You may or may not be ready to go meatless, but you probably know that adding more fruit and stuff to your meals is good for your palate and good for your health. My goal is to collect the most helpful information I can find and organize it for easy reference. This page features the most recent posts. The tabs at the top of every page are to help find specific posts. The Glossary links to facts about plant foods, and the Recipe tab will direct you to specific recipes. In the Resources you will find facts and opinions for all of us who are seeking better health by making better food choices.
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Category: RESOURCES
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welcome
Posted at 1:05 pm
Jul 24th -
Habits, not Rules
Posted at 12:30 pm
Feb 7th
Habits make the big difference. No need to obsess over an occasional transgression or indulgence! Plant-Based is principles and guidelines, not rules and regulations. It is not a competition.
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Guide to WFPB and other letter groups
Posted at 12:30 pm
Nov 11th
BTW ICYMI, SAD is a questionable WOE. ISO a better WOE? FOK or WFPBSOS may be right for you.
Newcomers to plant-based chats sometimes feel lost and bewildered by acronyms and abbreviations for often-repeated short (and not-so-short) phrases. This tendency started long before the digital age with things like NATO, UNESCO, NASA, NAFTA, POTUS, FLOTUS, and SCOTUS. With internet chat came the emoticons and LOL, BRB, and other shortcuts. This glossary focuses on vegan / vegetarian / plant-based phrases, but I’ve included a few more that are useful. Just yesterday, after feeling like a clueless outsider for a few hours, I learned that F in a comment means Following, which puts the commenter in the loop for notifications. (I also learned that there is a better alternative to avoid clogging posts with too many comments. I’ll let someone else explain that.)
Here is a mini-glossary (a work in progress). Please feel free to comment on this page or send a note through the Contact page if there is something you want to ask about or contribute. You can search for all kinds of abbreviations at https://www.abbreviations.com/
VEGAN / VEGETARIAN
- FOK / Forks Over Knives (a book, a movie, a WOE, a website, a movement)
- GFO / gluten-free option
- HCLF / high carb low fat
- MM / meatless Monday
- SAD / standard American diet
- WFPB / whole food plant-based
- WFPBNO / whole food plant-based no oil
- WFPBSOS / whole food plant-based salt-free, oil-free, sugar-free
- WOE / way of eating
- NO / no oil
- SOS / salt-free, oil-free, sugar-free
GENERAL
- BTW / by the way
- FYI / for your information
- ICYMI / in case you missed it
- ISO / in search of
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Watermelon!
Posted at 12:53 pm
Sep 23rd
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It’s Your Choice
Posted at 11:08 am
Aug 27th
Animal products are bad for everyone’s health, but eliminating them flies in the face of thousands of years of habit, tradition, and even religion. It takes courage, patience, and tolerance to live a meat-free life in a meat-driven world. I try to not make a big deal of it. Good manners require me to respect others’ decisions about what to eat and what to serve, but they also require others to respect my choices when I say, “No, thank you.” I don’t define myself by a label. I am not A Vegan or A Vegetarian or A WFPB. I am a human being who most of the time chooses to eat plants and nothing else.
Whether you follow someone’s plan or make it up as you go, you will benefit from becoming conscious of everything you take into your body. Ask yourself what it is doing for you and what it is doing to you. Acknowledge your reason for taking it in, whether you eat it as food, drink it as beverage, or swallow, inject, snort or smoke it as therapeutic or recreational drug.
Fruit and Stuff is mostly about improving health through food choices, and this blog has the Do-It-Yourself Plant-Baser in mind. My hope is that everyone will switch to plant-based and make it their way of eating for as long as they live. In addition to personal health, there are moral, spiritual, and environmental reasons to do that.
If you are following a prescribed plant-based diet for a specific health outcome, by all means you should comply with the requirements of that diet and the recommendations of your health care provider, but long-term success is more likely if you assume responsibility for your health and your choices. You may choose to adhere strictly to a prescribed eating plan, but that is YOUR choice, and YOU, not the experts who designed the plan, must make decisions every day about what you eat, what you think, and how you live. You alone will enjoy or suffer the consequences of the plan you choose.
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7 Steps to Plant-Based Living
Posted at 1:31 pm
Aug 9th1. Accept responsibility for your health and your choices. Advice from others, including health professionals, is helpful, but you have the final say about what you eat and how you live.
2. Eliminate animal products from meal plans. Do what works for you, and take as much time as you need.
3. Be conscious of EVERYTHING you take into your body–what it is doing FOR you and TO you and WHY you are taking it in. If you eat it as food, drink it as beverage, swallow, inject, snort or smoke it as therapeutic or recreational drug, be conscious of what you are doing.
4. Start with what you know. Meat-based meals and fast food culture make us settle for potatoes as just about the only vegetable, but most of us are familiar with many edible plants. Some are delicious with no more preparation than washing. You can try new foods as you’re ready, but don’t get overwhelmed by making too many changes or trying to understand too many “requirements.”
5. Eat a variety of foods. Eliminating animal products clears the way for health-building foods to do what they do best, but you have to provide those foods.
6. Keep learning. The more you know about nutrition the more you will be able to choose foods that build and maintain good health. Don’t settle for distorted studies as reported on social media. This Resources link will lead you to some reliable videos, books, studies and articles.
7. Have fun! If for you that means keeping it simple, then keep it simple. If it means learning about new and exotic ingredients or making gourmet plant-based meals, go for it!
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