Thinking about eating more of a meat-free diet, but don’t really know how? Emma Clifton’s been trying to do the exact same thing – here’s her approach to how to eat less meat, how she’s incorporating more plants and even some tips for eating out!
Capsule X BurgerFuel
In the past six months, two Netflix shows have fundamentally changed my life. Well, three, if you count One Day confirming why I, as a woman called Emma, was correct to learn how to never ride a bike. But romantic tragedies aside, two lifestyle series have swiftly changed how I cook, and how I eat.
The first was Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones, a four-part series that investigated the Blue Zones phenomenon, a discovery by American National Geographic Explorer and best-selling author Dan Buettner, about parts of the word where communities live well into their 80s and 90s. Messages like staying active, maintaining a social network, and having a purpose where the threads that connected these long, healthy lives. But the importance of diet was also a huge one – eating locally, eating seasonally and eating a more plant-based diet.
Then came the You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment, which honestly gave me pretty chilling The Biggest Loser flashbacks from the premise – was there ever a more cursed show than The Biggest Loser? – but actually was a far more nuanced look at plant-based versus meat-based diets, and how eating a more plant-based and less heavy on the meat diet affects not only your body but the planet.
And let’s be clear – I still eat meat. The more dogmatic a message is, the more I am inclined to ignore it, but both of these shows gently offered less-meat eating as a good option to prioritise a bit more in your life. There was no ‘meat is murder’ scare-mongering, but You Are What You Eat in particular did showcase the power of your consumer dollar and why a) only buying and supporting free-range produce is so important, because it helps support the farmers who run those kind of farms and b) why creating a bigger appetite for vegetarian products can only be a good thing.
As someone whose fall-back cooking option has been ‘chicken plus something’ for the past decade, it’s a kick up the butt I sorely needed to change my shopping, cooking and eating strategies. Luckily, it’s never been easier to make a change – here’s how to eat less meat:
Easy ways to eat less meat and more plants:
– Sign for a local vegetable-delivery service. Nothing like having locally grown vegetables turn up on your doorstep once a week to help you save a fortune at the supermarket and eat more seasonally, plus force you to learn how to cook a Brussel sprout (turns out, delicious??)
– Learn About Umami. As a millennial, it’s very hard for me not to make a Friends unagi joke but I’m going to just skip right over that and instead talk to you about mushrooms. Umami means ‘delicious, savoury taste’ in Japanese and sits alongside sweet, sour, salty and bitter as one of the five main tastes. Umami is often described as a ‘meaty’ savouriness but can be easily replicated with clever ingredients, like Parmesan cheese, seaweed, miso, and mushrooms. Also, they’re much cheaper than buying a steak (apart from Parmesan cheese, which is currently so expensive that I let out a small scream last time I was at the cheese section of the supermarket). If you’re worried that going without meat means missing out on flavour, umami ingredients are an incredible tool.
– Look for Meat-Free Options in your Takeaways (Yes, They Exist!). As consumers, where we spend our money sends a message. Your dollars help shape the world you want to live in, so choosing meat-free options to make up more of your weekly shopping and cooking is powerful – whether it’s picking only free-range animal products, or supporting local farmers and growers. It’s the same with your special meals – be it at restaurants or your fortnightly takeaway treat. I mean this story has been brought to you by our pals at BurgerFuel and we’re absolutely JAZZED about their new Shroom Shroom burger which, in a surprise to no one, heroes the humble portobello mushroom as the star of the show (but fancy because they’re marinated) PLUS double cheddar, bread and butter pickles, BurgerFuel’s famous aioli, mustard and tomato relish. Meat-free options are far more widespread these days (remember when we were kids it was hamburger, cheeseburger or, if you were lucky, nuggies!) so even if you’re trying to lower the meat in your diet, you’ll be well looked after when you’re out and about.
– Cook Different Cuisines. If you’re still living under the British shadow of ‘meat and three vege’ then it can be very hard to switch your shopping and cooking habits. But luckily, there are a plethora of other cuisines that create plant-based meals that are so rich in flavour that they will knock your socks off. Request some vegetarian cookbooks from your local library and get reading – Tenderheart by Hetty Lui McKinnon, Vegeful by Nadia Lim, The Weekday Vegetarians by Jenny Rosenstrach, Fresh India by Meera Sodha and Plenty More by Yotam Ottolenghi are great places to start.
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