Going plant-based, a journey

I've always had a passion for cooking and baking since an early teen, cooking for my family regularly. I find ingredients and what goes into food very interesting and feel the benefits of eating good, healthy food. There's many reasons for changing your lifestyle/diet and this tends to have an impact on how closely you stick to it. The more you research and learn the more easily you find it is to stick to it. It's a bit like the smoking industry when it was on it's way out. The majority of people still felt it was 'ok' to smoke!

For me, I made the change to being completely plant-based over 4 years ago, once I learned of the huge impact the meat, dairy and fishing industry has on the environment. It's the biggest contributor to climate change, so we must make changes to sustain our planet. Once I started doing more research, I also looked into the health benefits, which again has such a huge impact on our health and wellbeing. I'm sure if a doctor said you could take several pills everyday to reduce your chance of getting diabetes, having a heart attack, high cholesterol and cancer, (even skin problems) a lot of people would do it, no questions asked. But so many of today's diseases that are killing people. All of these health problems are actually reversible by switching to a plant-based diet. I'm currently reading up about our microbiome, which is essentially our gut health and it changes constantly. Having just one plant-based meal can change your microbiome for the better, within an hour. Imagine, what eating plant-based, every single day can do! What we eat has the biggest impact on our health. Full stop. Sadly the marketing and profitability of food (and pharmaceuticals) completely changes the way we look, buy and treat food and medicine.

I find the marketing of food very interesting and intriguing. Have you ever seen a farmer advertise an apple or a potato? No, because, as a business, you can make way, way more money by changing it slightly, chopping it, soaking it in fats and other ingredients (read the ingredients!), freezing it and calling it a chip! The sugar industry is phenomenally huge too. Sugar is ridiculously cheap and that's why it's typically one of the first ingredients in a lot of foods. Sugar gives highs and lows as our blood sugar spikes and our body craves it. The food industry knows this. If you actually reduce your refined sugar content down and that includes all the dodgy sweeteners out there too, your taste buds change and simply having a can of baked beans can taste like having a sweet treat. It's bizarre. Whilst sugar is from a plant, refined white sugar as we know it, has been so overly processed. Approximately 57 times. When you process food, you take a little bit of goodness away each time. That's the goodness our body /our microbiome, our gut craves. We may feel full, often stuffed, but our gut is starving of the good bacteria we get from fruit, veg and other plants.

Since switching from a vegetarian, I am predominantly plant-based, and I choose to cook with all natural ingredients, organic where possible, like lots of fruit and vegetables. I typically have a pantry full of tins and jars full of dried goods, like wholegrains, beans, nuts and pulses. I certainly have off days where I just can't be bothered to cook or don't have the time and this is where I'll have a couple of meals in the freezer, or some go to quick recipes that other people in the house can follow easily or some know local cafes/takeaways that are vegan and fairly healthy for a takeaway.

I've also been researching sourdough and the excellent health benefits of it. Making your own sourdough is certainly a learning curve but hugely satisfying. It does mean that I can easily prepare and have sourdough throughout the week to make meals and also have some quick go to recipes like flatbreads, waffles and pancakes.

I've hosted a few plant-based cookery classes over the last few years, to help share my knowledge and passion for good, healthy, tasty plant-based food for our bodies and how making time for this should be a priority.

It's actually very easy to be an unhealthy vegan! More companies are recognising people's desire to reduce meat, eggs and dairy from their diets which is good but the way we are marketed to hasn't changed. Reducing meat, dairy and eggs will have an impact on our health for sure, but switching it to mostly processed isn't. Personally, I think we tend to put too much pressure on ourselves to label who we are. If you eat plant-based or vegan one day a week it's going to help the environment. Don't beat yourself up if you decide to be predominantly vegan/plant-based one day and not the next. It's certainly a slow process/journey to go fully plant-based but it's worth it, to really taste and most importantly benefit from the goodness of a carrot. As you go along your journey and introduce more plant-based meals, I can guarantee that you'll start to crave less of the unhealthier foods. Your gut will recognise the healthy food and start shouting louder to get more of it. And when it does get the unhealthy 'treats' once in a while, it will certainly remind you why it doesn't like them anymore!