How to Transition to a Plant-Based (Vegan) Diet

What the heck is plant-based and doesn’t that just mean vegan? Errr yes and no. There’s currently not one definitive set of rules for plant-based but let’s try and sort it out 🙂

VEGANISM
/Consuming no animal meats or products (including, milk, cheese, honey, eggs, gelatin). Vegans also don’t engage or use anything that exploits or is derived from animals. On a side note, being vegan doesn’t automatically mean healthy, you could technically live off soft drinks, plain chips, and oreos.

PLANT-BASED
/By and large refers to a diet that excludes all consumption of animal meats and products. Unlike veganism, it’s purely focused on diet.

WHOLE FOOD PLANT-BASED
/Follows the same principles as plant-based with an added emphasis on minimising processed foods and choosing whole grain options.

It’s good to establish ‘the why’ for wanting to change up your diet, as ‘the why’ will guide what meals you eat.

/For health – you’ll want to focus on a diet that avoids heavily refined foods and look more towards adopting a whole food plant-based.
/For animals – vegan doughnuts are absolutely still on the table 😛
/For the environment – you might consider an extra caveat of buying food that limits plastic packaging.

Note: I went vegan primarily for animals which means my transition and my current diet include some less than healthy options but on a whole, I found that becoming vegan forced my diet into a much healthier path (huge veggie increase!), it also dramatically reduced my weekly food bill and got me thinking in a more eco-friendly way as well!

Get yourself some nutritional yeast and sprinkle it on everything 😛
There are also loads of vegan cheese replacements. Every year they get closer to the magical cow’s variety. I’m not going to convince you they’re there yet but I’ll happily take an “almost there” to gain all the other great vegan pros!

It takes some time to adjust to new flavours. I’d say it took me around a year to think of almond milk as my standard milk and nuttlex on bread (or a creamy avo) as my butter substitute.

Tip: Since plant-based milks are often thinner in comparison to cow’s milk, I suggest not adding water to your tea/coffee to maintain the same creamy texture.

It’s true, a lot of milk chocolates are made of cow’s milk but more and more delicious vegan chocolates are popping up every day.

Tip: check the packaging on 70% (or higher) chocolate – they usually rely on cocoa butter and don’t contain cow’s milk. Plus dark chocolate has the edge on health over the milk or white chocolate varieties.

There are honey substitutes but I swear by maple syrup as a replacement. It’s not as thick but does a mighty fine job in your smoothies or swirled on top of muesli.

Going vegan will mean your health will be scrutinised. At the start, I found it confronting/weird but the concern made me want to seek out the truth and make sure I wasn’t going to die of malnutrition 😛 I wasn’t, I’m now at my most healthy weight and spend less time fighting off illnesses. That’s my own experience and I employ everyone to do their own research. I do take a b12 supplement (harder to get as a vegan) but oddly enough in my twenties (as a full-blown meat eater) I was severely depleted of b12 anyway 😛

You need to explore the wonderful world of mushrooms. 🙂 I used to think mushrooms were restricted to buttons, portobellos, or tinned/dried varieties in the Asian aisle of my supermarket. If that’s you, then you have to try out oyster mushrooms. The king oyster varieties can be chopped into scallop sized pieces and when cooked in white wine + stock have a seafood taste/feel whilst regular oyster mushrooms have a more chicken texture/taste. The nice thing about oyster mushrooms is they don’t go soggy when cooked. The secret I’ve discovered is cooking the oyster mushrooms in stock for a few minutes, draining the liquid, and then frying the mushrooms in a super hot pan, producing a lovely seared texture – soooo good! Throw in some garlic and you’ve got flavour country!  If you’re interested in growing your own I’ve got a guide for that 🙂

Most of the ingredients of a burger (minus the meat patty) are already vegan, so this is an easy swap.

If health isn’t your guiding reason then get your hands on a beyond burger patty. These patties (and I know from experience!) can fool even the most die-hard, meat-eater, 😛 If fake meats are off your menu, a quick google will show you loads of recipes for patties using chickpeas, nuts, grains, or mushrooms as their base 🙂

Other Variations:

/Wraps (tofurkey for the win!)

/Burritoes (roast veggies and brown rice and avo!)

/Hot Dogs (There are some very convincing vegan sausages out on the market)

/Tacos – vegan mince, sour cream (see recipe above in staples), tomatoes, avo, lettuce, and vegan cheese

It might seem super boring but you can really jazz up a spud. I oven bake my potato for an hour then smother it in margarine, drown it in cashew sour cream and top it with garlic chives, some smoked garlic salt and some sort of plant-based bacon. It makes a great filling lunchtime meal.  My version is definitely not for the health-conscious but you could easily load it up with veggies (+ take away that margarine) and your good to go!

Curries, stir-fries, pizza, couscous, soups, risotto, fried rice, laksa, salads, lasagna, sushi (for fillings: avo, cucumber, mushrooms) basically anything that isn’t simply a piece of meat on a plate 😛

TIP: I’ve learned along this journey that there’s a lot of smart vegan bloggers out there so if you’re ever missing a certain type of food, you just need to do a quick type into google.

For my inspiration feel free to check out my savory Pinterest boards;
Vegan Dinners
Vegan Snacks