Neal Barnard, M.D. is a forward thinking clinician who runs the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), He's the author of several books and has embraced a Vegan diet as a major contributor to health and well being.
Some of my colleagues wonder what a vegan eats, since a meal without meat, cheese or dairy sounds limiting. I've been asked 'how do you make a Vegan pizza? Cheese substitute?'.
The answer is that a vegan diet is so varied and delicious that I never crave any other foods. Getting to the point where a double stuffed pepperoni pizza sounds vile may be a journey for some.
Dr. Barnard and the PCRM created the 21-Day Vegan Kickstart so begin the transformation. Here's a sample of the recipes.
Earlier this week, I visited Google's New York offices and was impressed at the number of vegan dishes in their famous company cafeterias - about half the dishes are vegan.
My advice - give the 21 day kick start a try. It's only 3 weeks and you can go back to meat and butter if it does not work out. Your heart and your doctors will thank you.
4 comments:
I'm a non-vegan who often cooks for vegans. There are many alternatives and substitutes for ingredients and often you can make something that tastes similar to a non-vegan dish. The trick is learning (in advance) how to work with the ingredients. For instance, Earth Balance "butter" cooks very differently than real butter. Egg Beaters cook differently than eggs.
But once you learn how to cook with substitutes, you can be pretty flexible.
While I'm not going to become a vegan anytime soon, I continually embrace more and more vegan-ish things. It hasn't limited my cooking, it's just changed the timings a bit.
You must know that there's a vegan pizza place, Peace O' Pie, right in Allston? It's next to Grasshopper, the Vegan Asian restaurant.
I have to say as a vegan of 4 years and vegetarian of 17 years there is SO many foods you can eat. I think being vegan opens a person up to trying things they never would with an easy animal based diet around them.
I also agree with Finnigan as I love both the Grasshopper and Peace O'Pie. And may I add so do many of my meat eating friends.
One of the freeing moments of plant-strong vegan eating is when you realize you don't need to replace or expect the same flavors as you did eating SAD (Standard American Diet). You are eating such a variety of veggies, fruits, grains, beans/legumes and raw nuts/seeds and is such tasty raw and cooked combinations that you find new favorites. You can still enjoy burgers, pizza, pasta - but you don't expect them to taste the same, you love the new flavors. It's wonderful when that happens.
Post a Comment