Nava Atlas - Vegan Express

contents

foreword

As you page through the recipes in this book, you will find flavors from one end of the world to the other, and your mouth will water with every turn of the page. But not only will your taste buds thank you. Your body will thank you, too.

Fueling your body with plant-based foods can revolutionize your healthperhaps even save your life. By setting aside meat, fish, dairy, and eggs, and bringing in healthful whole foods, you open the door to remarkable results. A vegan diet is healthful for everyone and Vegan Express makes it simpler than ever to enjoy delicious and healthy food in no time at all.

So many people have made wrong turns in their search for the perfect diet. A switch from red meat to white meat, for example, really does not do the job. You might scrupulously limit meat intake to no more than six ounces per day, favor chicken and fish while trimming away visible fat, and choose skim over whole milk and egg whites over whole eggs, but you would find the results to be embarrassingly modest. Cholesterol levels fall by only about five percent. Body weight and blood pressure improve only modestly. Inside the arteries, blockages continue to worsen. All in all, there is little reward for all this effort. Americans now eat, believe it or not, one million chickens per hour, and collectively we are more out of shape than at any time in our nations history.

Numerous scientific studies have shown that the healthiest diet of all is one that is low in fat and is completely comprised of plant foods. Vegetarians have healthier hearts, healthier skin, lower blood pressure, less risk of diabetes, fewer kidney stones and gallstones, and forty percent less cancer risk. Part of the reason, of course, is that vegetarian diets are naturally lower in fat and cholesterol, and higher in fiber than non-vegetarian diets. Vegan diets are best of all, since they are essentially cholesterol-free (our bodies make all the cholesterol they need), and contain zero animal fat or animal protein. Also, vegetarians are, on average, ten percent slimmer than non-vegetarians. A diet based on whole grains, legumes, vegetables, and fruit is low in calories and fat and rich in fiber to satisfy your appetite. Get ready to feel great.

If you are tempted to put it to the test, I suggest that you take a week or two and try out as many of these delicious recipes as you can. Then, when you have found your favorites, block out a three-week period to eat low-fat, vegan foods exclusively. Dont just put your toe in the swimming pool; go ahead and dive in. As you get started, your body will begin to transform itself. In all likelihood, youll start to lose weight, your cholesterol will fall, your energy level will improve, and youll feel better than youve felt since you were a kid. If after three weeks, you like the feeling of a healthier, trimmer body, you can stick with it. In Vegan Express, Nava gives you all the tools you need to put this powerful diet to work in the most delicious way possible.

Best in health,
Neal Barnard, MD
President, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
(pcrm.org)

acknowledgments

Many thanks to the talented people who contributed in significant ways to this book:

Susan Voisin (fatfreevegan.com and sbvdesigns.com) created the lovely photos in the insert of this book. Susan, I didnt know my recipes could look so good.

Nikki Goldbeck, CDN (healthyhighways.com), did the nutritional analyses of the recipes. It was wonderful to have one of the true pioneers of vegetarian food and nutrition writing involved in this book.

Neal Barnard, MD, who wrote the foreword to this book, is such an eminent authority on vegan diets and such an energetic promoter of the vegan way of life that Im truly honored by his contribution.

This is my third book with Broadway Books, and Im as impressed as ever with their attention to detail and their care at every stage of a books production. Special thanks go to Kristen Green and Elizabeth Rendfleisch. I always save the last thanks for my wonderful editor, Jennifer Josephy; this time, though, Ill add happy anniversary to these thanks. This book is being published in 2008, exactly 20 years from the time Jennifer first became my editor. For this rare gift of endurance in the publishing world, Im especially grateful!

Introduction

C oming home from camp one day several years ago, my younger son (then only ten years old) announced: Now Im a vegan. Since Evan had been a lifelong vegetarian (like his older brother, Adam) and is the child of committed vegetarian parents, this wasnt as much of a shock as when, decades ago, I informed my meat-eating family that I was becoming a vegetarian. Still, when I emptied his lunch box and saw that he had left his rice cheese sandwich uneaten (mistaking it for dairy cheese), my Typical Mom reaction was, Couldnt you have become a vegan after lunch?

I had been privately considering going vegan, so when my older son promptly followed his younger brothers lead, I decided to take the plunge as well. My husband took a short while longer to give up eggs, but soon we were all back on the same pageor more accurately, the same plate. Ours was a fairly typical transitionlongtime lacto-ovo vegetarians gradually giving up eggs and dairy, then taking the final leap from vegetarian to vegan. Weve never looked back.

Most of the people reading this book will already have a clear picture of what it means to be a vegan. If this applies to you, feel free to skim or skip this paragraph. For anyone who needs a crash course, here goes: Vegetarians avoid meat, fowl, and seafood; vegans avoid all animal products in the diet (including eggs, dairy products, and honey) as well as in their lifestyle. For most vegans, ethical factors are equally as important as health and environmental issues. Concerns for animal welfare and the embracing of a more compassionate lifestyle mean that full-fledged vegans wont eat honey or wear leather; in general, any products that are derived from animals or that contain animal by-products are avoided. Vegans also scrupulously avoid products known to have been tested on animals.

And no, vegans are not necessarily young, hip, and tattooed, as the media might have you think, though thats not to say that there arent a fair number who might fit that description. However, vegans are, by and large, extremely cool, even if they are no longer young!

It has become much easier to be vegan out in the wider worldperhaps not in the hinterlands, but certainly in every decent-sized city Ive visited at home and abroad. In addition, nearly every semienlightened locale, urban or exurban, has loads of great places to eat and shop for food. International restaurants abound with healthy meatless choices. My family members rarely, if ever, feel frustrated or restricted. When we need to let people know that were vegans, whether in restaurants or at gatherings, we often receive looks of admiration rather than confusion (or contempt!). What a change from twenty-five or thirty years ago, when merely being a vegetarian branded you as some sort of weirdo.

My family lives a couple hours north of New York City. Here we dont even have a Whole Foods market, and Trader Joes is just far enough away that its out of our shopping range. We do have some decent natural foods stores, as well as the Hannafords supermarket chain. This store is starting to bear a striking resemblance to Whole Foods (except that the prices at the former are more reasonable), as natural products, organic produce, and ethnic foods become everyday items. From what Ive seen during my travels, it seems this trend is spreading. Supermarkets are responding to consumer demand for more natural foods, making it easy to obtain products and produce not long ago deemed esoteric. So, if I can fulfill our familys vegan food needs where I live, chances are you can, too; and if you cant today, youll likely be able to very soon, as the American supermarket is changing rapidly.