Full Plate: One meal for the whole family

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

This book is dedicated to all those who want to create delicious rainbow-packed meals to positively impact their health trajectory.

To my mother, who fostered my love of rainbows, cooking and scrumptious food from an early age (and showed me what unconditional, steadfast love and care looks like).

To my children, who fuel my ongoing love and passion for dreaming up veggie-packed, yummy meals.

A NOTE FROM DR PREEYA

Dear Reader,

I won’t keep you long, given you’ve bought a cookbook (not a medical journal), and who really reads the non-recipe chit-chat? But you’ve picked up a cookbook written by a doctor, not a Michelin-hatted chef (yet!). So bear with me for a few pages, which will be worth your while, I promise you. If you don’t learn something new, I’ll eat my shoe (not a meal idea listed in this book, FYI).

You’ve picked up this book because you need simple, nourishing meal ideas that work every time. Well, you’re in the right place. Whether you’re cooking for one or many, older humans or littler ones (sans teeth and words), I have meals that will suit everyone. This includes people with intolerances, allergies and preferences around foods and textures (what you might call fussy eaters).

If you’re time-poor, juggling a billion balls but still super keen to eat yummy, veggie-packed meals that can also feed your 1-year-old, I have recipes for you.

If you’re living alone and keen to start cooking more, or freezing meals to prep ahead for busy patches, I have some excellent ideas.

If you’re at level zero in the kitchen (i.e. boiling an egg is a touch-and-go affair), I have things even you can whip up. I promise my recipes are achievable, doable and delicious!

EVERYONE SHALL BE FED

Quick and easy

No cooking skills (numpty in the kitchen)

Just moved out of home with no idea where to start in the kitchen

Time-poor with a very full plate and few minutes for cooking

On a tight budget, needs bang-for-buck meals

Loves to cook once, store and freeze

Needs 15-minute meals

Allergies

Anaphylaxis to peanuts

Lactose intolerance

Anaphylaxis to tree nuts like walnuts/almonds

Coeliac disease

Cow’s milk protein allergy (CMPA)

Anaphylactic to egg

Food preferences

Doesn’t like spice

Has an 8-month-old on solids

Vegetarian for ethical reasons

Fussy eater (child or adult)

Wants to sneak as many vegetables as possible into a one-pot wonder

There are heaps of recipe options in this book for you.

You can always make little tweaks to my recipes so they suit your needs, whether they’re budgeting requirements, intolerances or allergies. If you have someone with coeliac disease at your dinner table, I’ve got alternatives so you can still nail the recipe. If you’re feeding a 9-month-old, I let you know when to take their portion out (before adding spice, for instance) and how to prep it so it’s a suitable texture. When it comes to your budget, if you want to throw broccoli instead of zucchini into my Tuna Pasta Bake (because the market had them on special, so you bought up big time) – go for it! I encourage you to go rogue, experiment, and use what’s in season and costs fewer pennies (I’m a big believer in going with cost-effective canned and frozen veggies, too).

Improvise, be brave, heap in the rainbows (I’ll explain this, promise) and above all, enjoy!

Love,

Dr Preeya x

INTRODUCTION: ONE MEAL FOR EVERYONE

This cookbook mirrors how I cook for my family: ‘One meal for everyone.’

I’ve always tried to make one meal to feed the infant at the start of their solids journey, the toddler who’s started saying ‘yes’ and ‘no’, and the adults who love food and want to eat something tasty.

As a doctor, I know the huge impact food can have on our physical and mental wellbeing. I want to keep this very simple (because you’ve bought a cookbook, not a medical textbook). Eating a diet high in fruit and vegetables (what I call ‘rainbows’) yields a pile of health benefits.

FOOD AND HEALTH

You may have seen fancy wheels that advise you on how much of each food group you should be aiming for, like this one, which is adapted from the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating.

Drink plenty of water.

Use in small amounts.

Use only sometimes and in small amounts.

As you’re probably already aware, the recommendation is to aim for two serves of fruit and five serves of vegetables each day to reduce your risk of chronic disease. A patient once said to me, ‘Okay, so that’s well and good, but no one has ever told me what a serve is.’ So, while the above wheel tells you roughly how to divide your diet for health reasons – how much you should be aiming for can get a bit lost.

The information in the table opposite is collated from the Australian dietary guidelinesI

and applies to adults (things change for kids and people who are pregnant and breastfeeding). It gives you a rough idea of what a serve looks like for each food group.

In the consulting room, I talk about aiming for lots of fruit, veggies and wholegrains while trying to limit processed, salty and fried foods.

I find things can get confusing quickly for patients, so while the wheel is great – the old ‘eat lots of rainbows, less of the sometimes stuff’ is what often works with my own kids and my patients.

My ethos when it comes to food (as both a parent and doctor) is that everything in moderation is actually okay. I don’t think anything needs to be excluded completely unless there’s a medical reason, such as an allergy, or an ethical one. We know that consuming processed meat can increase the risk of bowel cancer. The World Health Organization (WHO) has classified processed meats such as salami and ham as a group 1 carcinogen, meaning these products are known to cause cancer. If you look at the wheel, discretionary foods are at the bottom right; these are foods that peak medical bodies suggest you limit due to their higher saturated fat, salt and kilojoule content. That’s where salami and other processed meats sit. Many guidelines put processed meats there and mention limiting these foods as opposed to banning them entirely from the diet.

I’m just pointing out that you don’t need to say ‘no’ to something all the time, and you don’t need to label the food as ‘bad’ because it’s in the discretionary section. But we’ll get more into that soon.

I’m all about balance, moderation and having a crack at everything – sometimes.

FOOD IS ABOUT MORE THAN NUTRITION

Food is about far more than getting the nutritional building blocks into our body. While ideally, we need adequate amounts of zinc, iron, vitamin C, vitamin B12 (and all the rest) from our diet, food is about FAR more than nutrition alone. On a dark day, food can bring you comfort (I know my family’s dhal still does, see page 74

), and in a joyous moment, food can bring fanfare to a celebration. Food brings families and friends together, binds people through difficult and tough conversations, and helps us bond through preparing and enjoying a dish created together. Food is more than just food. And it can be enjoyed without guilt or shame.

WHY I’M NOT A ‘GOOD FOOD/BAD FOOD’ DOCTOR OR PARENT

Food morality can be a contributing factor to body image issues and eating disorders. As a mum of two kids (I have a daughter and a son), I take my job of nurturing a wonderful relationship with their bodies and food seriously.

Social media has a significant negative impact in this space with hashtags such as #cleaneating popping up on our feeds. Diet culture is a serious (serious) problem – I say this as a GP who sees the impact of it too often in the consulting room.

Diet culture perpetuates the false belief that being thin is ‘good’ and equals happiness, and that being bigger, or fat, is ‘bad’ and leads to unhappiness. Food morality is rooted in diet culture.

Morality around food – applying labels such as ‘good’ and ‘bad’, or ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ to foods – can be problematic. It assigns guilt and shame to some foods, and purity and cleanliness to others.

We don’t use terms like ‘good food’, ‘bad food’, ‘junk food’, ‘healthy food’ and ‘clean eating’ in our house to help our children see food as just food, without the labels.

If we label food as ‘good’ and ‘bad’, then consuming a food perceived as ‘bad’ can lead to feeling guilt, shame and loss of control when we eat these foods. Berating yourself because you’ve eaten a piece of pizza (which some consider a ‘bad food’), or telling yourself you’re terrible for having eaten it, can have a negative impact on your mental health.

Assigning labels to food can also lead to judgement – if you see someone eating a food you consider ‘bad’, for instance, you may start making assumptions about them.

What you choose to eat and what I choose to eat has zero bearing on our worth as humans, our value as individuals.

For some, constantly thinking about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ foods can be a significant contributing factor in mental health conditions such as body image and eating disorders (I see lots of this in my consulting room).

I live by the motto ‘everything in moderation’. That’s what my kids have come to adopt, too.

For more information on this topic, the Butterfly Foundation is a good place to start.

I eat lots of fruit, vegetables, legumes and wholegrains every day, and aim to eat less salt, processed meat and processed foods. Please know I do eat burgers, twiggy sticks (my great love) and dagwood dogs – just not every day and not all the time. But I am human. I love food and I don’t deprive myself (or my kids) of anything.

I try to eat lots of the stuff that reduces my chronic disease and cancer risk, and limit the stuff that can increase it – that’s it.

ALLERGIES, INTOLERANCES AND OTHER GUT ISSUES

This cookbook has a recipe key (see page 24

). So that you can navigate the key like a pro (and avoid any confusion), here’s a punchy run-down on some common conditions I see as a GP. These are quick titbits – for more information, please see a qualified health professional.

FOOD ALLERGY AND ANAPHYLAXIS

Anaphylaxis and intolerance are not the same thing.

An aphylaxis is caused by a food allergy. A food allergy involves the immune system; the immune system sees a particular food protein (such as peanut or egg) and thinks it’s harmful when it’s not. The immune system then makes a pile of chemicals that trigger a range of symptoms (such as breathing problems, diarrhoea or hives) causing anaphylaxis, which can be life-threatening.

Avoiding the trigger is critical in an allergy – this is why the recipe key clearly labels some common allergy-causing foods (such as peanut and egg).

Peanut is actually a legume and sits in the same family as lentils and peas. Many people with an allergy to peanuts can still consume tree nuts (such as walnuts, almonds, pecans and cashews); this is why the key separates peanuts and tree nuts.

Throughout this book, I recommend introducing common allergy-causing foods into your infant’s diet before the age of one to reduce the risk of food allergies. So, if you are embarking on the solids journey with a little one, the key may help you with that too.

INTOLERANCE, INCLUDING LACTOSE INTOLERANCE

An intolerance is not the same as an allergy.

With an intolerance, the immune system is not involved.

Symptoms of an intolerance (such as bloating) come on slower and are not life-threatening.

Lactose intolerance is when someone can’t digest a sugar called lactose that is found in cow’s, sheep’s and goat’s milk. The person may have a deficiency in an enzyme called lactase, which is needed to break down lactose.

People with lactose intolerance can have symptoms such as nausea, diarrhoea and bloating when they consume these milks; the symptoms can range from mild to severe.

Lactose intolerance is more common in adults than kids.

Lactose intolerance is not life-threatening. Some people have a milk protein allergy – which can be life-threatening because the person’s immune system reacts to milk protein, triggering an allergic reaction when they consume it.

COELIAC DISEASE

This is an autoimmune disease.

The immune system sees gluten (a protein found in rye, wheat and barley) as the enemy and reacts to it. Oats can often be contaminated with gluten as well, so people with coeliac disease need to be careful when choosing oats to ensure they are free from any gluten contamination.

Changes occur in the bowel when a person with coeliac disease eats gluten.

A strict gluten-free diet is critical to managing coeliac disease.

Complications of coeliac disease can include nutritional deficiencies (such as iron deficiency) and the