Once we know which direction we want to take, the next question follows naturally: what does that actually mean on our plates?
We therefore translated our food model into a simple daily baseline. Not as a sacred list, but as a practical guideline that, over time, we have come to experience as nutritious, enjoyable and achievable.
For one person, this amounts on average to:
Perhaps the most important part is those first 600 grams of vegetables. That is quite a lot. And that is precisely the point. Vegetables form the backbone of our diet, with fruit as a seasonal addition. We consider variety more important than hitting exactly the same number every day.
Legumes and grains form the solid foundation alongside them. Lentils, chickpeas and different kinds of beans regularly return to our meals. Oats are present almost every day, and we make our own sourdough bread.
Nuts, seeds and olive oil are smaller components, but they remain constant. We are increasingly trying to produce the nuts ourselves. For now, we buy olive oil. Olive trees do grow here, but going from an olive tree to a reliable production of our own oil is another matter entirely.
Animal products deliberately occupy a limited place. We eat no mammal meat and no poultry. The eggs come from our own chickens. We buy fish. Milk and a little cheese make up the remaining dairy products.
That does not mean we aim for a perfect regime. A birthday with cake does not fundamentally change our eating pattern. Neither does a day when we eat fewer vegetables. We prefer to look at the bigger picture over weeks, months and years. The numbers are therefore tools. They give us direction.
And they have another function: they tell us what we need to grow. Because 600 grams of vegetables a day is not just a dietary choice. It is also a design challenge.
If we want to produce a significant part of that ourselves, we need to know which crops are involved, how much of each we need and how to spread that production throughout the year.
That is where the garden begins.