We are 3/4 of the way complete. We’ll be making a big step this week, adding in vegan lunches on top of eating vegan for breakfast and all of our snacks. If you work outside the home, lunches will take a bit more planning, at least in the beginning. It can be so tempting to fall back into old habits when you can’t get away for lunch. Or if you packed your lunch, but left it on the counter on the way out the door. Take a few moments to set up a backup plan. What restaurants near you serve vegan options? A failure to plan is a plan to fail. Fast food may not be the best or healthiest meal to eat, but it will do in a pinch. One of the goals of this challenge is to step you into a plant based diet as simply and easily as possible. Sometimes, that may mean fast food.
A few things to look out for as it pertains to eating out for lunches. Often many fried foods can be fried in the same grease as meat items. Example: a restaurant’s french fries maybe vegan, but they cooked the same fryer that is used to cook their chicken nuggets. This would make them not vegan. They would need to be cooked in separate fryer that was not used to fry meat to be qualified as vegan. This is also why the vegan burger (with no cheese or mayo) from Burger King is catching so much flack. Unless specifically asked, some restaurants are cooking their meatless patties on the same grill, without cleaning or in a separated space as the beef version. You may say no big deal, for many vegans it is. They do not want their meatless patty cooked in the spot that was just vacated by a beef patty, thus eating meat fat, juices or bits.
Read labels! You maybe tired of this but until you build up a good personal knowledge base, read every label. I once assumed salad dressing was safe, at the last minute I turned over the package. Surprise, surprise, that salad dressing contained bacon fat! Take it from me read the label. Let just get this out here now…McDonalds french fries are not vegan. At one time they used beef fat to flavor their fries, they have since moved to beef flavoring, however that flavoring is dairy based.
Here’s a list of a few things you can grab quickly, so you are not caught without options.
Hi I’m Chef Ria, I’m delighted to have you here. I am on a journey to eat more whole foods and less processed crap. Cooking does not have to be complicated, expensive or take a lot of time. I hope to encourage you to join me in the kitchen.
