11 Doctor-Approved Healthy Eating Hacks

When it comes to what and how you eat, thinking about the big picture is often much more important than sweating small details. Take it from an integrative medicine expert and the tips he shares in his new book of recipes: Wellness is simple and sustainable. We’ll show you how.

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June 08, 2022

By: Lauren Oster

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How to Focus on Big-Picture Wellness

As consumers we love to hear that bold gestures like elimination diets, cleanses and miracle supplements can transform our bodies and our lives. Doctors know better. “We like clear-cut, black and white solutions — this is good, that is bad; eat this, not that. It makes decision-making simple and easy. However, the real world is much more nuanced,” says Gary Deng, M.D., Ph.D., the medical director of integrative medicine at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

“For example, a little bit of sugar is harmless. In fact, our body will generate sugar even when we don’t eat any,” Deng explains. "On the other hand, too much sugar over a long period is indeed harmful. Another example is that if you are sedentary for a whole month then take a long run, it doesn’t do you much good. On the other hand, if you exercise regularly most days, taking a break for a day won’t do you any harm. Focusing on the big picture instead of minutiae is important. Plus, it frees us from unnecessary anxiety.”

Making Smart, Sustainable Choices

Deng combines his clinical experience as a physician with his own passion for home cooking in The Wellness Principles, his just-published guide to healthy living. It showcases 100 infinitely adaptable food and drink recipes along with an array of insights concerning how and why they’re good for you. Find out his expert instructions on incorporating those tips and tricks into your meals and practices.

1. Plan to Finish Eating Three Hours Before Bedtime

No matter what you’re eating, it’s worth your while to wrap it up (literally and figuratively) well before turning in. “It takes about three hours for most of the food to exit the stomach and enter the intestines,” Deng explains. “If you go to bed with food in your stomach, it irritates your nervous system and also raises the risk for reflux at night.”

That extended period of time when you’re not eating is precious, as scientists are discovering. “Research tracking breast cancer survivors showed fasting for fewer than 13 hours per night was associated with a 36% higher risk of breast cancer recurrence,” Deng says. “It is probably because longer overnight fasting drops our glucose levels and makes us sleep longer; both help our health.”

2. Sip Room-Temperature or Warm Drinks

Though chilled food and beverages are refreshing on hot days, they don't do our digestive systems any favors. “We have a set body temperature for a biological reason. The enzymes in cells and other vital cellular functions work the best at our body temperature (around 97-99 degrees Fahrenheit or 36-37 degrees Celsius),” Deng explains. “When cells experience extreme temperature, be it too hot or too cold, they are not in their healthiest state.”

If you experience indigestion or acid reflux, forgoing iced beverages could cut your body some slack. “When we drink cold beverages or eat cold foods, the cells in our digestive tract are chilled and stressed. They don’t do their naturally assigned jobs very well in that condition. Warm fluids and solid foods make them happier.”

3. Reach for Yogurt Instead of Milk

Getting into the habit of serving and cooking with fermented dairy can transform your gut health. “When milk is turned into yogurt, the microbes break down large protein molecules into smaller pieces. These smaller pieces are easier to digest and absorb. It is as if you can’t move a large bed into a room in one piece, you can take it apart and easily move the parts into the room then reassemble the bed,” Deng explains.

Even better? “If you eat live-cultured yogurt, the microbes (probiotics) get into our intestines, help breaking down food, and also interact with the immune system in the gut and make it stronger,” Deng says. Check labels for probiotics like Lactobacilli, Bifidobacteria, Saccharomyces and Acetobacters; all are excellent adds to your diet. “The best probiotic is a variety of probiotics, not a specific species. So I suggest people eat a variety of different kinds of yogurt to get a full spectrum of probiotics,” Deng adds.

4. Substitute Dried-and-Soaked Beans for Canned Versions

Dried legumes that can be tossed in a pot of water to soak the night before you intend to serve them are a low-effort nutritional and DIY-gourmet home run. Why are they preferable to the canned stuff? “Once a food item is in water, chemical reactions start to happen, and the more fragile nutrients, including fragrances, start to break down,” Deng explains. “Just compare the differences between fresh peach and canned peach. In canned beans, the beans have been soaked in fluids for months if not longer. It is great for preserving them from spoiling, but at the expense of losing some nutrients and flavors. Some people also have concerns that the lining inside the cans contains chemicals that may not be good for our bodies.” (While 95% of cans no longer contain the known-to-be-toxic chemical bisphenol A, we don’t know as much about how safe or unsafe the lining materials that have replaced it might be.)

5. Swap Sourdough for Other Breads

If you’ve taken up sourdough baking in recent years, your new pastime comes with a nutritional bonus. As Deng explains in his book, the lactobacillus bacteria used to create the dough yields fantastically complex flavor. It also yields a loaf that, as studies have shown, boasts a much lower glycemic index (GI) and lower gluten content than bread fermented with yeast alone. Whole-grain sourdough bread is considered a low-GI food, suitable for diabetics and everyone who wishes to avoid spikes in blood sugar. Want to make your morning toast even healthier? Deng counsels skipping butter and trying a flavorful plant-based option like high-quality virgin olive oil, nut butter or avocado.

6. Use Millet in Lieu of Rice or Oatmeal

Speaking of blood-sugar regulation, Deng also cites clinical research that found coupling a grain with beans can also help regulate our glycemic response. His preferred combo? Millet (a fiber-rich, gluten-free, B-vitamin-packed ancient grain that can be used like rice or wheat berries) served with sofrito black beans, a recipe he presents in The Wellness Principles. If you find you like millet’s nutty taste, try cooking it like oatmeal to switch up your breakfast bowl.

7. Let Tempeh Stand in for Chicken

Deng recommends eating no more than 14 servings of animal protein per week. Ideally, that means that of the three meals you consume each day, two will have a serving of animal protein apiece and the other will be vegan. Need a simple way to start moving in that direction? As a nutritious, gut-friendly substitute for animal proteins like grilled chicken, he favors tempeh — a firm, fermented soybean cake that’s textured, savory and ideal for stews and sauces. Because tempeh is made with whole soybeans, it boasts more fiber and micronutrients than a similar serving of tofu. And because it’s fermented, tempeh is also simple to digest.

8. "Harmonize" Salads With Wild Rice

What we know as "wild rice" is actually the seed of a grass that’s related to rice. What’s sold at the supermarket is a cultivated product with more protein and fiber and less starch than actual rice. Deng would also note that it’s a fantastic ingredient for pulling salads and other dishes together. “Starch tends to have a harmonizing effect on our palate,” he says. “For example, adding gravy to a dish can bring all the flavors together. It also has a mellowing effect on the palate.” He suggests using it to accompany "spicy" greens like watercress and to create leafy salads with a granular, interesting mouthfeel. “Wild rice is a good source of low glycemic starch, and it has a rather ‘clean’ taste, not overshadowing other ingredients.”

9. Keep Consistent Meal Times — and Take a Quick Walk After Eating

“The human body likes regular schedules. There is a circadian rhythm system (a master clock) programmed into each cell, controlled by a set of ‘clock genes,’” Deng notes. “A large proportion of our genes are regulated by the biological clock. If we go along with the master clock, the body functions better. Thus I recommend that we get up, eat each meal, work, exercise, rest and go to sleep at the same time every day.” He also favors taking a short stroll to kick-start the process of benefiting from what we’ve consumed. “Walking after we eat helps us move the food out of the stomach and into the intestines where the real digestion and absorption happens.”

10. Use Cheese as a Flavor, Not a Building Block

Tangy cheese does a bang-up job of imparting savory umami flavor to our dishes, but Deng encourages us to use it as an accent rather than as a significant source of protein. (Grating or adding chunks of cheese is preferable to adding several ounces or cups of cheese.) Achieve major umami without animal products by experimenting with mushrooms and tomatoes, which can be cooked to similarly satisfying savoriness.

11. Make and Freeze Your Own Granola

Prepping rather than purchasing granola is a power move, nutritionally speaking. As Deng notes, you can control precisely what goes into homemade granola and how much sugar you’ll consume. (You can then store and use it as a no-brainer snack or topping for whatever you like.) His preferred and scalable version, as described in The Wellness Principles, includes raw nuts, rolled oats, nut butter, honey, dates and sea salt — and once prepared, it’s good to be frozen for a few weeks and ready to be consumed at a moment’s notice. With an ideal mix of protein, fat and fiber, it’s an excellent way to kick-start a healthy day.