s dairy, chicken, conventional vitamin pills -- many such foods billed as health foods don't make the cut on the Spartan Diet, and I'll tell you why in future issues.
Many diets fall into broad categories of “low fat” or “low carb” diets. The Spartan Diet right-sizes fats and carbs -- neither high nor low -- but more importantly stresses the highest quality fats and carbs, and in optimal amounts that make sense for your individual needs. The Spartan Diet is built out of the world's best sources of good fats, good carbs, good proteins, good everything.
While the Spartan Diet is designed to be fitted to and flexible about your own particular circumstances and personal values, it's uncompromising in one very important way. It doesn’t seek a middle ground between healthy food choices and unhealthy ones. This is yet another factor that sets the Spartan diet apart from all other diets. Most diet and health experts, for example, might recommend that you reduce your white sugar intake, cut down on fried foods, try to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables, and so on. Knowing that white sugar, fried foods and a lack of fresh fruits and vegetables contribute to disease, these advisors advocate a compromise between what is known to be healthy and what is known to be easy. This compromise is based on the assumption that giving up junk food altogether is simply unthinkable, undoable – impossible and that people are gullible, weak and lazy. The best you can hope for is to reduce, cut down on, and moderate the consumption of the very substances that wreck health. A little donut once in a while won’t kill you, right? Well, that’s true. But I think “survival” is a pretty low bar for a snack.
I’m in favor of discrimination against toxic, empty calorie, denatured, processed, conventional and mediocre foods that compromise health no matter its source whether it’s free or comes from a grocery store, a restaurant or even a friend or relative. I encourage you to say no to food you know is neither nourishing nor supportive of your lifestyle and values. You don’t have to compromise your health for the comfort of others for the same reason you wouldn’t take a poisonous substance because someone gives it to you.
If you want to live your life somewhere in that vast space between maximum health at one end of the spectrum, and chronic sickness and premature death on the other, the Spartan Diet is not for you.
But if you want vibrant health, constant energy and both physical and mental strength, then the Spartan Diet is exactly what you’re looking for. - Amira Elgan
Recipe: Spartan Diet Sourdough Cornbread
The Spartan Diet Sourdough Cornbread is the perfect accompaniment for many meals, especially for the Spartan Diet Roasted Bison Chili Beans. It’s also great for dessert — slathered with butter or olive oil and raw honey with a cup of hot chocolate on a chilly winter night.
Its soulful cornmeal heartiness, whole corn kernels in every bite and chia seeds and ground flax seeds give the Spartan Diet Sourdough Cornbread a crumbly texture that is still fluffy and moist. And it’s not only high on flavor but also rich in fiber, protein, B vitamins, minerals and probiotics as it’s fully fermented.
Cornbread is an American staple, and it's made in a variety of ways in the United States and throughout the Americas. In the Northern region, it’s generally made with eggs, a lot of sugar and white flour with some cornmeal. In the South, it's typically made with little to no sugar or white flour. There are savory versions of cornbread made with cheddar cheese, bits of jalapeno peppers and bacon. (Cornmeal can be coarse or medium ground, and although is not true polenta, it can be interchanged with polenta. Finely ground corn is corn flour, not cornmeal. And masa harina is different from cornmeal and polenta.)
The Spartan Diet cornbread recipe calls for 100% cornmeal plus one cup of sourdough leavening and fresh (or frozen) corn kernels, plus chia and flax seeds.
If you’re a sourdough baker, you know that feeding your starter or creating a leavening always leaves you with leftover sourdough, which many call “discard” because most people throw it away. (The reason is that when you feed a starter, you by definition double the amount of flour and water. That means you remove the starter before adding flour and water. But that removed starter can be retained in the refrigerator for up to two months. Using this old starter is much better (healthier, tastier) than using flour in cakes, crackers, pie crust and other foods because it's well fermented.)
If no sourdough is available, this recipe can be substituted with a baking powder mixture also provided in the recipe. But it won’t be as good or as nutritious..
I’ll be sharing recipes for creating your own sourdough starter and leavening later on. If you want that sooner, please send me an email.
Incidentally, all of our sourdough bread and other baked foods are made with an ancient sourdough starter from Venice, Italy that a wonderful baker there gifted to us, and which we’re also happy to send to paid subscribers who request it.
Although this recipe is designed on the savory side, I still like adding a little vanilla and Ceylon cinnamon for extra deliciousness. From my kitchen to yours, cook with love and eat with joy! - Amira Elgan
