BDO-Ellis Dean:
This show is called vegan dish, and it’s really about how you can incorporate more fruits and vegetables in your diet. What does it mean to be vegan?
Dr. Monique May:
Vegan is a particular type of diet or particular type of lifestyle. It can, it can encompass more than just your diet, but basically what it means is that you only eat plant based foods or another way to think of it is you don’t eat anything that had a mother is how some people describe it. So your, your protein, your carbohydrates, all of your nutrient nutrition, all of that comes from from the ground. So no, that means not even eggs, not even dairy, not even honey, because that’s made by B. So that type of diet will be more vegetarian, but vegan is strictly plant-based.
BDO-Ellis Dean:
Do I start with salads? Sherry’s asking what’s the best way to gradually adopt a vegan lifestyle.
Dr. Monique May: Dr. Monique May: For me, it was, I make these delicious pancakes. I make this sweet potato poundcake. And, um, this is limit pound cake, but you know, it’s got butter and eggs and white sugar and everything. And one day, and I have it, am I my physician in the kitchen line. Um, and I said, you know, I really want to come up with something that I would feel comfortable as a physician selling to people. Right. I don’t feel comfortable with telling you a full pound cake made with all these bad things we just talked about. So I really, I just got in my kitchen, which I call my lab and I tweaked it. And I was like, well, what’s a good egg substitute. What’s a good butter substitute. What’s a good, you know, milk cow’s milk substitute. And it really was a lot of trial and error. And then that just kind of got me curious. It just said, well, if I did this, what happens if I do that? And it just was, it really just kind of snowballed on itself. And in fact, I’ve written a whole blog series about it. If you guys want to, you know, get a headstart and check my check out my webpage or my, my, um, my website, my blog site on my web page, Dr. Monique maid.com. I have my ABCs of, of vegan, of being vegan dish. And I talk about each letter is a, is a food that I used in my journey to substitute. So like a is for avocados and beans for beans.
BDO-Ellis Dean:
How can you reverse prediabetes and high cholesterol with a plant-based diet??
Dr. Monique May:
I’m a physician in the kitchen on all social media, and I talk about eat your colors, eat the rainbow. There’s I know there’s a candy slogan that says something about the Raven. We not talking about that. We’re talking about, you know, eat the rainbow. And by that, I mean, when you go into the produce aisle of your grocery store and just look at all those colors, like, we tend to kind of get in a rut. Like we know we like oncology greens and our corn and our, you know, tomatoes or what have you, but there’s so many other vegetables and those bright colors, those beautiful oranges and yellows and purples and reds, those are phytonutrients.
Those are plant chemicals that are, that give you the benefits that we’re talking about. They lower cholesterol, they help prevent heart disease. They help prevent cancer, all kinds of things. So if you just think of it that way by really putting a rainbow on your plate and making sure you have like lots of different, textures and varieties that you can experiment and try then. Yeah. That’s over half the battle right there. Try things different ways. I tell people, maybe you’re not as adventurous and that’s fine. Hey, look baby steps.
BDO-Ellis Dean:
I know that’s always the first question. I mean, all these vegetables, protein comes from meat, right? So how do they get more protein if they’re eating a more vegan?
Dr. Monique May:
That’s an excellent question. As an example, the largest animals on this planet are not meat eaters. Let me say that again, your elephants, your bison, your, I mean these ginormous animals and they eat what? grass. Well, we’re fortunate that we have more to eat than just grass. So there’s a lot of plant protein sources. I mentioned Tempeh is made from soy. They cook the fermented soybeans versus tofu.. Like they do cheese almost. It’s a different process. So with tempeh you get the whole soybean, those things are packed with protein. You can get anywhere from about 14 to 20 or so grams of protein per serving. You’ve got mushrooms. They are great. So at first of all there definitely are ways to get protein. Vegetables themselves often have good amounts of proteins. When you add it all up, you more than likely are getting an adequate amount, from things like your milks as well. Like your plant milks, like soy and almond milk or goods. Good sources as well. Seeds, hemp seeds, chia seeds, flaxseeds, definitely. Great sources of protein.
Dr. May will return weekly with information on being a “flexitarian” or moving from your existing food intake to a more plant based source of energy.
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