When I talk to people about eating a whole food, plant based diet they usually understand the health and environmental benefits, but there’s always some kind of huge obstacle or obstacles that they think are barriers to adopting a whole food plant based diet. They think it’s just too much of a stretch to overcome them. Here are 15 Popular Perceived Obstacles to Adopting A Plant Based Diet Squashed so there’s no more excuses now!
1. Why should I adopt a plant-based diet?
Adopting a whole food, plant based diet will effectively help to prevent and reverse chronic disease, maintain your ideal body weight and enhance your energy and athletic performance.
2. Why should I avoid eating meat, dairy, chicken and fish?
With animals or animal by-products such as butter, you get the saturated fats, cholesterol and hormones all being absorbed into your body with sometimes devastating consequences such as chronic obesity, heart disease, cancer and type 2 diabetes.
Fish aren’t the healthy alternative that you mights have thought either. Our oceans have become our dumping grounds, so when you eat fish, you are also eating a life-long supply of toxins that your body all to readily absorbs. Do you really want to be eating these toxic substances?
3. It would not be filling enough
I hear this a lot. Eating a whole food, plant based diet is incredibly filling and nourishing. The key is to divide your plate into four equal parts and fill one with vegetables, one with beans and lentils, one with fruit and one with starches, in other wards carbs. There’s been a myth surrounding eating carbs for a long, long time and yet they’re pure energy for the body and should be eaten regularly at meal times to give you energy and help you to feel full.
4. I don’t want people to think I’m strange or a hippy
That used to be the case but it’s become more acceptable now to eat a whole food, plant based, diet. even supermarkets on their food packaging are telling you if a product is vegetarian or vegan. They wouldn’t be doing that unless there was a growing amount of non-meat eaters shopping in their supermarkets. Remember that it’s a lot more common place than you think!
5. I think humans are meant to eat lots of meat
This is a common question that I’m asked every week. If that’s the case why then do people in the west, who eat lots of meat, fish, chicken and dairy, suffer from chronic obesity, heart disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes while those countries that eat significantly less, such as China and many countries in South America and Africa have hardly any known cases of these diseases? Perhaps it’s because they eat as their ancestors have eaten, without rich, processed and disease inducing foods.
6. I wouldn’t get enough energy or strength
Quite the opposite in fact. You’ll have more energy and will be stronger eating a whole food, plant based diet. Just take a look at some of the world’s best performing athletes such as Carl Lewis, Mike Tyson and Brendan Brazier. They eat a whole food, plant based diet and have excelled in their various sports.
7. It would not be tasty enough
You can pick any type of food in the world and I can bet there’s a whole food, plant based version of it. I make Mexican, Italian, Chinese, Indian and Thai plant based meals that are bursting with the flavours of these countries. It’s not all bland beans and tofu!
8. My family/partner won’t eat a plant-based diet
There are lots of tasty, filling recipes out there that can help to persuade people to at least try, maybe once a week, a whole food, plant based meal. You could try increasing this so half of all meals in one week are whole food, plant based. Why not try it and see if they notice the difference?
9. It takes too long to prepare plant-based meals
You can prepare a whole food, plant based meal in 15 minutes. The key is to plan ahead and have all the ingredients to hand. I show you how with my meal plans, just take a look at how easy it is.
10. Someone else decides on most of the food I eat
Why don’t you offer to make a whole food, plant based meal one night a week and show off what you can do? You could try building this to two nights a week or a weekend lunch. Or you could try asking them to leave the meat, chicken or fish out of the dish when it’s being prepared so you have the delicious plant foods and sauce.
11. The plant foods I would need are not available where I shop or in the canteen or at my home
That’s easy! Most whole food, plant based foods can be bought in the supermarket and I can show you how to make simple, fast packed lunches no matter what the season. You can even buy them in your corner shop. More supermarkets than ever are now labeling their foods as suitable for vegans or vegetarians. Unthinkable five or ten years ago, but it makes it a lot simpler for you.
12. I would (or do) miss eating lots of junk food
Junk food is filled with chemicals and additives to make you crave them. They become an addiction. Like all addiction it takes time to wean yourself off them, unless you want to go cold turkey! Changing your palate takes time, but it can be done. There’s lots of instances of people not liking the taste of food, for instance kale, or tofu and be gradually eating more of it they have become to like it.
13. I would have to go food shopping too often
If I told you you can shop once a week how would that suit you? Buying frozen vegetables and fruits makes shopping once a week very realistic. Plus you don’t need to buy milk, butter or cheese which goes off very quickly. Eating a whole food, plant based diet means that you need to keep your cupboards, pantry or store well stocked but this actually save money as you can buy in bulk.
14. Plant-based meals or snacks are not available when I eat out
It’s easy to ask for off menu items. Restaurants are normally very helpful. See my article on How to order whole food, plant based food in a restaurant for more top tips. This used to be a huge problem for me but over the past five years in particular it has become significantly easier. I regularly eat out and as long as you know how to order you’ll eat nourishing, tasty and filling foods.
15. It would be too expensive
Eating a whole food plant based diet is amazingly cheap. You can make a dinner for four for £4. See my article How to cook a meal for four for under £4.
What I’d Ask You To Do Now Is…
Up above, I told you the about the most Popular Perceived Obstacles to Adopting A Plant Based Diet and why these perceptions are flawed.
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