Everyone knows vegetables are healthy, and while many people want to go vegan or vegetarian, they worry about the difficulty of maintaining a specific diet. We won’t sugarcoat it; both vegan and vegetarian diets can be challenging, especially if you are very strict about consuming no animal products whatsoever.
To make life easier, we recommend plant-forward diets, which are diets so focused on plants that meat is naturally eliminated. At the same time, however, you won’t need to be reading labels to eliminate that small amount of fish sauce in your favorite Asian dish; you’ll simply be focused on getting as many vegetables as possible and choosing those options over meat.
Read on to discover some easy plant-forward meals that can truly enhance your diet.
1. Falafel Wraps
Falafel is one of our favorite vegan products. Made from chickpeas (yes, that’s a plant!), they provide a ton of protein in an easy-to-cook product. We always make ours in an air fryer, but you can cook yours however you want, from the microwave to deep frying, you can even bake them in an oven!
Here is our recipe for our favorite falafel wraps, but falafel goes with just about anything. You can keep it simple by just eating them with some hummus or adding them to a salad for some protein.
2. Noodle Soup
To be honest, chicken broth is only 5% chicken anyway, meaning that the flavor you associate with your favorite soups is actually the flavor of vegetable bouillon. With vegetable bouillon, you can accomplish a lot, and we love the simplicity of tossing in some pasta and veggies for an easy hot meal.
While using fresh veggies is always best, this easy noodle soup recipe cuts down on cutting by making the most of canned veggies.
3. Pizza
Pizza is the best vegetarian food there is. While we aren’t as much of a fan of vegan cheese on pizza, if there is anything you would eat it on, it would be pizza!
Homemade pizza is naturally salty and fatty, so much so that you won’t miss having meat on it. We recommend loading your pizza with as many veggies as possible (even though it still won’t be the healthiest meal ever). Try to go easy on the cheese, if you are using the animal product, or grab a vegan cheese you love and pile it on.
4. Avocado Toast
While we really hate repping “trendy” foods, avocado toast is just so easy and good that it has to be on this list. All you need is a nice bread, an avocado, and any other vegetable toppings you want. We recommend using this as an opportunity to enjoy some thinly sliced onions and radishes (that aren’t in the diet much otherwise), though you can truly enjoy any vegetable you want on a slab of avocado toast!
5. Vegetable Lasagna
Lasagna is another meal, like pizza, that we believe was made to be plant-forward. Truly, there is so much going on in Lasagna, you don’t need to add meat to it. Instead of a meat sauce, this vegetable lasagna recipe uses zucchini, mushrooms, and onion.
There is still a lot of cheese in traditional recipes, and if you have vegan alternatives, this is a good time to use them. If you don’t, just do a single layer of ricotta cheese, and some mozzarella on the top only to keep this meal plant-forward.
6. Cous Cous Salad
Any plant-forward diet will include salads—but they don’t have to be the green salads you ate as a kid. We recommend checking out pasta salads, and ones with a cous cous base like this cous cous salad recipe.
Cous cous is delicious and has a flavor dimension that adds so much more to a dish than green lettuce. The recipe we recommend does include feta cheese, which can be exchanged with plant-based cheese to make this recipe fully vegan.
7. Vegetable Stir-Fry
Basically, every vegetable tastes good when you slice it up and fry it in a little teriyaki sauce! We especially love this vegetable stir-fry recipe because it is easy and can be used with just about any vegetables.
Although teriyaki sauce can be high in sugar, we find that the amount of veggies in this recipe far outweighs the downsides, so enjoy that teriyaki sauce!
8. Black Bean Burgers
The first time we tried a black-bean burger, we were shocked at how delicious it was! While it doesn’t quite taste like meat, it’s a delicious alternative, and they are so easy to make.
If you don’t have a burger press, feel free to buy these in the freezer section of the store, but if you live somewhere where that isn’t possible, this black bean burger recipe makes it easy to enjoy this plant-forward meal regardless.
9. Tortilla Soup
While meat has long been a huge part of the American diet, this isn’t true in other countries; as such, we often turn to other cuisines to find plant-forward meals. This tortilla soup recipe was handed to us as a chicken tortilla soup recipe, but when times got tough and we couldn’t afford chicken, we found we loved it just as much vegetarian—with the addition of a few extra spices.
This recipe is fully and naturally vegan, though we do top ours with a small bit of cheese!
10. Buddha Bowls
Buddha bowls are a new trend. Think of them like burrito bowls, but without all the animal-based ingredients! Buddha bowls are easy to adjust to fit your personal taste. Just make sure you choose lots of veggies and a little something sweet to round it off. While this recipe is vegan, we do occasionally drizzle a little spicy mayo, which isn’t fully vegan, on ours.
Overall, we hope you’ve now seen how easy it is to trim animal products from your diet. While most of these recipes aren’t fully vegan, they’re an excellent step toward a better, healthier, and more sustainable future.
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