Nutrition
Ethical Eating: 7 Tips for Creating Cruelty-Free & Eco-Friendly Meals
Being an ethical eater is an excellent idea for the planet, the animals, and your health. If you’re looking for inspiration and tips on how to make delicious veggie and vegan delights, check out these seven ideas for creating cruelty-free and eco-friendly meals.
1. Set Yourself Up for Success
You will need a good selection of kitchen gadgets and cookware to make a healthy (and tasty) variety of plant-based dishes. It’s not about having the most expensive or complex equipment but about ensuring you’re equipped with eco-friendly pots and pans from the best induction cookware brands. You’ll also need a good-quality blender, some sturdy cutlery, and attractive crockery on which to display your culinary creations.
2. Eat Out
One of the best ways to make better vegan meals is by filling your mind with inspiration. Online forums and recipe sites can be a great help, but restaurants, street food vendors, and bakeries are ideal places to find inspiration as you get to taste new flavors before bringing them into your kitchen. If you love something, you can recreate it at home.
3. Elevate Your Seasonings
Seasonings and dressings offer an easy way to jazz up plant-based foods. The basic ones – salt, pepper, garlic, basil – are always good. However, you can add some extra yumminess with products like nutritional yeast or delicious spice mixes like Ras El Hanout, Baharat or Berbere, and Togarashi.
4. Try Making Your Own Vegan Meat & Cheese
The cost of living continues to rise across the world. Thankfully, making your own vegan meats and cheeses can save you money and add flavor to your veggie food. For example, seitan is a delicious, meaty food made from vital wheat gluten that you can season and cook to taste like bacon, beef, chicken – whatever you want. It’s incredibly satisfying and offers a great way to enhance your eco-friendly and cruelty-free foods.
5. Make It Easy
While it’s helpful to make good use of your time, if you get too obsessed with optimization, you can fall into the time anxiety trap. Finding free time for personal pursuits is something most people struggle with as we work more to cover the rising cost of living. For that reason, making vegan foods should never be a drain. You just won’t be able to keep doing it if you feel it takes too much time.
Master the one-pot meals, batch cooking, and quick and delicious 5-minute dishes – they will enable you to enjoy healthy, cruelty-free cuisine without spending all your free time on meal prep.
6. Make Vegan Friends
About 2% of the American population is vegan, with many more who follow plant-based or flexitarian diets. One of the best ways to discover yummy vegan meals is to connect with these people! Whether you find them in person or online, you’ll find most ethical eaters are more than happy to share their tips for cooking up a plant-fueled storm.
7. Make It Sexy
There is a place for falafel, fries, dry salad, bean burgers, and other vegan basics. But these days, you don’t have to make healthy eating boring. Instead, you can create sexy, rich, and deeply indulgent vegan food.
Vegan cheeses, creams, haggis, sausage, and meringues are just some exciting foods you can create. A few health evangelists will say that vegan processed food is unhealthy, but in reality, if you use it to get used to being veggie, or you enjoy it because you’re vegan for the animals and not solely for your health, where’s the issue?
Ready to cook up a plant-based storm? Don’t forget to invite us over for brunch!
