Plant Based Diet @ PSB

Pure.Simple.Bliss. began as a blog I created with hopes to inspire, educate and motivate friends, family and strangers to think about what they are eating. In 2010 I started my cooking adventure and experimentation based on a vegan diet. I know what you are thinking… VEGAN ahhhh! There are a lot of connotations attached to the word Vegan, both negative and positive. If you think about it, the word diet has many negative connotations attached to it as well. In actuality, the definition of the word diet is “food and drink regularly provided or consumed – habitual nourishment.”

My goal is to provide some insight into the food that we use as nourishment for our bodies. If I can come up with some fun and easy recipes that are plant based maybe we can all enjoy Meatless Monday together! I hope to inspire you to put a little more thought into the food you consume daily.

I know that cooking takes time, and time is one of the most sacred and least available things that we have today. There are a million excuses that you can come up with that justify rushing through the drive thru for a quick fix rather than prepping a simple 30-minute meal. If I can motivate you to do one thing my goal is to get you to think before you bite. What we put in our bodies not only gives us fuel and nutrition but it also affects our moods, hormones and potential risk of illness in the future. Yes, cooking, thinking and planning your meals and snacks takes time. However, you will start to feel such a great change that it will make all the effort worth it!

Here are some fun facts to help motivate and stimulate thinking about what you are eating and how that not only impacts you, but also the environment, health care and the future population of the planet.

–        From 1950 to the mid-1990s, over-weight increased from 25% to almost 55%. “The State of the World 2000 Report” (World Watch Institute) indicated that for the first time in history as many people are overweight as underfed – 1.2 billion each.¹

–            Childhood obesity has more than tripled in the past 30 years. The prevalence of obesity among children aged 6 to 11 years increased from 6.5% in 1980 to 19.6% in 2008. The prevalence of obesity among adolescents aged 12 to 19 years increased from 5.0% to 18.1%.^2,3

–        Cows, pigs, chickens and turkeys on factory farms generate billions of pounds of drug-infested feces per year. The feces often end up in nearby waterways killing millions of fish and initiating other dangerous effects. If you were to have one meat-free day per week that would have the same carbon dioxide savings as taking 8 million cars off U.S. roads, according to the Environmental Defense Fund.

–        “The best way to achieve a life-long healthy body weight is to lead a healthy lifestyle. Dump the dieter’s mentality of “thinness at all costs.” Thinness is a shallow goal based on fickle ideas of the fashion industry. With health goals you’ll not only end up with a better body weight, but more energy and reduced risk of chronic disease.” ⁴

¹ Davis, Brenda, RD, and Melina, Vesanto, MS, RD. Becoming Vegan. Tennessee: Book Publishing Company, 2000. 206.

² Ogden CL, Carroll MD, Curtin LR, Lamb MM, Flegal KM. Prevalence of high body mass index in US children and adolescents, 2007–2008. JAMA 2010;303(3):242–9.

³ National Center for Health Statistics. Health, United States, 2004 with Chartbook on Trends in the Health of Americans [pdf 3.8M]. Hyattsville, MD; 2004.

⁴ Davis, Brenda, RD, and Melina, Vesanto, MS, RD. Becoming Vegan. Tennessee: Book Publishing Company, 2000. 215.