Could you go vegan for the weekend?

This article was recently published in the Telegraph…  Lot sof people have complained that you can’t ‘go vegan’ for a weekend as it is a much more serious commitment than that.  I have to say I don’t really care if people go vegan for an hour, a week, on Mondays or forever – anything is a step in the right direction and should be encouraged and not disparaged!

What To Eat Now: a vegan diet

While the world celebrates World Vegan Month, our expert resident nutritionist Ian Marber turns vegan for the weekend

BY Ian Marber | 03 November 2014

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 Perhaps I was swayed by the words of film director James Cameron (of Titantic, Aliens and Avatar fame) who says that one can’t be an environmentalist if you aren’t a vegan. Or perhaps it was simply that I have become lazy about what I eat, favouring the same lean meat and poultry with vegetables most of the time, but in recognition of World Vegan Month I tried my hand at a vegan diet for the weekend. Now I realise that one weekend isn’t going to save the planet or do a lot for my health but I wanted to see what it was like, and what I could eat.

Aside from enjoying the food, following a vegan diet if only for 48 hours forced me to eat mindfully. As a beginner I think I would have found it hard to know what to eat without eating the same few foods again and again and so I sought the advice of author Tony Bishop-Weston, former Vegan Society chief turned author and vegan chef. His most recent work, The Vegan Cookbook can be found in bookshops and online.

Five reasons to become a vegan

1) Health – because veganism leads naturally to eating more fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds. By cutting out things with animal fat in, it makes it more difficult to eat badly.
2) The EPIC study was a vast piece of work that can’t easily be summed up. However, it confirmed that vegans were at least as healthy as the healthiest omnivores.
3) Veganism celebrates its 70th birthday this year and its founder, Donald Watson pointed out the irony of feeding our crops to animals for us to eat rather than eating the crops themselves.
4) The cost in terms of energy to maintain livestock – from electricity to water – isn’t sustainable for the planet in addition to the additional methane gas that livestock produce adding to potential global warming.
5) Traditionally vegans feel that it is morally wrong to exploit and kill animals for food when eating meat isn’t necessary.

Bishop-Weston suggests that an easy way to transition to a vegan diet is to take a practical approach, replacing meals here and there with increasing frequency. Here is the menu that we put together for my weekend:

Breakfast

Porridge or museli with non-dairy milk such as soy, rice, hemp, almond, oat, flax, hazelnut and coconut milk

Handful of berries

Chia/ flax/ hemp seeds

Smoothie or green drink, including algae and seaweed

Snack

Apple and a banana, green tea

Lunch

Falalafel salad wrap with hummus or,

Buck wheat noodles and vegetables with tofu and Miso soup

Snack

Toasted seeds or Brazil nuts in dark chocolate

Kale crisps (Pret have them now)

Water/tea

Dinner

Stir-fry with beansprouts, broccoli, shitake mushrooms, peppers, cashews, black beans, kale, carrots, butternut squash, red cabbage and mangetout

Dessert

Vegusto Swiss cheese with oatcake or

Booja Booja cashew nut chocolate ice cream