Authors: Rip Esselstyn
Brick-and-mortar stores aren’t the only place to get plant foods. Now that we live in the Information Age, take advantage of the Internet, where you can find all kinds of plant-based offerings available for
overnight delivery, from simple and inexpensive basic foods to gourmet precooked meals.
For example, you can order tons of quality plant-powered products from
Amazon.com
. Check it out for nonperishable items such as dry beans, whole grains, and low-sodium beans. Another great website for ordering plant-strong products is
vitacost.com
. Check in periodically for sales, when you can stock up on some of your favorite sauces, canned goods, beans, grains, and hundreds of other products.
Of course, we all eat out sometimes, but that doesn’t have to pose a problem. Many restaurant meals can be made plant-healthier with a few simple requests. Likewise, pizza restaurants that offer whole-grain doughs and plant-friendly sauces will also often accommodate a request for a cheeseless, meatless, veggie-heavy pizza with red sauce.
You’re not going to get your best plant-strong food at a fast-food shack, though, because these places usually use white flour and processed ingredients. But if you have no other options, then eat as healthfully as you can. For example, at Chipotle Mexican Grill, you can do quite well by ordering the vegetarian burrito bowl and layering the bottom with three corn tortillas topped with brown rice, vegetarian black beans, bell peppers and onions, salsa, grilled corn, romaine lettuce, and guacamole.
Not long ago, I was in the Raleigh Durham International Airport and saw a sign for a burger joint, and I immediately thought, “Let me see if there’s anything here that can accommodate a plant-strong guy like me.” I looked at the menu and lo and behold, I found a vegetarian sandwich. And not just any sandwich. To a toasted bun without butter I was able to add as many items as I wanted from a list of great-looking vegetables. I went to town! Grilled onions, grilled mushrooms, jalapeño peppers, green bell peppers, lettuce, pickles, tomatoes, fresh onions, all topped off with barbecue sauce. It was terrific. And it cost a jaw-dropping $2.89! (Just be careful not to make these places your daily lunch spot, because even though they’re great for fast food, their offerings are still cooked with oil and are high in calories.)
As you can see, the reality is that eating plant-strong in the twenty-first century in America is a piece of kale (not cake!). That’s also why this way of eating is called the Engine 2 diet… it’s just “2” damn easy, as opposed to “2” damn hard!
I’ve traveled all over the country and have enjoyed plant-strong meals in all kinds of restaurants! When you’re on the road, check online at
http://happycow.net
to find good places as you go. You can also download apps to your phone that will help you locate veg-friendly eateries.
Here are some ideas of what to order in different types of restaurants:
O
ne of the biggest misconceptions about a plant-based diet is that healthy food equals expensive food. There are even some studies claiming to support this bunk. Their conclusions are based on a ridiculous “calorie per dollar” comparison.
The reasoning goes: There are more calories in a candy bar than in a banana, so candy bars are “cheaper”—even though bananas far outrank them in nutritional value. Well, if your only goal in eating is to throw as many calories as possible down the hatch every day, the calorie-per-dollar comparison would be perfect and you could live off of candy bars, hamburgers, and sugary sodas. You would also save money, because you would probably die before you hit forty.
Let’s get real. Plant-based eating isn’t more expensive than eating unhealthily; it’s cheaper. And that’s not even considering what you save in medical bills.
Seventy-two percent of Americans are overweight, and several estimates put the health-care costs related to this obesity at about $118 billion per year. Think about that the next time you buy so-called cheap meat. A report by the Worldwatch Institute found that obese people visit the doctor 40 percent more often than people of normal weight. These people are also two-and-a-half times as likely to need drugs for cardiovascular disorders. Even worse, overweight people are unable to work as much, with obesity accounting for 7 percent of lost productivity due to sick days and disability leave.
If you still think you save money buying unhealthy foods, think again.
When it comes to your shopping cart, you’ll find that avoiding meat and eating plants will save you money as well as save your health. The
beauty of a plant-based diet is that it doesn’t rely on specialty ingredients like powders, exotic foods, or supplements. The healthiest, cheapest foods are sitting on your grocery store shelves; you just have to know what you are looking for.
I want you to eat like a peasant (beans, rice, fruits, and vegetables) so you can live like a king. If you eat like a king (meat, cheese, cakes, and pies), you’ll get fat and sick and die like one. So saddle up, and let’s take a money-saving and health-rescuing trip through the supermarket!
Here is a list of some of the cheapest plants you can buy:
Beans:
Whether you call them a poor man’s food or a smart man’s food, beans are one of the cheapest and most nutritious proteins out there. At roughly 50 cents a pound for dried beans, they are almost giving them away. If you buy them dried, you’ll have to soak them overnight, but at that kind of price, who cares?
If you’re not keen on making your own beans from scratch, buy them in cans. Whole Foods Market carries several brands of no-salt-added varieties, including their 365 brand beans that are typically less than $1.00 a can. Not bad for a can of convenience and health rolled into one.
Oats:
They are chock-full of fiber and complex carbohydrates, and cost about 50 cents a pound. The less processed the better, so avoid the flavored ones that look like flour and go for straight-up, old-fashioned rolled oats; or even better, steel-cut oats. Make a large batch of steel-cut oats on Sunday and store in the refrigerator for several quick breakfasts during the week.
Bananas:
The power snack of the gods. Loaded with potassium and fiber, fat and sodium free, they’re also great tasting—and all packed into one convenient travel shell. Bananas kick butt in just about every way: on top of the Rip’s Big Bowl breakfast cereals, frozen and made into “ice cream” (see
here
for a chocolate-banana ice cream recipe), in muffins (try the Mighty Muffins from
The Engine 2 Diet
book, which call for six bananas!), as an oil replacement in baking, and as a healthful, post-workout pick-me-up. The crops are susceptible to natural disasters, but as long as there haven’t been any major hurricanes recently, bananas are sold for roughly 25 to 50 cents a pound!
Potatoes:
Don’t let all those nasty French fries fool you; there are good reasons why potatoes are considered a great staple food. They are
full of vitamins and potassium, and they fill you up like nobody’s business for about $1.00 a pound. Sweet potatoes are also a great source of beta-carotene. Eat your spuds well-washed, but with the skin on to get an extra boost of vitamin C and fiber.
And don’t buy into the lore that potatoes are fattening or somehow unhealthy. The problem with potatoes is the company they typically keep—butter, sour cream, bacon bits—and the forms in which they’re often found: sliced up in sticks and fried in oil, sprinkled with salt, and dipped in ketchup laced with high-fructose corn syrup. (Unfortunately, fries—those fat-, sugar-, and salt-laden sticks—are Americans’ top source of vegetables!)
As a matter of fact, the potato won the award for vegetable of the year in 2008 from the WHO because it is such a plant-strong all-star. See
here
and
here
for mashed potato recipes,
here
for a sweet potato soup recipe, and
here
for a sweet potato burger recipe!)
Brown rice:
At less than $1.00 a pound, all rice is a steal. But the brown stuff is full of stomach-filling, body-energizing, complex carbohydrates. Like potatoes, rice is also extremely versatile and can be thrown into anything from soups and salads to an outstanding veggie stir-fry, or even a delicious soy milk rice pudding. For added convenience, pick up a box of brown rice in quick cook bags. Simply throw a bag in a pot of boiling water and pull out 10 minutes later. No measuring and no fuss, only affordable convenience. Or check out the frozen section of any store for a three-minute brown rice, such as Whole Food Market’s 365 brand or the new Engine 2 Plant-Strong™ whole-grain medleys.
But please, forget processed foods, even if they’re plant based. A packaged dinner of pasta with tomato sauce will run you around $2.80 a serving at the grocery store. A family of four would be looking at spending at least $11.00 to feed themselves. For that amount of cash, they could make six servings of their own pasta with fresh ingredients and still be able to afford a salad and fruit.
Yes, there is a time commitment involved in preparing your own food. But if you compare it to the amount of time that people who eat unhealthily spend at the doctor’s office for problems like obesity, heart disease, and diabetes, it doesn’t seem like a waste of your precious hours after all.
If a vegetable or fruit is not in season, buy it frozen. The price of frozen produce stays relatively stable throughout the year, even during the winter months when the price on the fresh stuff spikes. Nutritionally, frozen is similar, and sometimes even better than fresh produce. This is because it is picked at its optimal ripeness and then flash-frozen to seal in the nutrients. Some of the best frozen veggies are kale, peas, spinach, broccoli, green soybeans, and corn.
You won’t find all of your favorite produce frozen, but according to the U.S. government’s Federal Register, half of Americans’ twenty favorite vegetables are also available in the freezer aisle. Avoid canned veggies when possible; the canning process sucks most of the good stuff out of them.
Here’s a little trick with frozen vegetables. Thaw before you use them and then just warm them up in your dish as opposed to overcooking them. They’ve already been cooked, and cooking them twice makes them limp and diminishes their taste.
When it comes to fresh produce, it’s best to buy it in season. A peach that was grown a few states away is going to be cheaper than one flown in from Chile. Also, the abundance of peaches on the market during the summer will keep prices lower until the end of the growing season. There is an added bonus if the produce is local and seasonal: It will have been picked at its ripest phase, giving it time to develop all the nutrients that don’t exist in produce that has been picked early in order to ship it over long distances without rotting.
H
ere’s one I hear all the time: “You don’t eat meat? Then you must eat lots of tofu.” Case in point: The first article ever written about us Engine 2 firefighters ditching flesh and flipping to plants was titled: “Tofu Outmuscles Red Meat at Firehouse.” Nothing like perpetuating the myth about tofu. I mean, yes, we had some tofu here and there, but it wasn’t like it was an everyday staple.
Meat eaters, omnivores, carnivores, and cannibals believe this myth because they developed their stereotypes about vegetarianism back when the “tofurkey” was still a novelty food… about thirty years ago.