Veganuary Top Tips
Veganuary gets people to be more aware of what they eat which I think is brill - we should all be more clued up on how our food gets to us and what happens when it’s in us. But be very careful about going vegan overnight, even if it’s just for a month. Such a drastic change to your body has the potential to make you really quite sick… For example, it’s not uncommon for many people to go anaemic in the process. I don’t think there’s any benefit to being able to prove you can be vegan for an entire month. The real benefit from something like this comes from a good ol’ dabble. It comes from consciously committing to giving it a go without being restrictive to the point where it’s demoralising. If you regularly eat meat, it’s likely you’ll be unfamiliar with how to cook vegan staples and stretching that out for a month has the potential to make you miserable and potentially ill. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it because of course there are healthy ways to go about it, but if you’re going to give it a go, bear in mind my top 5 tips for making Veganuary a healthy and sustainable month for you:
Focus on the meal and not the month. Make vegan breakfasts for the first week; once you’ve ploughed through the supplies you’ve bought, go back to regular breakfasts and do a week of vegan lunches, then a week of vegan dinners and a week of vegan desserts/snacks. That’s your month sorted! You can do this by swapping your cows milk for a plant milk, trying vegan sausages in fry-ups, learn a handful of dishes rich in beans, tofu and lentils.
Substitute: for everything you ‘take out’, you have to replace it with something adequate. Now, I know it’s tempting to just replace all the meat portions of your meals with meat substitutes and say it’s vegan, but you won’t be learning anything new by doing that and you also won’t reap the full benefits of veganism by doing that. If you’re vegan, those products don’t make up the bulk of your meals and whilst they can be handy if you’re running short of time or don’t have the energy to cook, the best vegan diets aren’t packed to the brim with meat replacements. If you’re taking out meat for example, ask yourself: why do you eat it? What’s it rich in? Typically, it’s (heme) iron, protein, vitamin B12, etc. Vegans don’t eat protein in isolation, but in combination, so you make meals combining various ingredients to get all those things. For example, you can make a vegan cheesy pasta sauce using silken tofu as the base (protein), nutritional yeast for the cheese flavour (B12) and add any veg and spice you like to bulk it up (spinach, broccoli and black olives go well!). Enjoy some dried fruits e.g. apricots/raisins as a snack during the day (iron) and enhance its absorption in your body by pairing it with vitamin C - Bob’s your uncle, Fanny’s your aunt.
There’s a lot of boring meat-based food. There’s a lot of boring plant-based food. It doesn’t have to be that way. Don’t be afraid to get experimental with your meals and flavours - whilst sticking to flavours you’re comfortable with can help at the start, take inspiration from cuisines you enjoy to expand your horizons. Some spices and herbs feel so ‘out there’ and inaccessible, even if they’re right next to the ones we use everyday in supermarkets. I recently started cooking with ground fennel and garam masala and now it’s a staple in my cupboard even though I wasn’t raised with using either.
Food tastes better when it’s shared! Rope in a flat mate, a family member, a partner, a sibling, anyone that you can get excited about this with. It’ll give you a challenge you can do together, something to talk about and you can build a routine into your week that gives you something to look forward to. Community is everything!
Remember that it’s better to have millions of people doing this imperfectly than a small handful of people perfectly. Don’t beat yourself up if you think certain things in veganism aren’t for you - not everything will be. But there will also be plenty of things that will be for you and might just surprise you about it. It’s a question of comfort, habit and familiarity.
Have fun if you’re giving it a go and if you have any questions or need any help, I’m just a message away (whether I know you or not)!
Lots of love,
Nish x
