Forget Diet And Detox – New Year, New Lifestyle

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So you’re counting today as the first day of the New Year right?

Good. Me too.

Now, I can totally see the point of changing shit up at New Year.

It’s an easy way to measure progress; we will always know where we started from, and we’ll have made a clear and well-defined intention that is loaded with the freshness and hope the New Year brings.

This is good.

But…

How many of us have made ‘New Years Resolutions’ only to have forgotten all about them by, ooooh, March at the very latest?

I believe the reasons for this are:

We know the resolution will benefit us, but doing it (whatever it is) feels like torture
We’re not really engaged with the reasons why we are making a change
We’re lazy mofo’s (JK!)

Those of you looking to go vegan/plant-based purely as a way to ‘diet’ or ‘detox’ this January have it ALL wrong. Yep, ya do.

Don’t misunderstand – I’m not judging you for wanting to lose weight and clean up your insides with a whole food, vegan diet. No Sir.

It’s great that you’ve realised the best way to achieve these things IS with a whole food vegan diet. Lots of people still think that avoiding carbs are where it’s at; so props to you for being cleverer than these types.

And as I mention on my ‘About’ page – any way into veganism people may have is TOTES KOOL with me.

But you are coming to it from a perspective that may not serve to sustain your resolution.

You see, being vegan isn’t a DIET. At least, it works BEST when it’s not perceived a diet, but as a whole new lifestyle.

Why?

We always think of ‘diets’ and ‘detoxes’ as temporary. I mean, who is on a permanent diet? OK, you probably know someone who says they are permanently ‘dieting’ but not because they want to, and you know they’re not happy about it.

I encourage you to think of going vegan/plant based as an entirely new lifestyle. An exciting and vibrant one. One that will change your life forever for the better in ways that you can’t even imagine right now. Not only will it benefit your health, but it will benefit every single living organism on the face of the Earth, and the Earth itself! It will help combat world hunger. Your new lifestyle will help give today’s children a chance to explore and experience the natural beauty of the world when they are older, and to eventually bring their own children into a cleaner, safer, more stable world not fearful of extreme weather events, scarcity and war.

YES war! Going vegan can stop wars! Check it:

As long as there are slaughterhouses there will be battlefields ~ Leo Tolstoy (Russian author, 1828-1910)

As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love ~ Pythagoras (Greek polymath, c. 570-c. 495BC)

As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony between people. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer (Polish/American author, 1902-1991)

Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace ~ Albert Schweitzer (French/German theologian, organist, philosopher, physician and missionary, 1875-1965)

There is nothing wrong with focussing on the weight loss or detoxing benefits of this lifestyle if it’s that that drew you in in the first place, or with eating specific plant-foods that promote this. But if you go into it thinking of it purely as a diet or detox, you’ll:

A) Come to a point when you consider your goal achieved, go back to old habits, and find yourself making the SAME resolutions next year (PEOPLE – we only have so many years, let’s make DIFFERENT resolutions every year!)

Or:

B) Get bored, because you’re just eating fruit and chia seeds and drinking smoothies in an effort to achieve your detox goal; when you could be eating from a HYUUUUGE variety of delicious dishes as you educate yourself about all the ways to veganise old favourite meals, and the multitude of yummy world cuisines!

By looking at your resolution as a lifestyle change, rather than as a detox or diet (even if it’s those things that were your initial motivations), your entire perspective on it will change.

Because ‘lifestyle’ implies longer term; you’ll relax into it, learning new things bit by bit rather than bracing yourself for what you may feel is the deprivation of a ‘detox’ or ‘diet’.

You’ll push yourself to discover and explore new foods rather than just grabbing a kale/beet/wheatgrass/whatever smoothie,* and soon find yourself delighting in the amount you’ve learned, not to mention loving all your delicious new culinary creations.

I also encourage you to get informed about the environmental, ethical and social justice impact that veganism has, even if these are not your reasons for going vegan.

Why?

Because the more you know, the more your consciousness will expand, and the more reasons and incentive you will have for STAYING vegan, and thus, slim and untoxed!

We ALL like to feel that we’re doing good. Animal product industry marketers rely on this when they try and sell us ‘humane’ or ‘free range’ products.

So, instead of going back to feeling good about ourselves for buying eggs that are, in reality, produced in JUST as cruel a way as those at more intensive egg farms and benefitting only the bottom line of the greedy egg industry; and for throwing £20 into a charity bucket for ‘Starving Children In Africa’ when it’s actually animal agriculture that siphons food away from hungry people to cattle (for less hungry people to eat); let’s feel good about ourselves in 2016 for something that ACTUALLY MEANS SHIT.

Embrace every aspect of your new lifestyle – it truly is so much more than a diet ever could be.

And if you need personal, one-on-one guidance – you know darn well where I am.

Seeing this as a lifestyle shift and embracing its totality, rather than purely as a diet or detox means it may take a little longer to achieve your weight goal (though most likely not much longer at all!), but I promise you, once you reach it, you are far, FAR more likely to maintain it.

* I don’t mean to bash the smoothie; but it doesn’t hold a candle to a huge plate of Ethiopian food, or a table full of Middle Eastern Mezze.

Now Is The Time

Well OF COURSE I’m going to take the opportunity when we’re on the cusp of this new year to encourage you to go vegan/plant-based/whatever you want to call it, if you aren’t already.

But let me explain WHY the time is now; why there has never been a better time to take this step.

Global consciousness is rising, it really is. People are beginning to think about the wider issues outside of their own four walls or their own community.

They are beginning to consider the impact their actions have on other beings, both human and non-human.

They are beginning to join the dots and see how their life choices connect to cruelty towards others and environmental degradation, not to mention how these choices can lead to personal ill-health.

In east and west coast US (and progressive cities in between – Hi Austin, Asheville, Boulder etc!) this information is coming through loud and clear and the markets are rapidly changing to accommodate this new demand. You find restaurants, cafes and food emporia loaded with sumptuous plant-based fare. Brighton in the UK is getting there, and I hear Berlin and Gothenburg are vegan meccas. Forgive me Aussie readers, I’m ignorant about your country (though I’d love to visit one day), but I believe Melbourne is the place to be for plant-based delights aplenty.

Other places may be slower on the uptake ( 🙂 ) but are moving in that direction nonetheless. You only have to consider how vegetarians and vegans were perceived twenty years ago and compare that to now to know this is true. If you are too young to know this, ask an older friend or relative.

Yes, sadly it’s true that as some countries that were once poor are getting richer, many of their citizens are indulging in more meat and dairy, believing this is the ‘western,’ affluent thing to do. But, as technology enables information on the destructiveness of animal food production to spread fast and thick on a global scale, it is inevitable that very soon animal consumption will decline in these countries too, and at a much quicker rate than it did in ours.

If you are thinking of moving in a plant-based direction; whether you want to go vegan overnight, or start with vegetarian and see how it goes, or switch some animal products for plant-based ones and see how that feels – you’ve chosen the right time.

Here, here, here and, ooooh… here are some tips.

You will be part of a strong and gathering current of consciousness, a flow of positive energy that will only ever increase exponentially in force. It doesn’t even matter right now if you think I’m talking hogwash and your reasons for going vegan are more health or environment-based than ethical. All the reasons are interwoven, and you’ll feel connected to them all sooner or later. It’s no coincidence that the best thing for animals and the planet is also the best thing for you.

Get in on this energy at this stage. Don’t be late to the party. You’ll miss so much!

Just do something. Move forward. Now is the time.

How To Navigate Christmas As A New Vegan

A Safe,Happy and Prosperous New Year to All from Flickr via Wylio — © 2010 John Stratford, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio

Does it seem like it’s Christmas every frickin’ six weeks or is that just me?

It’s just such a lot of….well…bother!

Am I the Grinch?

*sigh* …Probably.

If this is your first (or one of your first) vegan Christmases; you may have a few concerns about how time spent with family and friends is going to pan out in light of your food choices.

It’s true that Christmas CAN sometimes present new vegans with a particular set of dilemmas.

I hope I’ve covered most of them here:

How do you navigate non-vegan family dinners?

I wrote a pretty comprehensive piece on this last year. Hope it helps!

As a vegan, should you even ATTEND non-vegan family dinners?

This is totally your call.

You are no less vegan if you do.

I get that it might be upsetting for some people, but it can also be an opportunity to wow the fam with some gorge food you made to bring and share.

A big obstacle to people going vegan is that they think the food will be boring and bland, so this can be an opportunity to prove to skeptical animal-munchers that the opposite is true.

If YOU are hosting Christmas, should you offer non-vegan food options?

In my opinion? Hell no. Your house = your prerogative. Why would you compromise your values?

However, you MUST offer lots of amazing plant-based food, to stop anyone whining about the fact that there’s no meat.

Look – you’re hosting – so you’re gonna be committed to a certain amount of kitchen time in any case. Try and find some extra-spesh, beautiful looking dishes that will excite the eyes and taste buds of even the grizzliest meat-eater.

Good food is good food. If it tastes great – they’ve got nothing to complain about!

I found some pretty cool ideas here and here.

What do you do if someone buys you a non-vegan gift?

Hmmmm. I have to say I think I would just be gracious about this.

It’s a gift. Their intention was good.

If you say you don’t want the gift and try to explain why...I mean…I just can’t see that turning out well.

If the gift is a leather or wool product, you can always make sure that you communicate effectively during the following year that your veganism includes not wearing animal products so that people get the message and it doesn’t happen again.

As for the gift? If it’s a leather, suede or wool product, I’d probably give it to a charity shop. It’s already been bought – and it can’t just dissolve or evaporate – so it may as well not go to waste.

If it’s a non-vegan food gift?

This one is difficult. Personally I couldn’t give it to some else – because I know how harmful animal products are health-wise and I couldn’t give to anyone else what I wouldn’t eat myself.

On the odd occasion when someone has unwittingly bought me non-vegan chocolate, it’s actually just stayed in my cupboard until its gone bad, such is my cluelessness about what to do in this situation.

Sorry!

How do you make vegan mince-pies

BLEEEEEEEEECCHHHH! I can help you go vegan and blow your mind with a ton of insights and inspiration to help you STAY vegan, but I cannot tell you how to make a vegan mince pie.

I always HATED those things and found them disGUSting. What even IS that mince shizzle made from?

I really don’t know.

I do not have the mince pie gene.

I found this recipe, if it helps, but I have not tried it and have no intention of doing so, so I can’t tell you if it’s good. Looks pretty legit though, if you like that sort of thing…

Is it ok to buy friends and family vegan cookbooks?

I say yes – if it’s a great quality cookbook. If it has lots of mouthwatering pics and engaging recipes, why not? Like I said in a previous point – good food is good food, and a good cookbook is a good cookbook, vegan or no.

What do you leave for Santa by the chimney/back door?

Um, a glass of almond or soy milk and some vegan cookies? We don’t want Santa to eat saturated fat and cholesterol and die of a heart attack or diabetes-related complications do we boys and girls?

And not meaning to fat-shame Santa, but he’s portly enough already if truth be told 🙂

I wish you all a relaxing and joyful holiday period, whatever you’re doing. And don’t forget, any rubbish presents – regift or repurpose 🙂

Go Back To Your Winter Roots: Celeriac And Rutabaga Fries

Winter ain’t good for much in my book.

If I never see another winter it’ll be too soon.

I mean…um…not that I want to die before next winter; but whhhhhhhhhyyyy can’t it go SPRING! SUMMER! AUTUMN! REPEAT!!!

But…I guess I love skating on the Christmas rinks. And the new Starbucks mulled apple chai with REAL cinnamon sticks is kinda delicious.

And I loooove hot, warming soups and bean stews and curries.

And………

………Wait for it…….

WINTER ROOT VEG!

It’s perhaps worth suffering just a little winter for these?

Now we’re all down with the parsnips, carrots and turnips; but there are two others you may not be so familiar with that would love to be players in your winter meal rotation.

Why?

Just ‘cos they’re darn well delectable that’s why!

Uh, it’s fair to say these two characters ain’t pretty; but their charm is in their rich, earthy taste.

If you haven’t tried them already, get some in and see what you think.

It isn’t always the prettiest veg that taste the nicest!

And they’re cheap as chips, hurrah!

The first is celeriac. This is its prettiest side:

And this is its slightly grizzlier side!

Not to put you off, but it looks a little brain-like to me!

But seriously; please don’t be put off by the nobbles or the hairy bits 🙂

The second glorious but lesser known winter root veg is rutabaga; or swede as its known here in the UK.

This is a little more photogenic – I love the green with the purple.

Oh, also? These two fellas are fibre-filled nutrient bombs.

Celeriac is a great source of Vitamin B6, magnesium, potassium, manganese and vitamin C; while the rutabagas will provide you with vitamin C, vitamin B6, potassium, calcium and magnesium.

One of the best and simplest things you can do with these two veg is make fries. YAY, friiiiiiiiies!!

Celeriac / Rutabaga Fries

Pre-heat your oven to 200C.
The hardest part of this recipe is peeling your root veg and chopping it into fries; but you’re no wuss; you can do it.
You’ll want to make the fries quite thin, say, 1cm wide maximum, otherwise they’ll take too long to bake.
Lay your cut celeriac or rutabaga fries in a parchment-paper lined baking tray thus; and spray them with either sunflower or olive oil.

Salt generously and sprinkle either fresh or dried rosemary evenly-ish all over.
Bake for approximately 35 minutes (or until they brown slightly), turning them once half way through.

These are the fries of the celeriac:

And these are the fries of the rutabaga:

Serve with vegan garlic aioli, vegan mayo, ketchup etc.

Mash

Have a change from potato or sweet potato mash – try mashed celeriac or rutabaga!

You can even do half potato, half rutabaga; or half potato, half celeriac. The other day I mashed a mix of the root veg I had left in my fridge – which happened to be sweet potato, a wedge of celeriac and a couple of turnips. I was doubtful that it could work but it was absolutely delicious!

Make the mash exactly as you would regular potato mash. i.e. boil the veg till soft; drain; mash your veg while adding a splash of soy or almond milk and a knob of dairy-free margarine. Season well with salt and black pepper.

Stews & Soups

Celeriac and rutabaga are great in stews and soups. Try sometimes adding either (or both!) to any recipe instead of potato.

Don’t get in rut with your roots! Shake it up! Don’t worry about the ugly! Isn’t there a saying.. ‘ugly on the table, damn tasty in the mouth?’ No? Well there OUGHT to be.

Why Are We Weirdly Selective About The Orifices That Produce Our Foods?

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Mixed Eggs from Flickr via Wylio — © 2011 soapydishwater, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio

Well this post will make you laugh if nothing else.

It might even larn you somethin’ – I definitely ‘larned’ something new as you will see!

Now even non-vegan readers must know by now that cow’s milk comes from a cow’s boob-equivalent – their udders; and that milk is food for cow’s babies, just as breast milk is food for human babies.

But I’m absolutely NOT judging you if you didn’t know that. It’s hardly something that milk adverts shout about, for obvious reasons.

And none of us would dream of breast-feeding from our mothers – or even from any other female human past infancy right? Yet this is what milk drinkers and dairy consumers (as all dairy is made of milk) are effectively doing, but it’s even weirder! They’re doing it FROM A DIFFERENT SPECIES.

And I found out something else last week.

Now I’m rather partial to saying that eggs are chicken’s periods (in an appropriate forum of course, not at a dinner table when someone is tucking into an egg – though it’s tempting 🙂 )

The eggs are unfertilised, so a period is technically what they ARE.

But did you know this?

(Maybe many of you did and I’m just ignorant)

A friend was telling me about a discussion she had with her partner. HE was saying that a chicken had but one…um…lower orifice; and she argued that this must be wrong, and that they MUST have two.

I agreed with her. They must have at least two I thought (I actually thought they must have three; one each for peeing and pooping of course; and one for the eggs to exit the body).

Later; to see who was right, I decided to get better informed about chickens’ unmentionables, and consulted the internet on this topic.

It turns out my friend’s partner was right. Chickens DO have but one, um, unmentionable (could I GET any more British?)

Did you know this?

I DIDN’T EITHER!!!!

This means that not only is an egg a chicken’s period, but also that it is pooping the eggs out of its butt (there, I said it).

As chickens (like all birds) don’t pee, the liquid waste mixes in with the solid waste and exits this one orifice as poop. So it really IS a butt.

I feel bad talking about chickens in a disrespectful way, but my intention is to make people think twice about eating eggs – so hopefully they’ll forgive me.

Why weren’t we taught this??? I’ve been on the planet X amount of years (now that really IS unmentionable) and I had NO IDEA that eggs came from a chicken’s butt.

Now chicken experts out there may point out that the poop and the eggs go down different tubes INSIDE the chicken’s body, and only exit from the same orifice, but still. Eggs still come out of their butt.

Just as sometimes those of us that are vegan, in order to get non-vegans to think about where milk comes from, ask them whether they’d be comfortable breast-feeding from a human female as an adult; this egg/chicken issue has similarly made me wonder:

Would we eat anything that exited from a human butt?

So why is a chicken’s butt OK as a food conduit?

Would we eat a menstrual deposit from any other animal?

Why then are we happy to eat a chicken’s?

Why were we not taught precisely where eggs come from and what they are – and in whose interest was it that we were not taught this?

Why are we not encouraged to ask questions about this?

It seems we have been conditioned to just accept milk and eggs as a healthy food source and not question a darn thing about whether they are indeed healthy, or where they came from, or why we don’t drink milk from any other animals (except perhaps goats) or eat eggs from many other birds.

This is why milk isn’t healthy.

This is why eggs aren’t healthy.

The reason why its cow’s milk (rather than milk from any other mammal) that has been pushed on to you since birth is that cow’s milk is the most profitable.

The reason why it’s eggs from chickens (rather than eggs from any other bird) that you’ve been made to believe are good for you since forever is that chicken’s eggs are the most profitable.

NO.OTHER.REASON.

In the interest of profit and profit only (as public health has NOTHING to do with it), our consumption of cow’s milk and chicken’s eggs has been SO normalised and legitimised by a multitude of societal elements that we receive both consciously and sub-consciously; that we DON’T tend to question anything.

It’s funny how many people identify as ‘germophobes’; they buy anti-microbial hand sanitisers galore and fuss and fret about bacteria – yet they’re happy to drink secretions from a different species, or eat something that exited the behind of another species, just because they consider that to be ‘normal.’

Next time I want a little fun with a non-vegan (and I know them to have a good sense of humour), I’ll tease them about their ‘butt-food.’

I learned a little something last week, but to be honest I was shocked I didn’t know this already.

Did YOU know?

Everything In Moderation Right?…..WRONG!

Let's have some complexity from Flickr via Wylio — © 2010 futureatlas.com, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wyli

‘But Karen…don’t you think we should just eat everything in moderation?’

I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve heard this.

It used to drive me CRAYZEEE and I didn’t have the counter-argument at my fingertips, so I got frustrated every time I heard it.

I had no answers other than ‘but what about heroin or cocaine, surely they’re not good in moderation?’

But this argument never felt sufficient. Someone would always say ‘er…no….they’re not food, we mean all foods in moderation.’

It didn’t help my frustration levels that the person saying it always thought they’d just KILLED ME with common sense, and that there was NO WAY I couldn’t now see things from their point of view.

And after all, it’s not one of the more aggressive things that get said to vegans. It sounds quite innocuous. Strangely, I prefer the stupider, more aggressive, defensive comments ‘cos they’re… well, just plain silly and quite easy to respond to.

But this one really does sound like common sense. Perhaps in another context, on another planet, it WOULD be common sense, but not in the way we use it today.

Now that I’ve given it some thought, I’m clearer on why the ‘moderation’ defence is poppycock; tosh; balderdash and bunkum.

There are really four elements to it, and they are:

1. What is moderation?

My definition of moderation is different to yours: yours is different to your auntie’s; hers is different to Donald Trump’s (not sure why I picked him, ew). This word has SUCH an ambiguous, indefinable meaning.

Everyone nods in agreement when someone says they ‘eat everything in moderation,’ yet none of them have the same idea of what moderation is.

And do they REALLY eat animal products in (any definition of) moderation? We all like to think we eat certain less-than-healthy foodstuffs ‘in moderation,’ but when it comes down to it, we just don’t.

Me? I like to believe I eat dark chocolate in moderation. I have it JUST on the weekends so I MUST do right? But when I really think about it honestly, I probably eat way more than is healthy for a two day period. I probably don’t eat it in moderation at all.

How many times have I had non-vegans say to me ‘Oh, you’re vegan? Well you know I hardly eat ANY meat or dairy.’ In actuality, they eat a lot more than they like to think of themselves eating. If all the people who said this were speaking the truth; half the livestock industry would’ve shut down by now! People don’t know how much they eat of anything until they stop eating it.

And ‘moderation’ is such a positive word; we all want to be associated with it. It’s the opposite of radical, fanatical and fundamentalist – all of which none of us want to be. We all want to believe we eat everything in moderation, but the truth is that lots of our meal choices are more animal product-heavy than we realise.

Just consider – do you eat chicken in moderation? Beef? Steak? Eggs? Cheese? Fish? Lamb? Pork? Yoghurt? Butter? Most of these? Weeeellll – that’s a heck of a lot of animal products to be eating ‘in moderation.’ If you eat each of these foods in moderation – you’re not leaving much room for plant foods!

2. What is everything?

Do the people who use this phrase really eat EVERYTHING?

I consider myself to eat a wide variety of foods from all over the globe, but I certainly don’t eat everything. I’ve yet to try durian, turnip greens and natto; plus hundreds of other plant-foods I’m sure.

I’m assuming the ‘moderation’ crowd don’t eat monkey’s brains, or frog’s legs, or shark meat. Some of the ‘moderation’ folk I know don’t even eat avocado, or sweet potato for the love of all things holy. And some I know eat chicken and potatoes in some form for pretty much every meal. Maybe they have Weetabix for breakfast.

Their concept of ‘everything’ is narrower than any fair definition of the word oughtta be!

The ‘everything’ they are referring to is the very small group of foods they stick to on a daily basis.

This is not what ‘everything’ means.

3. It’s not cool to eat ANY things in moderation (or otherwise) that have suffered and been brutally slaughtered when we have absolutely no need to do so.

Uh, that’s it.

4. It’s not cool to eat ANY things in moderation (or otherwise) that have a destructive impact on our planet (habitat destruction, global warming, topsoil loss, air/water pollution, desertification and rainforest decimating etc), when we have absolutely no need to do so.

Yep. That’s it for that one too.

Review Of Living Food Kitchen’s Raw Beetroot Hummus

During my weekly Whole Foods shop last week, in the interest of trying something new, and for something I knew I could snack on immediately when I got home; I picked up a tub of Living Food Kitchen’s raw beetroot hummus.

I love beetroot; and I love hummus (is there anyone who doesn’t, seriously?); and though I’ve tried several different flavours of hummus, beetroot flavour had never crossed my path.

I don’t normally buy ‘raw’ anything (unless it’s fruit and veg obvs). I live in the UK and my body needs hot foods lots of the time, but I thought that this could only taste good. And it was so pretty; so, so pinky purple and pretty. So in the bag it went.

This is what it contained:

Ingredients

Beetroot (41%), cashews, sprouted chickpeas (18.5%), sunflower oil, lemon juice, tahini (sesame seeds), herb salt (Himalayan crystal salt, thyme, oregano, rosemary, chives, basil, tarragon), garlic powder, cumin, coriander powder, extra virgin olive oil.

As you can see, the ingredients are as pure as the driven snow, just the way I like ’em. And if it tastes good too – win-win!

Later on, I toasted some Cranks wholewheat bread, and covered it in this purple delight.

It was soooooooooo good. No, that’s not an imaginative description, but that was my first reaction. The beetroot taste is very subtle; sweet but not overwhelming. and there is just a hint of each herb in the ingredient list. It’s this subtleness that makes you just have to have more.

The texture (which is possibly what worried me about it being raw) was perfect.

I don’t like hummus when it’s super smooth and creamy, I like a bit of ‘texture’, and this had just the right amount.

I can’t begin to describe how moreish this is. You better share it with one or two others or you’ll find yourself all of a sudden at the bottom of the pot; purple all round your mouth, whistling fake innocently when someone walks in and asks who ate all the hummus.

‘Vegan’ Does Not = Eating Fruit For Every Meal

Water melon from Flickr via Wylio — © 2006 Hajime NAKANO, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio

So there is a trend that worries me somewhat…

I’ve watched a tonne of YouTube videos that have ‘vegan’ in the title and are instructional in nature, and I have something I NEEEED to say.

In my opinion, the absolute vast majority of these videos are great, and it’s heart-warming to see so many people so clued up on the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of vegan. I’m also hugely jealous of the production values, editing skills, and just sheer confidence of the creators of these videos – but really enjoy watching them despite the ol’ green-eyed monster!

Yet some of them really concern me.

Some of these vloggers, if you watch their ‘what I eat in a day’ videos, eat nothing but fruit. Perhaps a nut here and there.

Of course, if you’re eating mainly fruit, then it’s pretty much a raw diet. My thoughts on raw in more detail are here.

I’m not naming any names or trying to take anyone down, I’m just genuinely concerned.

To be fair, some of these people DO look healthy, and report that their blood work is great. If this is true then good for them. But there are definitely others who don’t look like eating 95% fruit is serving them.

It’s popular and trendy diet plans like ’80/10/10′ and ‘Raw Till 4,’ (both encourage you to eat hyyyuuuuuge amounts of fruit for – supposedly – maximal health and fitness), that seem to have inspired this way of eating.

As a plant-based nutritionist I wouldn’t recommend eating a mostly fruit diet. Yes, of course it’s better than eating the standard US or UK diet full of chicken, fries, burgers and cheese etc, and maybe some people can live on it. But it’s not something I would recommend doing.

These are ALL the reasons these videos concern me:

Health-wise, we know the optimal diet is based around whole grains and starchy root veg. Brown rice, whole wheat products, whole spelt products, oats, quinoa, corn, potato, sweet potato, squash – these types of foods should be the foundation of most meals. After this come beans and legumes, and your veggies on the side.

Fruit appears as dessert; or a snack; or maybe PART of breakfast.

Where do I get off spouting this?

It’s true, I’m a nutritionist not a doctor…

…So I follow the advice of these guys who are:

Dr John McDougall, has practised medicine for many years and successfully treated hundreds, if not thousands of patients with a whole food, plant-based diet, with whole, starchy carbs as the basis. This is what he says on the matter.

The very accomplished and eminent Dr Caldwell Esselstyn, author of Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, who again, has treated hundreds if not thousands of people successfully with the same diet Dr McDougall prescribes, has this to say on the subject.

Here is what Dr T Colin Campbell, author of The China Study, thinks of diets such as 80/10/10 that espouse a raw, fruit-heavy way of eating.

All these guys say THERE IS NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE proving that eating mostly fruit is optimal for health.

However – there IS scientific, peer-reviewed evidence proving that a whole food, plant-based diet with a focus on grains and potatoes etc, IS.

I also have personal experience of eating just fruit. About 26 years ago, I’m not going to say I had an eating disorder because I was never diagnosed and I managed to get out of it on my own with no medical help; but I wanted to lose weight, so I started JUST eating watery fruits and veg, knowing that with this regime I could only lose weight as these foods are basically just water and would go straight through me.

Well I lost weight alright, and I lost my period too (if you’re a female human, you NEED your period so everything can function as it should).

Everything went back to normal eventually when I added starchy plant foods back to my diet, but for a while there, I was not the healthiest!

This isn’t to say that it doesn’t work for some people, perhaps it does, I don’t know. But I don’t understand scientifically how it could be a good idea long term.

The other thing is – what kind of climate do you live in? In Chinese medicine (not that I’m an expert, but a close friend is a Chinese Herbalist) they believe that some foods are cooling and some are warming.

Tropical fruits, for example, are believed to have a very cooling effect. If you live in a cold climate it doesn’t make sense to be eating lots of mangoes, watermelons and dragon fruit that are meant to cool you down.

The couple of fruit-heavy vloggers I’ve seen who DO look healthy, I believe DO live in hotter climates.

If you live in the UK, Northern or Eastern Europe, East US, or anywhere where the temperatures can drop; eating fruit all day just ISN’T gonna cut it. You need your stews, chilli’s and curries to warm you and fill you up.

Also – how expensive is eating 3 melons for breakfast, 6 mangoes for lunch, 2 dragon fruit as a snack; and 4 oranges, 2 more melons and 3 dates for dinner? Tropical fruit isn’t cheap and with the amounts people are eating in order to fulfill their caloric intake, the cost must rack up pretty quickly. Compare the price of six decent mangoes with a 2kg bag of lentils that will last you months!

The final reason these ‘fruity’ videos concern me, is that, to me, they are somewhat misrepresenting a vegan diet. If these vloggers called themselves ‘fruitarians’ instead of ‘vegans’ this would be helpful, so people don’t think that this is a typical version of a vegan diet.

Veganism and plant-based diets are, at last, gaining traction. More and more people are interested. But imagine a person who eats a meat and dairy-heavy diet that starts to be curious about veganism and wants to learn more. So they whack ‘vegan’ into the YouTube search engine. Then imagine the first video they see is someone who tells them that eating 3 melons for breakfast and 12 mangoes for lunch is the way to be vegan. I worry this is off-putting. Lots of people think vegans are weird anyway. I don’t believe the ‘fruity’ vegans are helping this perception any.

If YOU are the meat-eater tentatively looking for info on going vegan and want to do it healthfully, then type ‘whole food, plant-based’ into your search engine; or read anything by the doctors I mention above – these dudes are the real deal; they’ve done the science and published it. They’ve witnessed hundreds of times over how healing a whole food, plant-based diet is and they live to spread the message.

And if you need any help transitioning….YOOHOO!!!!!! You know I’m here to help you. I offer my programs, and have addressed lots of the common questions and stumbling blocks around going vegan here in my blog posts.

Let me know if there’s anything I haven’t talked about yet that you’d like me to, and I’ll get to it in one of my next posts.

Here’s Why Your Parents Are Not Thrilled About You Being Vegan

Ha! This is a juicy subject.

There are ways to talk about being vegan with regular non-vegans: then there are parents.

How the dynamics can shift!

If you have parents that were completely on board with your decision to go vegan, and in actual fact wanted to go vegan with you JUST to support you – yay you! And can your parents adopt me please?

But DON’T be downhearted if this didn’t happen to you; the above scenario is definitely the exception, not the norm.

Now you know as well as I do that if your parents are giving you crap about going or being vegan, it doesn’t mean they are shitty parents – far from it.

I mean, they could be shitty parents; I don’t know them; but most likely they are not.

What it means, is one or several of these things:

Your parents taught you how to eat. They fed you your first foods. For most of us, they decided exactly what your body was going to ingest for at least the first 16 years of your life (sneaky candy splurges aside 🙂 ). They completely informed your food likes and dislikes, and passed their own tastes on to you.

You going vegan is making them feel that you think they were, and are, wrong. That you’ve moved on from, and away from them and the life they gave you

Your parents watched with pride as you ate your first boiled egg on your own, ate your first shellfish, and your first piece of French cheese. They have many profound memories that surround you and food. They fear these memories will be negated; that they’ll not now mean as much to you as they do to them.

Don’t forget that the whole food association thing goes further back than you and your parents. Your parents learned about food from THEIR parents, and they have many food memories associated with THEM. And your grandparents would’ve taken on THEIR parents’ food habits, and so on. This goes a loooong way back, baby. You going vegan, in the minds of your parents, is just changing (and ruining) everything.

Your parents knew you loved spaghetti and meatballs/cheesecake/pineapple-upside-down-cake, and liked to make it for you when you visited. They fear that they won’t have the same way of connecting with you through food as they used to; that you won’t ever again feel pleasure because of something they cooked especially for you.
Maybe you used to go fishing with your dad (why don’t mums go fishing?) and bring the fish home and cook it. Maybe you and your mum or dad always made a special non-vegan dish together at Christmas or Thanksgiving. Food and the acquiring and preparing of it has always been a bonding familial experience for many of us.

When you initially tell your parents you’re going vegan, they may well fear that that’s the end of something they cherished and always looked forward to (it’s most definitely NOT, but I’ll talk about communication with veganism-averse parents in another post).

This next one is common:

Your parents brought you into this world and wiped your poopy butt; wiped snot from your nose and cleaned your ears and belly-button. Much as they love you and as much as you are the centre of their world, you will NEVER know better than them (about anything!) in their minds, no matter how old and clever you get.

Now, there are not many bigger authorities on a plant-based diet than Dr Neal Barnard of PCRM, but even HE tells this story about his mother being uninterested in going plant-based, even though he’d written fifteen books on the subject and had many times carefully explained to her about how it would lower her elevated cholesterol levels. It was only when, due to her experimenting with going plant-based for a few weeks, her own doctor noticed an improvement in her cholesterol level and told her she was doing the right thing, that she acknowledged that this diet was best for her health. As Dr Neal Barnard says – sometimes the source has to be unbiased. Lots of parents just won’t take information from their offspring, no matter how accomplished.

From my own experience, it’s happened several times that I’ll give my mother a specific piece of dietary advice hundreds of times over a period of years, and I’ll be blown off with a derisory ‘hmmm, that’s nice.’ Then one day she’ll tell me excitedly about how a man she just got talking to down the road told her the EXACT SAME PIECE OF INFORMATION, and how it must be true and she will try implementing it in her own life.

Bless her.

Or something.

Yes, it’s always a facepalm inducing moment.

Your parents are not health and nutrition experts (oftentimes even if they are doctors or dieticians!), and are not informed on how a plant-based diet is actually and factually the optimal diet for health and wellness. They are the people that care for you the most in the world, and they just fear that you might be risking your health.
They are probably also influenced by all the negative connotations associated with the word ‘vegan,’ and fear that you will become isolated socially and become a massive pain in the ass to people and lose friends.

In another post I’ll talk about how to communicate with your parents about veganism, based on the above stumbling blocks.

Fret not; it’s not difficult when you understand the reasons WHY they are freaking. These reasons are mostly just unfounded fears, and there is nothing that a little bit of meaningful communication, sharing of information and creative thinking can’t overcome.

6 Cool Things Going Vegan Says About You

Vegan Boutique / N1 from Flickr via Wylio — © 2013 george rex, Flickr | CC-BY-SA | via Wylio

Unimaginative and misinformed folks alike are frighteningly prone to regurgitating the same old words when they hear you’ve gone vegan. You may hear that vegans are all self-righteous, militant, angry, preachy, hippy, zealots and sandal-wearers.

Are we? Well, some of us might be I guess. I mean, I’ve been known to wear sandals 🙂

A new vegan unwittingly yet inevitably holds up a mirror to those that still participate in animal consumption (and thus cruelty), and this can provoke a guilt that often expresses as derision and mockery.

For example: I feel that people use the word ‘militant’ when really the vegan they’re referring to is ‘passionate’, but they would rather say ‘militant’ because it’s easier to be reductive and dismissive about something they couldn’t do themselves but know they perhaps should.

But what does it actually say about you if you go vegan?

If you’ve become vegan, or are thinking of doing so, you’ve already proved your self-assuredness and don’t need mine or anybody’s validation, but there are some facts that it’s safe to say are really true about you:

1. You are a discerning individual with massive capacity for critical thinking. You’ve taken a look at the status quo and asked questions. You haven’t believed the ‘well that’s just the way it is’ shtick. You KNOW it’s not the way it has to be, and you’ve taken action to change that, starting with what you consume three times a day.

2. You have proved you are a free-thinker. With all the meat and dairy ‘noise’ going on around you – all the folks whining about how they couldn’t live without bayyyyykun; all the ads for Sunday roasts; for yoghurts; for ice-cream; all the trendy single concept joints (usually burgers or chicken!) trying to seduce you – you have gone and bloody well risen above this shizzle and chosen for yourself what you will and won’t consume.

Many ‘liberal’ folks feel they are independent free-thinkers, but they really are not.

Most university professors, doctors and philosophers, etc aren’t as free-thinking as you.

If only they were!

3. You’re a leader not a follower. Even if someone you consider a leader initially inspired you to go vegan, many in your social circles (who are not acquainted with your original source of inspiration) will see you as a radical pioneer, which you totally are. Everyone learns from someone. Now go be someone else’s inspiration!

4. You may disagree, but I think you are pretty damn fearless. You have dared to make changes because of what you’ve learned, despite the fact that this is not yet (YET!) the popular thing to do. You have dared to be a vegan in a non-vegan world. Do you even realise how huge a deal this is? Do you even realise how many people are too frightened to do this?

5. Assuming you are going vegan for ethical reasons (though I’m convinced you will make the connection even if you initially go vegan for other reasons) you are able to say you are truly living in alignment with your values. Everyone gushes about how they looooove animals, when they really just mean they love their pets or exotic animals, not the ones that are available for them to eat.

YOU are walking the proverbial, er, walk.

6. You have the ability to see the bigger picture. You have connected the slab of flesh that comes shrink-wrapped in supermarkets to cruelty and unnecessary slaughter.

Maybe you’ve made the connection and realised that animal products and the saturated fat, cholesterol, hormones, anti-biotics and chemicals they contain are the primary cause of most chronic diseases.

You could have also realised that animal agriculture is the primary cause of all forms of environmental degradation. You’ve made the link between eating animal products and your children’s or grandchildren’s future on this planet.

And just for shits and giggles:-

What the words used to describe vegans really mean:

Militant = passionate about a lifestyle that can save the planet, our health, billions of animals lives and potentially end world hunger.

Preachy = wanting to spread the message about this lifestyle, because duh, why wouldn’t you?

Angry = frustrated when you explain the above and get the response ‘but… BAYYYYKUUUN!’

Self-righteous = when you explain how good you feel living this way

Zealot = see ‘militant’

Hippy = you dare to live counter to the status quo

Sandal-wearer = um, someone who wears skimpy footwear