The Mediterranean diet is well-known for its heart-healthy advantages, and now Ella Torres, a licensed dietitian, is offering it a plant-based variation that tastes great and is nouraging.
Ella’s method blends the rich, savory Mediterranean ingredients with plant-based eating for a diet that’s as healthy for the earth as it is for your body. Years of researching the power of food to heal have gone toward this.
“I have always loved the Mediterranean diet,” Ella explains. For anyone trying to maintain heart health, it emphasizes entire meals including fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and good fats. Including a plant-based twist simply strengthens the anti-inflammatory action.
How therefore would a Mediterranean diet with a plant-based spin work in reality? To get you going, Ella offers a handful of her best dishes.
Breakfast is chia pudding topped with walnuts and berries. Make chia pudding from chia seeds, almond milk, and a little of vanilla first thing in the morning. Top it with fresh berries, broken walnuts, and a drizz of honey. Walnuts’ omega-3 fatty acids help reduce inflammation; berries’ antioxidants shield the body from oxidative stress.
Lunch is Mediterranean chickpea salad. A Mediterranean chickpea salad makes the ideal lunch fare. Tossed with olive oil, lemon juice, and fresh herbs like parsley and oregano are chickpeas, cucumbers, tomatoes, red onion, olives, and a sprinkling of feta—or vegan feta. While the olive oil gives good fats essential to this diet, chickpeas give plant-based protein and fiber.
Snack: Cucumber slices and carrot sticks combined with hummus Hummus presented with fresh carrot sticks and cucumber slices is a basic but filling snack. Made from pureed chickpeas, tahini, olive oil, and lemon, hummus is high in protein and fiber and goes wonderfully with crisp veggies for a snack loaded with fiber.
Dinner calls for grilled vegetable and quinoa stuffed peppers. Ella enjoys creating quinoa stuffed peppers and grilled vegetable dinners. Quinoa, zucchini, mushrooms, onions, and garlic combine to stuff the peppers. These stuffed peppers, topped with olive oil and cooked till tender, are Mediterranean-flavored and quite filling.
Eating this way, Ella stresses, is about appreciating food that supports long-term health and feeds the body rather than about restrictions. “Everything depends on balance,” she says. “The Mediterranean diet is flexible; we are only improving its advantages by including plant-based foods.”
One excellent approach to include more complete, fresh foods into your everyday diet is this Mediterranean diet with a plant-based spin. Rich in tastes, good fats, and lots of plant-based protein, this way of life benefits your health as well as the environment.