Vegan Family Kitchen

Plant-based in public health: An interview with Charlyn Black, Professor, UBC School of Population and Public Health

Charlyn Black trained as a family doctor more than forty years ago, but most of her career has been as a scholar dedicated to understanding the social determinants of health for over three decades. She is now a Professor at the UBC School of Population and Public Health, and an enthusiastic advocate for the power of predominantly plant-based diets for prevention and vitality. I am grateful that she is also a Vegan Meal Plan subscribers, using them in her own way as she'll explain in the interview.

In this conversation, we talk about:

• Charlyn's journey from teaching yoga at age 16 to family medicine and finally a public health professorship,
• Her transition to vegetarian in the 80s and what it finally took to make her go toward a whole food plant-based diet,
• The intersections between her personal and professional journeys,
• Initiatives that give her hope when it comes to the use of plant-based diet to improve individual and public health,
• How she practices batch cooking,
• And the advice she gives to people who might be thinking about plant-based diets but fearing that it's not for them.

Thank you Charlyn for this inspiring conversation, I admire your vitality and enthusiasm! I look forward to cooking with you again soon.

The episode is also available on YouTube.

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Would you like to give batch cooking a try? Download my Planned & Plant-based 5-day dinner plan to give Brigitte's "building blocks" approach a try: https://veganfamilykitchen.com/planned-plant-based/ 

 

Getting started with raw vegan food: An interview with Crystal Bonnet, raw chef and author of The Art of Raw Desserts

Today on the Vegan Family Kitchen Podcast I meet with Crystal Bonnet, raw vegan chef and author of the just-published beautiful book The Art of Raw Desserts. 

Crystal is a graduate of the Matthew Kenney Culinary Academy and of the Pure Joy Academy. She develops unique and delicious all-vegan raw recipes and now teaches everything she knows to home cooks and professionals chefs alike. You can find her courses on her website https://crystaldawnculinary.com and connect with her on Instagram.

In this interview, Crystal shares what got her started on her vegan and raw journey, describes her lifestyle today, and shares her best tips for beginners to get started in adding a bit more raw food into their diet. 

 

Practicing mindfulness to tame food addiction: A conversation with Karen Steiner

How can the principles of mindfulness and compassion support a transition away from overeating and food addiction? I had the pleasure of exploring this topic with Karen Steiner in conversation for the Vegan Family Kitchen Podcast.

 

Karen Steiner is a Weight Loss Coach, Food Activist and Meditation Teacher. Professionally, she has Master’s degree in Counseling and Educational Psychology, has trained as a Life Coach through The Co-Active Training Institute and the eCornell Certificate in Plant-Based Nutrition from the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies.

 

After nearly 40 years of contemplative practice and study with teachers Buddhist, Christian, and Jewish she finally learned how to take her mindfulness practice off the cushion and into the kitchen. Through mindful eating Karen discovered that dairy was playing havoc with her body and that she was seriously addicted to a number of foods, including cheese. Giving up dairy and becoming fully vegan was a major game changer. Food cravings disappeared, weight came off and a life-long depression lifted.

 

In this conversation, Karen tells me about:

• The start of her vegetarian journey in 1984 with Diet for a Small Planet
• The distinction between casual overeating and food addiction
• Why moderation isn't useful for everyone and why she has to keep her home "clean"
• What makes her so angry about the food industry
• How a trip to New Zealand served as an epiphany that led her to make big changes
• How she decided to quit cheese and the successes and struggles that ensued
• Her new way of eating, which includes a lot of vegetables
• The role for patience when it comes to transforming one's habits

To connect with Karen, visit her website and download her free e-book Six Strategies for Permanent Weight Loss. She will run her program Breaking the Food Seduction One Mindful Bite at a Time in December and early in the New Year. Visit Karen's YouTube channel and read more about her journey in Forks Over Knives magazine.

 

New book: Flow in the Kitchen available for pre-order

My first book Flow in the Kitchen: Practices for Healthy Stress-Free Vegan Cooking is available for pre-order in ebook format from Amazon (compatible with all mobile devices)! (Paperback and Kobo coming soon.) It's not a cookbook! Instead of feeding you recipes, I offer you the seeds you can plant to grow your own versions of standard vegan dishes based on your preferences, ingredients you have at hand, and seasonal produce. Listen on to find out what's in the book and head over to Amazon.com to order. (Also available on Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, and everywhere in Amazonland.) 

Send your comments and invitation to chat about Flow in the Kitchen for your podcast, blog, or magazine, email me at hello@veganfamilykitchen.com.

Cooking with your Strengths: An Interview with Gemma McFall, Strengths Coach and Vegan Meal Plan subscriber

Do you hate cooking? You are not alone. My guest today, Gemma McFall, used to feel just like you, but then she found a way to leverage her strengths to improve her kitchen reality. Listen on to find out what she did.

Gemma McFall is a Gallup Certified Strengths Coach and also a Vegan Meal Plan subscriber. Her work is to help women reduce stress and heal chronic pain so they can get back to enjoying life. After struggling for years with back pain herself and trying everything, she discovered that she had neuroplastic pain, which meant that her pain could be cured. As she healed, she decided to share her discovery with others. You will love learning about her experience feeding her family of four as expatriates in various countries, following her process healing from chronic pain, and finding out more about how you too can leverage your strengths to find more joy in cooking. Let's chat! 

You can connect with Gemma via her web site: https://gemmamcfall.com

To see if the Vegan Meal Plans might be the right tool for you, check out my Planned & Plant-based 5-day healthy vegan meal plan: https://veganfamilykitchen.com/planned or download one of my free templates.

Things I do every week for happier weeknight meals

Cooking really good food for myself and my loved ones isn't a sprint. It's an ultra-endurance event. It has to be attended at least 3 times per day (more like 6 when counting snacks for growing and/or active people). It's not like I can deal it once for the year or a few months and be satisfied. It's one of those cyclical things that repeats every day. And having some weekly routines for it also helps a great deal. Here are my top 5. 

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Do you need a bit of help with meal planning? Download one of my free templates or subscribe to the Vegan Meal Plans. It's like a 1-year cooking course that is directly useful to your daily life! With access to the teacher by text message anytime, too.

If you are inspired to learn more about Flow in the Kitchen, consider pre-ordering my upcoming book.

From Nepal to the Midwest and back: Babita Shresta, author of Plant-based Himalaya

Babita Shresta thought she had landed on another planet when she first visited a grocery store in Minnesota. Coming from rural Nepal, where as a child she learned to cook fresh vegetables and simmer lentils alongside her grandfather, she had never seen packaged processed food. Pre-cooked tortillas and roti sold in plastic bags blew her mind. She could not have imagined that frozen meat would one day become part of her diet, yet it did. As a busy college student, she was too busy to think it all through. After some time, she realized that those convenience foods were neither good for her health nor for the planet, and she committed to sharing her deep love of traditional plant-based Nepalese cooking with the world.

Join me in listening to Babita tell the story of her food upbringing and of how travel transformed her perspective, leading her to become a advocate for the kind of food that's loving our bodies and the planet. 

I encourage you to order her book Plant-based Himalaya: Vegan Recipes from Nepal from your local bookstore. 

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Would you benefit from a bit of guidance and structure to adopt or sustain a healthy plant-based lifestyle? Download my free 5-day Planned & Plant-based meal plan or be in touch with me anytime at hello@veganfamilykitchen.com.

Soy and cancer: should we worry? Here’s what the recent literature says.

This question has been settled scientifically for a number of years but it still keeps on coming up, so I thought I would review the recent scientific evidence about the link (or rather, the lack of link) between soy and cancer risk for your convenience. Spoiler: soy certainly does not cause cancer and in fact may be preventive. 

You will find the reference and links to the publications discussed herein on my web site here.

I make sure to include tofu or some other soy food once per week in my Vegan Meal Plans. If you'd like to experience the peace of mind of not having to decide what's for dinner for a week (yet knowing that you're going to cook and eat simple yet delicious and nutritious meals), you are welcome to get my plant-based meal planning starter kit here: Planned & Plant-based.

Thanks for listening and keep on cooking!

Can fertility improve with a plant-based diet? Exploring Dr. Jenny Lee’s journey toward better reproductive health

Can fertility improve with a plant-based diet? Research certainly seems to be on the side of a reduction in meat intake having a positive effect, while health plant-based diets focused on whole foods have the potential to improve many of the factors that influence fertility. To talk about it, I invited Dr. Jenny Lee on the podcast. 

Dr. Jenny Lee is a board-certified physician in both Internal Medicine and Lifestyle Medicine, in addition to serving as a wellness coach. Through her work as a physician, she has seen many people developing and suffering from chronic disease caused by lifestyle. This is why she was drawn to lifestyle medicine where the focus is on nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress management, and relationships to prevent or reverse chronic disease. She also loves coaching, as it is more of a partnership between two people, where she works together with her clients toward their goals. Her passion is helping women with fertility issues. Through her own fertility struggles years ago, she learned the importance of lifestyle and diet. Against the odds, she became pregnant naturally twice with her miracle babies, who are now 3 and 1 year old.

In this episode she shares:

• her professional and personal journey as an independent perfectionist who learned to accept help,
• how she transitioned her diet to plant-based, removed toxic products from her routines, and improved her life and health,
• her struggles with fertility treatments and how she hit "pause" on that stressful process,
• her passion for supporting women through their own fertility journeys,
• what she recommends her clients do first when they want to improve their lifestyle and fertility.

You can connect with her on her web site and on Instagram. 

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If you like the idea of eating more plants (and fewer animal products), but feel overwhelmed by the options or just tired of deciding what's for dinner, I can help. Try out my one-week free sample Vegan Meal Plan and see how much peace of mind can arise from knowing you're organized to eat tasty, healthy plant-based dinners: https://veganfamilykitchen.com/planned-plant-based/. Keep on cooking! 

Iron for vegans: my views as a meal planner, woman, and mother

Iron is a common concern of well-meaning friends and relatives, upon learning that a loved one is going vegan or committing to eating more plants (and fewer animals). Since most people still think of meat as the source of the most abundant and easiest to absorb iron, isn’t forgoing animal products putting you at risk for iron deficiency? Unfortunately, many medical professionals contribute to spreading this outdated belief, despite ample scientific evidence to the contrary.

As someone who decides what’s for dinner for other people, I see it as my responsibility to stay informed on the topic of iron for vegans, and share my views and sources of information. Spoiler alert: it’s not a big deal for most people, which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be paying attention to this critical mineral when planning our meals.

To access the resources discussed in this podcast episode, visit the full blog post: https://veganfamilykitchen.com/iron-for-vegans/

To experience the Vegan Meal Plans for one week, try going Planned & Plant-based: https://veganfamilykitchen.com/planned-plant-based/