By The Staple Store founder and author, Catie Gett.
Health food shops were once owned by tree-hugging, granola-crunching hippies. In recent decades, they’ve been co-opted by an industry that has made wellness glossy, complicated and unattainable, selling us the implicit message that health is something you purchase.
When the truth is so much simpler.
Health food is simply good food.
I spent years as a naturopath telling people to swap refined foods for wholefoods, white flour for almond meal, white sugar for coconut sugar. Essentially, swapping one price tag for a more expensive one.
It was nutritionally sound advice, but I was speaking into a room that could afford to hear it.
The people I couldn’t see, the ones who weren’t invited into that room, were often the ones who needed practical support the most.
When the affordable option is the processed option, telling someone to avoid processed foods isn’t health advice. It’s exclusionary.
What Doable Actually Looks Like
If you’re buying packaged food, which many of us do and will continue to do, start here: choose the option with the fewest, most recognisable ingredients.
This doesn’t necessarily come at a premium. Interestingly, it’s often the homebrand option that has fewer additives.
That’s it.
That’s a real, low-barrier place to begin.
From there, think about the plate in sections rather than recipes: protein, carbohydrates, good fats, and fruit or vegetables. Any combination, in whatever form you can manage.
For fruit and vegetables, think in colour groups: blue, purple and red in one; yellow and orange in another; green in a third. Hit all three across the day through any combination of fresh, frozen or canned, and you’re doing well.
Then give yourself permission to use partially processed foods without shame.
Open a jar of tomato pasta sauce. Rinse a can of beans and stir them through. Serve it on wholegrain toast. Top with nuts and seeds.
That’s dinner.
And it delivers eight health foods in one ten-minute meal.
Realistic Meals in My House
Some nights dinner is a bag of dumplings dropped into boiling water with broccoli, frozen corn, soy sauce, grated ginger, half a teaspoon of sugar and spring onions, if there’s a live one swimming around the crisper.
Eight minutes.
Protein, vegetables, carbohydrates. One bowl.
Some nights it’s pizza, but not ordered pizza. I batch-make my own using Turkish pita bread, store-bought pasta sauce, whatever’s in the fridge and cheese.
Made ahead, frozen and straight into the oven or air fryer. Faster and cheaper than even bad pizza, with a couple of handfuls of raw vegetables on the side.
Bangers and mash does some heavy lifting too.
Sausages take ten minutes in the air fryer or twenty in the oven. If you’ve boiled potatoes earlier in the week, there’s always a batch in our fridge, mashing them with milk, salt and butter takes minutes. Frozen corn or peas can go into the mash, cherry tomatoes on the side.
Those same batched potatoes can become roasted potatoes with crispy edges, a quick potato salad, wedges tossed in salt, pepper and onion powder, or a pie topping when you layer them over leftover stew, add cheese and slide the whole thing into the oven.
One batch of boiled potatoes isn’t one meal. It pads out five meals in moments.
Eggs on toast with baked beans is a complete meal.
My baked beans are a jar of pasta sauce stirred through canned beans and warmed on the stove.
That’s it.
Protein, fibre, complex carbohydrates. Add two teaspoons of cumin and it works in a wrap as burritos.
I’m also firmly in my frittata era.
Frittatas are a Trojan horse for everything: the sad bit of feta destined for the bin, roast vegetables from two nights ago, the spinach you bought on Sunday with good intentions, those batched potatoes, frozen vegetables making yet another appearance.
One pan, 30 minutes, and it tastes better two days later.
The Peanut Sauce That Goes on Everything
One of the most useful things in my kitchen isn’t a gadget or a superfood. It’s a two-minute peanut butter sauce.
It goes on rice, noodles, roasted vegetables, tofu, or last night’s leftovers turned into a Bitsa* bowl, a bit of this, a bit of that.
And it uses things you probably already have.
6 tbsp crunchy peanut butter
2 tbsp sweet chilli sauce
2 tbsp light soy sauce
2 tsp curry powder
2 cloves garlic
¼ cup coconut milk
¼ cup boiling water
Stir it together, adjust until it tastes right, and pour it on whatever needs saving.
Dinner sorted.
The Lentil Mix That Nearly Hit Three Million Views
This one lives in a jar in my cupboard and has pulled me through more Tuesday nights than I can count.
300g dried lentils
½ tsp turmeric
1 tsp cumin
½ tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp paprika
2 tsp salt
A little sugar
Mix the dry ingredients together and store them in a jar.
When you need dinner, tip the mix into a rice cooker with 800ml water and a tin of diced tomatoes.
Twenty-five minutes later, it’s ready.
Serve it on rice, on toast, with a fried egg on top, or simply as is.
Nearly three million people have watched me make this.
I think it’s because people are genuinely that tired. And they’re hungry for permission to reimagine what health food can look like.
It doesn’t need to be a perfect meal for you to be healthy, or even a good parent.
Tick some boxes and take a breath. You have enough on your plate, so don’t worry about what’s on theirs.
The wellness industry has added to your stress for too long.
I’m here to dismantle that.
You’ve got this. I promise.
It’s so much simpler than you’ve been led to believe.
About Catie
Catie Gett is a naturopath, cook and founder of The Staple Store, whose work champions practical, nourishing food without the pressure or perfectionism of modern wellness culture. Her new book, The Staple Store Cookbook Vol. 01, is available online via The Staple Store.
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