Going vegan # 2 / How to get started

To be honest we didn’t plan these 14 days of exploring the vegan lifestyle very much. We already live a flexitarian lifestyle but aim to eat even less meat. All of a sudden we felt the motivation to go all in and test vegan eating first hand. Within two days we began.

Some preparation is definitely recommendable but most importantly I would advice anyone wanting to reduce their meat consumption just to trial vegan or vegetarian eating and learn as they go along. However if you have any health conditions make sure you get the proper guidedance.

Vegan in a quick decision

For long we have aimed to reduce our meat consumption but it has proven more difficult than expected. For some time we have discussed how to take the next step and after watching an American documentary called ‘What the Health’ on Netflix we looked at each other and said:

“What if we went vegan for two weeks?”

I am not claiming that the documentary holds the whole truth. I think it is good entertainment and I am sure that most of what it states is true. I however also believe that some truth has been left out. Besides, taking place in the United States I believe that the average eating habits and lobbyisme are quite different from here in Denmark and Scandinavia in general.

None the less it inspired us to just try out plant based eating for a shorter period to experience benefits and challenges first hand.

Why go vegan

Basically we want to eat more plant based to reduce our negative impact on the environment.

Read more on how and why in my previous post.

Preparing to test vegan eating

All ready the same day we ordered a vegan meal box for four days from aarstiderne who delivers recipes and ingredients right to doorstep in Denmark and Sweden. This left us to only come up with vegan dinners for three days for the first week not to forget breakfast and lunch for the whole week.

We agreed to allow for our youngest who turns 8 months March 2nd to only try our vegan dished and otherwise continue with everything she would normally eat.

For our daughter who is three and son who is seven we agreed to inspired and push them gently to eat as much vegan as possible. Most importantly though make sure that the period was going to be fun meaning letting them eat something familiar and even animal based if necessary.

For breakfast we usually eat porrigde or oats and muesli with milk. The milk we replaced with oat milk. For coffee we bought soy milk with vanilla.

For lunch we bought a vegan pate, some pesto and made sure we had avocado and banana as safe choices for the kids.

Besides, we bought a little more vegetables, fruits, seeds and nuts than usually and allowed for shopping a few more times than usually in order fir us to adjust as we went along.

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