Nutrition Fundamentals from a Culinary Perspective Blog 2

Blog 2

Plant-based or Vegan diet

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A diet that is based on foods derived from plants, including vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds and fruits, with few or no animal products is plant based diet. It focuses on food derived from plant sources. It includes fruit, vegetables, nuts, pulses, grains and meat substitutes such as soy products. It doesn’t imply that you are veggie lover or vegetarian and never eat meat or dairy. Or maybe, you are proportionately picking a greater amount of your food from plant sources Katherine D.McManus (2018,September 27). Plant based diet or vegan diet is becoming popular among people.

Kinds of plant-based diets include:

Lacto-ovo vegetarians – eat dairy foods and eggs yet not meat, poultry or fish.
Ovo-vegetarians -include eggs however stay away from all other animal food, including dairy.
Lacto-vegetarians– eat dairy foods however prohibit eggs, meat, poultry and fish.

Vegans– don’t eat any animals items whatsoever, including nectar, dairy and eggs. Many shop purchased instant items may contain animal ingredients so the names of every single fabricated item should be read cautiously.
People choose a vegan diet for a number of reasons including worry about the treatment of animals, health reasons, ecological concerns or as a result of taste and social weight. Plant-based diet are ending up progressively mainstream and on the off chance that they are well-arranged, can support healthy living at each age and life-stage Lynne Garton & Sandra Hood (2017 September). All the food that is naturally produced by nature or derived from plants are included in vegan diet. Plant based diet gives many benefits to health. It included various items.

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Benefits of following plant-based diet vs animal based diet

An entire plant-based diet helps in loosing weight and becoming healthy. A diet having low fat and prepared sugars will help you get fit. Weight reduction normally happens when you devour more fiber, nutrients, and minerals than consuming animal fats and proteins.
It is found that animal based diet increases blood sugar in most people whereas plant-based diet helps to lower the blood sugar.
A low fat, whole food plant-based eating routine is one of the strategy at keeping yourself away from disease dangers. Animal foods have been connected to cancer growth, particularly colon and bosom disease.

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Other benefits:

By adopting to eat more plant-based diet you can drastically cut your carbon footprint, save precious water supplies and helps to ensure that vital crop resources are fed to people, rather than livestock. With the wealth of available plant-based options available, it has never been calmer to eat with the planet in mind.
Making the switch to a plant-based diet food is an excellent way to show your support for animal rights, but while vegetarianism is a form of veganism, there is also clear difference between the two cultures.
A research demonstrates that increasing plant-based eating is cost-effective, reduces economic costs, such as hospital admissions and doctors’ bills, as well as increasing the number of healthy years people live, and enabling them to continue working.
A whole-foods, vegan diet is a way of eating that revels plant foods and cuts out unhealthy items like added sugars and refined grains. Plant-based food have been linked to a number of health benefits, including reducing your risk of heart disease, cancers, obesity, diabetes.

Incorporating plant-based foods in my future culinary profession

As discussed earlier, plant-based diet or vegan diet has number of benefits. Whether it is health or other benefits concerning environmental balance or cost effectiveness, plant based diet is proved to be more beneficial for humans. Although animal-based diet has some nutrition benefits but they give rise to some serious diseases. In my future culinary profession, I will be incorporating various plant-based food recipes in my menus to benefit my customers and increase awareness regarding health benefits provided by plant-based diet.

A plant-based diet lets you meet your nutritional needs by only eating natural, minimally-processed foods in which none of the ingredients come from animals.

Also another reason to include plant based diet in menus is to cater customer’s need because there has been a huge demand for healthy and vegan diet due to health concern which increases the popularity of plant based food.

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Experience on my vegan recipe

To find ingredients i had to visit few stores to collect them. Although for vegan diet majority of ingredients are available in the market . I tried to make recipe as healthy as possible. While making this recipe i experienced several culinary skills like right consistency of the batter , making the right shape of pancake, presentation skills , making sure of right spices and fresh ingredients , time management for the recipe.
Only challenge i faced while cooking was making sure the right consistency of batter, neither too thick nor too thin, because that can make pancake sticky or soggy. Otherwise i tried to make my recipe simple and easy to be made. Vegetable pancakes are great for morning breakfasts and for people looking forward to have less calories for the day. I have been making vegetable pancakes from past many years and will continue in future too.

Vegan recipe

Vegetable Pancakes Servings : 6-8 pancakes
Cooking time : 25-30 minutes

Ingredients :

20 g mini potato
100g chickpea flour
20g cucumber
20g tomato
20g lettuce
20g carrots
5g coriander
10g hot banana pepper rings
1 tsp red chilli powder
salt to taste
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp coriander powder
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp kitchen king masala
1 tsp ginger garlic paste

Method:
Clean and sanitize work stations.

Cut tomatoes, carrots , small dices and cut lettuce , potato , cucumber in julienne and coriander finely chopped.

Cook potato in pan by adding 1tsp canola oil and add bay leaf along with 1/2 tsp of turmeric, red chilli , coriander powder, garam masala , kitchen king masala.

Take chickpea flour in a bowl , add 1/2 tsp baking soda with ginger garlic paste.