If you’re one of the many people (millennial or otherwise) who have been enjoying avocado toast as a staple part of your diet for a while now… I’m right there with you 🙂
But listen up! There are a few things to know about consuming this dynamic duo – in order to ensure you’re actually getting the most bang for your buck from a nutrition standpoint.
Firstly, don’t get me wrong, avocado toast certainly makes for an amazing addition to ones diet. A huge thanks to all the incredible monounsaturated fatty acids from the avocados for being such a huge part of the reason why.
However, if you’re eating avocado toast as a main meal – you’re going to want to do a few things to spruce it up in order to ensure it follows the 4 Pillars of a Diet to Ease Anxiety (learn more about these in the “Eat to Ease Anxiety Course“).
So here’s how to make your avocado toast an anxiety friendly meal option:
- First and foremost, you want to take a look at the quality of bread you are consuming.
For me, my go-to is always an organic whole grain sourdough. You can read this article breaking down why this is the best kind of bread to consume – and what to look out for when you’re buying it from the store. - Can you add some protein to it?
My favourite protein to add to my avocado toast is definitely pasture raised eggs. Along with protein, they’re super rich in choline (an essential nutrient for brain health) – making them an incredible anxiety easing addition.
Other protein ideas include smoked tofu, scrambled tofu, tempeh strips or tempeh bacon, hemp hearts, wild smoked salmon, or even some ground meat or chicken. - Can you add some veg to it?
One simple way to do so is to eat your avo toast aside some sautéd kale or a handful of fresh greens with your go to dressing. In the picture above I paired it with some pan fried garlic, olive oil broccoli which was delicious!
However, one of my other fave ways (especially when salad just isn’t call your name) is to make an avocado mash with tomato, onion, and cilantro (recipe below). By adding on these few simple ingredients you’ll be blown away by the amount of nutrition (and flavour) you can punch into this otherwise simple meal! - Sea salt!
Who doesn’t love salt on their avocado toast? Many people are surprised to hear that as a nutritionist I am actually very in favour of salt.
However, not all salt is created equal and I certainly do NOT recommend people load up on table/ refined salt. I always encourage people to consume high quality unrefined sea salt (I personally love pink Himalayan). The cool part about unrefined sea salt (as opposed to table salt) is that it naturally contains essential trace minerals! - Can you make it organic?
Last but not least – an important pillar for a diet to ease anxiety is to try to minimize your exposure to pesticides and other toxins that can show up in our food.
Not only can pesticides be inflammatory, they can also impact the health of our guts (something that we could ALL use some improvement on!).
By doing your best to buy organic ingredients you’ll be sure you’re getting the most bang for your buck from a nutrition standpoint. Personally, I encourage people to try to buy as much organic as possible (whether on the dirty dozen list or not) – however if this is not possible, paying extra attention to ensuring your bread is organic is very important. Wheat is often one of the most sprayed crops – so you could unknowingly be eating a lot of pesticide residue if not consuming organic bread/ other wheat products.
Okay, now on to my current favourite way to enjoy my avocado toast (I’m not going to lie – it changes often) – but this one I’m sharing with you today has been one of my all time faves!
Ingredients
Serving size: approx. 2 servings, 4 slices of bread
For the Avocado Spread (it’s essentially guacamole)
- 1 medium to large ripe avocado
- Juice of half a fresh lemon
- 2 Tbsp. finely chopped white or red onion (I actually prefer white for this even though red is more commonly eaten raw – both are great!)
- 1/3 cup tomato, finely diced (approx. half a medium sized one)
- 1/4 cup fresh cilantro, finely chopped
- Sea salt to taste (I like to be quite generous with this)
Other Ingredients:
- 3 to 4 pieces sourdough bread (just depends on the size of them)
- Additional cilantro for garnish
- 4 large pasture raised eggs
NOTE: this recipe more than most you can be super flexible with the measurements. Love onion? Add more! Hate cilantro? Remove it! Huge fan of spice? Add some red pepper flakes, a pinch of cayenne, or a dash of hot sauce. Prefer fried eggs over scrambled? Do that instead! This recipe is here for inspiration – but feel free to make it your own.
Instructions
- Cut avocado in half (from north to south), remove pit and skin, and place the flesh of both halves into a medium sized bowl
- Squeeze the juice out of 1/2 a lemon and then add to the avocado bowl
- With a fork, mash the avocado together with the lemon until it’s relatively clump free (does not need to be perfectly smooth by any means though)
- Finely chop onion (I like to do it quite fine so you don’t get huge bites of onion)
- Finely chop the tomato
- Finely de-stem and chop the cilantro
- Add the onion, tomato, and cilantro to the avocado bowl and mix throughout
- Add a generous pinch of sea salt and stir throughout
- Next, heat your pan to medium (preferably cast iron) with a generous drizzle of olive oil or a spread of butter
- While the pan is heating, crack your eggs into a medium sized bowl and vigorously whisk with a fork until the eggs are smooth
- Pour eggs on to heated pan and immediately begin moving them around with a spatula. Allow them to cook for 3 -5 or so minutes (until no longer runny)- continuously moving them with the spatula. Next, remove them from the heat.
- As the eggs are cooking, pop your toast down in the toaster
- Now it’s time to assemble your amped up avocado toast!
- Generously spread the avocado mixture over your toast, serve eggs on the side, and garnish with additional cilantro (or another green of choice)
- Sprinkle with additional sea salt and even some hemp hearts for additional protein and healthy fats!
