Dear Dot: I Want to Eat a Plant-Based Diet. Where Do I Start?

Dear Dot,

I’ve heard all the stuff about how hamburgers are harming the planet, and I want to shift to a vegetarian or vegan diet. But the idea of giving up meat entirely stresses me out (especially when my boyfriend is a dedicated carnivore). How can I do this and not lose my mind, my appetite, or my paramour?

– Maddy

The Short Answer: Don’t aim for perfection. Start with a single meat-free meal, then add another. Experiment with recipes, swapping out plants for meat. If most of us adopted a “flexitarian” diet — removing meat for the majority of our meals — it would have a profound impact on agriculture’s carbon emissions.

Dear Maddy,

Let me set the scene: Driving along a country road, Dot spots a transport truck loaded with pigs en route to the slaughterhouse. Ugh, I think, slowing down, averting my eyes. I can’t look at those pigs, Maddy. Their chubby pinkness, those snouts poking out of the metal bars. I sobbed at Charlotte’s Web, Maddy. Every single time, those doomed pigs stir me to vow that I will stop eating meat. 

And I did. For about four years when I had three Little Dots, I eschewed meat. My family did not. Partly because cajoling the Little Dots to eat even a carrot was a Herculean task. I couldn’t imagine taking meat off their plates, because if I did, with the exception of pasta, there wouldn’t be much left on them. (I did stick to buying meat only from a local farmer, so … there was that.)

Eventually, though, I abandoned my own vegetarianism. I woke one Sunday morning to the smell of bacon, and I caved. I attended a friend’s barbecue and scarfed down a burger. But those pigs continued to stir my conscience. And, as I’ve learned more about the outsized impact of meat on land use, carbon emissions, deforestation, and the animals themselves (and my children have grown into far less picky adults), I enjoy many meat-free meals and, when I do eat meat, it takes up significantly less space on my plate. 

Dot’s approach — dubbed “flexitarianism” — is growing in popularity. One study reports that Gen Zers are driving the trend toward a flexitarian diet, with 87% adopting a greater (though not exclusively) plant-based diet. Some settle into long-term flexitarianism, while for others it’s simply the first step toward veganism. But any reduction in meat consumption is a good thing and not to be minimized. 

Bluedot Santa Barbara’s Notes from the Home Front columnist Lizzy Fallows’ family of six eats exclusively plant-based meals. She recently wrote about it (Finding the Plant-Based Path), and Dot invited her to share her best advice for someone keen to dig into plant-based eating. Lizzy worries that people think plant-based eating is more complicated or overwhelming than it needs to be. “I think people don't start because they think it has to be all or nothing,” she told me. She recommends that readers/eaters “take it one meal at a time.” Once one meat-free meal feels easy, move to two meals. “Take something you love to eat and swap the animal product out to make it plant based,” she says. “This means tuna salad becomes chickpea salad, chicken curry becomes tofu curry, spaghetti bolognese becomes spaghetti with lentil bolognese.”

She also urges the plant-curious to shift the focus. Instead of focusing on eating less meat, Lizzy says, focus on eating more plants. “Anytime someone is eating more plants, they are doing something positive/healthy for their body, the earth, and the animals. It's a radical act! A meaningful act.”

One of the reasons Dot didn’t move her children toward vegetarianism was their dislike of, well, vegetables. I worried that, without meat, they’d be deficient in important nutrients and minerals. Lizzy gets it. “A decade ago,” she told me, “I would stress and over-index on one nutritional dimension or another — calcium, omegas, protein!” What she’s learned, however, is that eating a wide range of foods in a whole foods plant-based diet meets her family’s nutritional needs. “Our family of six eats the rainbow,” she explained. “Purple cabbage and figs and potatoes, green okra and arugula, orange pumpkin and carrots, red pomegranates and lentils, white cashews and navy beans and tofu.” Consequently, she told Dot, “we have never experienced a deficiency of any sort.” She’s also a big fan of beans, which are great substitutes for meat. 

Lizzy also does what she can to “amp up the nutritional density of meals.” Her kids’ oatmeal, for instance, will have added chia, hemp seeds, cinnamon, and peanut butter. Pasta is typically protein-rich red lentil pasta. Toast is sourdough or seed bread from a local bakery topped with avocado, nut butters, or tomato.

Her kids delight in Lizzy’s laissez-faire attitude when it comes to topping, letting her kids heap spoonfuls of tahini, pesto, cashew cheese, toasted nuts, and coconut yogurt on top of whatever they’re eating. “Just as a squeeze of lemon or a dollop of chili crisp can transform the taste of a meal,” she said, “what you add at the last moment can amp up its nutritional profile.” 

Vegans, en masse, have gained something of a reputation for being too strident. (Yeah, PETA, Dot’s looking at you.) Which is why I love Lizzy’s more laid-back approach. “I like a softness [around] being plant based,” she said. “Like, if my kids are at a birthday party and there’s an ice cream cake, my kids make their own choices, and they don’t need to come home and report to me that they had ice cream. I think it’s really important for them to make their own choices.” Besides, she says, “It’s what you do most of the time that matters.”

So, Maddy, you have both Dot’s and Lizzy’s blessing to move forward in your plant-based pursuit at whatever velocity and intensity works for you. You and Lizzy have inspired Dot to push even more meat off my plate. I want to be able to look those pigs in the eye next time I see them. 

Plantfully,

Dot

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