Wild Salmon & Baby Spinach
When I give my health talks/presentations, people often ask me about supplements: Do I take them? Can I recommend any in particular? My answer is that I’d rather have a lush meal than take a pill. (“Lush,” by the way, refers to the quality of the ingredients, not the mode of preparation. “Lush” is perfectly compatible with “simple” in my book.) Not only will I enjoy a wonderful dinner more than a pill, nutrition is too complex to be able to pull out bits here and there and still reap their full benefits. Vitamins, minerals, fats, proteins, carbohydrates, micronutrients…they all work together when you consume fresh, whole foods. They don’t fare nearly as well when they’re taken out of context.
I was feeling the need for “brain food” last week, so I decided to bulk up on omega-3s: wild salmon (baked with pats of grass-fed butter on top) and a simple salad of spinach greens tossed with sea salt, pepper and flaxseed oil. Dessert was fruit dipped in yogurt from grass-fed cows. Total cost? Under $10. Much, much tastier than an omega-3 capsule–plus I also got the beta-carotene from the spinach, and the calcium and iron and potassium and selenium and zinc and vitamin E and…you get the picture. Then there’s the vitamin D and healthy fats from the salmon, the countless minerals from the sea salt, the lignans and omega-9s from the flaxseed, the magnesium and phosphorous from the pepper, vitamins A and D from the butter and yogurt…the list goes on and on.
Hence, my general recommendation when it comes to supplements: make a nice fresh meal instead. As Hippocrates said, “Let food be your medicine!”
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Tags: fish, flaxseed oil, greens, omega 3s, salmon
