Plant Based Recipes For RV Life

Plant based diets remain a foreign concept for most North Americans. However, there are so many health benefits to this diet, it’s hard to imagine why more people don’t adopt this lifestyle. Plant based diets have been proven to lower blood pressure, reduce risk of heart attacks and strokes, and reverse diabetes. However, plant based diets aren’t just good for us, their beneficial for the planet as well. Not only that but they’re delicious too. My Plant based recipes involve simple ingredients and preparation.

Growing Plants Is Better For The Planet

Not only does growing plants require less fossil fuel inputs, water, and other resources than animals, but it takes up a lot less arable land. Driving extensively through Canada’s prairie provinces and throughout the midwestern USA, you see thousands upon thousands of acres of beautiful farmland, stretching as far as the eye can see.

Plant Based Eating Is Healthiest

It’s stunning to realize that the majority of soybean, corn, and grain on these cultivates fields aren’t grown for humans to eat. Instead, all of this land is used to feed animals that are being raised to feed humans that believe they need to consume animal products to thrive, and then wonder why their blood pressure is through the roof, or why heart attacks and strokes kill millions of omnivores every year. The hard truth is that If all that land were used to feed humans instead of animals, we’d get rid of a lot of human illnesses. We might even be able to feed the ever increasing human populations who simply don’t have access to food.

My Journey To Becoming Vegan

My journey to being vegan began when I worked as a dairy milker. Back then, I ate meat from animals and products from them, like milk, cheese and eggs. And then I worked 2 horrifying shifts as a dairy milker at a 130 head dairy farm and saw up close and personal what happens to cows on a small scale farm. I On my first shift, I was astonished to discover that cows live their entire lives in concrete barns, eating, pooping, and giving birth to beautiful calves.

Hard Truths About The Dairy Industry

I could see the depression in the cows as they called for babies that were taken from them after just 4 days to be raised and sold at a livestock auction. From what I saw, the new moms are obviously sad and call out repeatedly when their bawling calves are taken from them. My heart broke when I found out this happened every year for these bovine moms in order to keep them in milk production that often exceeds 32 litres every day.

Any cow that tried to defend her calf or resisted having her udder attached to a milking machine was loaded on a truck to go to the livestock auction. After 2 shifts as a dairy milker, I couldn’t be part of this system of abuse anymore. I was too horrified at the was these animals have been turned from a family milk cow into a slave for a big industrial machine that pushes diabetes-inducing milk products as part of a healthy diet.

The Dawn Of A New Era For Me

I not only quit the job. After that, I quit consuming dairy products and began to explore non-dairy options that didn’t involve abuse of animals.

Plant based Milk Uses Fewer Resources than Dairy

Dairy Farming Uses More Fresh Water Than Any Other Type Of Farming

According to the Dairy Farmers of Ontario, a single dairy cow needs to eat about 30 lbs of food per day. And a cow has to drink 80 to 180 litres of water every single day. Many more litres of fresh water is needed to hose their semi liquid poop from the barns and milking parlour.

Multiply those numbers by a small herd size of 130. The cowsn on the farm I worked on ate 3900 lbs of food every day. They washed it down with 10400 to 23400 of water. All to make a measly 3900 litres of milk.

That doesn’t even begin to addess the fossil fuel inputs needed to run a dairy farm. All to produce a product that scientific studies now say harms human health. Humans don’t need cow’s milk to thrive.

Here are the resources used to make 1 litre of milk.

*Data from BBC Science Focus Magazine

Dairy Milk

• Emissions (kg) = .63
• Land Use (square metre)= 1.79
• Water (litre)= 125.62

Oat Milk

• Emissions (kg)= .18
• Land Use (square metre)= .15
• Water (litre)= 9.65

Almond Milk

• Emissions (kg) = 0.14
• Land use (square metre) = 0.1
• Water (litre) = 74.3

Soy Milk

• Emissions (kg) = 0.2
• Land use (square metre) = 0.13
• Water (litre) = 5.6
  

Plant Based Diet for a Better Planet

I realized that if I wanted to reduce my own impact on this beautiful planet, and help save a bunch of cows and other farm animals from living a miserable life I would need to change my eating habits. I cut out meat and dairy and soon wanted to try a cholesterol free existence, so I also cut eggs out of my diet.

The health results? My blood pressure dropped, my cholesterol levels are very low, my energy levels are about the same as ever, and there is still no sign of the diabetes that runs in my family. As I officially enter my senior years, so far so good.

Delicious Plant Based Recipes For The Road

Plant based eating is not only healthy, and sustainable, but plant based eating can be delicious! It’s also well suited for a mobile, RV life because plant based products don’t tend to go bad in the RV refrigerator. That said, this page has great plant based recipes that I know you’ll enjoy.