What you eat matters and every mouthful counts! Here are some tips to help you enjoy a healthy, happy, plant-powered life.
Appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthy and nutritionally adequate. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the lifecycle.
Specialist advice
For plant-friendly healthcare professionals, you can contact Doctors for Nutrition. The organisation offers to provide information on local practitioners who are supportive of plant-based nutrition for health, while working to develop their practitioner database!
A professional who is experienced with plant-rich eating will be able to devise a personalised health and eating plan that is best for your lifestyle and energy needs. (For a more general guide to living a healthy plant-based life, see our next tip below.)
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‘Daily dozen’ — the simple, wholesome checklist app
Enjoying varied and colourful plant-based meals, rich in fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans, legumes and grains is the single most powerful way you can be kind to your health, the planet — and the animals!
To help you understand and meet the daily meal targets for your best health, Dr Michael Greger M.D., a leading nutrition expert and the physician behind NutritionFacts.org, has spent years researching and creating more than a thousand evidence-based (and ‘bite-sized’) videos.
He’s whittled down a list of what he considers the most important foods to include in a healthy daily diet. Yes, greens are good for you, but how much should you try to eat each day? How about nuts? Fruit? Beans? Download the Daily Dozen app today and it’ll serve as your handy little pocket guide.
Some foods and food groups have special nutrients not found in abundance elsewhere. So as the list of foods I tried to fit into my daily diet grew, I decided to make a checklist.
Remember: It’s not all or nothing, and every healthy mouthful is a win! If you don’t manage to get your greens in one day, just try your best to tick more healthy boxes tomorrow.
There’s no need to be obsessive about the list — the Daily Dozen checklist is simply a tool to serve as your helpful reminder to try to eat a variety of the healthiest plant-based foods every day. You can even turn it into a ‘healthy’ competition and compete with your friends as to who can score the most nutrition category ticks per day.
Quite simply, the more you substitute plant foods for animal foods, the healthier you are likely to be.
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Share your journey and wisdom
Keen to encourage friends and family to join you on your plant-based journey of discovery? Why not order them a free copy of our Veg Starter Kit?
If you’re ready to get cooking right away, then you might like to browse our collection of 100+ scrumptious plant-based recipes at VegKit.com.
