A new food movement that aims for better – not perfect
Not your muscles, no. There’s a new kid on the better-living block: flexitarianism. What if we aim for ‘better’ instead of ‘perfect’?
TThere is a wealth of new information about nutrition and the profound role it plays in most lifestyle diseases, and we’re finally cottoning on to the detrimental effects that our food industries are having on the environment. But sticking to an intense, restrictive diet is tricky.
The Oxford dictionary defines a flexitarian as ‘a person who has a primarily vegetarian diet but occasionally eats meat or fish’. But flexitarianism today actually points to a broader trend: people are moving away from traditionally rigid diet choices towards a more adaptable approach to eating and living. With flexing, you don’t have to be exclusively vegan, Paleo or alcohol-free – which means you can make better choices without being restricted by too many rules or feeling guilty when you break them.
In its annual food trends report for 2017, Whole Foods named the flexitarian movement one of its top 10: ‘Consumers will embrace a new, personalised version of healthy eating that’s less rigid than typical vegan, Paleo, gluten-free and other “special diets” that have gone mainstream. For instance, eating vegan before 6 pm or eating Paleo five days a week, or gluten-free whenever possible, allows consumers more flexibility. Instead of a strict identity aligned with one diet, shoppers embrace the “flexitarian” approach to making conscious choices about what, when and how much to eat.’
Azraa Rawoot, a 26-year-old urban designer from Cape Town, has been flexing for about two years. ‘I tried the vegan thing but found it very difficult. I was really hungry all the time and going vegan is also extremely energy intensive – you can’t just stop eating dairy and meat products; you have to consciously supplement your diet and eat the right things to make sure you get all the nutrients you need. It’s not as easy as switching to sandwiches and pasta because that will take a toll on your health,’ she says.
‘I moderated my diet and went back to what I was doing before – which is eating a vegetarian diet five days of the week and a bit of meat on weekends. Plus, I always buy good meat where possible.’
She also refers to herself as being an ‘indoor vegetarian’ – ‘as long as you’re cooking at home you try to stick to vegetarian eating. I find it easier to cook vegetarian meals for myself than going to restaurants, where it’s harder to find a good vegetarian dish.’
The preferred word – ‘plantbased’ – is in itself indicative that people don’t want to be too stringent with their choices. Rather than saying I’m ‘vegetarian’ or ‘vegan’, ‘plant-based’ conveys that fruits and vegetables are the main foundation, but not the only food source allowed.
Lifestyles that call for the complete exclusion of certain foods can be overwhelming, and often people won’t even try them. Diets as we traditionally know them also usually fail because we run out of willpower to uphold impractical restrictions. By flexing, however, you can make manageable, less intimidating changes – I can’t imagine giving up meat forever, but I can imagine giving up meat for a few days a week, and subsequently eating less but better meat, for example. Likewise, I can’t imagine giving up alcohol forever but I can imagine giving up drinking during the week, or for a month at a time. Healthyish (Bon Appétit!’s new brand extension), which launched in 2017, epitomises the flexi direction the world is heading in.
‘Healthyish, as in, we like knowing where our food comes from, what’s in it and who made it. We care about how food makes us feel. But, also, we’re not losing sleep over it. We’re not nutritionists. We don’t count calories or fret about our cholesterol levels (the good or bad kind),’ writes Amanda Shapiro, editor of the publication.
THE RISE OF THE CONSCIOUS CONSUMER
The past decade has seen an influx of new documentaries and docuseries (like Cowspiracy, Food Inc., What the Health, The Truth About
Alcohol and Rotten) that investigate the issues around mass production and the overconsumption of meat, dairy, alcohol and more. It’s becoming harder to ignore the consequences of our lifestyle choices.
Striving for a more plant-based lifestyle is founded on three things, says Azraa. ‘Firstly, health: I don’t want to put antibiotics and a lot of the other things that end up in meat through production or processing into my body. The second thing is that meat and dairy production is incredibly natural resource-intensive; the land and water costs are high and it’s very bad for the environment. A lot of land that could be used to feed people is being used to grow grain to feed animals, and it takes a lot of water to produce animal products. Thirdly, the way animals are treated in the mass production of meat isn’t okay. I know that you can buy better meat, but that option is available only to a tiny percentage of the population that can afford it. The majority of
‘I moderated my diet and went back to what I was doing before – which is eating a vegetarian diet five days of the week and a bit of meat on weekends. Plus, I always buy good meat, where possible.’
people – middle to low income – will buy what’s affordable. It’s also about the larger implications of farming and how the methods are changing to produce a lot of meat quickly for a fast-growing, meat-hungry market.’ Apart from the ethical, environmental and health considerations, there are other practical motivations for flexing:
• A farewell to food guilt.
Subscribing strictly to one diet often leaves you plagued with guilt when you bend or break one of the rules. And food guilt can be the beginning of an unhealthy relationship with food. Plus, the allure of forbidden fruit is pretty powerful (even when it comes to food we weren’t that keen on to start with!) and can leave us feeling deprived.
This is what led Dawn Jackson Blatner, author of The Flexitarian Diet, to change her approach: ‘I’d been vegetarian for over 10 years, but ate meat on rare occasions,’ she writes on her website. ‘Every time I ate meat I felt like I was being a bad, lazy vegetarian. So I developed this style of eating for people who know that vegetarianism is one of the healthiest and smartest ways to eat, but don’t want to sit in the corner at a BBQ with an empty bun.’
• It’s socially inclusive. Most of us don’t just eat for fuel; we eat for fun – especially in social and celebratory settings. It can be exhausting to be the token vegetarian, vegan or teetotaller turning down the main event on the menu and being left with that empty bun. For lifestyle changes to stick, they need to make provision for the fundamentals of our lives, like social situations.
• It saves money. When you eat less meat and/or drink less alcohol, you’ll definitely chop a chunk off your bills. Although we are quite spoilt with the quality of meat available at a good price in SA, the prices of meat, eggs, fish and dairy are climbing.
• It encourages experimental eating.
When you change up your eating habits and have to fill your plate with more vegetables, you have to get creative – you’ll have to use a larger variety of vegetables and plant-based foods in order to fill your plate and you’ll need to incorporate a variety of flavours so you don’t get bored. Meat, chicken and fish are satisfying even when simply cooked, but with vegetarian meals it’s the combinations and diversity that make the meal.
FLEXING YOUR WAY TO FOOD FREEDOM
If you’re hoping to make a positive change to your lifestyle this year, start small and be flexible about it – that way you’re more likely to give it a real chance.
Here are a few flexitarian strategies (that can be applied to anything, from eating to exercise or drinking less) that have worked for some:
VEGAN BEFORE SIX:
As the name suggests, VB6 flexitarians follow a vegan diet until 6pm and can include some animal protein for dinner.
80/20 APPROACH:
This aim is to eat a healthy (mostly plant-based) diet 80% of the time, and less-healthy options or treats 20% of the time. This could mean eating healthily all week and being a bit more relaxed about it over weekends. The healthy 80% can
come in many forms: a low-carb diet, a ketogenic diet, a Paleo diet, a vegan diet, going alcohol free, etc. The other 20% can mean different things to different people – from dairy, fried foods and alcohol to meat and sweets.
5:2 OR INTERMITTENT FASTING:
This is more about when you eat, rather than what you eat. For five days of the week, you eat normally, with little attention paid to calorie control. On the other two days, you reduce your calorie intake to 500 calories for women and 600 calories for men.
RAW TILL FOUR:
These flexitarians eat only raw food – fruit and veg – before 4pm, after which they can enjoy a cooked meal that can include animal protein.
You can figure out a whole new strategy that works for you, but the goal when it comes to flexitarianism is to be better, not perfect. As Azraa says: ‘Being an indoor vegetarian works for me and it’s a sustainable approach to reducing meat-eating, because if you’re at a braai over a weekend you don’t want to be the person who brings a squash. This is a good balance.’
We like that: set aside all the confusion, anxiety and guilt around food and eating the strictest possible diet, and aim for better balance by flexing instead.