Why do some LeafSide meals have so many calories?

First, because many people switching to a WFPB diet initially have a hard time getting enough calories, e.g. they may start by eating lots of salad, and not get enough calories, and wonder why they’re often hungry/tired.  It takes time to research and understand what fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, and other ingredients deliver the most nutrition, so we solve that problem for them.

Second, because LeafSide’s core value is healthy convenience: Thus we deliver a truly complete, organic foods meal (not a snack) that’s ready in minutes.  Most other “meal” services will charge you more while only giving you a third of the calories (like 150 to 250 kCal) and nutrition (e.g. only a handful of ingredients, instead of our 20-30) — and that’s simply not enough for a real meal.

Finally, remember that calories are often not equal: 500 calories of donuts and soda has an entirely different effect on your body compared to 500 calories of vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, seeds, whole grains, etc. Most people eating a complete WFPB diet find they don’t really need to count or worry about calories, as the ample fiber in the diet naturally regulates feelings of hunger and satiety.  When eating whole plant foods, the body’s natural wisdom takes over to reach a healthy state — as the old (pre-soda, pre-candy-bar) Zen saying goes, “When you’re hungry, eat; when you’re tired, sleep. Fools will laugh, but the wise shall understand.”

Some LeafSide meals have significant amounts of fat; is that healthy?

With the possible exception of people suffering from advanced heart disease, whose doctors have ordered a low-fat diet for medical reasons like reversing atherosclerosis, the human body needs significant amounts of dietary fat to function properly — the main issue is what kind of fats, from what sources.

As researchers have noted, between the long-lived populations of the “Blue Zones” there is a wide range of fat intakes, from the 10-12% fat of Okinawan diets, to around 30% for some Mediterranean groups like Icaria, or Sardinia. What these long-lived peoples have in common is that the sources of fat are minimally processed, and from plants: nuts, seeds, avocados, or whole olives more than olive oil.  Even when oil is used, it’s minimally processed, e,g. made directly from mechanical pressing without further chemical treatments.

The least healthy fat is saturated fat, where the balance of evidence continues to show strong associations with heart disease risk.  But even there, the source of saturated fats matter: it’s animal or processed saturated fats that are strongly associated with worsening cholesterol (thus raising heart disease risk), and lipotoxicity (increasing type 2 diabetes risk), while also bringing unwanted toxins like pesticides, growth hormones, glycotoxins, etc. which are stored in animals’ fat cells.

By comparison, plant fats in their whole form are generally clean, and loaded with supporting antioxidants, phytonutrients, and fiber. Even with the whole plant foods containing more saturated fat (e.g. whole coconut flakes), the fiber and other nutrients counteract the typical bad effects of saturated fats. But this kind of “package deal” of foods is not at all conveyed on current food label standards.

EAT FREELY & INDULGE GUILT-FREE

When you eat minimally processed whole plant foods, you can generally indulge yourself in a huge variety of delicious AND maximally nutritious foods: thousands of different fruits, vegetables, beans and legumes, whole grains, nuts and seeds, mushrooms, and many different herbs and spices. The number of ways to prepare, cook, and combine WFPB meals is practically unlimited.

Even without using any sugar, oils, or salt (SOS-free), new techniques and recipes are appearing every day, from scores of cultural backgrounds. Deliciously decadent yet healthy recipes abound, like roasted sweet potato wedges dipped in lemon and tahini topped hummus. Or dark raw cacao raspberry cashew-cream “cheeze” cake. There are far more WFPB options than salads, that you can enjoy guilt-free, because they’re truly good for you, and you can rely on your body to signal when it’s had enough.

Unfortunately this term and number on nutrition labels is confusing, and only recently did the FDA revise the label to separately specify “Added Sugar,” i.e. the chemically processed and separated white sugar/fructose crystals of table/refined sugar. LeafSide never uses any kind of added sugar, thus that number is and always will be ZERO on all our products.

The fructose/sugar in LeafSide meals is only in the form of whole plant foods like berries, mangos, bananas, etc. and thus come packaged with nature’s good stuff: phytonutrients, antioxidants, and above all, fiber.  This “package deal” nature of real food is still being understood, but it’s already clear that eating whole fruit is good for us, and totally different in effects on the body, than eating the same amount of fructose as table sugar.

Read our more about “Why is the Total Sugars number large? Is there any added sugar in LeafSide meals?” here!

LOSE & MANAGE WEIGHT EASILY

One can lose excess weight in the short-term on a very wide variety of diets, but what matters is keeping the weight off, i.e. long-term, healthy, and ideally easy weight management, where we’d simply eat delicious and nutritious foods until we feel full.

That need for easy long-term weight management  implies meals that are nutrient-dense: delivering all the macro, micro, and phyto nutrients needed for good health, while avoiding excess energy-density, i.e. avoiding calorie-rich foods that are nutrient poor and bypass our natural satiety senses (because they have no fiber), like saturated fats from meat and dairy, oils, processed sugar, etc. From epidemiology and clinical research, plant-based diets best fit those requirements.

Only a diversified whole food plant-based menu fits those requirements of high nutrient density while avoiding excessively high caloric/energy density. Put another way, eating minimally processed, fiber-rich foods best allows our natural satiety signals to work, while also being long-term sustainable because 1) the eating guidelines are very simple to follow, and 2) the meals are fully nourishing.