Getting Your Best Vegan NutritionOne of the first questions I get when people first move to a plant-based diet is about vegan nutrition.
Whether you have been a vegan for years, or are just starting your journey, you have likely wondered a few things about vegan diet nutrition like:
These are all great questions and I hope to show you that you can certainly be healthy on a vegan diet, and it's actually not very hard! This guide will help you answer these common questions, whether to prove to others that it can work, or to become a healthier version of yourself.
The easiest starting point to being a healthy vegan is the quick and easy vegan food pyramid. It's very similar to the pyramid we were all taught in health class, but changes the proportions by focusing more on vegetables and less on proteins. An easy way to ensure you are getting a full day's worth of each ingredient is to track it on a few random days. Just write down what you eat, and how much of it. At the end of the day, check with the pyramid and see how it matches up. You'll probably be surprised to see that it's right on target, and if you have adjustments to make, they likely aren't very large. The pyramid can seem intimidating, but because serving sizes are small, it's actually easy to eat all of the necessary foods.
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Even professional athletes are able to reach high levels of success on a purely plant-based diet. Decathletes, football players, marathoners, and more find that a diet without animal products provides them with plenty of protein and other vital nutrients to reach their peak performance levels. Learn which of your favorite athletes sticks to a vegan diet here.
Dr. Neal Barnard, of the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine recommends a low-fat vegan diet, and many people follow this type of diet. Rather than cooking in oils, they avoid adding anything extra to their meals. While they will eat vegetables and fruits higher in fats (think avocados and olives), they eat them with restraint. When you do add oils when cooking, opt for heart-health oils like olive oil, safflower oil, and sunflower oil rather than simple corn oil.
Ensuring good vegan nutrition takes a small amount of time invested up front. Once you have the hang of it, the rules are as simple and finite as the ones we were taught as children. Except that now, instead of “milk does a body good,” we know that “fruits, veggies, beans and legumes do a body good.”
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