Finding the best flexitarian cookbooks can be a challenge if you’re new to the concept. While many purists might encourage you to fully embrace a vegetarian or vegan life way, there’s no reason you can’t explore a more moderate approach. Known as flexitarian or plant-centric, this eating pattern focuses on plant-based food sources, while still including meat, dairy, and eggs. This gentler, more moderated approach can often prove beneficial for modern eaters since it mirrors the evolutionary patterns of our distant ancestors. Plus, because it is designed to be flexible, if you wish, you can use the recipes to transition to a dedicated vegetarian diet over time. In order to minimize your search time, we’ve compiled a list of the top ten flexitarian recipe guides and texts.
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1. Mostly Plants by Tracy Pollan
Over the years, renowned author Michael Pollan traveled the world, talking to evolutionary anthropologists, Moroccan bakers, Indian vegetarians, small farmers, and the research scientists at food companies. What he discovered about how we should eat, he distilled into a seven-word adage—eat food, not too much, mostly plants. The flexitarian lifestyle doesn’t eliminate animal protein, but it provides a healthy shift in focus to what nourishes our bodies and delights our eyes. Now, in a plant-centric cookbook, Tracy Pollan offers more than 100 beautiful recipes that make members of the plant kingdom the building blocks of meals.
2. The Flexitarian Diet by Dawn Jackson Blatner
While the vegetarian lifestyle has many benefits, it isn’t for everyone. Blatner’s crafted approach provides a more relaxed approach with plenty of meat alternatives that doesn’t rule out meat or other animal proteins. Based on the understanding that humans evolved to eat a wide range of foods, both from animal and plant sources, it embraces the breadth of food diversity. By reducing the consumption of meat and animal products, individuals attain better health and longevity, without a sense of privation or restriction.
3. Everyday Flexitarian by Nettie Cronish and Pat Crocker
This cookbook takes the core ethos of the flexitarian lifestyle to heart. In a range of recipes designed to appeal to all appetites, the authors offer more nutritious and filling fare that can be tailored to vegetarian and omnivorous palettes alike. In addition to helpful guidelines for reducing the primacy of animal protein in the diet, the authors offer a thorough exploration of features such as the true meaning behind the labels of organic foods and a pantry guide to help anyone on their way to better, healthier eating habits.
4. Food Swings by Jessica Seinfeld
As a human activity, eating was never really meant to be strictly regimented. We evolved to eat a variety of foods, feeding whenever we grew hungry and sources were available. But that was before industrialized, western culture appeared and offered up too much of a good thing. Seinfeld provides a balanced approach that embraces those tasty but unhealthy foods along with superlative sources of nutrition because that’s the core sentiment of the flexitarian life way. In addition to delicious, vibrant recipes to feed your cravings and your body, she provides tips and tricks, personal essays, and helpful lists to help you realign your nutritional perspectives and practices.
5. Ketotarian by Will Cole
There is some debate among nutrition scientists about the benefits of the keto diet, which is loosely based on an approach intended to mitigate seizures in epileptic children. However, with a mostly-plant based approach, this semi-vegetarian book brings the benefits of plant foods and healthy fats back into focus. It draws on the positive aspects of the keto approach, which omits refined sugars and simple carbohydrates without avoiding the bounty of nutrients and fiber found in almost all plant foods. This book offers 75 vegetarian, vegan, and pescatarian recipes for a positive spin on the keto concept that boosts brain function, weight loss, and health.
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6. The VB6 Cookbook by Mark Bittman
A core idea of a flexible eating plan is the de-emphasis on meat and other animal proteins. With this in mind, the VB6 recipes are vegan. Of course, you can choose to focus primarily on the options presented within these pages, but if you’re in pursuit of a flexitarian approach, there’s no need to exclude animal proteins. The main idea behind the 350 recipes is an omission of animal products prior to six p.m. Hence, the title of the book.
7. Plant-Based Meats by Robin Asbell
You don’t have to be a dedicated, lifelong vegan in order to explore the interesting and delicious creations made with the new plant-based meat alternatives. This book is for everyone who would like to try new things, explore the vegan life way, or simply shift their diet to a more plant-centric focus without the jarring shock that can accompany some vegetarian models.
8. The Flexitarian Diet by Bruce Ackerberg
If you’ve avoided incorporating more plant-centric recipes into your diet because you’re uncertain about how to begin, this book is perfect. A concise guide for beginners it offers a measured and informative approach that will enlighten anyone who would like to know more. You’ll learn about what the approach is, how to adjust your perspective to embrace a more flexible approach to food, the additional food groups included in the model, and how to unload the damaging concepts that surround the Western idea of the diet.
9. The Pollan Family Table by Corky Pollan
Embracing a plant-centric way of eating is hardly new. The Pollan family has utilized the fresh, locally grown produce to dress their tables for generations. Now, Corky and his children bring you a beautifully illustrated collection of their best, nourishing recipes that make perfect additions to a flexitarian approach to life and food. Along with a practice of incorporating more plant foods, these recipes reflect relationships, both with members of the wider community and the immediate family.
10. Clean Eating for Busy Families by Michelle Dudash
Cooking nutritious foods for the whole family fell out of fashion, largely due to the increased pace of life. It didn’t align with long ingredients lists, onerous preparation instructions, and lengthy cook times. This book offers strategies to return to this more wholesome eating pattern, pairing delicious, quick recipes with weekly shopping plans, pantry prep, and other great tips.
Diversifying your diet and exploring a more plant-based approach doesn’t have to be complicated or strict. In fact, that’s the opposite of the core principles of this nutritional ideology. What can help is finding the best flexitarian cookbooks for your lifestyle and tastes, because they’ll introduce you to new food combinations and preparations, permitting you to create your own delicious approach.
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By BCR Staff
July 2019
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