Did you know that studies show the healthiest guts on the planet consume over 30 different plants per WEEK?! Diversity of plant fibers = the diversity of your gut bacteria.
Now, don’t be too intimated by the number 30 itself, remember that plants are: grains, seeds, nuts, legumes, fruit, veg, and more (like seaweed for example). Let’s say you have a multigrain bread with oat flour, millet, buckwheat, chia seeds, pumpkin seeds… that’s five plants right there! Perhaps later on you top your salad with cranberries, sunflower seeds, walnuts, and hemp seeds; that’s another four. And maybe in that salad, there’s carrot, cucumber, bell pepper, lettuce, tomato, beans and chicken… another six! You’ve just eaten 15 different plants in just two meals, and you have the whole rest of the week for fruit salad, stir fries, and more. Plus, the more you rotate and switch up the 30+ fruits and veggies you include each week, the better your gut microbiome will fare.
In an effort to help each other with this rotation, this Saturday, you can join me and Nick in adding more diversity and variety to our diets. Each week, we’ll be a sharing what unlikely veggie we picked up AND the recipe Nick creates with it as part of our #GutDiversityChallenge.
This week we fell in love with okra, a vegetable that I’ve personally always been intimidated to prepare.
Nick helped make this first week extra fun by whipping up okra chips! You can eat these alone as a snack, dip them in hummus, or even as a salad topper if you make ’em extra crispy. It’s easy to turn this underconsumed veggie into a tasty snack that will feed and fuel your gut bacteria, by exposing them to fiber and phytochemicals they’re not used to in your normal diet.
Nick's Okra Chips for Gut Health
PREP TIME
COOK TIME
TOTAL TIME
SERVES
Ingredients
- 1lb of okra
- 2 tbsp vinegar
- water
- olive oil
- salt, pepper, and adobo (or seasoning of your choice)
Directions
- Slice 1lb of okra into thin rounds, and soak in a diluted solution of 2 tbsp vinegar + water for 20 minutes to remove the slimy coating. Drain and rinse to continue removing the last of the coating, and pat dry.
- Toss the rounds in ½ tbsp of olive oil and season with salt, pepper, and adobo (or seasoning of your choice) to taste. Toss in the oven at 500F for 10 minutes, flipping or jostling the rounds at the halfway point.
- Take them out, let them cool, and put them back into the oven at 200F for about 1 hour, or until they dry out fully to achieve that perfect chip texture and crunch!
We hope you enjoy! 🙂 Love, Chef Nick and Olivia x
