I know that once mentioning to vegan diet, many of us will sigh tiredly because you are going to kiss goodbye those delicious and attractive dishes from meat, animal milk and eggs, starting a whole new life with boring recipes of vegetables, roots and fruits.
It’s true that you might need some time to get familiar to new diet plan, HOWEVER, I have to make clear that their tastes are not boring at all. In fact, vegetarian foods are various and delicious if you get right recipes.
Today, I’m going to correct some wrong myths about vegan and vegetarian food as well as provide some easy, healthy and tasty dishes to enjoy at home. Let’s see!
Vegan Diet – Two-edged Sword
When you switch to vegetarianism, your weight easily drops off in the beginning. However, this situation can change if you are loading too many vegetarian foods rich in carbohydrates such as white rice, tapioca and cakes. Vegan diets are only successful if you balance the diet so that each meal is relatively full of essential nutrients for the body and no substance should not be increased suddenly.
Also, do not eat vegetarian food prepared in industrial packaging. If you eat too much, you will be not only unable to lose weight, but also have the risk of weight gain.
You might meet these unpleasant matters in the first stage of vegan diet
Flatulence & bloating
This condition improves gradually, but in the early days of vegetarian, such symptoms like bloating and flatulence might occur. The reason is that your body needs to adjust to the amount of fiber loaded more than usual. In addition, the microflora in the gut also begins to change rapidly.
Change your cooking style
At the beginning, cooking can be a big challenge for you simply because you do not know what to cook with vegetables, roots and fruits. Refer to how to cook vegetarian food on culinary sites, maybe you will start enjoying the food that you rarely do before.
Feeling lonely in every meal
In the beginning, you may feel very down at home. When you are miserably eating boiled spinach, the other members in your family gather joyfully to eat a large seafood pizza. Instead of trying it yourself, why not invite your family enjoy the vegetarian food with you? Vegan diet is like other weight loss methods, if there is a companion, the ability to keep it will be longer.
Irresistible hunger
For some, it is easy to remove meat but it’s totally another different story when you completely remove eggs and milk from animals because to many dishes, if not processed with these two ingredients, the taste will be not as delicious as the original. Also, by eating only plants, you will feel hungry all day. This also causes many to give up on vegetarianism soon.
But here’re what it’s worth a try
Your taste is changed
If you are a sugar-fiend and want to end it because it is not good for your health, vegetarianism is the ideal choice. Many studies have shown of the taste changes from those who tried vegan diet.
Accordingly, just try to vegetarian for a few weeks, your craving for sweet will be reduced. Since then, weight has improved. So, if you can’t be a vegan, trying to focus on vegetarian food for a few weeks will also bring some encouraging results.
Feel healthier and liver longer
One of the benefits of vegan diet is that it promotes your health and longevity. Some say that vegetarian food cannot compensate for the lack of protein needed in the body. Others claim that plant protein is not homologous to replace animal protein.
But these thoughts are not correct because in fact, such species like buffalos, cows, horses and elephants who don’t eat meat don’t meet the lack of protein. They are always healthy, even their body is bigger than other animals.
In fact, the protein consists of 22 amino acids, only eight of which are needed for human. Importantly, these 8 essential amino acids do exist in whole grains and legumes. Sometimes, their volumes are much more than the volume contained in meat.
A study by Harvard University found that 100g of beef contains 20g of protein while 100g of cheese contains 25g and 100g of soybeans contain up to 34g of protein. If you eat well, the quality of Amino acids in your body is all doubled than the standard need.
Colin Campbell, director of research at Cornell – China – Oxford, said that Eating less fat as instructed by the US Department of Health and Nutrition was not necessarily preventable those incurable diseases. It is necessary for us to eat frugal vegan diet with nutritious foods.
Help weigh loss
Weight loss can be considered as a direct result – one of the benefits of eating vegetarian foods or being a vegan, as these diets tend to reduce the intake of fat. The vegetarians have a tendency to eat more unsaturated fats than saturated fat compared to non-vegetarians.
Such this benefit has also been demonstrated in many scientific studies – the body weight of vegetarians is consistently decreasing compared to those who choose normal diets.
More energy
Many office workers shared that since they were vegetarian, they only needed a cup of coffee in the morning to stay awake all day. Previously, that number would have been two because they had to drink a glass in the early afternoon to counteract sleepiness.
Being vegetarian means that you will not touch foods that are high in sugar, or processed foods. That helps to improve your overall health, giving you more energy to work.
Your skin is nicer
If you are suffering from skin problems, when you are vegetarian, you will see significant positive changes in just a short time. Your skin will be smoother and you will not have to worry about acne anymore.
The Kitavan people of Papua New Guinea have beautiful, flawless skin, presumably due to their diet. The people here are mainly living on food from low-fat and unprocessed plants, so scientists believe there is a correlation between diet and acne-free skin.
Research has also shown that dairy products can lead to acne, as well as canned foods related to high blood glucose levels, but vegetarian diet removes both of these and further helps whiten skin. This is also the benefit of vegetarianism that many women believe.
Top Healthy Recipes
Actually, there are a lot of ways to eat as a vegan. You can be raw, you can be a fruitarian, high carb low fat, you can actually eat Oreos and still be a vegan because they are vegan as well.
But the healthiest way in the easiest way to eat is simply to eat Whole Foods vegan diet meaning you are eating plenty of whole grains, legumes, fruits, vegetables, healthy seeds and nuts.
Sweet potato & tofu curry
Ingredients
- Sweet potato
- Tofu
- Kale
- Onion
- Garlic
- Coconut milk
- Salt
How-to
Start with chopping an onion and garlic.
Topping a sweet potato into cubes.
Doing same for tofu. Next, topping up some kale. To make the curry sautéed garlic and onions in water, add a sprinkle of sauce and cook until the onions are translucent. Then, add in sweet potato, curry spices, coconut milk and water. Let it cook covered for 10 minutes. Once the sweet potatoes start to soften, add the tofu, the kale and another sprinkle of salt.
Stir the kale as it cooks down then, add some soy sauce. You should get three nice and substantial meals out of this dish, serve over rice and garnish with cilantro.
Mushroom & barley risotto
Ingredients
- Mushroom
- Zucchini
- Barley
- Salt
- Garlic
- Lemon juice
How-to
Sautee minced garlic and oil. Then, add sliced mushroom and zucchini and some salt. Once the vegetables start to release water, add the barley. Stir it in and add a few cups of water.
Cover the pot and cook for 45 minutes until the barley is tender. Once it’s done cooking, stir in nutritional yeast salt and squeeze some lemon juice over the top.
Lentil sweet potato chili
Ingredients
- Tomato
- Lentil
- Potato
- Chili spice
- Vegetable bullion
- Garlic & onion
How-to
Sautee chopped onions and garlic in water, once they’re cooked through at a can of chopped tomatoes along with lentils and cubes of potatoes. Add water and cook covered on medium heat.
Once everything is cooked through, add your chili spices and vegetable bullion. This is the easiest tastiest most filling dish for a cold day.
Roast beet & kale salad
Ingredients
- Beet
- Carrot
- Kale
- Garlic
- Salt
- Oil
- Maple syrup mustard
- Apple cider vinegar
- Black pepper
How-to
Peel and chop three beets into cubes. Using a mix of golden and red beets is nice for this salad because they look so pretty together.
Slice carrots into thin strips, again I love using various colors. Though the vegetables into a skillet, toss them in a little oil and sprinkle a little salt over the top of them. Then, roast them in the oven for 45 minutes on 350 degrees.
Our salad dressing combines olive oils, maple syrup mustard, apple cider vinegar, black pepper and salt in a jar, shake it up to combine.
Chop up some kale and then mince up a clove of garlic. We’re going to make a gremolata with the tops from the rainbow carrots.
Mince the carrot tops with the garlic and then, mix in salt and olive oil. I’m just combining everything in a cutting board instead of a mixing bowl.
Massage the chopped kale with the salad dressing then, add cooked barley. They are roasted rainbow veggies and the gremolata and toss.
This is a filling super tasty salad, highly suitable for a meal.
These four recipes are perfect as a lunch and dinner that you can flexibly change during a whole week to enjoy. Besides, the ingredients are neither difficult to find nor costly as all. In general, for a week, you just spend roughly $30 to get healthy and effective vegan diets.
Oatmeal
And of course, we can’t forget about breakfast. I usually enjoy oatmeal in the morning and don’t make mistake that it’s just a boring food. In fact, you can buy raw old-fashioned oat and use them everyday to make different recipes.
Other than sweet oatmeal which is so familiar to most of us, oat can be enjoys as tapas. All the recipes and instructions have been shared in detail in my Top healthy dessert with oats Article, you can consult some interesting preps there.
Conclusion
I hope you already got some new ideas to try vegan diet not too harshly. And wishfully, I was able to prove to you that you can be vegan, be on a budget and still eat delicious filling food. To help you kickstart your vegan journey, I also posted some more interesting articles, which you can take a look here:
