5 habit tweaks to try to eat more plants
Eating more plants, as opposed to animal products like meat, dairy, and eggs, seems like the right thing to do. That’s true whether you look at it through the lens of ethics, health, or environmentalism. Whether I like it or not, not everyone is willing or able to go 100% plant-based overnight. But just because one can’t do everything doesn’t mean that one doesn’t have a duty to do something. We do not control everything in our lives, but nothing and no-one can stop us from getting started in the smallest of ways.
Many of my vegan friends disagree with me about this. They believe that once a person sees through the imposture of animal agriculture they should immediately quit consuming meat, dairy, and eggs for good. I admire how they themselves went vegan overnight and their activism fuels my commitment to continue on this path myself. However, in my work as a vegan food educator and in my coaching practice, I encounter many individuals who, despite having their heart in the right place, simply can’t achieve a complete transition toward a fully vegan lifestyle and wholly plant-based diet at the moment. I get it: everything, in our civilization, conspires against living and eating in an ethical and healthy way. Yet, we still can act.
You can take steps as small as you need them to be. What matters most is that you keep moving. Here are five suggestions as a gift to you: habit tweaks you can experiment with in order to progressively nudge your actions to align better with your knowledge and beliefs. Pick one of these new habits and commit to following it for one month. Embrace the change as a scientist does with an experiment. Diligently follow through, then assess the results, tweak the parameters, and experiment again. Which one will you choose?
Start with sweets and snacks
Make it a rule for yourself to only eat sweets, snacks, and treats that are free from dairy, eggs, or other animal products like gelatin. (Gelatin is made by boiling animal parts like skin and tendons.)
If you bake, choose recipes from the best vegan chefs, like Isa Chandra. She is the queen of vegan cookies, pies, and cupcakes. You are more likely to get good results than if you attempt to veganize an old family recipe.
If you prefer ready-made, ask for options at your favorite spot. Starbucks has irresistible dark chocolate almond butter cups. For the best cookies, try a local independent coffee shop.
Bonus: because vegan-certified candy bars are less widely distributed, this tweak may help you decrease your snacking on unhealthy processed items and maybe take an inch of fluff off your waist. But if you stick with this habit long enough, you’ll discover that amazing vegan candy does exist, so watch out!
Ditch dairy
This tweak is perhaps the hardest of all five, but also carries the most benefits. Going dairy-free is harder than quitting meat, in part because there are milk products added to all sorts of foods that really should not have them, like salt and vinegar potato chips. But the biggest obstacle to quitting dairy is biochemical.
In a mother’s milk, there are hormones and other compounds that not only support the rapid growth of their babies, but also promote attachment so that the baby craves nourishment from their mama. That evolutionary adaptation is true for humans, as I experienced as a breastfeeding mother. It’s also true for milking cows… because they are also mothers!
In case you haven’t connected the dots, cows don’t start making milk until they give birth to their own babies. (It’s so obvious, yet so few of us have thought about it before!) The calves (baby cows) are slaughtered within days or weeks if they are males, or isolated to grow into mammalian milk machines themselves if they are females. Meanwhile, mama cow remains quite hormonal as you can now imagine, especially since she gets impregnated again just a few months later in order to keep milk production at industrially profitable levels.
The hormones that make human babies go nuts for their moms — and scream when they are taken away — are also in cows’ milk. That’s why people scream when someone wants to take away their cheese. But fear not! You can absolutely survive without a mothers’ milk, because you are now a fully grown person.
The best thing about ditching dairy is that, for a large part of the population, quitting dairy will almost immediately relieve some unpleasant health conditions that they may have taken for granted as “normal.” Tummy aches, constipation, and acne among others are all related to consuming milk of the wrong species at the wrong time.
If you are curious to see what living dairy free would do to your body, I will be thrilled to help you spend 30 days without milk products to experience the difference.
Go animal-free at breakfast
Wholesome toast with nut butter and banana slices. Overnight oats with goji berries and hemp seeds. Green smoothies sweetened with dates. Indulgent granola with coconut yogurt. YUM! Breakfast is my favorite meal and I never run out of delicious options.
Do you prefer a hot breakfast? You’ll love scrambled tofu, especially if you can lay your hands on magic sulfuric dust, also called “black salt” (although it’s actually pink) or kala namak in Indian grocery stores. Just a pinch will trick your brain into thinking that you are eating eggs.
If you dislike pandemics as much as I do, then quitting eggs may be the best individual action you can take to decrease the odds of another one. Flu viruses thrive and mutate in the cramped farms where hundreds of thousands of laying hens are layered on top of each other with compromised immune systems. It would do us all a favor to decrease the demand for eggs and poultry products — even for just one month.
Veg out at restaurants
From Prague to Lille, and from Omaha to Hanoi, vegan options are now abundant the world over. All-vegan restaurants are trending. Don’t be left out! Prepare your regular food when cooking yourself, but if you are eating out, then you get to pick a plant-based option. Don’t worry: just because it’s vegan doesn’t always mean it’s a salad. Perfectly decadent burgers and cheesy pasta dishes are churned out of the world’s vegan eateries, cruelty-free.
Be a virtual vegan
If you are not ready to make more room for plants on your plate, then try to put some in front of your eyes at least.
Follow popular vegan and plant-based creators on Instagram like @BadAssVegan John Lewis or get inspired by Anna Pippus’ @easyanimalfree food. Dance with heartwarming Tiktok superstar Tabitha Brown. Or subscribe to newsletters such as mine. You can even join a local vegan or plant-based Facebook or Reddit group and lurk around for a month.
While you do that, snooze or unfollow meat-centric cooking and restaurant social media channels so you don’t get bombarded with content that normalizes the consumption of animal flesh and secretions.
By the magic of social media algorithms, you will soon see more ads for plant-based products. Changing what gets your attention will progressively change how you think and feel. After a month, I bet you’ll be ready for one of the other four tweaks.
Few people are ready to go 100% vegan today, but just because you can’t do everything doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do something. Those five tweaks are not about quitting meat, but they will help you progressively move plants to the center of your plate, where they belong. They’ll trigger conversations and learning opportunities. They will reassure your reptilian brain: “Hey, there’s something to eat out there that doesn’t come from animals! And it’s tasty, too.”
Transitioning to eating more plants than animals is the perfect complement to your mindfulness journey. If, like me, you are trying to live in greater alignment with your values, I welcome you to join me on that path by signing up for my 5-day “Just a nudge” email series, and keep in touch.
Your only regret will be not doing it sooner.
