Our Story

Why we started this

We’re a young family in the Netherlands, and when our baby arrived, we learned something fast: expenses shoot up overnight. Suddenly we were looking hard at where our money was going, and the grocery bill turned out to be a serious one. For a while we’d leaned on services like HelloFresh, a lovely, premium experience where everything’s done for you, but the cost simply didn’t make sense anymore.

Here’s what we realised, though. We still had the time to cook the meals, and we still had the time to get to the supermarket. What we didn’t have, after a long day with a little one, was the time to sit and think through what we’d eat each day and plan the whole week around it. That planning was the real burden.

So this newsletter is all about taking that one piece off your plate. Every week we share the recipes, the ingredients, and what it all costs at our local supermarket, built around real, whole foods and aiming for thirty different plants a week for a healthy gut. Cheaper meals, healthier weeks, and a lot less to think about, one week at a time.

Why 30 plants?

Researchers behind the American Gut Project (now the Microsetta Initiative at UC San Diego) found that people eating 30 or more different plants a week had noticeably more diverse gut bacteria than people eating 10 or fewer. More diverse bacteria means more of the fibre-fermenting bacteria that produce short-chain fatty acids, the compounds that keep the gut lining healthy. Interestingly, plant diversity mattered more than whether someone ate vegan, vegetarian, or omnivore. Thirty is a guideline, not a rigid rule, but it’s a fun, easy number to aim for, and herbs, spices, nuts, seeds, beans, and whole grains all count, so a normal week of varied cooking gets you closer than you’d think.