Food is a flavor delivery system

Switching from an omnivorous diet to vegan was a daunting idea when I first looked at doing it. I was fascinated with the idea of changing after seeing how dramatic of a transformation Penn Jillette went through in his diet change. He was even more dramatic in his change, going through a two-week monodiet eating nothing but potatoes, I was not prepared for that. The advantage of going that route is that it truly resets your taste buds, Americans especially over do it on adding flavor to dishes, everything is drowned in salt, fat, and sugars. So, since I wasn’t going to go through with a monodiet to reset my taste buds, how could I make this change pleasant? It hasn’t been easy, and I am still struggling to make a more radical change. But as with many of the big changes in life, it can be a gradual shift. Katie and I eat a plant-based diet, but we still crave a lot of the same overload of flavors. We have had to do a lot of experimentation to find alternatives, we use a lot more plain spices to flavor our food such as basil, cumin, coriander seed, and paprika; thus, reducing the salt intake. But learning about the habit that we have of adding salt, fat, and sugar has woken me up to the idea that as a whole, eating is more about the experience, and ultimately whatever you are eating, whether it’s a steak or an eggplant, we are only enjoying the taste. I’ve never eaten a steak because the meat was so delicious, I enjoyed the steak because of the butter it was cooked in, and the rock salt and cracked pepper that I used to season it with, it’s the combination of all these things that makes a steak great. Armed with that knowledge we can all learn to undo our brainwashing that we need to eat meat, we just want to eat flavor, the food is just the delivery method for the flavor. Now keep in mind that I have bounced regularly between extreme diets, keto was very restrictive and difficult because of the caloric concentration of the majority of foods, so keeping under calorie intake and high enough in fat, while also being low in carb and protein; there was a lot of difficulty in keeping track, and in the end I didn’t feel healthier or lose any real weight, but I got to eat as much butter and salt as I wanted, it was a delicious time. Taste is what makes eating enjoyable, if you are tired of eating and feeling physically drained afterwards, you might just try looking for alternative flavoring methods than adding more salt or butter to a dish. We will definitely be sharing all of our favorite flavor combos on our cooking page. And for anyone that is interested in being vegan, but afraid of bland food, I can guarantee you that it is just as flavorful if not more so than the salt, fat, and sugar you are used to.

-Matt