What's Your Occupy Movement?

As I have said in earlier blogs, what started as me recording my efforts to follow a plant-based diet has evolved into a platform for me to talk about all subjects that affect our future as a species. I think it would be naïve of me to not include the recent coverage of the Occupy Movement in that. In recent months, the Occupy Movement has taken up a lot of column inches, but the most poignant for me is a photo essay by Tom Campbell in The Big Issue. Rather than focus on the political aspects of the movement or it’s ramifications on recent history, Campbell chose instead to base his essay around a series of portraits of some of the individuals involved.

The portraits are a stunning collection of art. I have scanned a couple onto this blog, but my meagre attempts at reproduction do not do the artist justice.

It has been said that a picture speaks a thousand words, and Campbell’s photos are definitely proof of that. Even if you don’t read the accompanying text, by looking at the photos you begin to see the story of the subjects, and the passion with which they live their lives. These people have built a community, and it is a community that will stay strong and continue no matter how many times they are evicted and moved on.

When it comes to my personal opinion of things such as the Occupy Movement, some people would describe me as being ‘sat on the fence’, but I see it more as being open-minded. In any debate, I always try to see things from the viewpoint of every side and understand where they are coming from and why. With campaigns and demonstrations such as the Occupy Movement, regardless of what the outcome is and how much they achieve towards making the world a ‘better’ place, I think the important thing is that someone is doing something. It makes me question why more people don’t stand by what they believe in, and why they don’t share their views. When I first turned vegetarian, for me it was a private thing and I disliked other vegetarians who were trying to convert the world. My opinion was that it was everyone’s choice what they ate. Now that I eat a plant-based diet, and I understand the importance of everyone following a more planet friendly lifestyle to preserve our species, I shout about it much more, hence this blog. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still not trying to convert the world, I just want everyone to be more educated about the issues that are important to us. We don’t all have to drastically change our lives, but if reading this blog helps one person to make one small step in the right direction then it is worth it.

What the Occupy Movement is showing us is that we don’t have to just sit back and accept the norm. Just because we live in a world that is controlled by big business and leaders, it does not mean that it always has to be like that. In the same way, just because we have been told in the West that eating meat is good for us, it doesn’t mean that we can’t change. After all, before Christopher Columbus came along, everyone knew that the Earth was flat. The greatest gift we have as humans is education. We all need to listen to each other, learn from each other and absorb as much as possible. As the Occupy Movement has shown, if we’re stronger together then we don’t need leaders. Maybe if we were all more open with our own beliefs, we would find it easier to be accepting of other people’s.

Making a Meal Out of Sides

   Today I found myself eating in a chain restaurant with friends where the food is generally reheated rather than served fresh. My first glance at the menu led me to believe there was quite a selection for vegetarians. On closer inspection, however, it turned out that three of the vegetarian meals were the same cauliflower cheese dish that had been included under different course options. The only main I could find that included no animal protein was a jacket potato with baked beans. Tinned beans aren't ideal, I know, but sometimes you have to cheat a bit. With all the will in the world, a jacket potato with beans is never going to be an exciting meal. So, I decided to add a side of flat mushrooms to make it a bit more interesting.
   Making a meal out of starters and sides is a skill that I picked up whilst living in Greece. Whereas Greek main meals generally revolve around meat, the starters (or mese dishes) are usually vegetarian, and a lot are plant-based.
   If you are finding it hard to make a plant-based choice when eating out, why not order a combination of starters and sides instead? It gives you much more variety and your dining companions will no doubt be jealous of your personal buffet!

No-Cheese Pizza

One of the hardest things I’ve found about following a plant-based diet is eating out in restaurants. By the time you’re searched through the menu to find something you can eat, it feels like everyone is looking at you and you still aren’t any closer to getting some food. A neat trick that I have picked up is to order a vegetable pizza with no cheese. Pizza is fairly common in restaurants, most of them are cooked fresh, and it’s not such a big deal for the kitchen to prepare them with no cheese. Plus, they’re really tasty.

Why freerangecarrots?

I thought I should take a moment to explain where the name Free-range Carrots comes from. I first turned vegetarian when I was nine years old. Unfortunately, it being the late 1980s and a time when everyone listened to their GP unquestioningly, my doctor told my parents they should force me to eat me and they did. For another four years. Then, when I was thirteen, I told my mum that I really couldn’t eat meat anymore. I’d always felt that I was born a vegetarian, and I needed to find my way into the lifestyle where I belonged. My mum’s initial reaction was that I was just being a fussy eater. I’m glad to say her viewpoint has now radically changed and my vegetarianism has in fact encouraged her to eat a healthier diet. Due to health problems when I was born, I’d struggled with food phobias all my life, and even then I could understand her apprehension at my converting to vegetarianism. So me made a compromise. I would take the conversion one step at a time, and together we would educate ourselves about healthy vegetarianism and make sure I was doing everything properly. Red meat was the first to go, and then I gradually gave up white meat, fish, animal fats, gelatine, leather and so on until I was a complete vegetarian.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the reactions you get from people when you tell them you’re vegetarian. I never set out to convert the world, and my belief at that time was that everyone has the right to eat whatever they want. I only told people I was a vegetarian when I had to, i.e. when someone insisted I eat a cocktail sausage at a party or I was in a restaurant when the menu wasn’t labelled for dietary needs. Most people seemed to want to catch me out, to find something I did that proved I wasn’t a real vegetarian. They demanded to know what my shoes were made of (in case it was leather) and quizzed me on what sweets I ate (assuming I wouldn’t know that most jelly sweets contain animal gelatine). Bizarrely, a common response I received was ‘plants have feelings too’. Although this may one day be proved true, my survival comes first for me, and I have to eat something. Ever the sarcastic teenager, and wanting to confuse people before they could drag me into an argument, my stock answer to this comment became ‘Yes, but I only eat free-range carrots’. Hence the name freerangecarrotsJ

Do We Lack Nutrients?

A few weeks ago I talked about Rip Esselstyn and the Engine 2 Diet. On his website, Rip answers what I believe is one of the most frequently asked questions about plant-based diets.

Ever since I became a vegetarian, people have told me that I’m unhealthy. Usually while they’re munching on an incredibly unhealthy beef burger, I might add. The common misperception is that if you don’t eat meat or dairy products, you lack protein, iron and calcium. They literally look at you like they expect you to drop dead in front of them. People are quite often surprised when I say I’m a vegetarian, as I don’t look permanently ill. Believe it or not, I have survived without meat now for almost twenty years, and I intend to do it for a lot more years to come.

Spinach, mushrooms, beans, oatmeal, wholewheat pasta, corn and potatoes are all healthy sources of protein. Iron can be found in lentils, beans, leafy vegetables, pistachios and tofu. Green leafy vegetables such as collard greens, kale, bok choy and romaine lettuce are great for calcium, as well as nuts, oranges, kidney beans, lima beans, whole grains, lentils, raisins, broccoli and brussel sprouts.

As Rip explains, the only nutrient that you may develop a deficiency in on a plant-based diet is vitamin B12. If this is a concern, you can get your daily supply from two tablespoons of nutritional yeast, a glass of fortified soya milk, a bowl of fortified cereal or a 500 milligram B12 supplement. That’s not bad compared to the number of omnivores who can eat anything they want, but choose to eat only the bad stuff and therefore develop lots of deficiencies.

Deficiencies are sometimes unavoidable, no matter what you eat. Both my father and I have problems giving blood due to our iron count being ‘at the lower end of the normal scale’ (the story of my life!). I eat an iron-rich plant-based diet, and he eats meat.

Before I stopped eating dairy I was told by a dentist that I had a calcium deficiency. One of the solutions was to drink more cows milk. No matter how much milk I drank, it didn’t seem to make any difference. Since converting to a plant-based diet, my calcium levels are fine.

So, next time you meet a vegetarian, please don’t look so surprised that they’re still able to stand.

An extra note about the blood donation and my apparently low iron count – a quick jog around the car park before I take the iron test seems to get my blood moving faster and I pass with flying colours, so I’m not so sure it’s my actual iron that’s the problem. I think my blood is just a bit slow.

Mixing it up

   I've been trying to think of new ideas for lunches that I can take into work. When you're trying to only eat seasonal, local vegetables you can find yourself eating the same things over and over again. So I've looked back through my recipes and adapted some of them. Here's one of my favourites. The recipe is for Summer Risotto, but you can use pretty much any vegetables as a substitute. I made some this week using pumpkin, butternut squash and mushrooms.

Ingredients
100g (3½oz) asparagus, trimmed
350g (12oz) risotto rice (or short brown rice)
125g (4oz) broad beans
1 small onion, finely diced
1 litre vegetable stock
150ml (¼ pint) dry white wine
½ lemon, juiced (I substitute this with a splash of vinegar as we don't tend to get many lemons growing in South Wales)

Boil the asparagus and beans in water for 3 minutes. Drain and plunge into cold water and then drain again.
Using a little of the vegetable stock, fry the onion until transparent. If you're using mushrooms, add them here as well. Stir in the rice. Add 1 ladle of hot stock and cook until absorbed. Keep the stock simmering on the stove and add it a ladle at a time until absorbed. When most of the stock has been used, add the asparagus and beans, white wine and lemon juice. Simmer for a few more minutes.


The trick with risotto is to add the stock gradually. I once saw a TV cookery competition where a chef did not follow this advice, and his colleagues and customers were not best pleased.

Organic vs Vegetarian

   One of the frustrating things about being vegetarian are the odd, and to be honest sometimes downright rude, reactions you get when you utter the words ‘I’m a vegetarian’. When a lot of people hear those three simple words they seem to think it’s OK to immediately tell you what their assumptions about vegetarians are. The most common replies revolve around the feelings of animals, and my most common comeback is ‘I’m a vegetarian, not a tree-hugging hippy’. In all honesty, when I first became vegetarian I wasn’t really sure why. I just knew that it was meant to be. As I’ve grown up, I’ve learnt to understand more about my beliefs around eating and wearing animal-based products, and our impact on the planet. I suppose I consider myself to be a ‘realist vegetarian’. I’ve not really got an issue with people eating meat, as long as they know where their food comes from and it’s produced ethically. What annoys me is that, in the Western world today, most people will only eat meat if it comes pre-packaged from the supermarket. And they couldn’t care less where it comes from. They argue that it’s natural for humans to eat meat, but as soon as you suggest they go out and kill their own prey they look at you like you’ve just told them to run six marathons back-to-back. If it came down to me or the animal, I wouldn’t hesitate in slaughtering the animal. Having spent a lot of my childhood in the countryside, I grew up eating rabbit that the local farmer caught, pheasant that my uncle was paid in (he’s a pheasant beater) and fish that my dad and I caught ourselves. I even used to gut my own fish. Besides, most of the types of meat available in supermarkets were never originally eaten my humans. Cows, for example, started off as skinny bags of bones before they were fattened up during the agricultural revolution. The omnivores I respect are the ones that are aware of the origins of the meat they eat, whether they’ve caught it themselves or not, and obtain it in a way that has as little impact on the environment as possible.

   I’m not the best person to explain this belief, but I’ve found someone who is. ‘Scenes From a Smallholding’ is a book written by Chas Griffin about the experiences his family had when they decided to leave suburbia and take over a farm in West Wales. Rather than try to change his words, and get it completely wrong, I’ve decided to just copy the insert from his book into my blog. In the unlikely event that Chas Griffin reads this blog, I hope he doesn’t mind me using his material, and I apologise if he does.

‘Organic vs Vegetarian?’ by Chas Griffin, Summer 1992     ‘We were vegetarian for quite some time before we moved to the smallholding, but living and working here has driven us to the unexpected and apparently harsh conclusion that as far as we can see, you can either be organic, or vegetarian, but not both.
   The logic behind this seemingly brutal claim runs like this: like all living things, plants need feeding; chemical farmers who produce the tasteless rubbish you buy at the supermarket, use chemicals; chemicals weaken the plants, kill off the micro soil life, and destroy the soil structure, so it eventually erodes away, just as it is now doing in East Anglia (Britain’s own up-and-coming dustbowl) and across the world, at the alarming rate of millions of tons a month. And once it’s gone, it’s gone for good. Now there’s a thought. Never mind global warming, soil loss is humanity’s greatest problem. And the less soil there is, the more they are going to blast it with chemicals, aren’t they? Unless you and I can persuade them to stabilise their soil by going organic.
   So chemical farming is a long-term disaster. What is the alternative?
   Organic farmers use compost, which feeds the soil that feeds the crops; so the soil is built up, not destroyed.
   But here’s the rub: it is virtually impossible to produce enough vegetable-only compost for the needs of a farm or market garden, and anyway, compost needs a nitrogen input to get it going. The nitrogen naturally comes from animal urine and dung.
   There may be a way around needing this animal input, but there is no convincing evidence that I know of that is really practically possible for an organic farmer to avoid the need for animal excreta. And anyway, it is clear that animals and plants were made for each other. The animal is designed to eat the plants, and then to fertilise the land it grazes on.
   As a by-product of the essential nitrogenous waste, a cow also produces valuable milk, and, with a bit of extra work, butter and cheese. But… and here’s the point… she will only produce milk after producing a calf.
   Unfortunately, 50 per cent of calves are male. As one bull will serve about 40 females, what is going to happen to the other 39 bull calves? They can’t be left to eat a whole herd’s worth of grass, or the price of milk would double every year (work it out for yourself). What is more, 39 testosterone-stuffed bulls in one field would soon make the Battle of Kursk look like Salad Days.
   On top of all this, the Artificial Insemination service has reduced the need for bulls even more. One super-stud can now serve hundreds or thousands of heifers, and without all that unseemly bellowing and drooling.
   So… if you want organic vegetables, and I for one think you ought to on ecological grounds alone, you must accept animals going for early slaughter, unless you can find a logical flaw in my argument.’
  
   See, I told you that Chas Griffin could explain it much better than me. Personally, I still prefer to be a vegetarian who eats a plant-based diet for health reasons. Besides, I have no desire to eat meat. I do agree with what Chas is saying, though. I think we need to take a step back and look at how we farmed before the agricultural revolution. Before the days of mass farming, everyone ate from local, small, organic smallholdings. If all omnivores thought like Chas Griffin, I for one think the world would be a better place.

fork2fork

   I just checked out www.fork2fork.org.uk, a great website for anyone who lives in Wales and wants to eat fresh, direct and local food. Frustratingly, the website sends you round in circles a bit and some of the links don't work, but it's a good reference point for anyone who doesn't know where to start in buying local. You can pledge to buy local, find out where your nearest farmers markets and farm shops are, and read about Welsh producers. They will even send you a seasonality calendar so you know what best to buy when. Buying local isn't just about food, either. This year I bought Christmas presents from my local farmers market and Christmas market, including Welsh ale for my dad (he gave it a definite thumbs up), Welsh wine, chutney and preserves.

What to do in a hummus emergency

   I had a bit of a hummus incident a few weeks ago. I put a can of chickpeas into the blender, then my intention was to add a little water to make it smoother and to prevent my blender from catching fire. Unfortunately, I accidently added too much water, so I then had to add another can of chickpeas to thicken it up again. I was left with way more hummus than I could ever eat in a week.
   As you know, I'm always keen to try a new kitchen experiment. So I thought I'd put some of the hummus into the freezer and see if it survived. Well, the results are in, and I'm pleased to say I've been eating defrosted hummus since Saturday and I haven't been sick yet.

The Latest Accessories for 2012 - A flask and a water bottle:)

The purpose of this blog is to see if making small changes to our lifestyle as individuals can have a bigger impact to us as a species. Although I have generally been good at sticking to the changes I have made, I will admit that over Christmas I ended up consuming more dairy products than I would have liked. With the combination of visiting restaurants for Christmas meals, where vegetarian meals are pretty much guaranteed to contain cheese because they think we'll keel over without it, and staying with family who are not yet fully aware of what a plant-based diet is, it became too much of an effort to avoid it. In a way I'm glad I did, though, because it made me notice how ill dairy products make me feel. Admittedly, due to my eczema I am more prone than most people to having a reaction to dairy, but I'll deifinitely avoid it as much as possible in the future.
If you feel you can only make one change to your lifestyle at the moment (and don't worry, it all counts) than my tip would be this - buy a water bottle and a thermos flask. I carry both almost everywhere with me, including to work. Compared to my colleagues, who waste countless disposable cups and bottles everyday by buying drinks from vending machines and the coffee shop, I wash and refill my water bottle and flask everyday. I also carry some herbal teabags with me, so I can refill my flask during the day. As well as the environmental advantages, there are two other huge benefits to using your own water bottle and flask. The first is that it's healthier. The best thing you can drink is water (although, depending on where you live in the world, your tap water may not be good). Any soft drink that comes in a bottle, regardless of whether it says 'diet', 'sugar free' or anything else on the bottle, will never as good for you as water is. I promise you, if you cut out soft drinks from your diet, you will notice weight loss within a couple of weeks. Plus, if you cut down on caffeine and start drinking herbal tea instead, you'll sleep a lot sounder at night and feel much better when you're awake.
The other benefit is that you save a lot of money. When I see how much my colleagues spend throughout the day on bottles of cola and take-out coffees, I can't believe that I used to do the same. If you work out how much you spend on these items over the course of a month, I'm sure you'll find something else much more worthwhile to spend the money on.

The tardis of freezers

My freezer is like Aladdin's cave sometimes. Which is all the more amazing considering it's only a box freezer. Alongside the mushroon gravy I used to make the stew yesterday I also found a tub of the basting sauce from Chef Sarno's Seitan Briskett recipe. I added a teaspoon on cornflour, heated it gently whilst stirring continuously, and ended up with a lovely sauce to pour over vegetables.

Scavenging for food at Heathrow Airport

The travelbug is in Austria this week, so I apologise for any spelling errors. I'm having to use a German keyboard, and the spell check is trying to correct me in German so everything is coming up in red!
Admittedly, Heathrow Airport is not on my top 50 list of favourite places on planet Earth. It is, however, a useful place to pass through if you need to get to an awkward destnation quickly. Which is how I found myself there on Saturday morning. The awkward destination being Innsbruck, where I was headed to visit family.
I thought this would be a good opportunity to see how difficult, or easy, it is to stick to a plant-based diet whilst in transit. I appreciate there are thousands of vegans out there who do this on a regular basis, and are probably telling me to shut up right now. But for me it was an interesting experience. It actually reminded me of when I first turned vegetarian, before the days of labelling foods for dietry requirements and before most people really understood what vegetarianism was. I remember many a trip where my staple diet would be fries, salad and bread, and I would constantly have to tell people that no, I don't eat fish, and I can't just pick the chicken out or eat around the beef.
So there I was in Heathrow airport, having to read every single ingredient again. I must point out here that, unfortunately, I was flying from Terminal 1. The larger terminals at Heathrow do have some excellent fresh food outlets, and I can't wait for them to make it onto the UK high street. I settled on a carrot, houmous and salad leaves on wholemeal sandwich from Boots, a fresh pear and filling my water bottle up from the water fountain. The sandwich is made by a company called fresh! (I believe the exclamation mark is an essential part of the name). The blurb on the box (which is recyclable by the way) promises 'no gunk and no junk', and I have to say it was a really tasty sandwich. The only downfall is that the houmous did contain tahini. On that note, does anyone know the correct spelling for houmous? I've come across a few different variations so far.
Extra brownie points go to Caffe Nero, where the lovely barista was more than happy to make me a latte with Alpro Soya, which I might add was one of the tastiest lattes I've ever had.
For the benefit of anyone else who is travelling through Frankfurt airport in the near future, they have a lovely fresh food outlet. The vegetarian options are still quite dairy-based, but there's a lot of fresh fruit and juices.

Magic Sprouting Beans

OK, so maybe they're not exactly magic, but they're still pretty impressive. One of the common arguments against a plant-based diet is that you don't eat enough protein and calcium. I must add at this point that most comments I receive like this come from omnivores with very bad eating habits. Like all nutrients, however, you can easily get enough protein and calcium from plants, you just have to do it right. Plus, plant-based protein is also much healthier for you. Green vegetables such as kale and brocoli are great sources of calcium, and beans, lentils and seeds will also provide essential nutrients. Which is where my magic sprouting beans come in. A few years ago, a friend took me to an organic farm shop in Devon. This was the first time I had been in such a place, and to me it was like Aladdin's cave. There, she introduced me to organic sprouting mix, a dry mixture of beans that you soak in water for 3-5 days until they're soft enough to eat and begin to sprout (hence the name). I immediately found a new favourite food, and when I returned to work abroad the next week I made sure I had a packet in my backpack. There are different contraptions you can buy that are specially designed for sprouting the seeds, but personally I prefer the jam jar method. Simply soak the beans in water and drain, then leave to stand out of direct sunlight. It's recommended you put a piece of muslin cloth over the top of the jam jar, but I discovered last week that a j cloth also works well. A clean j cloth, of course.
On my return to the UK, I couldn't wait to but another pack of sprouting seeds. After all, they'd proved to be an easy to transport snack whilst I was travelling. Imagine my horror when I couldn't find them anywhere in Cardiff!. Some shops did stock ready-sprouted mix, chilled in the fridge, but I didn't fancy the look of them, and would probably had to eat them up in an incredibly short time before they went out of date.
At this point I could leave you in suspense and make you wait until my next blog to discover if I was ever reunited with my magic sprouting beans, but I'm not that cruel. I'm pleased to say that a couple of months ago I was browsing in Beanfreaks in Cardiff (you can order online too) and was overjoyed to find they stock organic srpouting mix in their basics range. I was that excited that I think I actually did let out a small whoop of joy, and for that I apologise to anyone who was in the shop with me. I now put them on my salads to take to work with me, and chuck them in stir-fries to make them a bit more interesting. I've also discovered through (accidental) experimentation that it doesn't matter if you sprout them a few more days than you intended, they're still edible. Although the ones I put on my lunch today were so far gone that Alan Titchmarsh could have presented an episode of Groundforce on it.

Soya Milk Success!

Had a minor breakthrough the past couple of days. Through some controlled experimentation, well, through trying different things in my kitchen at least, I think I've solved the issue of my soya milk looking like it's gone off when mixed into hot drinks. If you leave the drink to cool slightly first before adding the soya milk, it seems to be fine.

Hummus is my new favourite snack

Without wanting to sound like a stereotypical vegetarian, I'm going to talk about the merits of hummus. Over the years I've tried various types and brands of pre-packed hummus and, whilst it is perfectly edible, I've never been a huge fan. Inspired by Ann Esselstyn's 8 Principles on www.planeat.tv, I decided to give in another shot. Number 8 on Ann's List is Eat Beans and Lentils instead of meat and dairy. You should, however, avoid hummus that contains tahini, and Ann has a great, simple recipe for making your own hummus. Blend together chick peas, lemon and garlic and add cumin, vinegar, red peppers, parsley or cilantro (coriander to us Brits) to taste. On a personal note, I'm alergic to garlic (I know, it's a nightmare) so instead I use chilli which tastes great. My top tips are to boil the chick peas for 5 minutes first for a smoother texture, and grate a bit of the lemon zest into the blender for an extra tangy taste. Whilst we're on the subject of blenders, it's an important piece of kit for any whole food home cook. I got mine for Christmas last year and it's probably been used more than anything else in my kitchen. When I'm trying new recipes, I always find that I have lots of vegetables left over that I'm not going to use up before they go off. Just fry some chopped onion and chilli in a large pan, chop the leftover veg and add to the pan with some vegetable stock (2:3 ratio is about right). Leave it to boil until all the veg is soft, and then once it's cooled down blend it to make a tasty soup. I then freeze the soup into batches so that I can reheat it at a later date when I don't have time to cook.
Anyway, I've finished my hummus and oat cakes that I've been eating whilst typing this, so I'm off to the fridge to get some more.

Dyfal Donc i dyr y Garreg

Apologies to anyone who can't read Welsh, and rest assured that 'Dyfal donc i dyr y garreg' isn't offensive. At least, my Welsh tutor told me it isn't. The phrase translates into English as 'It's a steady tapping that breaks the stone', and I thought it an apt mantra to adopt whilst tackling my latest challenge. Having been a vegetarian for the past seventeen(ish) years, I know a few facts about the impact our diet has on the environment. However, I'm always keen to broaden my knowledge, and with that in mind, last week I watched the Planeat film (www.planeat.tv). According to the scientists in Planeat the less animal-based foods and the more plant-based foods you eat the better, both on a health and environmental level. Their mission is to create awareness of the benefits of a plant-based diet, encourage consumers to reduce their meat and dairy consumption and be inspired by plant-based cuisine.
Already being a vegetarian, I fully admit that at the start of the film I was quitely confident that my diet was already pretty environmentally friendly. I was soon brought down a peg or two though, when Gidon Eshel, prof. of Physics and Geosciences at Bard College, explained that vegetarian diets aren't actually that much better than an average omnivore diet, and in fact a poultry-based diet can have less impact on the environment. This is due to us veggies tending to over-compensate by eating more dairy products and eggs. Which brings me neatly to another important message that I learnt from Planeat. In the Western world we are brought up to believe that we should eat lots of animal-based protein.The research of T Colin Campbell shows that too much protein from an animal-based diet is damaging to our health (As you may have guessed already, I'm no scientist, so please watch the film or visit the website for a more coherent explanation of this theory).
So, where am I going with this? I'm not saying that I'm going to turn vegan overnight, but what I am interested in, though, is to see if it's possible to make small changes towards the Planeat philosophy. I will use the free-range carrots blog to chart my ups and down, and also to share any tips and plant-based recipes that I come across. And I'll take it one small step at a time, because as we say in Wales 'Dyfal donc i dyr y garreg'.