February 7, 2008
Plant-based whole foods diet
23:20 UTC » Health and Medicine
Ever since I started my vegan diet the year before last, I've been looking for a good word for what my diet is called. This search was intensified when Lawrence Lessig started a similar diet and insisted that he didn't like the word "vegan" - although that is what he currently is. The problem with "vegan" is that it has some political overtones and the vegan diet includes high-calorie-low-nutrition foods such as refined starches and oils.
The problem with this is that when you request a vegan meal on a plane, you end up with something like a pile of pasta with tomato sauce - which is really not the point. The point of our diet is to eat as much healthy whole foods as possible. One of the problems with refined starches, oils and meats is that they have much less nutrition per calorie than plant-based whole foods. So while cutting down on animal proteins and "bad fats" is part of the deal, a huge part of the deal is cutting down on "blank calories".
Anyway, I've decided that the current working name for my diet is "Plant-based whole foods". If anyone can think of a better word for this, let me know. I have yet to find one.
PS If you're a PMOG player, I made a Veganism mission. The problem with "Plant-based whole foods" is that it's a bit long to make into an "ism" - Plant-based whole foodsism... hmm
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2- Joi Ito @ February 8, 2008 12:50 AM
Hmm... so whole fish and stuff isn't considered whole food? If that's true, you're right.
I take a bit of whole-grain pasta, rice, oatmeal etc. but I try not to eat too much. One of the things I try to do is have as much variety as possible and sometimes with the grains I end up filling up on just that. ;-)
3- Peter Wayner @ February 8, 2008 1:37 PM
I'll ask my sister who've very much into these things.
But I don't know why the term "whole foods" doesn't refer to meat either. Let n be the percentage of the cow or pig that go into a hot dog. Let m be the percentage of a wheat plant that go into the so-called whole wheat bread. I'm pretty sure that n>m. There are huge parts of the wheat plant that aren't included in whole wheat flour. Everyone forgets about the stalk or the root structure. They're not traditionally edible but maybe that's only tradition. Potatoes are undigestable unless they're prepared correctly. Maybe there's a good way to prepare wheat roots too?
The term is so misleading because we rarely consume close to the whole item. Well, except perhaps for soft-shell crabs and even then that's only an accident of timing. Wait a few weeks and the shell will be inedible again.
4- Bret Fausett @ February 9, 2008 8:31 PM
I've been on something similar, and I always tell people that my goal is to eat things that are as close to the way God put them on the planet as possible. Perhaps you could call it the "God Diet."
-- Bret
5- tomo @ February 14, 2008 2:16 PM
If the point is that you don't like to sound being political / too stoic, how about "Veg-hedonism"?
Or if focusing on the "cutting down on blank calories" part, "High performance vegan"?
6- John Lee @ March 2, 2008 7:19 PM
I would suggest calling it the green diet.
1- boo
@ February 8, 2008 12:44 AM
That's much better than vegan. You can even drop the 'plants-based' part because the term 'whole foods' implicitly refers to plants. No such thing as whole meat.
Speaking of pasta, what is the take in your diet for whole-grain organic pasta?