Knowles - Proper healthy food: hearty vegan & vegetarian for meat lovers

I need hearty meals not thin weedy plates a salad wont cut it so heres my vegan and vegetarian cookbook for meat eaters full of filling, healthy recipes.

We all know that more fruit and veg and less meat and processed food is better for us.The trick is to be flexitarian in your diet you can eat everything, but choose to cut down on the things that could do you harm. Eat vegan and vegetarian, but if a friend cooks you roast chicken for Sunday lunch, then go ahead and eat it.

Dont feel bad about the cake you have with your coffee at elevenses have a healthy raw chocolate cake instead. Why skimp in winter when you can have a hearty vegetable stew and dumplings or a chunky vegan burger? Proper Healthy Food includes 100 vegan and vegetarian recipes with punchy flavours and decent portions to satisfy everyone.

Nick Knowles is the presenter of the hit BBC show DIY SOS. He also regularly presents various Saturday night quiz shows such as Judgemental, Who Dares Wins and 5 Star Family Reunion.

Along with familiar faces from DIY SOS, in 2016 Nick travelled to Thailand for 4 weeks, where they undertook an intense detox retreat. Amazed by the results, and healthier than ever, Nick changed his diet to flexitarian vegan mostly, vegetarian occasionally, with the odd day off.

Nick was born in London and raised in Southall by his parents Pat and Eddie. Nick has four children: Charles, Tuesday, TJ and Eddie and lives in Windsor.

You might have bought this book yourself, or you might have been given it and youre thinking, Im not really a veggie kind of person!

If youre the latter, thats me a year ago. As I told my wife: Ill join in a juicing regime when they start juicing Scotch eggs.

Lets face it, Im not vegan- or veggie-shaped, Im a big unit pushing 17 stone, 6 foot 2 inches tall and with a 46-inch chest and I need a wholesome bowl of fuel to keep going. A bowl of salad leaves is not going to work for me. The health benefits of a vegetarian or vegan diet are indisputable more veg and less meat and dairy means living healthier and sometimes longer, but I do love steak and cheese. Man, I love cheese!

But heres the news: following a veggie diet doesnt mean you have to wear tie-dye trousers that hang around your knees, weave ribbons in your hair or even swear off meat and dairy for ever.

Im vegan mostly, vegetarian occasionally, and if friends cook me a meal with meat in it Ill eat it because I dont want to be rude and its a nice change once in a while. And if Im three pints in at the rugby and smell frying onions, Ill have a cheeseburger and not feel bad because tomorrow and the next day Ill mostly be eating healthily.

So really the message is, dont beat yourself up about it then theres no wagon to fall off! Theres a term for it too there always is, and normally coming from California: flexitarian. In short it means you can eat everything, you just choose to cut down on the things that could do you most harm.

Ive always loved preparing food and trying new tastes. I grew up in Southall, in West London, where many of my classmates had parents from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, North Africa, the Caribbean and Poland. Every familys food had a different flavour and unusual ingredients; you couldnt call at any house without the mums filling you with delicious grub. Visiting my friends houses was like a culinary tour of the world, and I think thats where my love of spices and herbs started. It certainly wasnt from my mum, she made big wholesome meals that kept us full, but a sprig of mint in the new potatoes was about as exotic as it got and garlic was the work of the devil.

When I left school I went travelling for a while. I think I wanted to try to see many of the places that my friends parents had talked about, and of course to see if I could find some of those taste sensations again. To this day I eat my way round the Notting Hill Carnival every summer goat curry, salt fish, honey roast plantain Well, that was the case until a year ago.

Id reached the point where things had to change. I had lost control of my weight, I was stressed, on the road a lot so I wasnt eating well and I felt like my head was too full to think. Sound familiar?

So I went to a retreat in Thailand. Being there calmed my head and got my eating back in order. I reduced my cholesterol and at the same time my weight. I felt lighter, less sluggish and truly happier inside. I was doing yoga and started working out. All of these lifestyle changes stemmed from me changing my eating habits to a diet of mostly veg and fruit.

Its common sense, really: youre only as healthy as the food you put into your body and we all know deep down that processed food, with its sugars and fats and salts and preservatives, etc., just isnt good for you.

When I got back to Britain I tried to keep going with the diet and lifestyle that Id adopted in Thailand, but there just wasnt the variety of ingredients available to make it easy to do so. The veggie food that was on offer seemed thin and weedy, but then I remembered the global neighbourhood that Id lived in while growing up and knew that this boring approach to veggie cooking didnt have to be the case. I knew that in many cultures around the world meat is scarce, so instead they do amazing things with herbs and veg, fruit and spices, and for veggies eggs and cheeses. If you think about it, there are 70,000 edible plants growing around the world, so surely we should be able to get creative with them like so many other cultures have?

Im not a chef, but I did want to eat well whilst being vegan/veggie (mostly), which is why I got to work on these recipes that anyone can prepare. As Ive said, you dont have to cut out meat and fish completely; if you eat veggie once a week youll be healthier, if you do it three times a week youll be a lot healthier, and if you spend most of your week eating like this, like me you could end up several kilos lighter, with lower cholesterol and more energy for work and family. But Im sure the more cynical will wonder just how serious I am about all this. Well, Ive put my money where my mouth is. I now co-own two vegan restaurants so you can see I mean what I say.

So, this is the veganveggie cook book for meat eaters! Give it a go, have fun, eat hearty and, most importantly, enjoy! If I can do this so can you.

To my family, who love me even when Im a pain, make sure Im grounded between my flights of fancy and would like me to hang around a while. The feeling is mutual.

Following a vegan or vegetarian diet is very much a personal choice, and there are many varied reasons why people choose this diet animal welfare, environmental concerns or simply texture and flavour. Whatever your opinion of these arguments, one thing that is indisputable is that there are many health advantages to removing meat and fish from the diet.