How to start a vegan lifestyle: Vegan Diet – Luxiders Magazine Guide
Discover your favourite restaurants
Knowing where to eat and what meals to have makes eating out more enjoyable and easier to stick to your diet. A great tool that helps to discover vegan and vegan-friendly restaurants is the app Happy Cow. It shows the restaurants in the area, their ratings, cuisines and opening times. In case you are not the person who is choosing the restaurant, a great way to be prepared ahead of the time is to go online and check out the restaurant’s menu. If still unsure, give the restaurant a call and kindly ask for options or their vegan-friendly menu. If everything else fails, you can always get creative with the sides of rice or roasted potatoes, grilled veggies, beans and salad. Thanks to the fast growth of veganism, which has brought tons of new options in the past few years, having no vegan meals at the restaurant doesn’t happen very often anymore.
Another trick is to visit Mexican, Indian or Chinese restaurants, which are all fantastic for vegans. Not to mention Italian restaurants, where you can ask for a vegetarian pizza with no cheese, or pasta (check with the waiter it doesn’t have eggs) with tomato sauce (make sure it is made with olive oil instead of butter). Most importantly, enjoy the experience, even if the waiters don’t fully understand your diet requests, stay polite and kind. They are just doing their best jobs after all.
Simple vegan swap ideas
Still not sure about how to go vegan? Here are some easy vegan swap ideas you might find useful.
Scrambled eggs – Make scrambled tofu with turmeric instead
Beef burger – Order Beyond meat burger or any other veggie burger
Cow’s and goat’s milk – Treat yourself to a glass of calcium fortified oat, coconut, almond, rice, or soy milk (look for those with simple ingredients and no added sugar),
Yogurt – Enjoy a cup of coconut or soy yogurt instead
Cheese – Sprinkle your salads and soups with yeast flakes (they have a delicious cheezy flavour and are a fantastic source of B vitamins), buy a vegan cheese board and discover your favourite vegan cheese Eggs for baking – Use a vegan egg substitute, chia seeds, mashed bananas, apple sauce (which option to go for depends on the recipe)
Ice cream – Spoil yourself with delicious vegan ice cream made of almond, coconut or soy milk. Even Ben and Jerry’s and Magnum now offer vegan options! You can also make your own vegan ice cream from frozen bananas, which is not only delicious, but also healthy and nutritious.
Whether you are ready to fully embrace veganism or not, eating less animal products and including more wholesome plant based foods in your diet is not only beneficial to your health, but also to the environment and the wellbeing of the animals.
If you would like to learn more, stay tuned until next time when we will be talking about other aspects of vegan lifestyle, including vegan fashion and vegan beauty.
