Plant-based, Rainbow Cuisine For Vibrant Health And A Planet Green

To me, plant-based cooking has always been a provocative experience, much like wandering through a lush forest and experiencing plants in their wholeness- observing their distinct aromas, flavors, textures, and colors with all of my senses. A menagerie of possibilities just waiting to be discovered and sautéed, simmered, roasted, tossed, or blended together with herbs, spices, or flowers. A common misconception about plant-based cuisine is that the food is bland, monotonous, and unsubstantial. Perhaps this arises from unfortunate experiences with over-processed, soy-based products attempting to taste like something they are not, or ill-prepared meals made with soggy vegetables and little to no imagination.

A well-balanced meal is always vibrant and colorful. Chefs and cooks all know that a delicious plate will possess flavors of acid, fat, salt, and heat, but what I wish to add to this is the notion of color representing vitality, deep nutrition, and of course, beauty. Blues and purples of eggplants or berries remind me of antioxidants and anthocyanin which help our cardiovascular health and cognitive function, for the color red I remember lycopene in juicy, crimson tomatoes or vitamin C and flavonoids in ambrosial fruits like pomegranates and strawberries. Orange and yellow I recall the vivacious, inflammation-fighting curcumin from turmeric or beta carotene in squash and fragrant, tropical mangoes. Last but not least, the infinity of greens that are full of chlorophyll and life-force energy packed with more vitamins, antioxidants, and potassium. A well-balanced vegan or vegetarian meal will possess a wide-variety of nutrients, but also good fats and proteins that our bodies need for fuel. This could come in the form of coconut oil, avocados, quinoa, lentils, almonds, or brown rice...just to name a few.

From hearty soups to risotto, falafel and multi-layered salads, homemade ferments to support gut flora and digestion, veggie rollups and hummus, and desserts made of avocado and cacao or creamed cashew...plant-based fare is a dynamic, vivid, and ever-expanding realm that is full of possibility to embellish, and passionate flavor that brings authentic happiness. For many it's a new road to be explored, but if you love tasty food that is also beautiful, supports harmony on the planet, and which makes you feel amazing, then I dare you to give a freshly made, plant-based meal a try.

The decision to explore an herbivorous diet has become more and more popular and acclaimed in recent years, but why?

For some people it is for health reasons, some truly enjoy the unique flavors and ingredients of the meals, and for others it is deeply ethical. For me, it is definitely a combination of all three.

The health benefits of observing a plant-based diet are so numerous, I couldn't justifiably explain them all at once, but I'll begin with what I consider to be the biggest ones. As history has taught us, our human ancestors were nomadic hunter-gatherers and had a diverse diet that included wild animals, fish, and a wide variety of plants and medicines. Over time, as some communities began to plant their own subsistence gardens and became more settled as sedentary pastoralists, their consumption began to become less diverse. As agriculture and animal husbandry expanded, we have seen that humans generally relied more on the robustness and convenience of consuming mostly animal protein - rather than a mostly plant-based diet.

Industrial agriculture is a system whose design is rooted in the domination of land, resources, animals, and sadly, often other human communities. Within this now gargantuan range of manufactured system, there is little to no cohesion in the human-animal relationship, and nowadays unfortunately the animals have very little contact with a natural environment, other animals, or even very many people. This scale of food production and divisiveness creates many pathways for contamination to occur, and it's magnitude robs animals of not only inhabiting an enjoyable existence, but of their own physical nourishment as well.

It being true that we are what we eat, then if a person consumes a malnourished animal who's been plumped up with hormones from an environment that is deeply unnatural, we too are devouring this toxic life that the animal experienced. Eating a diet high in meat has been well-documented for decades by experienced physicians and nurses from accredited establishments all over the country. It has been proven that this can put us at risk of having high blood pressure and LDL cholesterol, it may lead to heart attack, stroke, or extreme health ailments such as heart disease, obesity, and cancers- which also happen to be some of the biggest causes of death in the United States alone. Our bodies are resilient and brilliant self-regulators and healers, but we must also maintain them with genuine nutrition, and this is where plants can help us.

With so many contaminants and stresses whirling rampantly around the globe, plants have the potential to help our bodies more easily digest and detox, and make precious minerals and nutrients more available for metabolizing. Vegetables, fruits, legumes, roots/tubers, and fungi grown in healthy soil with unpolluted water will draw up nutrients and trace minerals from the richness of the Earth, and their dietary fiber helps us keep our intestines clean, to potentially lower cholesterol levels and control blood sugar levels. Just imagine the ingenious ways that bitter and sour flavor helps us begin to salivate and then digest food, the ways it can keep our liver, gall bladder, and kidneys operating optimally. Or the brilliant ways that a little capsaicin from spicy, chili peppers can accelerate metabolism, raise our body temperature and heart rate, improve blood circulation, and potentially increase perspiration.

I do believe that plants and humans co-evolved because it is mutually beneficial. Perhaps it is the arousing beauty, sweetness, intoxication, or desire for control that draws us in... as Michael Pollan described in his book The Botany of Desire. Or, as the idea is proposed with what we now know as sweet corn, that as a grass it was domesticated in Mesoamerica from the tough and chewy teosinte wild grain to become more palatable by early humans who could readily access and spread it's seeds by cracking open their husks with the opposable thumb.

So, what does a plant-based diet have to do with ethics?

For millennia, indigenous peoples across the globe subsisted off of wild foods and what they could catch or hunt, they lived harmoniously with animals and plants, they didn't take more than they needed, and there was a deep-rooted understanding of reciprocity. In the Andes of South America, this philosophy of mutualism is referred to in the Kichwa/Quechua language as Ayni- to give and receive in relationship with all life. This is a proper alliance of sharing the divine, it means that all life is sacred, that the elements and animals are to be revered and respected as we would a human life, because we are all connected. "All My Relations", as the Lakota of North America call Mitákuye Oyás’in, a profound sentiment and worldview that also reflects the belief in the interrelationships of all life.

For decades now, this has not been the mainstream lifestyle or understanding in the "developed" countries. As many of us know, profit has become the priority before the well-being of people, and long before the well-being of the land. The effects of widespread cattle ranching, factory farming, and industrial agriculture have been well-documented in books such as Stolen Harvest (Vandana Shiva), The Color of Food (Natasha Bowens), Braiding Sweetgrass (Robin Wall Kimmerer), Agriculture (Rudolf Steiner), One Straw Revolution (Masanobu Fukuoka), or The Omnivore's Dilemma (Michael Pollan), and documentary films such as The Future of Food, Inhabit, or Dirt! The Movie...to name juuust a few.

To me, the most upsetting piece about this paradigm is the unnecessary suffering that is imposed upon animals, people, and places that are not themselves enacting this reality that has proven to contaminate clean water, fertile soil, and the magnificent air we breathe. Rather than working cooperatively with nature, large-scale agriculture and megacorporations that generate processed foods have elected clear-cutting and monocropping over organizing a long-lasting, regenerative design and utilizing equitable land management.

There are still many unknowns as to the actual, long-term effects of GMO's and Big Agra, but what time has proven true is that there is resilience in diversity. By this I refer to versatile landscapes and ecosystems, rich in opportunity for adaptation and survival. This means revering the billions of microbes we cannot see with the naked eye in the soil by not asphyxiating them in chemical pesticides and herbicides. This means coexisting with insects and "weeds" that all contribute to a greater system that manages itself and possess their own intrinsic value, need, medicine...and reason for being. This includes human communities and cultures of all colors as well.

The human body is not so different than the Earth's, as we too are variegated in our shapes and hues, and as we are all made up of a great quantity of water and bacteria, we require variance in our diets in order to thrive and function at full capacity. A diet consisting of mostly animals that subsisted off of industrially-raised crops (such as corn, soy, etc) from mineral-deficient soil and lacked the nutrient-dense grasses/wild foods they would consume given the chance, only offers the human a perfunctory and impersonal culinary experience. This kind of nutrient-scarce diet may make one feel full from an immediate meal, yet unfortunately one actually remains malnourished (at times starving), which invites in a high possibility of becoming overweight- or worse, creating a poisonous habitat within our own body for disease to birth and proliferate.

The same can be said about processed foods, not only the animal products. An individual could observe a technically vegan or vegetarian diet, but if one is lacking the vitality of fresh fruits and vegetables or the diversification of meals, a seemingly "healthy" or "ethical" lifestyle choice could contribute to the demise in well-being very quickly. A regimen consisting of processed carbohydrates does little to nourish the body for very long, and consuming industrially-grown soy or palm oil (which tend to be abundant in such processed vegan foods) contributes to the destruction of life in the megadiverse and cherished Amazon Rainforest in South America and is devastating much of Indonesia.

When I was just a young child I made the decision to stop eating meat, and 32 years later I still don't. For me it's been a beautiful adventure, not lacking it's own tremendous challenges- limitations while travelling, health discoveries, and relating to others- and I feel fortunate to have chosen this path. Naturally being very curious, I have had the chance to deepen my understanding as a student of Permaculture and the life sciences, learning how to grow organic food and prepare/utilize herbal medicines, and ultimately as a chef who wants to craft delicious meals made with intention, conscience, and that which truly nourish the body, heart, mind, and soul.

May we all continue to ask questions and observe the beauty in the natural world around us. Plant-based doesn't necessarily mean one doesn't consume any fish or meat, as there are ways to source animals that did enjoy a fulfilling existence and may be full of vitality that a human may savor and thus carry forth. The topic is controversial and sensitive, and for some vegetarians and vegans it is vehemently believed that it is a grave injustice that any animal should ever be killed for food. I understand this sentiment and in my reality of abundant resources, I do agree.

However, we mustn't forget the wisdom of our elders, ancestors, and of indigenous peoples. Any lifestyle that is sustained by the suffering of another is not virtuous, and my personal objective is for balance and deep connection with all life. To me plant-based doesn't just mean a diet lacking meat, it also eliminates much of the packaged foods and "health foods", and it includes the health and well-being of the entire planet. It is the essence of the slow food movement, it feeds soil and truly feeds hungry bellies, it considers the intelligence of the past and nurtures a long-term vision for the health of all in the future.