Looking for a name for this type of diet.

March 24, 2009 4:24 AM

Mostly vegetarian diet with some meat, lots of fruits and vegetables, few carbs, no dairy. Is there a name for this type of eating, and where can I get recipes?

For health reasons I want to reform my eating habits. I just read the book Eat to Live and am completely won over to the idea of eating that way, but the issue for me is the implementation. I'd like to greatly increase the fruits and vegetables I eat, but not give up meat entirely. I do want to forego dairy food, though, and cut back on carbs. I've tried it for a few days, but honestly, my cooking expertise ends at chopping up a salad or steaming greens. Is there a name for this type of eating? I need to find some simple, easy-to-do recipes if I am going to be successful.

posted by bchaplin to food & drink (24 comments total)

Sounds like you want to look at mostly Asian recipes (and keep the carbs in brown rice or something like that) -- Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, etc. I think that meets all your requirements.
posted by olinerd at 4:32 AM on March 24

If you want to eat some meat every day, a cuisine like various Asian or African ones is probably good. However, you are describing the diet that my family uses, essentially. What we do is fairly typical American meat-based meals (although smaller portions) 2-3 days a week, and vegetarian dishes the rest (in fact most) of the time. So standard recipes like meatloaf or baked chicken, plus vegetarian meals like veggie lasagna, veg stir fry, etc. I'd say a couple of vegetarian cookbooks (I really like The Vegetarian Epicure-- website) and a standard home cooking-type cookbook like the Joy of Cooking.
posted by nax at 4:58 AM on March 24

You know how usually make a meal, and it's generally meat with some vegetables and a shitload of carbs? Cut out the last bit. Instead of rice, pasta or potatoes, you need to just have stacks of delicious vegetables. No mystery.
posted by turgid dahlia at 5:00 AM on March 24

Thanks for the suggestions so far.
Just to clarify, I don't care if every meal or every day includes fish or meat. I don't feel strongly either way, but like it for flavor and for making me feel satisfied.
My primary goal is also to cut way down on processed food/ empty calories, greatly increase my quota of vegetables, and eat lower on the food chain. What I need is a book or web site of really simple recipes that require few ingredients and can be slapped together late in the evening. Or clever lunch ideas I can keep in the frig at work. Etc.
And to be fair to the author of the book I referenced, the diet I'm outlining isn't exactly what he recommends! But it is still an improvement over my previous habits.
posted by bchaplin at 5:11 AM on March 24

South Beach Diet?

Replace rice, pasta or potatoes with legumes - beans, lentils etc - less carbs, more protein.
posted by iviken at 5:20 AM on March 24

In this post from a recent thread, desuetude mentioned a couple of names for the "low meat diet" concept, which is trendy recently as an option for those who avoid meat for environmental or health reasons. I always thought this made a lot of sense; to me the idea of a "health vegetarian" is almost incoherent--if you're only avoiding meat for health reasons, why not have it once in a while?
posted by abcde at 5:20 AM on March 24

For a good vegetarian cookbook that can be used independently of or to complement meat, I highly recommend Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.
posted by The Michael The at 5:43 AM on March 24

Diet for a Small Planet was published some 38 years ago, and wasn't even the first book arguing for the kind of diet you are describing (low on food chain, minimal meat, and minimal dairy are pretty much constants, though the anti-carb stuff is more faddish and comes and goes). You can even find dietary books from the 1800s pushing for this sort of diet. The point being, it's not a new idea, but remains somewhat counter to the average American diet over the past couple of centuries.

I think Michael Pollan's pithy phrase ("Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.") captures what you are looking for quite precisely. Mostly plants, and then you layer in things like bacon for flavor, rather than starting with a pile of bacon and adding a little bit of salad.

For recipes, it's really easy to eat this way (well, assuming that you can manage to buy decent veggies year round), much easier than trying to cut out all meat and dairy. Since nothing is off limits, you just need to focus on moderation. All you need is to switch around the proportions of what you are already eating. Instead of that 21 ounce steak, enormous loaded baked potato, and a small salad, you want a small (and ideally locally-produced) steak, some roasted baby potatoes, and a big-ass salad, for example. Same stuff, different idea.

For recipes and philosophical ideas, I'd suggest looking at the various Moosewood cookbooks, anything recent by Alice Waters, any of a dozen "ethnic" cuisines (like Indian, Japanese, etc) that don't emphasize meat so much, and all those hippy classics like Laurel's Kitchen and the Tassajara cookbook. The approach can be kind of hokey, but they were writing directly for an audience of people like you -- good intentions, but unsure of how to take the first steps.
posted by Forktine at 5:52 AM on March 24 [2 favorites has favorites]

I recently bought Eating Well Serves Two and have found that it is wonderful for making things is around 30 minutes that involve fresh ingredients plus seasonings. I do eat dairy, but in general their recipes are heavy on the veggies and light on everything else.
posted by hydropsyche at 6:08 AM on March 24

I came here to suggest Diet for a Small Planet. The book was a revelation for my wife... I've always pretty much eaten that way. So I'll second that.

I'll also suggest a name for such a diet: Cheata-tarian. I'm a cheating vegetarian. I've been that way since grade school. A 95% vegetarian is a healthy, and maybe even sustainable way to live. It's also freaking delicious: you get to take advantage of local delicacies when you travel to far off lands (or just to Georgia), and to treat yourself to a nice steak once a month or thereabouts. The head food critic for the NYTimes is a "vegan-until-6PM". Hey, whatever works.
posted by zpousman at 6:30 AM on March 24

Others have chimed in with support and background for your goals, I'll discuss the part where you aren't sure if you know how to cook. I think most people who cook every night have a standard repertoire of about eight things, tops, that they make all the time, a few once-in-awhile dishes, the occasional new recipe, and then they dine out occasionally. So, let's make your goal more attainable. Aim for being comfortable putting together four things with some variations that you would like to eat for dinner.

You can steam your greens and serve them over a bed of the whole grain of your choice. (Sample some of the whole grains you can get -- much more easily, thanks internet! -- now. Quinoa, spelt, barley. Quinoa is the easiest thing to cook ever.) Squirt of lemon at the end. Almost everything is better with a squirt of lemon at the end.

There's a lot of things you can do with greens, though. You can saute them in peanut oil and a splash of oyster sauce and soy sauce and a little sriracha (or tabasco.) You can saute them in olive oil and a sprinkle of hot pepper flakes and a shake of nutmeg. You can get collards or kale and simmer them in chicken broth until they're tender. What type of greens are you using? If you have an Asian market nearby in addition to your regular supermarket, you have so many greens available that you could have a different green every day of the week not get bored. And instead of grains, you can use lentils or other fast-cooking legumes.

Almost all vegetables are better roasted. Peel if necessary, chop them up, put them in a pan (line with foil for easy cleanup), glug in some olive oil and mix so that all the veggies are coated, sprinkle with salt, put in 300-350 oven, peek occasionally. Asparagus or green beans are done in 10 min, tops, less if they're very skinny. Tomatoes are amazing roasted. Sundry squashes, onion, potatoes, carrot, sweet potatoes, take longer, at least 20 min. When they're soft, they're done. Roast some garlic and make some ginger along with. You can again, just spritz with lemon, or you can get creative with your spice rack. The roasted root veggies are also soup. Toss into a blender or processor or just mash 'em well, blend with some chicken or veggie broth until, well, soupy. I made this on Sunday.

Fritatta or quiche (Pillsbury refrigerated pie crusts are fine.) If the recipe you find makes it sound complicated, look for a simpler one. Yes, the technique of stirring can help produce the custardyest egg ever, but the more pedestrian versions are damn tasty and require no technique. Eggs, a big splash of milk or half-and-half, and a couple minutes of whisking or vigorous fork-stirring. With whatever's in your fridge that needs using. I always have marinated artichokes, roasted red peppers, and olives on hand, too. They keep a long time and are good in lots of things. (Also, if you're just tired and need food now, I find scrambled eggs with chives to be terribly satisfying.)

That's three of your four, and I haven't even gotten into roasting a shoulder of pork or lamb, shredding it, diving the meat into small portions, and using it as an ingredient in other recipes in small amounts -- it will last for months. Or summertime recipes of steamed shrimp plus corn, tomatoes, cilantro, jalapeno, lime juice.
posted by desuetude at 6:58 AM on March 24 [5 favorites has favorites]

Isn't this basically the premise for Mark Bittman's new cookbook, Food Matters? He also has the advantage of creating great recipes for novices. His earlier books would have plenty of great, easy, meat-light recipes.
posted by palliser at 7:01 AM on March 24

Sounds a lot like the Paleo Diet as well, a decent eating plan as long you don't buy into the caveman evolution quackery. Here are some recipes.
posted by zoomorphic at 7:09 AM on March 24

You might be interested in a macrobiotic diet. From the above link to "Macrobiotics Guide:"

Macrobiotics is an approach to physical and emotional wellness through consuming foods that are balanced energetically (between yin and yang) and nutritionally. It is typically a well-balanced diet with high fibre, low fat, lots of vegetables and grains, vegetable protein, and limited meat, with an emphasis on eating seasonal organic food.

See also, macrobiotics on wikipedia.
posted by GPF at 7:24 AM on March 24

you might want to take a look at The Instinct Diet. despite the name, it's not all about weight loss, but 'diet' in the sense of what one eats and drinks on a regular basis. it has a lot of easy recipes and suggested menus, which pretty much follow what you described.
posted by needled at 8:16 AM on March 24

No one has said flexitarian yet? That's the trendy term, anyway.
posted by mdn at 8:35 AM on March 24

I think if you really, truly cut out the processed junk food snacks and desserts, you'll be fine with "honest" carbs like rice, pasta, and potatoes. Everything else you've described sounds like traditional (delicious, yummy, tasty, delectable) Asian cooking.

Some cookbook recommendations:

Various Asian cooking for newbies -
The Key to Chinese Cooking by Irene Kuo is the best overall introduction to, well, Chinese cooking that I've found.
The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen by Grace Young was a revelation for me, giving me a real appreciation for Cantonese food (the type most commonly abused in US Chinese restaurants).
The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking by Barbara Tropp is also very good, with exhaustive descriptions of techniques and ingredients.
Real Thai by Nancie McDermott is probably my favorite Thai cookbook for beginners.
Lord Krishna's Cuisine by Yamuna Devi is a great introduction to Indian vegetarian cooking, with extensive discussion of ingredients and techniques.
An Invitation to Indian Cooking by Madhur Jaffrey covers non-vegetarian Indian food, and has a few vegetarian recipes as well.

For more advanced cooks (you'll get there sooner than you think!):
Charmaine Solomon's Thai Cookbook is flat-out awesome, but she doesn't give much detail so you're sort of on your own.
Her Complete Asian Cookbook is also really good.
Food Heritage of India by Vimla Patil is surprisingly good, but written for an Indian audience so some of the terminology is unfamiliar and a lot of details are omitted.

I also want to plug my current favorite American vegetarian cookbook, Vegetarian Planet by Didi Emmons, which offers really tasty dishes that don't make you feel like you're doing penance (I find a lot of vegetarian dishes are so damn healthy, it's like you're supposed to get your satisfaction from feeling virtuous. Down with rabbit food!) Many recipes are simple enough for beginners.

Note: many Indian dishes use lots of dairy products, but don't write off the whole subcontinent - there's lots of dishes that are milk-free. And yeah, "flexitarian" seems to be the tongue-in-cheek name for the diet you describe.
posted by Quietgal at 9:32 AM on March 24 [3 favorites has favorites]

You've largely described the Mediterranean Diet. They do consume a fair amount of dairy, but mostly in the form of cheeses, which can be easily adjusted.
posted by mkultra at 9:49 AM on March 24

Mark Bittman likes to call himself a less-meat-arian. Because he also agrees that "flexitarian" sounds silly.

(In fact, when I saw him speak to promote Food Matters, he noted that he was using www.lessmeatarian.com as the working URL for what became the new www.markbittman.com website.)
posted by desuetude at 10:08 AM on March 24

on cookbooks and recipes: the London healthy fast food chain Leon does good recipes for this kind of eating. They cook meat but avoid meats that are badly raised and have lots of good ideas for diets that restrict a few things, but are more about the love of food than the restrictions, which are boring and the suck. You probably can't get the (incredibly pretty) Leon cookbook in the USA, but some of the recipes are on the Guardian's (guardian.co.uk) website: if you search for 'Allegra McEvedy' or Leon you should find them.
posted by iamnotateenagegirl at 11:58 AM on March 24 [1 favorite has favorites]

On the Eat To Live message boards I've been to, people seem to be most comfortable calling themselves "Nutritarians" since the Eat to Live plan is all about nutritional density. I am unable to use that word to describe my diet without rolling my eyes, because to me it just sounds silly. However, it rolls off the tongue better than less-meat-atarian, so maybe I'll get over it soon.

Many of the recipes at fatfreevegan.com are simple, easy and delicious, and I don't see why you couldn't just add meat whenever you felt like it. That links directly to the Eat To Live section, but there are many more recipes to explore, and the blog itself is interesting to read.
posted by Brody's chum at 12:11 PM on March 24 [1 favorite has favorites]

nthing mark bittman's book/website. That sounds like exactly what you're looking for.
posted by skechada at 12:36 PM on March 24

It's the hunter/gatherer diet or the paleolithic diet, eat like your hunter gatherer ancestors did.
posted by zentrification at 1:37 PM on March 24

And here's a name for it, as well as a couple of recipe suggestions.
posted by palliser at 12:00 PM on March 25