How a Plant-Based Diet can Save Your Life

Keto, paleo, Atkins, Starch Solution: they all have one thing in common. They’re all geared to help you lose weight, feel better and live healthier. Here’s the problem: none of them work in the long-term. That’s right, nutritionists agree that these diets can be helpful in the short term, but they’re just not feasible as long-term dietary lifestyles. However, one enduring dietary lifestyle has stayed around for centuries and remains one of the best things you can do for your body: the plant-based diet.

What is a Plant-Based Diet?

Plant-Based Diets are Simple

The best thing about plant-based diets is just how simple they are. In essence, the only thing different about a plant-based diet is that you’re focusing your diet primarily on things like fruits, vegetables, nuts, beans and mushrooms. Okay, we know mushrooms are fungi, not plants, but they still make the cut. However, while many people think this diet might sound prohibitively limiting, that’s far from the truth!

There are hundred upon hundreds of plant-based meals you can prepare. From stir-fried vegetables to rice and beans, tacos with black beans to healthy, plant-based pizzas. You can prepare delicious pasta dishes, hearty salads, and much, much more. The only limit to a plant-based diet is your imagination and creativity.

Why Plant-Based?

Switching to a plant-based diet can be a great way to watch out for your health, and there are numerous reasons for this. If you focus on plant-based foods instead of processed foods, you’ll cut a number of harmful things from your diet. Processed sugars, trans fats and fatty oils are all very high in processed foods. If you opt instead for fresh vegetables and fruit, you avoid these potentially harmful items!

Similarly, by choosing to eat plant-based you will eat many more healthy vitamins and minerals. Many people don’t get nearly enough of the vitamins they need and rely instead on multivitamins, or simply go without. However, with a plant-based diet this isn’t the case. Your iron, B vitamins, vitamins A and C, and many more are all more than covered with a balanced plant-based diet.

For Your Wallet

As anyone who has been to a grocery store recently will tell you, meat is expensive. Likewise, junk food and processed foods are also rather pricey. On the other hand, produce tends to remain quite affordable. Rice, beans, vegetables and fruits all tend to stay rather low on the scale of grocery food prices. As such, opting to eat more plant-based food items can be much, much easier on your wallet. While you might find yourself missing some foods, your wallet will certainly thank you.

This goes for when you go out to eat, as well. You’ll often find that ordering vegan or vegetarian menu items can often result in you spending less overall on your meal. It also means you’ll get outside of your comfort zone and try new foods you might have not considered previously.

For the Animals

The less meat you eat the less animals have to be killed to feed you. This might sound like a very harsh way to put it, but it’s true. The animals that are killed to create meat products live short, miserable lives in harsh conditions with inadequate nutrition. Even people who are okay with the idea of killing living creatures with emotions and personalities for the sole purpose of eating them tend to take issue with the factory farming industry’s abhorrent practices.

For the Planet

Even if you’re not concerned about animals on an individual basis, the effect of factory farming on the planet is undeniable. Nearly one-fifth of all greenhouse gasses on earth are produced by the beef industry alone, an that’s not all they do. Feeding such large animals requires a huge supply of grains, which in turn requires millions of gallons of water. For each pound of beef, farms must go through dozens, if not hundreds, of gallons of water to provide food for the cow that yielded it.

The Bottom Line

If you want to help yourself, your wallet, the animals and the very planet you live on, it’s worth pursuing a plant-based diet. Few people expect you to stop eating meat altogether right away, though if you do your body will thank you.

However, even among many people who prefer plant-based diets, they may still have some fish or chicken with their meals occasionally. However, as long as you begin making plants the focus of your meals, you’ll begin to see a change in your health and well-being.