Veganuary, veganism – it’s everywhere! Whilst milk, after all, is meant for calves and animals are being mistreated, it is easier said than done to go vegan after seeing one, most likely, sponsored Youtuber talk about it for fifteen minutes. However, you don’t have to go vegan to help the environment or your health.
Fortunately, it is now easier than ever to reduce your meat and dairy consumption. Here are my top tips on how you can do so:
Cheese
Cheese is a staple part of a student diet. It transforms your bowl of boring pasta. There are now a huge variety of plant-based substitute cheeses, and they are remarkably good! Tesco even has its own (more affordable) brand, but Violife is my personal favourite. So now you can reduce your dairy consumption and enjoy your dinner. Why not try one?
Milk
Another easy way to reduce your dairy consumption is to replace cow’s milk with almond milk, oat milk, or soya milk. They are amazing in coffee. However, coffee is not the only thing they are good in. You can also use these dairy-free milks in porridge, mash potato, cereal and sauces. There are so many to choose from you are bound to like one of them!
Butter
Fancy making something sweet? Most margarines don’t even use dairy products! So make your cake, save money, and reduce your dairy consumption. These margarines also taste good so you won’t miss out on tea and toast!
“Quorn chicken nuggets are incredible.”
Meat
I would say this is the easiest thing to reduce your consumption of. Purely because you can hardly taste the difference between substitutes and the real thing. Quorn chicken nuggets are incredible, famously better than the real thing! Quorn has lots of very versatile products which fit into many different recipes.
Tofu is a popular Japanese protein source often used instead of chicken – you could try this in a stir fry or a curry. Vivera is another, newer, brand that makes meat substitutes such as burgers, steaks and meatballs – making reducing meat consumption super easy.
“Make life even easier for yourself and buy a vegan or vegetarian cookbook.”
Cookbooks
Make life even easier for yourself and buy a vegan or vegetarian cookbook. You will get loads of ideas and eat some delicious foods. There are some cheap options on Amazon that are targeted to those with a tight student budget! By no means do you have to use it everyday, but it will help get you started.
Eating out
While you could reserve eating out to treat yourself to enjoying a meal with no restrictions, it is now both easy and delicious to avoid meat and/or dairy when eating out. Fast food restaurants such as McDonalds and Greggs, who sell the much-debated vegan sausage roll, now cater for veggies and vegans (perfect for after a night out).
Slightly classier places provide many options that can help you reduce your meat and dairy intake. Pizza Express, for example, do vegan cheese which you could get with a meat pizza, or you could go full vegan or just veggie if you don’t like the cheese alternative. Most other restaurants will serve a variety of options – even Pieminister do vegan pies!
Hopefully these tips will be able to help you reduce your meat and dairy consumption. It is not as hard as it seems!
Olivia Emmott
Featured image courtesy of Karen in California, no changes made to the image. Image license can be found here.
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