Your Ten-Point Plan to Becoming a Vegetarian
For those craving guidance and structure, what follows is a simple ten-step transition from a nonvegetarian to a veggie lifestyle. Of course, you don’t have to follow this course of action to become a vegetarian, but sometimes having a carefully thought-out plan in place before beginning a major venture can make you feel more secure about the unfamiliar path you’ve chosen to take. You’ll notice that, at the beginning, it is only making changes to your evening meals. Dinner is perhaps the single most planned meal of the day; it is the meal that the family eats together, putting thought into planning the main course, side courses, and dessert.
If you think about the variety in your current diet, you’ll discover that you already draw from only a handful of recipes to make family favorites over and over again and rely on basic meals that you enjoy and have made before. You may go out to a new restaurant for a special occasion or try a new recipe now and then, but we all keep going back to tried-and-tested favorites several times a month. Planning vegetarian meals is no different. During the steps of your transition, you’ll discover a number of delicious new meals, revise current favorites to make them vegetarian, and have as many meal options at your disposal as you did as a meat eater—maybe more!
As you develop healthy new habits and learn more about nutrition, you’ll find that your previous ideas of what constitutes a complete evening meal will change drastically. Ever since the era of Ozzie and Harriet, we’ve been told that an appropriate family dinner includes a large portion of meat, some veggies on the side, a starch of some sort, and, often, a big glass of milk. Soon you’ll be abandoning that idea; eating a healthy satisfying vegetarian diet isn’t just a matter of replacing meat with something else while continuing the same old method of consuming four squares. A quickly put together veggie stir-fry with a multigrain roll is a fast, nutritious evening dinner—so is homemade macaroni and cheese accompanied by a green salad. The old ways of eating don’t apply to you anymore, so go ahead and forget what you were taught about meal planning; you’re about to develop your own rules based on what your body needs.
Step 1: Eat three meat-free dinners during the week that you already enjoy.
Make a list of vegetarian main dishes that you and your family already like—macaroni and cheese, vegetable soup with bread and salad, cheese quesadillas, vegetable stir-fry, and quiche and cheese pizza are just a few of the meatless meals you already eat. This still leaves four nights a week that you can include meat in your meals, but you’ve taken the first step toward thinking differently about your eating habits.
Step 2: Adapt three favorite recipes to make them vegetarian, and add them to your week’s dinners.
A wide variety of main course meals can be turned into delicious vegetarian fare, allowing you to enjoy healthier versions of foods you already love. Take a recipe for vegetarian chili and make it your own by using the same mixture of spices in your own ground beef chili; leave the beef out of your lasagna, and replace it with sautéed zucchini, eggplant, and mushrooms; make your favorite soups and stews using coarsely chopped portabella mushrooms; mix up a zesty taco salad with the usual lettuce, tomatoes, sour cream, and salsa, but replace the ground beef with a mixture of black and kidney beans. The possibilities are only as limited as your imagination!
Step 3: Add three brand-new vegetarian meals to your repertoire.
During the previous two steps, you developed six vegetarian dinners that you and your family are happy to eat. Now it’s time to do a little research and find a few new tricks to spice up your menus even further with some new recipes. Purchase a couple of vegetarian cookbooks, borrow them from friends, or check them out in the library. We’ll provide you with some great recipes in chapter 13, as well as a list of cookbooks to get you started.
You can also search the Internet for recipes; online vegetarian support groups are a terrific source of recipes from veggie lovers. Find recipes that look tasty, and give them a try. This is a time for experimenting; if something doesn’t appeal to you after you’ve served it up, discard that recipe and try something else. No matter what your level of cooking expertise is, there are recipes you can make, and you’ll even find yourself becoming a better cook as you develop new skills.
Step 4: Make all your dinners meatless.
Once you’ve found three new dishes that you love for dinner, that’s nine vegetarian dinners to choose from! If you like, you can have a different
meal every night, plus two alternates—which may be more variety than you had before you started transitioning to a meatless diet! Odds are that, at
this point, you’ll be intrigued by the different flavors and textures of your vegetarian entrees and that you’ll keep on creating new menus.
After all, you’re not going to eat the same nine things for the rest of your life—but it’s a great way to start! With so many dinners to choose from, it’s time to ban meat from your dinner table entirely. You should feel secure that you’re not going to go hungry with so many options and that you will discover even more in future.
Step 5: Give up the lunch meat.
Now that you’ve successfully given up eating meat during your evening meal, it’s time to turn your attention to your lunches. If you’re the sort of person who visits a restaurant to take a lunch break from office, look for places that offer vegetarian pasta options, vegetarian (or vegetarian- friendly) cafes, and places that have well-stocked salad bars. Burger places probably won’t have much for you to eat, but spots that specialize in sandwiches usually have vegetarian options. The downtown areas of many big cities also have street vendors offering Indian, Thai, and Mexican vegan specialties.
If you eat at home or take your lunch to work, you’ll naturally have a lot more control over your meal planning. If you have a microwave at work, you can heat up a bean burrito, a frozen vegetarian meal, or leftovers from your evening meals. A snackish meal of pita bread slices, hummus, and fruit is nutritious and fun, and if you’re ovo-lacto, there’s always egg salad or grilled cheese.
Step 6: Change your old breakfast habits.
Breakfast doesn’t have to be eggs, bacon, and sausage. It can be anything you want it to be! If you want cheese enchiladas or leftover vegetarian chili, go for it. A fruit smoothie with a scoop of alternative protein powder is a quick breakfast that’ll give you the boost you need, or you can toast a couple of pieces of whole-grain bread and top it with peanut butter.
On weekends, when you have more time to cook and linger over breakfast, make an omelet stuffed with mushrooms, onions, and cheese, or a stack of blueberry pancakes. If you simply can’t shake the craving for breakfast meats, there are vegetarian sausage links—including even fake bacon made from vegetables that are great for you— which can help satisfy the craving. Just remember that breakfast is whatever you want it to be; so long as you’re getting the nutrition you need, you can eat anything you like.
Step 7: Get creative.
If you’ve gotten this far, it’s time to get serious about embracing the vegetarian lifestyle. Giving up meat is only the beginning; there’s a whole world of foods to explore, ranging from grains, seeds, and nuts to vegetables you’ve never tried before. The more foods you’re open to eating, the more creativity you can bring to your cooking. At this point, you should be feeling pretty good about the meal choices you already have under your belt, so now is the time to start having fun and trying new things.
As you thumb through vegetarian cookbooks, you’ll find recipes that use exotic ingredients like quinoa, tahini, and spelt. Try using rice milk as a replacement for cow’s milk in recipes, and experiment with exotic spice combinations that you’ve never tried before. This is your chance to develop a broader, more interesting recipe repertoire. Enjoy yourself! You can also take a trip to your local health food co-op store and spend awhile reading the labels on all the products you’ve never seen before. Don’t be intimidated by the unfamiliar labels and ingredients, and don’t be shy about asking the employees for tips on how to use foods you find intriguing, or for recommendations and recipes. Tell them up front that you’re new to vegetarianism, and they’ll be happy to point you toward foods you’ve probably never considered before.
Step 8: Giving up the eggs.
During the last step, you may have noticed that you’re now an ovo-lacto- vegetarian! Congratulations! You may also notice, though, that you’re eating a lot of eggs and cheese. This happens to most new vegetarians, because cheese is tasty and eggs are an inexpensive source of protein.
But both cheese and eggs add fat and cholesterol to your diet, and, if you think back to previous chapters, the practices of high-tech egg farms are barbaric. Experienced vegetarians know how to replace eggs in recipes, and now that you’re an experienced vegetarian too, it’s time you started doing the same. You certainly don’t have to give up eggs entirely if you don’t want to, but there are a number of ways that you can at least cut back on the amount of eggs you eat. If you’re a fan of egg salad, try replacing the eggs with chickpeas; use everything else you would in your favorite egg salad recipe, like mayonnaise, celery, onion, and mustard, and you’ll find that you never miss the eggs. Chickpeas also work as an excellent substitute for scrambled eggs when sautéed with onions, mushrooms, garlic, and a little salt.
When making a veggie loaf or vegetarian burger, try some tahini (chickpea paste available in the natural foods or ethic section of your grocery store) or mashed potatoes as a binding agent. After some experimentation, you may find that you don’t want to give up eggs after all. But even then, cutting back on your consumption is a good idea for a number of reasons, and you can always seek out organic eggs from small, local farms that don’t indulge in the same abhorrent practices as the big ones.
Step 9: Find new ways to build your bones.
When we’re kids, we’re all told over and over again to drink our milk. Even as adults, the milk industry keeps drumming into our heads that we have to drink milk and eat lots of dairy products to maintain strong bones and teeth. While it’s true that our bodies require calcium for good health, we don’t need to drink milk to get it. Did you know that humans are the only animals who drink the milk of other species? Cow’s milk is ingeniously designed by nature to provide the calcium, riboflavin, fat, protein, and carbohydrates that a baby calf needs—and even calves stop drinking milk once it is past infancy.
Humans have actually evolved over thousands of years in a way so that many of us—mostly Westerners—can drink milk without getting sick; our intestines produce lactase, an enzyme that breaks down the sugars (lactose) in cow milk. But many non-Western cultures have never developed the ability to drink milk, and a large number of people of European descent are still lactose intolerant. Drinking milk as an adult is simply unnatural—people who can do so without suffering intestinal discomfort are benefiting from a genetic anomaly.
Yet, we still need calcium. If you enjoy eating cereal, try one of the many hemp milk or rice-based milk replacements on the market. There are a wide variety of brands and they all taste different—so if you don’t like the first one or two you try, keep experimenting until you find one you like. And make sure you add calcium-rich food to your meals like leafy green vegetables and beans. We’ll discuss this is further detail in the next chapter.
Once you find yourself enjoying a wide variety of foods that are rich in calcium, you’ll find it a lot easier to eliminate dairy from your diet. After you become accustomed to eating calcium-rich foods and drinking nondairy milk supplements, you can move on to trying soy-free cheeses. And look for nutritional yeast at your health food store; added to dishes or sprinkled on popcorn, it adds a delicious, cheeselike flavor to recipes.
Step 10: Become a savvy consumer.
When you shop for food, examine the labels carefully for animal products you need to avoid. You’ll be surprised by how many foods contain lard, dried milk, eggs, and other animal by-products. It can be extremely challenging at first, but don’t be discouraged. You’ll soon find yourself becoming as familiar with the products and brand names that help you stay on course as you were with the products you used in your old lifestyle.
As you spend more and more time educating yourself about being vegetarian, you’ll discover exactly how diligent you want to be about your new lifestyle. You may find that it’s worth the effort you put into it, and you may want to embrace a completely vegan way of life. Or you may find you are comfortable eating commercially made bread products that contain eggs while not cooking with eggs for your other meals. Don’t allow politics to dictate your dietary choices, seeing a vegan diet as ethically superior to an ovo-lacto one, and beating yourself up because you still eat cheese. You can be proud of yourself for adopting a vegetarian lifestyle, and even if you don’t go 100 percent vegan, you’ve still made a healthy, humane choice.
Congratulate yourself! 