Western North Carolina blogger and author Aisha Adams has penned a new resource for the vegan and health arenas. Vegan Curious: Answers, Recipes, and Activities to Help You Jumpstart Your Vegan Lifestyle offers practical suggestions for those interested in transitioning to a vegan diet.
Adams says her book is a bit different from other books about veganism currently on the market. “When I became vegan, I didn’t need recipes, I needed an understanding of what veganism was and how it was going to affect my body,” says Adams. “I just think we are a product of misinformation that is continuously going out that focuses on status and consumerism instead of health and wellness.”
Thumbing through the workbook, readers will find multiple resources including a plate pyramid, a mindset change activity and a a “What Do Vegans Eat?” section that lists favorite plant-based food options. “For me, I think the difficult part was, I read a lot of books, I had a lot of information, so now I had this information, but [I wondered], ‘How do I apply it?’ So, how do I fix my plate? That first graphic [in the book] is like, this is how you can fix your plate every single time. It looks good, it tastes good and it’s good for you,” says Adams.
The book is also geared for those who are not quite ready to transition to a 100 percent vegan diet but are interested in making some healthy changes. “To me, becoming vegan isn’t even the most important thing. The most important thing is watching your sugar intake because sugar is really bad for you,” she says. “The molecular structure of sugar is really just horrible, and we overdose on it all the time. If you’re going to make changes to your diet, the best changes are to get rid of preservatives, sugars, artificial sweeteners and that sort of thing first, and then to move into less of a meat [-based] diet. ”
Adams stresses that staying true to oneself and being able to maintain a social life is key to a nutrition plan that works for the long haul — and is a piece of the puzzle that many who are considering making such changes tend to worry about. “This is such a food-conscious area that you don’t have to stop your lifestyle,” says Adams. “I live a very cool lifestyle, and I still get to be vegan at the same time. Know that you can get access to foods, you can go out with your friends, and it doesn’t have to be a hard lifestyle to live anywhere, but specifically in Asheville. You can be spoiled and have good food here.”
As someone who has personally enacted various dietary changes over the years due to health reasons, I found that Adam’s book provided something that is in short supply: a resource that extends beyond recipes to break down what, for many, can feel an insurmountable shift into feasible and easy-to-implement solutions that can be immediately applied. For those interested in veganism for ethical reasons, health reasons or both, Vegan Curious serves as an easy-to-digest jumping-off point.
Vegan Curious is for sale now at AishaAdams.com. The cost is $20.
Life is so much simpler when we don’t get hung up on food. Jesus said that there’s nothing that a person can eat that can defile him/her. Pretty good word to live by. Yeah it’s good to pay attention to what we eat because we live in an effed-up world with its poisons and GMO crap. But it’s not the poison, it’s the dose.