In loving memory of my grandfather, Ralph Masterjohn.
October 23, 1923 — February 10, 2018

Originally published September 15, 2018.

My grandfather passed away at the age of 94 in the late hours of February 10, the day before Orthodox Christians gave up eating meat in the run-in period leading to Lent, which officially started on February 19, Clean Monday. My grandpa lived and died for faith in Christ as preserved in the Orthodox Christian tradition, so I've decided to honor him by writing something that many people have been asking me to write for years: advice on how to eat healthily during Lent. For Orthodox Christians, this involves significantly more dietary restriction than for other Christians, hence the highly specific post.

Before acting on anything I say herein, please read through the relevant disclaimers.

Here is what you will find in this post:

• Healthy Eating Without Lenten Fasting
• The Restrictions of Lenten Fasting
• Nutrients That Are Difficult to Get During Lent
• Is This Really That Important?
• What to Eat During Lent
• Extra Tips to Supercharge Your Nutrition
• Special Considerations
• Stocking the Refrigerator and Cabinets: Buying Recommendations
• Tips on Preparing Food
• Technical Details and References
• Further Reading

I'd like to start out by describing some guidelines for healthy eating without any restrictions, since this will make it clearer what could be missing when putting together a Lenten diet.

Healthy Eating Without Lenten Fasting

For someone with no allergies or other reasons to restrict food groups, the following principles help ensure that you're meeting all your nutritional needs:

• • Diversify your protein among meat, fish, shellfish or other invertebrates, eggs, and dairy. Get a half gram to a gram of protein per pound of bodyweight (if overweight, reduce this to your ideal bodyweight), which for a 150-pound person would be 75-150 grams of protein. Most people have plenty of wiggle room within this range, but if you are trying to lose body fat, gain muscle, or meet athletic goals, you should aim for the higher side of the range. The diversification helps you take advantage of the different vitamin, mineral, and fatty acid profiles of the different foods, and keeping your protein up to this amount supports a healthy body composition, which protects you from diabetes and other chronic diseases, keeps your bones strong, and prevents you from losing vitality and suffering from injuries as you age.
  • Make an effort to eat “nose to tail” by utilizing parts of the animals we've been neglecting in our society. For example, try eating liver once a week and using bones to make broths, gravies, and sauces or eating the edible bones found in canned fish.

Liver is incredibly rich in many nutrients but is especially rich in vitamin A, which keeps your eyes moist and protects them from getting irritated or scratched, supports your ability to see well at night, helps maintain a healthy sleeping rhythm, and keeps you from getting sick.

Bones are an important part of this approach because of their amino acids, which are the building blocks that make up proteins. Bones are very rich in the amino acid glycine. Glycine prevents wear and tear on your tissues as you age, supports your skin and bones, keeps you calm and less distracted, supports healthy sleep, helps rid your body of toxins, and leads to a long, healthy life. Eggs, dairy, meat, poultry, and fish are all rich in another amino acid, methionine, which depletes glycine. Balancing these foods with bones helps restore the natural balance of these two amino acids.

• Get about 1000 milligrams of calcium per day, which is easiest to get from several daily servings of dairy or edible bones, such as the ones found in canned fish. Calcium is critical to maintaining healthy bones and teeth.
• Diversify your carbohydrates among legumes, whole grains, starchy tubers, and fruits. Each of these foods has a different profile of vitamins and minerals. If you diversify, you'll get everything you need. If you put too heavy an emphasis on one category (for example, eating bread, pasta, and other flour products to supply most of your carbohydrate) you will miss out on key nutrients.
• Eat a large volume (several cups per day) of vegetables, diversifying them across colors with an emphasis on red, orange, yellow, and green. Always include dark green vegetables in the daily mix. Vegetables give you a high nutrient-to-calorie ratio, allowing you to get far more nutrients into your diet without eating too much food. The colors signify different nutrients. For example, green signifies vitamin K, and all four colors signify vitamin A. The colors may also signify unique plant substances that have important health effects. For example, lutein is a yellow pigment that protects your eyes from damage induced by ultraviolet light, and lycopene is a red pigment that researchers are currently studying for its potential to prevent prostate cancer.
• Include foods or supplements that aid in digestion at every meal. Examples include ginger, lacto-fermented vegetables, kombucha, raw apple cider vinegar, Swedish bitters, and digestive enzyme supplements. The reasoning behind this one is simple: all those nutrient in your food are only useful if you digest your food well, breaking it down fully and absorbing everything it has to offer.

Much more could be said about this, especially when tailoring a diet to specific individuals, but I believe these six principles offer a very simple, easy framework to use to maximize the probability that you are getting all of the nutrients you need.

Now let's take a look at the dietary restrictions of an Orthodox Lent to see how they alter these principles.

The Restrictions of Lenten Fasting

The periodic and intermittent dietary restrictions of the Orthodox Church are referred to as degrees of “fasting,” even though that word in the modern context usually refers to complete abstinence from food. Most healthy adults are invited to follow the restrictions of Lenten fasting as strictly as they can. Children, pregnant and nursing women, the elderly, and those burdened with illness or injury are expected to follow them less strictly if at all. There are small variations in fasting practices among different communities within the Orthodox Church, but they generally fall into five levels of strictness:

• Exclusion of meat and poultry, but the allowance of fish, dairy, eggs, invertebrates such as snails and shellfish, alcoholic beverages, and oils. For example, this is the level of fasting in the week leading up to the beginning of Lent.
• Exclusion of meat, poultry, dairy, and eggs, but allowance of fish, invertebrates, alcoholic beverages, and oils. This is the level of fasting on some feasts that fall within Lent, such as Annunciation, and in some traditions Palm Sunday. This is also the level of fasting held during much of the fast leading up to Christmas.
• Exclusion of meat, poultry, dairy, eggs, and fish, but allowance of invertebrates, alcoholic beverages, and oils. This is the level of fasting held on Saturdays and Sundays during Lent.
• Exclusion of meat, poultry, dairy, eggs, fish, alcoholic beverages, and oils, but allowance of invertebrates. This is the level of fasting held on most weekdays during Lent. The rules as originally written in the oldest texts refer to wine and olive oil, and different communities have interpreted this differently to mean wine and olive oil specifically or to mean alcohol and oil broadly, and various permutations in between. I believe the intent is alcohol and oil broadly. Regardless, abstaining from alcohol and oil broadly during the week is healthier than the narrow interpretation for reasons I will explain below in the “What to Eat During Lent” section. Some people maintain that shellfish should be abstained from during weekdays, but when I researched this I could not find any support for classing any invertebrates among the foods abstained during any period, except for people observing strict xerophagy, described below. A liberal approach to shellfish, allowing it through the week, is more consistent with historical fasting practices and, for reasons explained below in “What to Eat During Lent,” is the healthier option.
• Xerophagy literally means “dry foods,” and in its strictest form it means eating one meal per day of bread and water. This is the strictest interpretation of how to eat during most weekdays during Lent, but it is generally observed only in pieces. For example, a large number of people abstain from alcoholic drinks and cooking oils, and the abstention from oil makes the food “dry,” but they eat plenty of things besides bread. Many people, especially in monasteries, observe one meal a day (which we would call in the modern vernacular “intermittent fasting”), but still eat plenty of things besides bread, often including invertebrates. In the early days of the Russian mission to Alaska, the Alaskan natives put a lot of emphasis on eating one meal a day because abstaining from fish was infeasible, so they observed the intermittent fasting rule while simultaneously eating fish, otherwise only eaten during Lent on select feast days.

In addition, there are some days in the first week of Lent and during Holy Week where some people completely abstain from food.

Now that it's becoming more popular to eat crickets, in the form of cricket flour or Exo Bars, some might wonder where these fall in. Most people who write fasting guidelines refer only to “shellfish,” which is a culinary term referring to aquatic invertebrates. It is clear, though, that in practice terrestrial invertebrates are treated the same as aquatic invertebrates. On the island of Crete, for example, snails are considered fair game during all fast days throughout the year. In my research I've found nothing but silence on the topic of insects, and I can only assume that, as terrestrial invertebrates, they should be treated like snails. This makes them allowed throughout the year and potentially an important source of protein.

Now let's take a look at how this change in eating patterns can impact the healthiness of your diet, and what to do to manage it. In each section below I consider the nutrients that might be most difficult to get during Lent, and how to obtain them. Then I end by looking at some examples of how you might put together a complete Lenten diet in a way that ensures good nutrition.

Nutrients That Are Difficult to Get During Lent

The following nutrients are more difficult to get during Lent and deserve special attention:

• Protein. Eating less meat, fish, poultry, dairy, and eggs makes it more difficult to get enough protein. This requires us to focus more on the animal foods that are allowed during Lent (invertebrates like snails, crickets, and shellfish) and on the plant foods richest in protein (mainly pulses, which include lentils, peas, and beans). Thankfully, both invertebrates and plant foods supply a better balance of methionine and glycine than the animal foods we fast from during Lent, allowing us to forgo eating or using bones without a problem.
• Vitamin A. Vitamin A comes in two forms. In red, orange, yellow, and green vegetables, vitamin A occurs as provitamin A carotenoids such as beta-carotene. In animal foods, vitamin A occurs as retinol. The form of vitamin A that we need in our bodies to be healthy is retinol. The reason carotenoids serve as vitamin A is because we can convert them to retinol. But for many reasons — genetics, digestive health, status of other nutrients, hormone balance — some of us do not perform this conversion well, and we rely more heavily on animal-based vitamin A. People who eat four ounces of liver once a week obtain all the vitamin A they need from this alone. Most people these days do not eat liver, and for them dairy and egg yolks may provide a third to a half of their daily vitamin A. Shellfish provide some vitamin A, but not as much as these other foods. During Lent, animal-based vitamin A is scarce, requiring us to get what we can from shellfish, and to double down on the vitamin A we have free access to in colorful plants. Red palm oil is an especially great plant source of vitamin A because its carotenoids are much easier to absorb than those in vegetables and is featured in the section on supercharging your nutrition.
• Zinc. Zinc supports healthy skin and hair, prevents acne, keeps you from getting sick, helps balance your hormones, stabilizes your blood sugar, and helps you hold on to your lean muscle mass. In the modern American diet, the best sources of zinc are beef and cheese. Overall, animal foods are much richer in zinc than plant foods, and the zinc in animal foods is much more absorbable than the zinc in plant foods. In fact, whole grains, nuts, seeds, and pulses all inhibit the absorption of zinc. This means that a cheeseburger is a great source of zinc, as long as it isn't served on a whole wheat bun! Thankfully, there is one source of zinc that blows beef and cheese out of the water: oysters. And oysters are allowed during Lent. Furthermore, techniques such as soaking, sprouting, and fermenting reduce the substances in whole grains, nuts, seeds, and pulses that inhibit zinc absorption. Thus, by putting a special emphasis on oysters and proper preparation of plant foods we can get plenty of zinc during Lent.
• Calcium. The Lenten diet excludes the milk and bones, the two richest sources of calcium. This makes us more reliant on plant foods for calcium during Lent. Estimating whether you are getting enough calcium from plant foods is more difficult than it first appears. Calcium is very poorly absorbed from some plants. For example, we only absorb 5% of the calcium from spinach and only 9% from rhubarb. It is very easily absorbed from other plants. For example, we absorb 50% from kale and 60% from broccoli. Yet others are in between. The absorption from nuts, seeds, and pulses, for example, is about 20%.  To put these figures in perspective, the absorption from pasteurized milk is a little over 30%. In my recommendations below, I took into account the calcium content, the percentage absorption, and the caloric load of different Lenten foods and concluded that chia seeds, certain tofus, and cruciferous vegetables are the best sources. I list the specific amounts of each food you would need to eat to make it easier to put together a food plan that supplies enough calcium. Some foods are fortified with calcium (check the label to make sure), such as orange juice, cashew milk, rice milk, almond milk, and soy milk. If you consume these foods already, you may have your calcium covered. However, I don't recommend adding them to your diet to get calcium. If natural foods are infeasible for you, a calcium supplement gives you more dietary freedom and accomplishes the same result as a fortified food.
• Vitamin B12. Vitamin B12 helps stabilize your mood and prevents anxiety and depression, prevents anemia, protects against cardiovascular disease, and works with other nutrients to prevent fatty liver disease. Its deficiency can cause irreversible degeneration of your nervous system. Outside of Lent, most people meet their vitamin B12 requirement by consuming three servings per day of meat, poultry, fish, or dairy. Plant foods do not contain any B12 at all. Certain specific mushrooms (shiitake, chanterelle, and black trumpet) and algae (chlorella and nori) may contain B12, but the consistency and reliability of their B12 content is unclear. Among Lenten foods, the only reliable sources of B12 are invertebrates. Among invertebrates, oysters stand out as excellent and clams stand out as stupendous. Emphasizing these two foods during Lent will offer strong protection against B12 deficiency.
• Vitamin K2. Like vitamin A, vitamin K comes in two forms. Dark green vegetables contain vitamin K1 while animal foods contain vitamin K2. Fermented foods, regardless of whether they come from animals or plants, also contain K2. K1 supports blood clotting, which makes it important to prevent excessive bruising, or, in the case of injury, excess blood loss. K2, by contrast, is used mainly for a host of other beneficial effects, such as bone and dental health, kidney and heart health, exercise performance, sexual health, and cancer protection. Most people get most of their K2 from egg yolks and cheese, foods that aren't eaten during Lent. As with carotenoids, we have the ability to convert K1 to K2, but some of us are better at it than others and none of us really know how good we are. Thus, placing emphasis on dark greens will give you some of the benefits of K2, but it is more reliable to eat K2 directly. Thankfully, the best source of K2 out of all foods known to man is natto, a fermented soy food common in Eastern Japan. It smells funny, and it makes everything it touches gooey and sticky, but it's completely Lenten. My main recommendations below emphasize dark greens for vitamin K, but the special recommendations for supercharging your nutrition emphasize natto.
• Choline. Choline prevents fatty liver disease, which afflicts approximately 70 million Americans. It also supports mental health, supporting performance at tasks requiring extended focus, protecting against age-related memory loss, and likely protecting against anxiety and depression as well. In pregnant women, it prevents birth defects. Egg yolks are choline superfoods. Two or three of them per day can fulfill all your choline needs. Diets low in fat and high in folate, a B vitamin found most abundantly in pulses and dark green vegetables, lower the need for choline. Thus, while the Lenten diet is lower in choline for its lack of egg yolks, its low oil content during the weekdays and its high pulse and veggie content throughout the week reduce the need for choline. Nevertheless, since there are a few Lenten options that are almost as supercharged with choline as eggs are — beets, wheat germ, and lecithin — these are listed in the section on supercharging your nutrition.

Is This Really That Important?

At this point, you may have two questions:

• Can't I eat less of these nutrients for a mere 40 days without much harm?
• Can't I just take supplements?

If these questions interest you, click on the buttons below to open up the answers. You can re-click each button to close the answer.

If you're already convinced that it is important to arrange your diet so that you meet your needs for these nutrients from natural foods, you can simply keep reading without clicking to dive straight into the practical details of what to do.

What to Eat During Lent

Here are some simple rules to follow during Lent to ensure good nutrition:

• At each meal, include a cup of cooked pulses, or four ounces of invertebrates or both. Following this rule helps ensure you get enough protein, which is more difficult to get when you restrict meat, poultry, fish, eggs, and dairy. Here is a list of pulses. Foods like lentils, peas, and most things you would call “beans” that you'd consider part of a meal (like kidney beans and baked beans, but not vanilla beans or coffee beans) are pulses. Soybeans are pulses, and traditional soy foods such as tofu and tempeh can be part of this mix. Fake meats made from isolated soy protein, however, are not healthy or nutritious and should be avoided. Edible invertebrates include oysters, clams, mussels, scallops, octopus, cuttlefish, whelks (sea snails), squid, shrimp, lobster, crab, snails, and crickets.
• Eat oysters and clams at least once a week each. Oysters are an important source of zinc and clams are an important source of vitamin B12, both of which are harder to obtain on a plant-based diet than on an animal-based diet.
• Consume two or three of the following every day: 5 tablespoons of chia seeds (if you grind them; 10 tablespoons if you do not); 6 ounces of House Foods brand firm, extra-firm, or super-firm tofu; 1 cup of turnip greens; 1.15 cups of bok choy; 1.3 cups of mustard greens; 1.6 cups of kale; 2.2 cups of rutabaga; 2.25 cups of broccoli; 3.6 cups of watercress; 3.6 cups of kohlrabi; or one capsule of calcium citrate taken at the end of your meal. For the vegetables, the measurements refer to the volume after cooking.Each of these foods provides approximately the amount of calcium you would get from a glass of milk, and the supplement gives you a backup for whenever you have difficulty meeting your goal from foods alone. You can also meet your calcium needs mainly through the supplement if you would have difficulty incorporating these foods into your diet. For the best absorption, spread your calcium sources evenly across your meals. The vegetables listed in this section increase your need for iodine, which is critical to your thyroid health. If you are relying heavily on the vegetables, make sure to get enough iodine by using kelp flakes, seaweed-fortified salt, or an iodine supplement containing between 200 and 1000 micrograms per day, such as this one. If you have an established thyroid disorder, I recommend limiting these and other cruciferous vegetables to one cup of cooked vegetables per day and emphasizing the other sources of calcium.
• Consume at least one cup of dark green vegetables per day. Dark green vegetables are foods like broccoli, kale, spinach, grape leaves, mustard greens, and virtually anything else that is as richly green as these foods, but not lighter green foods like lettuce or green peppers. This helps ensure you get enough vitamins A and K. Note that some of these vegetables were listed as ways to get calcium, but some were not. If you got your calcium from chia seeds, tofu, or a supplement, you still need a cup of dark greens, and you can use any in this list, including spinach and grape leaves. You can't, however, rely on spinach or grape leaves to get your calcium.
• Meet the rest of your caloric needs from a mix of these foods: tubers (for example, potatoes, yams, sweet potatoes, cassava, or taro), whole grains, nuts, seeds, and other fruits and vegetables besides those listed above.
• Whenever possible, opt for soaked, soured, fermented, or sprouted versions of your pulses, whole grains, nuts, and seeds. This increases their vitamin content and makes their minerals more easily absorbed. This is always good to do, but since you will eat more of these foods during Lent it becomes more important.
• Include foods or supplements that aid digestion at every meal. Examples include ginger, lacto-fermented vegetables, kombucha, raw apple cider vinegar, Swedish bitters, and digestive enzyme supplements. This principle is the same inside and outside Lent. However, during Lent you will likely be eating more beans, which many people find difficult to digest. If this is the case for you, make sure you are taking an enzyme supplement that contains alpha-galactosidase, which breaks down the most difficult to digest substances within the beans. Swedish bitters are mainly helpful for digesting fat, so may not be as relevant as the others in meals where you are restricting oils.
• Restrict alcohol, oils, sweets, and desserts. Fasting from all alcoholic beverages and oils on weekdays and restricting sweets and desserts to five or ten percent of your food intake, at most, will support your ability to meet your nutritional needs. All of these contain calories yet contain little if any protein, and are quite low in most nutrients. By displacing more nutritious foods, they make it harder to hit your nutritional targets. Detoxifying alcohol, moreover, is an additional burden that taxes your calories, protein, zinc, and vitamin A, and your capacity to deal with it may be lower during Lent. When you do use oils, avoid corn, safflower, sunflower, cottonseed, canola, and soybean oils, and instead use red palm, coconut, olive, macadamia, and avocado oils. Red palm oil is an unusually nutritious oil and its use on weekends is featured in the section below on supercharging your nutrition.

Extra Tips to Supercharge Your Nutrition

These tips require a little more micromanaging, but they each carry a big nutritional payoff:

• Once a day, every day, eat a meal that has one or two oysters, a heaping teaspoon of clams, and three to four ounces of a different invertebrate, but does not have any whole grains, nuts, seeds, or pulses. The remainder of the calories in the meal can be made up of any of the following foods: avocado, coconut, potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, squash, or any other tubers, fruits, or vegetables of your choosing.Oysters are by far and away the richest source of zinc, but are lower in protein than most other invertebrates. Clams are the best source of vitamin B12. They are also a good source of protein, but so are almost all other invertebrates. Whole grains, nuts, seeds, and pulses contain substances that block your ability to absorb zinc from your food.In this meal, the oysters supply the zinc, the clams supply the B12, the other invertebrates supply the protein, and the other listed foods meet your calorie needs while allowing you to absorb the zinc from the oysters. The reason for doing this every day and using such a small amount of oysters and clams is that you can only absorb about two-third's of a day's worth of zinc and one day's worth of B12 from each meal. Clams are rich enough in protein that they could also serve as the “different invertebrate,” but rotating the protein source through other invertebrates will help you to not get sick of eating clams.To make this practical, I would use canned oysters and clams. Open the can and transfer them to the refrigerator in an airtight container, preferably glass, where they should last for three to four days. Each day, you can transfer your oysters and clams from the container directly to your dish.
• On weekends and feasts, use two or more tablespoons of red palm oil per day. Most added oils contain few if any vitamins. Red palm oil is an exception, being extremely rich in vitamins A and E. The vitamin A in red palm oil is much easier to absorb than the vitamin A from dark green vegetables, so this adds extra insurance that you are getting enough.
• Use an average of at least one-third to two-thirds of an ounce of natto per day. Natto is jam-packed with vitamin K2. You can usually buy it at an Asian grocery store, you can make it at home, or you can buy it on Amazon. You could eat a little bit at each meal if you wanted, or you could eat a larger amount a few meals a week that comes to an average daily intake of at least one to two thirds of an ounce.If you get your vitamin K from natto, it is still good to eat a cup or more per day of dark green vegetables, but you don't have to. You can also get your vitamin A by eating a cup per day of orange and red vegetables (in addition to red palm oil on weekends and feasts). “Orange” vegetables includes squash, sweet potatoes, and carrots. “Red” vegetables includes tomatoes, red peppers, and red leaf lettuce. Technically this list includes some fruits, but most people think of the “fruits” it includes, such as red peppers, squash, and tomatoes, as vegetables. If you are unsure about any particular food, search for it on NutritionData.Com or the USDA database and see if the amount you are eating provides close to 100% of the recommended amount of vitamin A.
• Consume one of the following each day: 4.5 ounces of wheat germ, 3.5 ounces of cooked or canned beets, 7 ounces of raw beets, or 2-3 tablespoons of sunflower or soy lecithin. These foods provide a day's worth of choline, or provide a day's worth of betaine, a closely related nutrient that can substitute for choline.
• Supplement with two capsules per day of krill oil. This will give you some extra insurance for vitamin A and essential fatty acids. Compared to fish oil, krill oil is higher in vitamin A and has its fatty acids in a form that is better able to support the health of the nervous system. Krill are invertebrates, so krill oil is Lenten whereas fish and cod liver oil are not. If you have a tendency to get sick often, develop dry eyes, poor night vision, or flaky or bumpy skin, you can try using up to six to ten capsules per day for extra vitamin A, and keep the dose up if it helps.

Special Considerations

No one set of rules works for everyone. Children, pregnant and nursing women, and older adults have some special nutritional needs. You may have allergies or intolerances to some of the foods I recommended above, or have trouble digesting them, and need alternative strategies. You may be on a low-carb diet and need to shift your emphasis away from many of the high-carbohydrate foods I recommend. If you want to lose weight, or you tend to lose weight, there are important things you should consider.

If any of these apply to you, you can click on the buttons below to open the special instructions that apply to you. You can re-click the button at any time to close the special instructions.

If none of these apply to you, feel free to keep reading without clicking to get buying recommendations and special tips for implementing the recommendations.

Stocking the Refrigerator and Cabinets: Buying Recommendations

In order to efficiently get a full menu of Lenten meals going, it is important to plan ahead and stock your fridge and cabinets with the right foods. Here is what you will need, along with some specific buying recommendations.

Keep in mind that for any foods you have never tried, you might want to see if you like it before buying a large amount. Once you are sure, though, stocking up saves money and time.

Here is what I recommend stocking up on:

• Pulses. Tru Roots is a brand that makes sprouted pulses and grains. Their products are available on Amazon, Thrive Market, and in Whole Foods. Although not sold sprouted, Food to Live is a great brand that sells a wide variety of lentils and beans. You may also save money by buying pulses in the bulk bins of your local market. If you are adventurous in the kitchen, you can always sprout the beans yourself. Stock up on your favorites, but ideally you should diversify your pulses across as many as you are comfortable trying to take advantage of the different nutrient profiles they each contain. Store these foods in a cool dry place, either in the sealed packages they came in or in air-tight containers of your own if you bought them in bulk, and keep them away from direct exposure to light.
• Shellfish and Other Invertebrates. To maintain an efficient rotation of invertebrates through your diet, you will probably need to rely on frozen or canned shellfish. Buying them fresh and shucking them on your own takes up more room in your fridge, requires a lot more of your time, has a fairly steep learning curve, and increases the risk that you'll lose food due to spoilage. If you are already proficient at handling shellfish in the kitchen, feel free to go the fresh route. Otherwise, stock up on a collection of your favorite frozen and canned shellfish so that you always have a full week's supply at hand. The most important ones you will need are oysters and clams. The others are up to you.
• Exo Bars are a great Lenten convenience food. You'd never know these were full of cricket flour if you didn't see the cricket on the label. Two of these bars make a modest meal requiring no prep, cooking, or cleanup. They are sold on Amazon, Thrive Market, and ExoProtein.Com. As I am writing, Thrive is completely sold out. ExoProtein.Com is sold out of my favorite, the apple cinnamon, while Amazon has it but at a hefty premium. Amazon also has the peanut butter and jelly flavor at a hefty premium, which appears to have been discontinued. Only the banana bread flavor is sold on Amazon at the typical price, and the blueberry vanilla and cocoa nut flavors can currently only be bought on ExoProtein.Com. I do not recommend eating these every day, but I think they are excellent as a backup convenience food when time is tight.
• Chia Seeds. You will need a robust supply of chia seeds if using them as a calcium source. Food to Live are the ones I keep in my kitchen. If using them at 5 tablespoons per day to supply one of your two or three daily sources of calcium, you can expect the one-pound bag to last you just shy of a week and the five-pound bag to last you most of the way through Lent.
• Tofu. Six ounces of House Foods brand firm, extra firm, or super firm tofu can serve both as a one of your three daily protein-rich foods and as one of your two or three daily calcium-rich foods. Anything medium firm or softer does not have enough protein or calcium. Other brands tend to have less calcium as well. If you choose a different tofu product, look for at least 7 grams of protein and 15% of the daily value for calcium per serving. Tofu labels count 3 ounces as a serving so the six ounces I recommend here is two servings. If the container says it has 4.5 servings, that's only enough for two meals. Decide how often you will use tofu for protein and calcium, and stock your fridge with enough for a week.
• Dark Greens. My default recommendation is to eat one cup of cooked dark greens per day. These can be fresh or frozen. Different vegetables shrink during cooking by different amounts, often 20-50%, so it will take some trial and error to see how much shrinkage you get for the vegetables you are using in order to determine how much you need to buy each week. If you are relying on dark greens for calcium, you will need to focus on the specific greens listed in the recommendation and you will likely need to buy twice as many greens as you otherwise would. These also can be fresh or frozen. If you are relying on greens for folate because you cannot eat pulses, you will need to buy at least triple as many as you otherwise would and they must be fresh rather than frozen.
• Red and Orange Vegetables. There is no specific requirement for these in my default recommendations, but if you are covering your calcium from sources other than dark greens and are covering your vitamin K with natto, you will need to eat a cup of dark greens or red and orange vegetables to cover your vitamin A needs, which means stocking up on foods like sweet potatoes, yams, carrots, red peppers, tomatoes, and red leaf lettuce. Cooking, pureeing, and juicing these foods releases the vitamin A more effectively, so opt for choices that you can more easily incorporate into your daily routine when prepared in those ways.
• Other Foods. After meeting your goals for pulses, shellfish, colorful vegetables vegetables, and calcium sources, you can fill in the remainder of your energy needs with tubers, whole grains, nuts, seeds, and other fruits and vegetables. Go Raw has an excellent selection of sprouted seed products that make tasty, nutritious, and convenient snacks. You can see their full selection and buy their products in bulk on their web site, or you can buy individual packages of select products on Amazon, Thrive Market, iHerb, or in your local Whole Foods. Be mindful of how much additional food it will take you to feel satisfied and keep your weight at a healthy level. You may or may not have much room left for these foods, depending on your energy needs.
• Digestive Aids. Ginger is an excellent digestive aid. The fresh root can be added to your food during cooking or juiced raw. You can also steep shredded fresh ginger in warm water to make your own ginger tea, or you can buy ginger tea. Unpasteurized fermented foods containing live active cultures include sauerkraut, kimchi, pickles, carrots, raw apple cider vinegar, and kombucha. These foods are sold at Whole Foods, other health food stores, and increasingly at regular supermarkets. The raw apple cider vinegar would be with the other vinegars, while most other items in this list would be in the refrigerated section, probably near the cheese, yogurt, or eggs. “Regular” pickles are not fermented and “regular” sauerkraut has usually been canned or pasteurized, so make sure the labels say that they are lacto-fermented, raw, or contain live active cultures. I would use these in small amounts with each meal, such as one or two tablespoons of fermented veggies, or one or two swigs of kombucha, or a shot glass worth of apple cider vinegar.
• Supercharger Foods. If you're following the “supercharged” recommendations, you will need red palm oil, natto, krill oil, and a source of choline or betaine, such as wheat germ, beets, or lecithin. The oysters and clams have already been covered above. On a global scale, palm oil is connected to deforestation and harm to wildlife, especially orangutans, so it is important to buy from companies committed to sustainable practices. It is also important that the palm oil be “red” to ensure it has the vitamins A and E we are after. For red palm oil, I recommend Wilderness Family Naturals, Nutiva, or Juka's. When deciding how much to buy, plan on using at least four tablespoons per week. At this rate, you would go through two ounces per week, and a one-pound jar would last you most of Lent.  For natto, you will need to stock up on all the ingredients required to make it at home, or buy it on Amazon. Plan on using a half ounce per day, in which case the 3.5-ounce package from Amazon would last you one week. For krill oil, I recommend Jarrow. The 60-capsule bottle is most cost-effective and would last 30 days if taking two capsules per day. If using lecithin as a source of choline, I recommend Micro Ingredients Organic Sunflower Lecithin. If using two tablespoons per day, the bag will last you two weeks.
• Supplements. If you are relying on supplements for calcium: calcium citrate. If you cannot eat oysters: Jarrow Zinc Balance. If you cannot eat pulses or the large amounts of fresh greens recommended as an alternative source of folate: Jarrow methylfolate. If you cannot eat any animal foods: Pure Encapsulations B12. If you cannot eat invertebrates or pulses and are still fasting from fish: Sun Warrior Plant-Based Organic Protein and glycine powder. For general digestive support that includes support for digesting beans: DigestMore Ultra or DigestGold. For digestive support at a lower cost that is specific for digesting beans: BeanAssist.

Let Me Know What You Think!

If you're an expert in the kitchen and it seems obvious and easy to you to begin implementing these recommendations, then the article is done! Let me know what you thought in the comments, or use them to ask questions or share recipes.

If you need some tips on preparing food, though, click open the box below. You can re-click it at any time to close the extra tips.

Technical Details and References

If you really want to geek out on the details, click the button below to open up a more detailed discussion on several of the themes in this article, with links to scientific references.

Further Reading

Vitamins and Minerals 101 My introduction to each of the essential nutrients.

Can Christians Be Paleo? Christianity, Faith, Evidence, Dobzhansky, Evolution, and More. In this 2010 blog post, I took on the question of whether Christians can believe in evolution, which sprang from an internet discussion of whether Christians could be Paleo. In the comments, a discussion of Orthodox Christian fasting took place. The topic of whether the fast could be “modified” was debated, and a number of people reported health problems in their families from fasting.

Nourishing Our Bodies During Lent – How to Navigate the Campus Dining Hall I was asked to write this article in 2011. It is a simpler view of how to get good nutrition during Lent when you are at the mercy of a campus dining hall.

Testing Nutritional Status: The Ultimate Cheat Sheet This is my guide to assessing nutritional status. The guidelines in this post are meant to give you the best probability that you are meeting your needs. But we are all different, and we may want to take a closer look at whether we, as individuals, are truly meeting our own needs. The guide walks you through assessment of signs, symptoms, and dietary intake that you can do on your own, and lab testing that you can do with the help of your doctor.

The Ultimate Vitamin K2 Resource takes a fun and highly educational deep dive into one of the nutrients discussed in this post: vitamin K2.

For brief, practical tips on optimizing your nutrition, check out my Chris Masterjohn Lite series.

For deep explorations of the technical details of optimizing your status for individual nutrients, check out my series on measuring and managing nutritional status.

Join the Next Live Q&A

Have a question for me? Ask it at the next Q&A! Learn more here.

Subscribe

Subscribe or upgrade your subscription here.

Masterpass members get access to premium content (preview the premium posts here), all my ebook guides for free (see the collection of ebook guides here), monthly live Q&A sessions (see when the next session is here), all my courses for free (see the collection here), and exclusive access to massive discounts (see the specific discounts available by clicking here). Upgrade your subscription to include Masterpass membership with this link.

Learn more about the Masterpass here.

Take a Look at the Store

• At no extra cost to you, please consider buying products from one of my popular affiliates using these links: Paleovalley, Magic Spoon breakfast cereal, LMNT, Seeking Health, Ancestral Supplements. Find more affiliates here.
• For $2.99, you can purchase The Vitamins and Minerals 101 Cliff Notes, a bullet point summary of all the most important things I’ve learned in over 15 years of studying nutrition science.
• For $10, you can purchase The Food and Supplement Guide for the Coronavirus, my protocol for prevention and for what to do if you get sick.
• For $15, you can pre-order a single format of my Vitamins and Minerals 101 book, my complete guide to nutrition, which I am currently working full-time on finishing.
• For $25, you can pre-order a digital bundle of my Vitamins and Minerals 101 book.
• For $29.99, you can purchase a copy of my ebook, Testing Nutritional Status: The Ultimate Cheat Sheet, my complete system for managing your nutritional status using dietary analysis, a survey of just under 200 signs and symptoms, and a comprehensive guide to proper interpretation of labwork.
• For $35, you can pre-order a complete bundle of my Vitamins and Minerals 101 book.
• For $250-$1499.99, you can work one-on-one with me.