Functional Plant Based Nutrition

If you have read anything I have written on plant based eating then you know I don’t think a strict vegan diet is sustainable, not if you want to truly be at your healthiest. But there is a way to thrive and limit your impact on animal life.

I too feel bad about eating animals. I don’t think it is ‘wrong’, I just think it is an unfortunate relationship between most living things on this planet that survival often necessitates the transfer of energy through killing and eating each other. It seems like we are the only species that have the capacity to ponder this relationship and those of us who can’t seem to justify it seek out ways to limit it or manage the brutality. This seems honourable and it is definitely a way to mitigate bad feelings. But our feelings are not real or at least they do not represent objective truth. I don’t want to make this a philosophy piece, I just want to outline that our feelings are heavily influenced by our conditioning and our current environment and they seldom reflect truth or logic. If you lived in a culture that both worshiped and sacrificed animals, then eating them might not feel bad, in fact it might feel like one of the ways we get closer to nature. To assume that you would feel bad about it in that environment the same way you feel bad about it now is to dismiss everything you have learned in your current life – all the talk of factory farming, the moral superiority of vegan lifestyle, the identity politics of diets and the stories of how sad it is we eat animals because they deserve to live peacefully. How you feel about all of these things is learned reactions and these reactions are often built on feelings. They are not shared by our planet brethren in the animal kingdom and they have not been shared by the vast majority of humans that have walked this earth These feelings are new and they do not represent how humans have survived and thrived for millenia.

All that said, I still get it. Our current reality is that the majority of animals killed for food are raised and sacrificed in a horrific manner. We have done better and we can do better now. I would gladly eat less meat if it meant we obliterated all mass farming and returned to a world where we were not so far removed from our food. If you raise an animal or hunt the animal out of necessity rather than for abundance, then the relationship is bound to change. Gratitude will override feelings of cruelty.

My version of eating is, to me, plant based – as in it accounts for the base of my nutrition. The majority of my plate, if not all of it, is plant foods. But I do have clean or mostly clean animal sourced foods most days to make sure I am getting all of the fundamental building blocks of health. I recently wrote an article outlining some of the compounds missing from a strict vegan diet, you can read it here. It is an important read, especially if you want to have children and think it is a good idea to raise them on a vegan diet. I would really suggest otherwise. It is crucial for brain, eye, immune and nervous system development that you include animal sourced foods. It is not just that they hold certain compounds that plant sourced do not, it is that the form of the compound is more bioavailable – it is absorbed better by our digestive systems. I have seen too many people do a half assed attempt at a vegan diet and begin to fall apart and they have all been adults. It is very important that we don’t mistakenly cut our children’s development short because we have a weird identity crisis with our place in nature.

You can do very well by simply adding fish to your diet. This will add essential fatty acids, heme iron, vitamin A, vitamin B12 and vitamin D. All of which are often deficient in strict vegan diets. If you then add a bit of sugar free, high fat greek yogurt, goat yogurt or kefir you will get some much needed, bioavailable calcium along with some probiotics which will help regulate your digestive system.

If you fill your plates with veggies, nuts, seeds, fruits and legumes throughout your day you will have an abundance of vitamins, minerals, prebiotics and phytonutrients. This is such a great base of nutrition to thrive on, there is no doubt in that. To add fish and yogurt each day is not a huge sacrifice of ideology in order to thrive and be able to continue the message of plant based eating with good conscious and good health. Because clean fish is a bit hard to come by, it may be prudent to try and find small farm free run poultry. Low mercury seafood like shellfish, trout, haddock and sardines are good options. Having wild caught Pacific salmon a couple days a week is also safe.

Our brains still develop into our late 20s. Because of this I rarely suggest trying a vegan diet until later on in life and even then I usually try and mitigate the inevitable deficiencies with limited animal sources and/or supplementation.

For people in their 30s and over who are willing to try a Plant Based but Omnivorous Diet, this is what a day might look like.

Breakfast – Nutty yogurt

• 1 cup Sugar free high fat greek yogurt
• 2tsp hemp hearts
• 3 tsp pumpkin seeds
• 10 almonds
• light sprinkle of granola with dark chocolate
• handful of blueberries
• half handful of blackberries
• 1 scoop of mixed source plant protein (optional)
• half tsp cacao powder (optional)
• this breakfast is loaded with healthy fats, complete protein profile, antioxidants, fibre, phytonutrients – a prefect way to start the day and rev up your metabolism

Lunch – Bean Salad & Nut Toast

• 1 cup of black beans
• 1 cup of kidney beans
• half of a cucumber
• 3/4 red pepper
• 3/4 yellow pepper
• 3/4 jar of sliced black olives
• 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• squeeze half a lemon
• 1 piece of low ingredient bread (the kind you need to freeze or it goes bad in a few days) with choice of nut butter on it.

Dinner – Crack Stew (it’s really good) – vegan or deer meat version & side salad

• 1 medium sweet potato
• 1 cup of beans (of choice – I use black)
• 2 handfuls of spinach or kale
• 1 small onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 cup of small pasta or 1/2 cup of wild rice
• 3 carrots
• 3 celery stalks
• 1 lb. deer meat cubes (optional)
• 5 tbsp active yeast
• bay leaf
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 small jalapeno

This is an example of 2 meals that are either vegan, vegan optional or as I would call it – plant based, nutrient rich omnivore options. The breakfast is vegetarian but purposefully selected to include good fats, calcium and probiotics. The Deer meat option gets you your b12 and heme iron and elevates your protein profile. It is also usually much cleaner than beef or chicken.

[[ These meals come from a number of our adaptable recipes we use with out clients in our nutritional programs. They differ greatly in portion sizes and come with specific ingredients to enhance certain nutrient profiles but we offer many options that suit whatever food choices make the most sense to you ]].

The vast majority of ingredients in the meals listed above are plant sourced. If you do care for the life of all animals and the environment then you need to avoid foods that are mono-cropped and foods shipped from non local areas. Even relatively small farms end up killing thousands of mice, voles and other rodents. Mono-cropping transforms otherwise life-filled ecosystems and drains them of their complexity just to grow one crop. This is booming business, and some of it is done so to account for the also growing vegan movement.

t’s all so much more complex than the decision you make at the supermarket. But If you come at it with as much knowledge as you can with regards to what actually gives you optimal health, you often find options that are in harmony with nature. To my best knowledge, it is local, small farm or urban farm, plant based but animal source included omnivore eating.

It’s an unfortunate truth that there is no such thing as a meal that is free of death. If you are lucky you may have an option like we have here in Montreal in Lufa Farms – an urban grow site that uses already existing city space to grow foods that would normally not be found locally or year round. It is an easier choice, morally speaking but a harder one financially.

I understand the dillema in choosing to eat animals and to prioritize the lives of some animals over others. But we would prioritize the lives of certain humans over others given the right scenario….I mean, not to eat them…you know what I mean. Think about what kinds of food make you healthiest, what kinds of food allowed humans to thrive all over the planet for thousands of years, remember that we are all part of a cycle of energy transfer and that partaking in that transfer is meaningful, or at least it used to be. Visit a small farm and talk to the farmers about the care they rake in making sure the animals are healthy and happy. It might not change your mind completely but it might ease it in allowing for some small compromises. If not for you, I urge you to do it for your children who do need a varied diet to develop without and hindrances.

If you need any help trying to adapt a diet for yourself or your family, feel free to contact us for our nutrition services. In the meantime, remember these general rules

• half your plate should be veggies (but you can add more)
• 1/4 should be legumes or other complex carbohydrates –
• 1/4 should be a clean sourced sea food or animal product but can occasionally be replaced with more legumes or meat alternatives.
• look for low glycemic carbs when trying to fill the gap, heres a hint, stay away from the white carbs as much as you can.
• try and eat 5 colours a day – the above listed meals cover blue, green, yellow, orange and red.

Much love,

Joey