David Schmalz here. I turn 49 today. When I first started at the Weekly in 2013, I was 38. What a journey. But that’s not what I’m here to write about. 

Rather, I want to draw your attention to a story my colleague Pam Marino wrote for this year’s Health and Fitness issue about the salutary effects of eating plants. 

The takeaway quote from the story is so simple it’s hard to understand how so many hucksters make a pretty penny hustling dietary fads: “Eat real food.” 

I don’t eat much meat—I was once a strict vegetarian for 12 years for environmental reasons, and my diet is still almost entirely plant-based. 

That said, the struggle of eating healthy is real, and it’s all too easy to eat unhealthy when time is scarce. 

That’s why I found Marino’s story refreshing: It was a reminder that I should always be striving to get more plants in my diet—at least 30 a week, she reported. 

We’ve also been having some fun with it around the office. I asked Marino the other day, after eating a breakfast of a toasted “everything” bagel with cream cheese and a glass of V8 if I could count the poppy and sesame seeds and burnt onion on the bagel as part of the 30, as well as eight plants in the V8. She replied that yes, technically I could, but that her primary source for her story, Dr. Joanna Oppenheim with Salinas Valley Health, “would say a white bagel is not a great choice.”

Laughter ensued. 

I was joking, of course. I know what healthy eating looks like and how it makes you feel, and that the more plants one eats, the more plants one wants to eat—your body starts craving them. 

So I hope you’ll check out Marino’s story that imparts some plant-centric, dietary wisdom. Taking some of the advice contained therein—or least being reminded of it—will be good for you, and the planet.