Moving to a plant based diet or even planning a plant based meal each week, is such a positive step towards your own Health & Wellness.
Together with the collective impact towards the planet and the welfare of animals, there are so many reasons to add more plants into your diet.
Some of the questions that are often asked and considered are:
Where will I get protein from without meat?
Where will I get all my vitamins and minerals from?
and
Will I find the food nutritious and easy to use in recipes?
Below is a quick reference guide with some examples to help with some of those questions, you will also notice a lot of plant based foods provide various nutrition, such as tofu, nuts and seeds.
Protein:
The building blocks for the body repairing cells, hormones and antibodies.
Plant based foods that are rich in protein are soy products such as tofu and tempeh, potatoes, pulses, wholegrains, lentils, chick peas, quinoa, green leafy vegetables such as kale and broccoli nuts and seeds including hemp and chia to name a few.
Carbohydrates:
Bananas, quinoa, oats, buckwheat, apple, blueberries and sweet potatoes
Wholegrains:
Oats, brown rice, barley and quinoa will spring to mind for wholegrains, though also included are foods made from them such as wholegrain bread, and wholegrain pasta. Wholegrains also contain fibre and minerals which assists energy. Also opt for organic and look for whole foods which will contain more nutrients and less processing.
Iron:
Pepitas/pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, macadamia nuts, hemp seeds, tofu, lentils, spinach, kale, potatoes, mushrooms.
Fibre:
Brown rice, kale, peas, avocados, broccoli, raspberries, oats.
Calcium :
Enriched soy milk, soybeans, tofu, white beans, chickpeas, spinach, tahini, chia seeds.
Just by adding these plant based foods to your diet more often creating delicious recipes that can be found in so many books, will be a positive step towards a plant based transition or if you are looking to add more plants to your diet.
There are also some delicious recipes all plant based and nutritious in some of my other articules from feeling wholesome.