Health & Wellness, Updates

LeafSide’s 2021 Review

Posted on by LeafSide Team
LeafSide's 2021 Review banner image

At LeafSide, our team is obsessed with whole food plant based (WFPB) nutrition, from

  • the science — what’s healthiest?
  • to the ingredients — what’s best in nutrients and taste quality?
  • to the recipes — what’s going to taste great?
  • to an actual meal you can hold in your hand and take anywhere and enjoy anytime in minutes, freeing you to live life fully!

Of course, it’s not just the immediate meal we obsess over — we’re also delivering the plant-based results we all want: optimal weight, more energy, better sleep, better mood, preventing disease, metabolic health, better skin & scent, athletic performance, and healthy longevity.

To those ends, we’re always paying attention to new videos, podcasts, books, courses, and research on plant-based nutrition. Please check-out our favorite new resources from 2021 — enjoy, and cheers to making 2022 your best one yet!

NutritionFacts.org 2021 Favorites

As usual, Dr. Michael Greger’s NutritionFacts.org continued to deliver the most concise, evidence-based content in the space of lifestyle medicine and WFPB nutrition.  Our team particularly appreciated the following 2021 videos:

200-Pound Weight Loss Without Hunger!?

In this first of a fascinating four-part series, Dr. Greger tells the story of a remarkable experiment that shows how well our body can regulate satiety and our body weight; and then all the ways those natural regulators can be hijacked…and how to restore them (spoiler: Eat a wide variety of minimally processed plants 😋 ).

 

Yes, There IS a Scientific Consensus on a Healthy Diet

Nutrition tends to be a noisy and contentious public arena, with massive conflicts of interest, and regular media distortions. Here, Dr. Greger reminds us that in the global academic community, there is in fact a scientific consensus on what the healthiest eating pattern is:

 

Should You Go “Forest Bathing”? Or Sniff Trees? 🌳🌲Yes and Yes

In case we needed any more reasons to take a walk in your friendly neighborhood forest, it turns out that tree scents can significantly boost our immunity:

Favorite 2021 WFPB Book Release 🥇

Like the spectacular 2019 documentary The Game Changers, this 2021 NYT and Amazon bestseller book brings the stories and science on how competitive, elite athletes worldwide are eating whole plant foods to boost their endurance, strength, and rapid recovery. You’ll find almost 100 stories of athletes from all sports tell their tales of how plant-based eating took their performance to new highs, along with up-to-date discussions of sports nutrition, and plenty of usable recipes, many from the athletes themselves. This is a great way to get inspired and get active!  (Pssst…and when you use LeafSide meals, you’re entirely freed up to just focus on your sport 🤸)

 

Favorite New Podcast for the New Year

Alright, this didn’t start in 2021 per se, but just a few weeks ago in January 2022: One of the world’s leading experts in aging and longevity, has started his own podcast — we’re talking about Harvard University’s Dr. David Sinclair, and his Lifespan show. 

We find it especially interesting because Dr. Sinclair isn’t from the food or nutrition world, but from a quite different scientific field, bringing a different “arrow” of evidence on health, that still points in the same dietary direction.

In the 2nd episode, he discusses what and how to eat to maximize longevity; you can probably guess what foods are recommended, but when to eat may surprise you…we’ll bet more than a few of us will try it, especially when LeafSide makes high-nutrition meals easy-peasy, and opens up the possibility of actually reversing aging, not just slowing it down:

 

LeafSide’s New & Improved in 2021

The NEW Pesto & Peppers Pasta

LeafSide now has the tri-colors of Italian sauces: Our red marinara and white alfredo pastas are already LeafSider favorites. So, we decided to treat you (and your health), to our delectable take on a healthy whole plants green pesto for the complete Italian experience! Grazie and buon appetito!

Highlights & Benefits:

  • The taste of summer all year ’round: Italian-inspired, fabulously fragrant, oil-free, toil-free, and mouth-watering!

  • Full of prebiotics/fiber, 24 grams of protein, & amazingly heart-healthy (no processed oils, as always with LeafSide).

  • Zesty basil (a digestion booster) is paired with powerfully pleasant garlic (unmatched for anti-infection & anti-cancer powers), along with cheezy immune-boosting nutritional yeast, and bright pectin-rich lemon, to create an intensely complex green sauce.

…and plenty more yummy nutrition, click to see more.
LeafSide Mint Chip Smoothie

We’re Never Satisfied With Yesterday’s Best

The LeafSide kitchen is always humming with activity in our never-ending quest to find the best ingredients, and combine them into the healthiest, most nutritious ways possible. Like previous years, 2021 saw many recipe tweaks, including these 3 larger updates:

  • The updated Apple Cinnamon Crunch sweet-bowl will remind you of a warm granny smith apple crumble, and the addition of velvety lucuma (a Peruvian fruit with maple undertones – yum!), will have you craving these flavors any time of the day.
  • Our improved Thai Veggie Noodle savory-bowl now features pea vermicelli noodles for an even more satisfying bite.
  • Not to mention our newly updated Mint Chip Smoothie, designed to give you your mint chocolate fix —  now with even more refreshing peppermint and decadent cacao nibs in every sip!

Get Even More From Your LeafSide Meals

We’re steadily growing our suite of LeafSide “meal-mods” so you get more fun and variety from your meals, not to mention more nutrition and value. 

  • Serve 4-6 people with 1 LeafSide Pack and a few ingredients to make a picture-perfect, mouth-watering meal, often with just 10-15 minutes of easy prep.

  • Cut the time you spend shopping and cooking by 90%

As an example of a LeafSider favorite, in almost no extra time you can make Tex-Mex Tacos for 8 people!

Visit our website for more meal mod ideas! 👩‍🍳

Thank You!  🙌

Thank you for being on the LeafSide, and for choosing food that makes a difference — for you and yours, for the animals, and for our one planet Earth.

Please feel free to contact us at any time with your questions or feedback; it’s with your help that we’re making the plant-based revolution happen!