Hot Health Trend – Plant Based Diets

The latest buzz in the health world is around “plant-based eating”, with celebrities and sports stars adopting this eating style in droves. Not just popular in Hollywood, this growing global movement to eat more foods derived from plants and fewer foods from animals is attracting many Aussie fans too. Its popularity comes down to its simplicity and the many health improvements associated with eating plants.

In its purest form, plant-based eating refers to diets that are high in vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, legumes and whole grains. It includes strict vegetarians and vegans yet doesn’t exclude those who eat meat or fish too. It’s about consuming mostly plant foods, or at the least, more plant foods.

What are the plant based diet benefits?

There are stacks of good reasons for gobbling plant foods. Plants bring us not just the basic vitamins and minerals as we know them, but a whole host of complex compounds, phytochemicals and other elements. These minute food components have a profound and positive affect on our physiology and cannot be synthesised in a lab.

Here are some specific plant based diet benefits associated with diets high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes and nuts:

1. Boost your gut health as plants are high in fibre.
2. Better manage your weight as plants are low in calories.
3. Improve your quality of sleep.
4. Lower your risk of chronic disease (such as cancer and type 2 diabetes).
5. Beneficial for the prevention and treatment of hypertension, osteoporosis, dementia, gallstones and rheumatoid arthritis to name a few.

What’s on our menu for plant eaters?

Here at Gourmet Dinner Service we’ve noticed an uplift in the popularity of our vegetarian dishes over the last two years. Our clients are demanding a more diverse range of vege meals and they want more exciting flavour combinations too.

Some of our most popular dishes now include Eggplant Parmigiana and Vegetarian Lasagne with Pesto.

Our sister company, Dietlicious, has even more options for those who want to get more creative with dishes that focus on plants and exclude meats. You can check out the Dietlicious menu. Use the dietary filter tool to drill down to vegetarian meals.

How to boost your intake of plants

Getting into this trend certainly doesn’t have to mean a complete overhaul of your eating patterns, although it can do. It can be as simple as swapping out a few low nutrient carb snacks for some vege sticks and hummus. Or take a leaf out of the “Meatless Mondays” book and drop animal proteins from your menu just one day a week.

Whatever your approach, increasing your consumption of plant foods just makes good health sense, which is why we have adjusted our menus to cater to this rise in popularity. We believe this health trend is here to stay.