Maybe you’re taking some first steps toward a vegan diet. Or maybe you can’t imagine yourself ever being vegan. Either way, you can choose meals with fewer animal foods right now in some pretty painless ways. Here are 10 things you can do this week that will reduce your consumption of animal products:
• Replace mayonnaise with Vegenaise, a wonderful vegan substitute that tastes like old-fashioned homemade mayo. It's better than most "real" mayonnaise products on the market. Look for it in the natural food section of the grocery store, where it is always kept refrigerated.
• Try Tofutti Better Than Sour Cream on baked potatoes and burritos or in black bean soup. See if you can even notice a difference!
• Replace ground beef in spaghetti sauce with a veggie ground beef substitute like Yves Meatless Ground. In your favorite spaghetti sauce, you'll be surprised at how much you don't miss the meat.
• Make the healthy switch to olive oil and vinegar for salads, instead of creamy dressing.
• Use non-dairy “creamer” in your coffee.
• Try some of the instant soups in a cup like Fantastic Foods Black Bean soup for a super quick lunch or snack.
• Serve vegetarian baked beans instead of “traditional” baked beans. (You’ll hardly notice a difference.)
• Trade in chicken broth in recipes for vegetable broth or bouillon.
• Serve mushroom gravy on potatoes instead of meat-based gravy.
• Enjoy fruit crumble with soy or cocoanut “ice cream” for dessert in place of cakes and cookies made with butter and eggs.
I can't promise that every single step you take toward a more plant-based diet is easy. But for now, don’t worry about never eating meat again or never eating cheese. Make the changes that are easiest—and see where it takes you.
Comments
It's really exciting to see so many references to veganism in a mainstream newspaper. I've been vegan for 2 years, and it definitely helps to take it one day at a time and not think of it in terms of all the things you will never eat again.
I think the biggest change a person can make is to give up MILK! The switch to soy, rice or one of the may alternatives now available (I saw hempmilk in the health food store yesterday!) makes an immediate and huge difference in the suffering of dairy cows and the "by product" veal calves whose suffering is unimaginable. It's a twofer! :)
Good list, especially when I'm trying to help someone make the conversion.
HOWEVER... and this is a huge "alas!"... Morningstar Farms is no longer carrying any VEGAN items whatsoever. The crumbles now have egg whites in them. Morningstar Farms was bought out by Kellogg, and so there goes the compassion angle, as far as farmed animals/slaughterhouses goes.
It's a heartbreak. And just awful.
Yves has a "Meatless Ground," which I'm liking very much, by the way.
I've got lots more going in "Veganism," which is part of Current. And I hope you don't mind that I'm submitting your article there. Nice to see a newspaper caring enough to allow this kind of helpful writing!
Thank you, Virginia!
Current dot com forward slash groups forward slash veganism is how you can see your article.
Susie, thanks so much for this comment. I've revised the article to take out the information about Morningstar Farms. I knew that they were adding eggs and dairy back to some of their products but had forgetten that I mentioned them in this article. I wrote to Morningstar when they first made this change to let them know how disappointed I was in this change. It's hard enough to get companies to remove the eggs and dairy from their meat substitutes--so it's kind of depressing to see these ingredients being added back!
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