Jolinda Hackett - The Daily Vegan Planner: Twelve Weeks to a Complete Vegan Diet Transition

Includes
meal plans,
recipes, and
nutritional
information The Daily Vegan Planner 12 WEEKS to a Complete Vegan Diet Transition JOLINDA HACKETT author of The EverythingVegan Cookbook, with Nicole Cormier, RD, LDN To those who truly dont get enough protein, the beautiful children of Haiti. Ou toujou nan k mwen ak lapriyem. Mwen pap janm bliye ou. You are always in my heart and in my prayers. I will never forget you. Acknowledgments Special thanks to Joey for the use of his kitchen, to Sibella and Tim for keeping me full of coffee and homemade hummus, and to Tom for his patience and awe-inspiring hair. Introduction Imagine learning to swim without a pool or a coach.

Or changing religions without going to church. You need the proper tools to learn new skills, and its always helpful to have an expert there to show you the ropes every step of the way. This book is the next best thing to someone doing it for you, or having your own personal chef and nutritionist. In fact, this planner is much more convenient than having your own personal chef or nutritionist, as it can be by your side or in your kitchen twenty-four hours a day, and you dont have to pay it health insurance! Assuming you dont have a personal chef, going vegan requires learning a bit about nutrition (something most people know very little about!), food labeling, learning to cook differently, or perhaps even learning to cook for the first time and changing your shopping habits at the grocery store. On top of all this, youll be adjusting your daily schedule for a while as you get used to preparing more home-cooked meals. Each of these individually would be a challenge, but when going vegan, you need to acquire all these skills and make all these changes at once! The goal of this book is to help you become a healthy and happy vegan, not just for the twelve weeks outlined here, but for as long as you want.

By the time youre done following this twelve-week vegan meal plan, being vegan will be so easy that youll barely even have to think about it. It will have become second nature. Youll learn how to cook simple, healthy vegan recipes that will keep you nourished, excited, and committed to a vegan diet. People around you may worry that youre not getting enough protein, but thanks to the well-balanced meals youll follow, youll know with complete confidence that youre getting more than enough protein (and exactly how much that is), and all the rest of your nutrients, too. But perhaps you went vegan for animal rights or just because you lost a bet and dont really give a hoot about your own health. Even though they might be in the minority these days, there are certainly plenty of junk food vegans who love their soda, hydrogenated oils, and snack cakes and wouldnt touch a veggie unless it was deep fried.

If this is what you envision for yourself in the long run, relax. No one is going to tell you that you need to be a health nut, just that you should eat some tofu along with all those potato chips, especially as a new vegan. Even if your end goal is animal rights and not longevity and wellness, you should still take the time to learn a thing or two about vegan nutrition, and plan on eating well-balanced meals (at least some of the time!) as a new vegan. As you follow along with the planner, youll also learn one thing that others around you might never have guessed: Going vegan is actually fun! Youll try new foods each week, and begin exploring new restaurants and probably new grocery stores and neighborhoods, too. Who knows, you might even meet some interesting new friends shopping the vegan section of your local health-food store! By the end of these twelve weeks, youll be familiar with a wide variety of vegan foods and cooking techniques, and youll be able to prepare healthy, tasty, and well-balanced meals with confidence. In fact, youll be knowledgeable and confident enough that youll be able to help out new vegans who feel completely overwhelmed, just like you might feel now.

PART I On Becoming
Vegan CHAPTER 1 On Becoming Vegan So Youve Decided You Want to Go Vegan. Now What? Anthropologist Margaret Mead once said, It is easier to change a mans religion than it is to change his diet. Two, three, or even more times every single day, we eat. As one of lifes basic necessities, it cant be avoided. We may eat for sustenance, for pleasure, out of boredom or mindlessness, or even due to social pressure. At thirty years old, the average adult has eaten more than 30,000 meals in their lifetime.

No wonder its so difficult to make changes! Although youre cutting all animal products (and possibly foods that may have used animals in their production) from your diet, you really wont miss a thing. As a vegan, a nearly infinite myriad of grains, herbs, fruits, vegetables, beans, and legumes from around the world is at your fingertips. Theres no need to ever ask, What do vegans eat? Its simpler to question what vegans dont eat, as the list is much shorter! You may find it easiest to spend some weeks eating a vegetarian diet while gradually omitting eggs, dairy, and other animal products. Others prefer going cold turkey. Theres no right or wrong way to go vegan, but youll need a little help along the way. If youre used to eating lots of take-out meals and processed foods, you may be wondering whats left.

Going vegan will be a big change. But if youre used to home-cooked meals made from whole ingredients and already enjoy a variety of ethnic foods, you may find the transition a little easier. Wherever youre coming from, this book will be your mentor at every step. But first, why is the vegan diet and lifestyle so important? Why Vegan? If youve bought this book already, or are flipping through it at a bookstore, chances are youve already put some thought into why you want to change your diet (and your life!) by going vegan. But before you even start trying to figure out whats for dinner tonight, take a moment to think about your goals. Why do you want to go vegan? What is your personal motivation? Animal welfare? Environmentalism? Personal health? Concerns over animal suffering may intuitively lead to a vegetarian diet, but the suffering and killing of animals in dairy and egg production inspires many well-intentioned vegetarians who learn of such practices to quickly go vegan.

Gone are the days of Old MacDonalds happily mooing dairy cows and clucking chickens. Todays cows are relentlessly milked by machines, not cheery, freckle-faced men in overalls, and chickens rarely roam free in the fresh country air. Eggs today come from hens that are tightly packed into filthy cages, stacked floor to ceiling in huge warehouses. Under these circumstances, deaths from dehydration and suffocation are common. To avoid pecking conflicts, baby chicks have their beaks sliced off at birth. Dairy-producing cows must be kept constantly pregnant in order to lactate and produce milk, which is sucked out of them by nightmarish machines, and their offspring are regularly sold to slaughterhouses as veal calves.

Such are the lives of animals used for industrialized food production. Not a pleasant life. Its no wonder that more and more people are refusing to support these practices, voting with their stomachs and pocketbooks in favor of tofu scramble over eggs from tortured hens. Modern food production is no friend to local environments, either, as anyone who has lived near a large death factory can tell you. Neighbors of industrialized farms are constantly complaining of the air and water pollution caused by the concentrated waste of these poor animals. And the larger global environment suffers, as well.