Nutritious choices made simple®
For the typical omnivore, switching to a vegan diet which excludes meat, fish, poultry, eggs, and dairy is a drastic lifestyle change. Without a foundational understanding of nutrition and key considerations for vegan eating, it’s easy to feel like your whole life just turned upside down. I’ve pulled together five common nutritional pitfalls for new vegans along with strategies to address them here.
At Guiding Stars, we often talk about how the foods we eat impact our health. But what about our diet’s impact on the environment? The science is clear that plant-based diets are more environmentally sustainable than diets laden with animal products, but is that connection understood and valued by consumers enough to eat less meat?
Several of the members of our team here at Guiding Stars, Joyce, Anissa, Karen, and Hilary, have either been vegan for years or are in the process of transitioning to a vegan diet. We’ve talked together about some of the challenges of the process, as well as tips and tricks for working through them and some of our favorite resources for learning vegan cooking.
Plant-based diets are a flexible way of eating that can be tailored to your individual preferences and lifestyle. It celebrates and emphasizes plant-based foods, but it isn’t limited to them. Here are my top 3 tips to pay attention to when starting to eat in a more plant-forward style.
Spiralized noodles have become something of an internal conundrum for us at Guiding Stars. The whole craze started with zoodles, which are, of course, zucchini noodles, but you can spiralize so many things! And it would make no sense to call all of them zoodles, right? Tell someone they need to make zoodles, but out of sweet potatoes, and the conversation goes immediately downhill. Who can make sense of that? It’s only moderately more helpful to tell someone to make spoodles, of course, because the term hasn’t been standardized through use. We, in a spirit of helpfulness, propose the following A-Z guide to help people navigate the nutritious delights available from eating oodles of voodles and froodles.
March is National Nutrition Month—a time to refocus our attention and energies on good eating habits, regular exercise and the myriad ways that food and nutrition impact our health and overall wellbeing. Created by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (the world’s largest organization of nutrition professionals), National Nutrition Month (NNM) has taken place every March since 1980. Around the U.S. you may see more nutrition coverage in the media and notice NNM activities taking place at your workplace, local hospitals, schools, or grocery stores.
I eagerly volunteered to tackle this important topic. I love football and the big game is also a significant food event! An estimated 103 million people watched last year. Some tune in to see the game, others care more about the half-time performance and commercials. I think we can all agree, though, that the food served is equally important.
Instead of planning every weeknight meal, it works well for my family to grocery shop for three dinners and make them when we have the time. We also keep other key ingredients stocked, which allow us to quickly put together a balanced meal on busy nights. Here is an example from Cooking Light: