By: Tom Cloyd - 3 min. read (Published: 2025-11:24; reviewed: 2025-11:24:1521 Pacific Time (USA))
[Incomplete - under development]
This mix of remarkably diverse ingredients is used in my Tiger soup and my greens smoothie with legumes. Mixed up in a number of individual portions, it's ready to use with very little effort. Once you have the ingredients on hand, you can make up multiple batches of the dry mix with only a little preparation time. I regularly mix up 16 portions, each placed in its own little 1/2 cup lidded jar. To mix those 16 portions takes me 45 minutes - not quite 3 minutes a batch.
The recipe came from my reading of a truly exceptional book1, authored with such focus and impressive scholarship that I had to take its recommendations seriously. The author's respect for science runs deep, and he is superb at explaining it. His writing is fun to read and resolutely informative at the same time.
NOTE that I use footnotes extensively. I'm a believer in sourcing my claims, and each item in this recipe is a substantive claim that it's good for you, and you should ingest it. I strongly encourage you to click and read each footnote. Each say something important, but I didn't want to clutter up the recipe. Footnotes solve the problem.
NOTE also that there are two ingredients listings. The second is annotated. Doing this is an ongoing project, so the annotations are not complete.
This recipe is for one portion, to be mixed into 12 oz. hot water. I measure out each portion into a small glass jar for storage, a system that does not require any ingredient mixing. Just measure, then mix the portion you need into hot water, then wait a couple of minutes for it to absorb the water, before sipping. Mine is usually entirely consumed within 5 minutes.
Several of these ingredients are unusual. You will have to search for them or order them online. I give a suggestion here for where to do that. Even if you don't use all the ingredients, any that you do use have distinct benefits, so don't be reluctant to use only some of what's below. You won't taste the herbs and spices. Do include the nutritional yeast because it significantly improves the taste.
For detailed explanation and justification of each ingredient, see Ingredients - explained, below.
3 T nutritional yeast (important both for nutrition and taste)
1/2 T oregano
Bioavailable complete protein in this base recipe: ~ 21-27 grams
Place ingredients in small a container. When making a smoothie, shake the container to mix the ingredients, then add the mix to the hot water while stirring vigorosly. A nice option is to stir into the hot water 1/2 t vegetarian broth paste, before adding the mix.
1/4 c ground dry okara (optional)
Okara is the ground soybean pulp left-over from making soy milk at home. It's incredibly versatile and nutritionally valuable. Adding it to any recipe or preparation will lower the glycemic index of what it's added to. This is considered a very good thing. It means that your insulin production system is less stressed than it might otherwise be.
In my tiger soup, it has another function: thickener. Thickening the soup makes the various non-soluable ingredients stay in suspension longer.
Note that in savory (not sweet) smoothies, one can substitute 1/2 cup of some cooked mild bean, unless the recipe already has in it a legume of some sort.
1 T flax (ground) 1 T peanut butter or peanut butter powder 1/2 T oregano 1/2 T nutritional yeast 2 t ground chia seed (could be increased to 1 T) 1 t macha powder OR 2 bags of green tea (I like Costco's Kirkland brand, because it has macha tea in it) 1 t amla powder 1 t creatine monohydrate (optional) 1/4 t cinnamon 1/4 t tumeric (plus a pinch of ground pepper) 1/4 t fiber 1/8 t clove (ground)
The book: Greger, M., & Stone, G. (2015). How not to die: Discover the foods scientifically proven to prevent and reverse disease (First edition). Flatiron Books. Michael Greger, M.D., is a physician and educator; Gene Stone is the author of many books on plant-based nutrition. ↩
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