Easy Changes
Change is hard
So anything, ANYTHING, that can make change easier is a tool we can use. And I think we should use every tool we have at our disposal to stop adding to climate change, stop contributing to the brutal animal agriculture industry, and to stop causing the slow but sure decimation of our own health. Why on earth wouldn’t we use every available tool?
We do not have to go from 0 to 100 mph on day one. We can make our lifestyle shift in stages.
I thought I was doing it all at once three and a half years ago, but I wasn’t. I did it in stages that unfolded for me as I learned more. The more I learned, the cleaner my diet became, but I still don’t know what I don’t know. The more I learn, the better I do, and sometimes it takes me a few tries before a change sticks.
That said, here are some of my suggestions that can make change a whole lot easier.
Don’t aim for perfect, aim for better
There’s finally been a medical study comparing meat and plant-based meat substitutes, and here’s it’s conclusion:
“Among generally healthy adults, contrasting Plant with Animal intake, while keeping all other dietary components similar, the Plant products improved several cardiovascular disease risk factors, including TMAO; there were no adverse effects on risk factors from the Plant products.” (Crimarco et al. 2020)
So, to make the transition away from animal products, it’s okay to rely on the fake foods for a little while.
If you do it this way, you stop funding the suffering of animals. You stop paying for CO2 and methane to be pumped into our atmosphere. Using the meat and dairy substitutes instead of meat and dairy accomplishes both those goals in a huge way!
When you rely on the substitutes, you are also beginning to improve your health. So It ticks all the boxes.
Meat and dairy substitutes are transition foods, not permanent solutions
At least, they aren’t the solution if the goal is achieving peak health, reversing disease, and getting off medications. The substitutes, while tasty and high in protein, are full of saturated fat and very high in sodium. Also, they aren’t whole foods. They’re made from heavily processed parts of foods; soy protein isolate or wheat gluten plus oil, salt, and seasonings. Relying on the fake meats will slow down any weight loss you might’ve hoped for, and severely limit any health improvements too, when compared to a truly whole food plant-based diet. That’s where health begins to soar. But again, they’re still better than meat.
How to use the substitutes wisely
Try not to fill your plate just like you used to. For example:
The old way: Big hunk of meat, potato or other starch swimming in butter, small serving of a vegetable, also swimming in butter. Lots of salt on everything.
The new way: Big hunk of fake meat, potato or other starch swimming in fake butter, small serving of a vegetable, also swimming in fake butter. Salt over everything.
That level of change is a bit too little. Merely swapping out meat for fake meat, dairy for fake dairy is really no change at all, as you’ll realize when you try some of the plant-based products out there. They taste the same. A lot of them taste better.
Try instead, to fill most of your plate with whole plant foods. Don’t just have one vegetable, have several. Try something on them besides plant-based butter. Cook a bunch of different veggies together, with a little bit of reduced-sodium tamari (a mild soy sauce,) or roast them with a drizzle of maple syrup, or eat them raw with balsamic vinegar. There are dozens of ways.
Fill a big sections of the plate with starches like brown rice, soba noodles, quinoa, potatoes, or sweet potatoes. Starches are what fill us up.
Speaking of starches, if you use bread, use Ezekial brand bread - no oil, all whole ingredients. (Ezekiel products are kept in the freezer section and they mold fast, so keep frozen until use.)
Finally, use only a one portion of the fake meat product, not two or three. And don’t feel as it’s an essential part of every meal or even every day. Maybe use the substitutes fewer and fewer days of the week, as you improve in your plant-based food prep skills.
Try to wean yourself off the need for meat substitutes. Get some whole food plant-based cookbooks like The Engine 2 Cookbook, or Be a Warrior Woman in the Kitchen. Start experimenting with the hundreds of recipes at ForksOverKnives.com. There are also recipes here on the site.
Gradually reduce your reliance on the fake foods as you become more and more adept at making full meals and main courses and even desserts out of whole plants.
The Exception
The exception to the gradual approach is this: If your health is bad enough that you are at risk of an imminent heart attack or stroke, or if you have cancer or type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, or any chronic condition that puts you in danger, you’re going to want to go cold turkey. I’d hate to have you go gradual, and then croak before you get to the whole food plant-based part, which improves health rapidly.
The Substitutes
Fake Meats: There are chick’n nuggets, chick’n tenders, Daring brand “pieces” which are very much like cooked chicken breast pieces. There are fake burgers, fake steak in small pieces, fake meatballs, fake breakfast sausage, fake brats, with fake skin and all. There are even fake fish filets.
Try to go for the brands that are lower in saturated fats and sodium. Some are starting to be made from mushroom fibers (mycelium) which seems far better than those made from glutens or isolates. The further down the list of ingredients the oil is, the better. Be careful though, as they have to list ingredients by amounts from greatest to least, so they often use 3 kinds of oil, so they can push it further down the list, when, if you combined all 3, it would be number 1 or 2.
Big Food is tricky, greedy, and not the least bit concerned about your health. Their one and only concern are their profit margins and perpetually increasing sales.
Fake Dairy-Cheeses: Of them all, the Myokos brand cheeses are the best I’ve found, and there’s one variety that comes as a liquid that solidifies into gooey mozzarella when you bake it. Kind of the opposite of dairy cheese which starts solid, then melts. There are lots of fake cheeses. None of them are great. Frankly, I can do without them, but hubby loves them. He makes us homemade pizza on special occasions and when he does, he uses Myokos mozzarella.
Fake Dairy-Creamer: We transitioned at first, using Coffee Mate brand plant-based creamers. They are different, but it only takes a few days for the tastebuds to adjust. However, if you look at the ingredients, oil is usually number 2 or 3, and even then they usually have more than one kind, so it’s probably number one. Eventually, we just stopped. I drink my decaf black. If you have excellent, flavorful coffee, and start drinking it black, pretty soon when you try a cup with the creamer, you will gag. You feel the oil coating your tongue, and it’s just gross. Hubby has upgraded to a little almond milk and sometimes a little sugar in his coffee.
Fake Dairy-Milk: I like almond milk, which is possibly the highest water-use intensive of all the plant-milks, but still uses far, far, far less water than dairy milk. I love soy milk. I think oat milk tastes like paint, but some people love its natural thickness and sweet flavor. There’s coconut milk, but that’s just subbing one saturated fat for another, so that’s the only one I don’t recommend.
You can make you own nut milks at home. They sell little machines on Amazon but you don’t even need those. Check Youtube. You want two ingredients; nuts and water.
Fake Dairy-All the rest: There are more than 30 flavors of Ben & Jerry’s dairy-free ice cream. You can find sour cream, ranch dressing, and a dozen of buttery spreads. The best tasting butter substitute is Land-O-Lakes with avocado oil. BUT the fake butter, ice cream, and spreads are extremely high in fat. And the ice cream has a lot of sugar, as well. Use in moderation and use as a transitional tool, not as a permanent solution. We no longer have any of these in our house. I think we had dairy-free ice cream once, all last year, on a holiday.
Do whatever it takes to begin today
I believe that the rash of fake meat and dairy products has nothing to do with a sudden increase in vegan living and plant-based eating. (Although both are on the rise.) It’s about necessity. Those in places of power can see the writing on the wall. Our planet is crumbling under the weight of our meat and dairy consumption. She cannot support all the cattle and pigs and chickens, she cannot grow enough to feed them without depleting herself, she does not hold enough water for them to continue drinking it. Any political leader who would dare say aloud that people must give up meat and dairy to save the world, would be driven from power or worse.
So, instead, the transition away from meat and dairy begins subtly. The fake meat brands began with green packaging, attracting those concerned with the environment and animal well-being, like me (for a little while.) Then they changed the packaging bloody red, and made the ads all about more meat! with manly men grilling. They’re wooing people over, and in a few years, if we have a few years left, it won’t seem so much like meat is essential.
The demand for meat will shrink, so factory farms will breed fewer animals, so the methane and CO2 flow will crank down a little bit, and there won’t be as much shit flowing from every creek in the middle of the country to the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, where it has created a hypoxic zone or “Dead Zone” that’s currently the size of New Jersey. (MSN: Dead Zone the Size of New Jersey) ←Visit link for a map of the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone. Powerful image. I’d put it here, but copyright.
In conclusion, none of us are perfect. Most days, I do my very best, but some days, I’m sedentary and eating potato chips. But I do better all the time. For me, this journey of finding my peak health is an infinite onion. No matter how many layers I peel away, there’s always more.
So start wherever you have to start.
Start wherever it’s easiest for you to actually begin. That’s the most important part! Actually beginning.
Ready? Set. Go!
Sources
Crimarco, Anthony, Sparkle Springfield, Christina Petlura, Taylor Streaty, Kristen Cunanan, Justin Lee, Priya Fielding-Singh, et al. 2020. “A Randomized Crossover Trial on the Effect of Plant-Based Compared with Animal-Based Meat on Trimethylamine-N-Oxide and Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors in Generally Healthy Adults: Study with Appetizing Plantfood—Meat Eating Alternative Trial (SWAP-MEAT).” The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 112 (5). https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqaa203.
Simmerman, Alexis, and Doyle Rice. 2024. “A ‘Dead Zone’ Is Growing in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s Now the Size of New Jersey.” Msn.com. 2024. https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/a-dead-zone-is-growing-in-the-gulf-of-mexico-its-now-the-size-of-new-jersey/ar-AA1oi1yE.
Personal Note
Sorry there wasn’t a post Saturday. It was the final day of a book deadline, (my real job is storytelling) and I woke up to a broken computer, soooooooo... yeah. That happened. But no worries, all is well, the book is done, I finished it on THAT. Is there a special award for that sort of thing? The new MacBook will be here Tuesday, I had no choice-Apple Card. And so all that is why you’re still getting your weekly post a day late.
The Book I finished on that broken screen is Harrison Hyde and the Runaway Bride, a small-town, country-friend romance with a lot of humor, a little suspense, and an ending that will make you cry. Made me cry all three times I wrote it. It’ll be in paperback everywhere, and in e on Kindle. (I think. Have to check with publisher.)
Pre-order coming soon.
