How to go Vegan — Vegan 101 (part 1 of 5)
A SMALL FORWARD:
“How do I go vegan?” is a question that we love to get. But what we’ve found is that it’s hard to answer in a concise yet effective way. Just recently, a friend messaged me and said, “Vic, my wife and I just watched What the Health on netflix and need inspiration and recipes. Any advice?” So I spent the next 30 minutes responding via instagram messenger in 9 different messages. I feel like I gave pretty good advice, but it was hard to format and cram everything I wanted to tell him about plant based eating into my response. It takes more than 500 characters to really answer a question like that. On the other hand, we don’t want to overwhelm our friends who want advice. So here’s our solution — A five part mini series on how to start eating a plant based diet. Don’t worry, we’ll keep it short and interesting.
What is a vegan diet?
If you want to get into the nitty gritty, Marilyn wrote a killer article on this that you should go read. (insert Marilyn’s article). To simplify things, we’re going to group together the words “vegan” and “plant based” for now.
People who eat a plant based diet include these things:
- Vegetables
- Fruit
- Whole grains (wheat, rice, quinoa, barley, oats, etc.)
- Legumes (chickpeas, beans, peas, lentils, soy beans, etc.)
- Nuts and seeds
And avoid these things:
- Meat. Yes, chicken and fish are also meat.
- Eggs
- Dairy products. (Milk, cheese, butter, etc.)
- Processed and refined foods (added sugar, white bread, added oils, candy, soda, etc.)
Why plant based? (just a reminder)
Marilyn and I still need constant reminders about why we eat the way we do. For some reason, in the world we live in, it’s really easy to forget our motivations, so here’s 3 basic reasons why we eat plants and not animals. Simple answer, it’s healthy for our bodies, the planet, and the critters. Long answer…
Your Body
The preponderance (a fancy word for majority that I recently learned, and have been using at every opportunity to sound smart) of nutritional research has shown that a balanced plant based diet is very successful in preventing and reversing America’s chronic health problems, which also happen to be the reasons why most people die. These include:
- Heart Disease
- Diabetes (type 1 and 2)
- Many types of cancer
- Diseases of the brain (Alzheimers, Dementia, Stroke)
Why wouldn’t we be eating the foods that have been shown to prevent and fix these diseases, and avoid the foods that have been shown to cause these diseases? Just sayin’.
Your Earth
Eating plant based is also extremely healthy for our big blue planet. The way humanity treats our planet is super unsustainable. We have SO much room for improvement, and there are so many things that we can do to help planet earth be a healthy home for us. People who eat plant based help cut greenhouse gases, conserve water, produce less pollution and waste, stop deforestation and habitat destruction, and feed more humans while doing it. It’s great! A couple stats? Raising livestock accounts for more greenhouse gases than all forms of human transportation in the entire world! Also, it takes about 2,000 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef. That’s a lot of water used to produce something that doesn’t have a whole lot of nutrition. Bottom line, puny you can make a huge difference for the environment while at the same time benefiting your personal health.
Your Animals
You don’t have to be a hippie tree-hugger to practice compassion. Factory farming, which makes producing animal products cheaper and more efficient creates horrible conditions for animals. Animals have cognitive processes and feelings that are very similar to yours and mine. Why make animals suffer, if we don’t even need them for food? It’s actually pretty ironic — we kill animals to eat them, and eating them kills us. It’s senseless.
That concludes part 1 of 5 in our “How to go Vegan” mini series.
PS. WE LOVE QUESTIONS!!! If you have any questions, send us an email, message us on the Instas, send up a smoke signal, get our attention! We’ll answer you.
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