The Nutrition Curriculum

Plant foods to build meals around — alongside meat, not instead of it.

This is a free reference for what's on the plate when you follow the Green Eye Open protocol. Meat is part of the protocol. The plant side is what fills out the meal around it.

Three reference blocks live here now: the plant-foods add-on list (starch staples, green and yellow vegetables, fruit), the remove-and-whole-food list that pairs with it, and a nutrition-pillars application layer. Together they turn "eat real food" into an actual plate, shopping list, and repeatable daily routine.

Not vegan. Not plant-based. Meat included. Plant foods build the meals around it.

Reference List

Foods to add alongside meat

This list is the plant side of the plate. Meat, fish, eggs, and dairy (if you tolerate it) sit alongside — they aren't replaced. Build meals around one or more starch staples, fill half the plate with the green and yellow list, add a fruit serving or two across the day.

Starch staples

Center meals around one or more

Whole grains — barley, oats, brown rice, quinoa, buckwheat, rye, bulgur, triticale, wheat berries, corn, wild rice, millet, couscous
Roots — burdock, celery root, tapioca, Jerusalem artichoke, taro root, jicama, chestnuts, parsnips, white potatoes, rutabaga, yams
Winter squashes — butternut, acorn, hubbard, banana, pumpkin, buttercup, turban squash
Bean family — aduki, red kidney, black, mung, fava, navy, garbanzo, pink, great northern, pinto, white kidney lima beans; lentils (brown, red, green); peas (black-eyed, split yellow, split green, whole green)

These are the calorie-bearing anchor of each meal. Pick one or rotate through — variety is the point, not perfection.

Green and yellow vegetables

Low-calorie, eat freely

cabbage, bok choy, kohlrabi, broccoli, radish, chicory, Swiss chard, endive, cocozelle, taro root, collard greens, turban squash, water chestnuts, watercress, romaine lettuce, spinach, peppers, carrots, beets, turnips, etc.

Low calorie, high micronutrient density. Half the plate, every plate. No real upper limit.

Fruits

~3 servings per day

apples, strawberries, cherries, oranges, mango, grapes, papaya, persimmon, peaches, kiwi, berries, kumquat, pears, etc.

Limit to about 3 servings per day. Less for sugar sensitivity — if you know fructose loads hit you hard, start at one and scale from there.

How to use this list

A simple frame for the plate

Anchor: pick a starch staple (or two) and center the meal around it.
Half the plate: fill half the plate with the green and yellow vegetable list — no real upper limit.
Fruit: add one or two servings across the day — about three servings/day as a default ceiling.
Animal protein sits alongside: meat, fish, eggs, and (if tolerated) dairy round out the meal — they aren't replaced.

This is not vegan. This is not plant-based. Paul's protocol includes meat — the lists above are what gets added to build out real meals, not what gets swapped in to take anything away.

Reference List

Foods to eliminate and the whole-food rule

Adding the right foods is half the work. Removing the wrong ones is the other half. This list is what to stop buying, stop rotating, and stop putting on the plate. Meat, fish, eggs, and dairy stay on the plate — they aren't part of what gets removed.

Grains to eliminate

Not the same as the whole-grain starch staples above

Wheat — the dominant modern grain and the one most engineered for yield, gluten content, and shelf stability. Bread, pasta, most baked goods, and most packaged foods carry it by default.
Barley and rye — close relatives of wheat, both gluten-bearing, both processed into the same kinds of convenience products. If the label says barley or rye, treat it the same as wheat.
Modern refined wheat — white flour, "enriched" flour, whole wheat that has been milled into flour and baked. The starch-staple list above names whole grains — wheat berries, oats, barley in their whole form — and those are a different conversation than the bagged, shelf-stable wheat products that line the center aisles. When it shows up as flour in a baked good, it lands in this eliminate list, not the starch list.

This week, read ingredient lists for the word "wheat" on every packaged food in your kitchen. Anything that lists it as an ingredient — not a whole grain you cooked yourself — comes off the rotation.

Refined and processed foods to drop

If you can't pronounce it, don't eat it

Added sugars — high-fructose corn syrup, cane sugar, brown sugar, honey, maple syrup, agave, anything ending in "-ose." The fruit list above already covers natural sugar; everything else is added load.
Seed and vegetable oils — canola, corn, soy, sunflower, safflower, cottonseed, grapeseed. Industrial oils pressed at high heat and used in nearly every restaurant and packaged food. Replace with butter, ghee, tallow, olive oil, or coconut oil for home cooking.
Artificial sweeteners and shelf-stable packaged food — aspartame, sucralose, acesulfame, anything with a shelf life measured in years instead of weeks. If it survives a year in the pantry unrefrigerated, it isn't food.

Cook one meal this week from ingredients you can name out loud. Animal protein, a starch from the first list, vegetables from the green and yellow list, butter or olive oil. That's the baseline.

The whole-food rule

One operating principle for everything on the plate

Single ingredient — if it has an ingredient list, it isn't on the list. Meat is meat. A potato is a potato. Rice is rice. The first list on this page passes the test by definition.
Recognizable as a food — if your great-grandparents wouldn't have recognized it as food a hundred years ago, it isn't food. That filters out the vast majority of what lives in the center aisles.
No label needed — when you shop the perimeter of the grocery store, you can read every food without a label. The center aisles exist to put a label between you and the actual food.

Apply the rule at the grocery store this week. Shop the perimeter first. If a packaged item makes the cut, read the ingredient list — every word should be a food you can name. Anything else goes back on the shelf.

Nutrition Pillars

Turn the references into a daily routine

The lists above become useful when they are applied consistently. Use these simple pillars to turn the reference foods into a repeatable daily plate and routine — without turning nutrition into a tracking exercise.

The 12–7 eating window

Consistent timing for eating for energy

12–7 window — keep meals inside a consistent 12 p.m. to 7 p.m. eating window as a simple Body Tune-Up structure.
Meal timing — eat at repeatable times instead of grazing from morning through bedtime; consistency makes the routine easier to notice and keep.
Eating for energy — use the window to support steady energy through the day, not as a reason to skip needed food or force hunger.

The takeaway: choose the 12–7 window, set your first and last meal times, and keep the schedule consistent enough to become automatic.

Build the plate, not the spreadsheet

Animal protein plus simple whole-food sides

Animal protein first — build each meal around meat, fish, eggs, or dairy if tolerated.
One starch plus vegetables — add one starch staple and a generous serving of green and yellow vegetables; add fruit across the day.
Cooking fat — use an appropriate amount of butter, ghee, tallow, olive oil, or coconut oil for cooking and flavor.

The takeaway: make the plate repeatable — animal protein, one starch, vegetables, and a cooking fat — without turning the routine into calorie or macro tracking.

Fiber, gut, and inflammation support

Rotate whole-food inputs and measure one habit

Rotate fiber — alternate soluble and insoluble whole-food fiber from oats, beans, root vegetables, fruit, greens, and other produce rather than chasing a single superfood.
Choose closer to the source — prioritize whole foods over industrial seed-oil-heavy packaged foods and keep ingredient lists simple.
Measure the habit — pick one weekly measure, such as vegetables at lunch five days or one bean or whole-grain serving daily, and review it at week's end.

The takeaway: rotate real-food fiber sources, make packaged food the exception, and track one observable weekly habit so the plan stays practical.