By Jessica Braun
Nutrition is a touchy topic for us Americans. As far as health goes, we’re not exactly a shining example to the world. I admit that I drink a giant soda every day, and I hardly ever drink water…I eat vegetables sometimes, and occasionally I’ll buy the healthy grain-y bread, but overall, I would say my diet is very unbalanced (to put it gently). When I hear the word “tofu,” my first instinct is to cover my mouth and look away…and kale? Don’t even get me started. At least, that’s what I would have told you two nights ago, before my experiment with the whole food plant-based diet began.
I consider myself a pretty normal American — busy with work, hobbies, and relationships. When it comes to food preparation, the easier the better; and I’m definitely not going to eat something that tastes bad. We only have one life to live…we might as well enjoy the foods we eat, right? Eating a whole-food, plant-based diet doesn’t oppose that philosophy. In fact, it supports it — we only have one life to live, so let’s make it a long one that enables us to do things we like doing well into the future!
But when a lot of us hear the word “diet,” we feel intimidated, imagining harsh rules and restrictions. I’m not here to tell you about the health benefits of a whole food plant-based diet (though there are many). My goal today is to convey the results of my experiment — a normal, every-day, busy American cooking and eating a whole-food, plant-based meal for the first time.
To start, I looked up recipes online. I was expecting it to be hard to find something that I would actually enjoy, and would be easy enough to carry out successfully. Surprisingly, I found a wide variety of recipes from different blogs and discussion groups. They shared tips for things like what to use in place of oil (a cornstarch/water mixture), and how to make kale taste better — by massaging dressing into it (the kale becomes greener and more flavorful!). I finally settled on a stuffed tomato recipe.
I also figured beforehand that I would need to buy many special, expensive, hard-to-find ingredients. While I don’t usually keep things like silken tofu and hulled sunflower seeds in my cabinets, the rest of the ingredients were things I would have bought at the grocery store anyway.
The recipe was easy to follow, but it did take a long time. One thing that surprised me was how good it smelled when it was cooking. I was expecting the vegetables to be bland, since I couldn’t use any oils or butter, but the combination of the different herbs and vegetables made up for it. To my pleasant surprise, the vegetables didn’t stick to the pan when I was cooking them. Apparently, I’ve been lied to my entire life — you don’t NEED oil or butter to cook things without making a smoky, sticky mess! Water did just fine.
The tofu did surprise me a little when I was preparing my sauce; it probably looked even more unsettling than I initially thought. It was white, runny, squishy, and weird…That being said, I was thrilled to find out that I couldn’t even taste it in the end. It basically just gave the sauce a creamy texture — almost like an avocado.
When everything was done, I tentatively put the fork to my mouth. Knowing that I had only used salt, pepper, and the fresh chopped garlic to season everything, I wasn’t expecting a lot of flavor; but I was very excited when I tasted the combination of all the different types of foods together. I really tasted the individual flavors of all the different ingredients — they complimented each other nicely. The cilantro-tofu sauce also kicked the flavor up a notch, without making the whole dish too thick.
Mentally, it felt refreshing to know that everything I was putting into my body was something it needed. I hadn’t realized before how subconsciously guilty I felt every time I ate my normal meals, until I realized then that I was eating everything that I should. It was oddly satisfying!
Overall, it was definitely worth the experiment. I really like how everything is so simple. Besides the occasional call for tofu or nutritional yeast (or other things you wouldn’t normally buy), everything is incredibly easy to find/use. Power foods like quinoa and tofu can be a little pricey, but not so expensive that I couldn’t afford it. If you are already a very organized person, eating a whole food plant-based diet would be a cinch; you just have to be willing to take a little bit of extra time to prepare things before you start cooking.
Trust me, if someone like me was impressed by this this meal, I think almost anyone could be satisfied by it. For all the amazing health benefits a whole-food, plant-based diet offers, it’s a wonder more people don’t do it! It’s not as hard or intimidating as it sounds. Next time you’re at the grocery store, pick up some extra vegetables and whole grains (like brown rice or quinoa), and surprise yourself by making an extra-healthy meal for yourself or your family — your body will thank you for it, and so will your taste buds!