introduction

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Why do growing numbers of people seem to be adopting a vegan diet? Some people are removing animal fat from their diet to reduce the risk of heart disease and for other health reasons, while others are approaching veganism from an animal welfare perspective. Eating less meat is also recognised as environmentally friendly because plant foods require less land and water to produce.

Whatever your motivations, moving to a plant-based diet requires a little planning, but it isn’t the quantum leap into alien eating territory that many people think. Before I started writing this book, I feared that eating a vegan diet equated to deprivation. But once I began to explore plant-based recipes, I realised that it’s not about missing out at all.

The truth is that a lot of our eating patterns are based on habits that are as easy to give up as they were to pick up in the first place. Giving up meat, fish and other animal products might feel like a wrench to start with, but if you fully explore plant-based eating you could end up enjoying a more varied diet than you ever did before.