8 Easy Plant-Based Recipes that Anyone Can Make
“Plant-Based” Isn’t Just Another Buzz Phrase. Here’s What You Need to Know:
Let’s face it, sticking to a “diet” is hard. We’ve gone crazy for Keto, went hungry with intermittent fasting and unleashed our inner caveman with the Paleo diet.
A plant-based way of eating may be your ticket to stress free dining if you want to stop over-thinking your food. Ditch the fad diets and focus on eating a surplus of non-processed, fresh foods to stimulate weight loss and improve overall health. Scroll to the bottom of the page for our 8 favorite, budget friendly, plant recipes.
What is a Plant-Based Diet?
A plant-based diet is a diet consisting mostly or entirely of foods derived from plants, including vegetables, grains, nuts, seeds, legumes and fruits, and with few or no animal products. There’s lack of rigidity that you’ll find in most other diets, which makes this way of eating so easy to follow. If you focus on cooking with non-processed, plant foods most of the time, then you’ve already won.
Going out to dinner and craving meat or cheese? That’s fine too. It’s all about substituting plant-based options when available, but enjoying meat if you want to. Think of meat as a garnish and veggies as the main event.
3 Benefits of a Plant-Based Diet
1. Better For The Environment
The continued consumption of Western diets high in red meats and processed foods could increase the environmental pressures by up to 90% by 2050, “exceeding key planetary boundaries that define a safe operating space for humanity beyond which Earth’s vital ecosystems could become unstable,” according to study author Marco Springmann of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food at the University of Oxford. By reducing the amount of animal products we consume, we can do our part in reducing the greenhouse-gas emissions. For example, beef gives off 100 times more emissions that legumes.
2. Weight management
Cutting out processed foods and getting adequate fiber intake from plant-based foods can aid in weight loss. Studies show that on average, people who follow a plant-based diet lose up to 9 pounds more than those on an animal diet and are able to keep the weight off for over one year.
3. Disease Prevention
Chronic diseases such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes can be prevented or reversed using a plant-based approach. In one study, certain types of cancer were shown to be reduced up to 43% as compared to a non-plant-based eater.
8 Easy Plant-Based Recipes on a Budget
Sweet Potato Chickpea Buddha Bowl
Best Plant-Based Pulled Pork Sandwich
Plant-Based 3 Bean Chili
Cozy Wild Rice Soup
Roasted Cauliflower, Chickpea and Arugula Salad
Easy Mushroom Tacos
Crockpot Tuscan White Bean and Lemon Soup
Your Favorite Fast Food Chains Offer Plant-Based Options
Major fast food chains such as Burger King and Dunkin’ Donuts are making plant-based options more accessible and affordable. In the past, vegetarian meals were something you could only enjoy if you made them yourself. But these days more and more people are moving away from meat while eating less processed foods. If you can believe it, only one in five millennials has even tried a Big Mac. Fast food restaurants are capitalizing on the demand for healthier options by creating menu items such as “Beyond Meat” burgers and “PLTs (Plant, Lettuce, Tomato)” sandwiches.
Besides, a plant-based snack or meal can be your best pre-Studio Physique fuel & post workout recovery plan.