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The 29-year-old box office star, who will be soon playing the role of a surrogate mother is making all possible efforts to fit the bill-and that means, piling on the kilos! Yes, you read that right. While you usually get to hear how stars got in shape for a role, Kriti is making efforts to gain 15 kilos!

The role that will be a physically and mentally gruesome one for her will see the actress weigh up to 70 kilos. Like a true champ, Kriti is all game for it. She said, "I'm excited to see the transformation. It's a role very close to my heart and I want to give it everything I can, even if that means not taking up any other work in the process."

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Kriti Sanon to put on 15 kilos for her next film; Here's how you can gain weight the healthy way - Times of India

WACO, Texas The season of joy and excess is over and many of us promise ourselves we will eat healthier in the new year, but not all diets work for everyone.

Every year a fad diet comes along, but not all of them are healthy.

A new U.S. News and World Report ranked the best diets in 2020. Coming in number one for the third year in a row is the Mediterranean diet, followed by the Flexitarian diet.

Mediterranean Diet

The Mediterranean has a lot of good qualities. Jessica Urban, a nutrition manager at Baylor Scott & White Hillcrest in Waco said it's filled with fish, fruits and vegetables, and whole grains. So, you can always count on getting your Omega 3 and fatty acids, which can reduce inflammation.

RELATED: Local nutritionist, chef breaks down the Mediterranean diet

Keto Diet

The popular Keto diet came in at the bottom of the list. This low-carb diet focuses on proteins and fat. Urban said, if you try it, make sure you do it right.

"It is a good idea to instead of just eating bacon or sausage, make sure you're choosing more lean types of meat," Urban said.

Don't forget carbs are important, so Urban said instead of a strict Keto diet you should throw in some whole grains.

RELATED: VERIFY: Is the Keto diet dangerous?

Vegan/Vegetarian Diet

Many people are going meatless and even chain restaurants are including meatless options on their menu, but if you don't do it right it could be unhealthy.

Urban said nutritionists and doctors will always recommend eating fruits and vegetables, but if you only eat that you could be missing out on proteins and other vitamins found in meat. Foods like nuts, beans, chickpeas, quinoa, and tofu are all good substitutes. Also, make sure you add whole grains into your meals.

If you do it right, a plant-based diet can be healthy. "There are so many good things about fruits and veggies, vita chemicals, vitamins, nutrients, cancer preventative properties and cardiovascular preventative properties as well," Urban said.

RELATED: Austin man loses 200 pounds, shares his journey to motivate you on your New Year's resolution

Don't forget to take your vitamins with any diet. This ensures you get what nutrients might be missing in your food.

Flexitarian

The Flexitarian diet has become popular in recent years. This diet is for those who don't want to go all-in on becoming vegan/vegetarian. It's a mostly plant-based diet with some meat and other animal products in moderation.

No matter which diet you choose, make sure you talk to a nutritionist or your doctor if you have health issues to see which diet will work for you.

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Picking the diet that's right for you - KCENTV.com

This month, millions of Americans will kick off 2020 with a diet reset. The healthier and leaner version of ourselves will be achieved only by controlling our eating habits, especially around carbs and sugar. Or so we believe.

But a radical new approach to health has also been gaining traction. Its called intuitive eating. Hang on to your green smoothie, because it contradicts everything weve learned about health and weight loss. And its the antithesis of wellness programs from keto to intermittent fasting to eating clean.

Intuitive eating posits that the very best diet is no diet at all. Instead of strict food rules, we should tune into our natural-born urges to eat what we want, when we want. While it sounds like a crazy fad diet, research is mounting to support its merits.

For one thing, diets definitively do not work: 95 percent of people who lose weight on a diet regain it within five years. An exhaustive study of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey published in November 2019 found that although more Americans are trying to lose weight mainly by controlling food consumption, body mass indexes and obesity rates continue to climb.

But the problems go beyond traditional weight loss programs. Chasing the perfect diet is, itself, a potential health risk. Clean eating, for example, emphasizes local, organic, non-GMO, unprocessed and plant-based food. But fixating on avocados, coconut oil and quinoa while demonizing processed foods takes eating healthy to a dangerous extreme. According to a June 2019 study in the Journal of Eating Disorders, the popularity of clean eating among college students belies its potential for disordered eating, or orthorexia nervosa.

As a food magazine editor in the mid-2000s, Christy Harrison wrote about the gluten-free and low-carb lifestyle, believing she was promoting healthy food choices. But at home, she binged. Id have an ungodly number of rice cakes to try to get the satisfaction I would have gotten if I had just allowed myself to have a sandwich on bread, she told HuffPost.

Now a registered dietitian with the popular Food Psych podcast, Harrison is leading a counter-revolution against diet culture. Her new book, Anti-Diet, is a takedown of the $60 billion weight loss industry along with celebrity-endorsed detoxes and well-intentioned environmental food rules she calls sneaky forms of dieting.

Based on deprivation, diets not only lead to food obsessions and binging but take a bigger toll. You start to see that its not actually giving you what you want, she said, and is taking away a lot of important aspects of your life your time and money, your well-being, your happiness.

According to Harrison and a growing chorus of holistic health practitioners, the antidote is intuitive eating.

The brainchild of registered dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch in the mid-1990s, the 10 principles of intuitive eating are designed to heal our relationship with food and our bodies. The journey to intuitive eating is like taking a cross-country hiking trip, the authors write in Intuitive Eating. Unlike dieting, the process is nonlinear and personalized with a nonjudgmental focus on wellness, not weight loss.

The concept has resonated with the body positivity movement, including the movement Health at Every Size, and lately has sparked a new brand of Instagrammers like @erinliveswhole and @olive.eeeats showcasing the anti-diet way of life.

But lets back up. If intuitive eating is based on internal eating cues, can we really trust ourselves?

Eating is fundamental to human survival, journalist Virginia Sole-Smith told HuffPost. The author of The Eating Instinct found convincing evidence that we are all born with a set of instincts to eat and self-regulate our food intake. Even toddlers do it. The trouble starts when we grow up in a culture that replaces comfort and pleasure around food with guilt, shame and fear. Were so convinced that eating the wrong things will make us fat, she said.

You can blame the diet industry, but Sole-Smith, along with Harrison, lays equal blame on the natural food movement. For 20 years, the efforts to call out environmental, social and racial injustices in the food system have also demonized industrialized food as bad and dirty. And if we choose to eat them, we are unhealthy by association.

While living on chia yogurt bowls and turmeric chickpea curry sounds good, its not sustainable for most people. I think the pressure to eat as clean and whole and natural as possible is wearing people out, Sole-Smith said.

Sure, its a scary idea to trust our own eating instincts. Were afraid of losing control, but Sole-Smith said, Youre not going to want to eat doughnuts day in, day out because after a while your body will crave something different.

The research backs her up. Ohio State University body image and eating behavior researcher Tracy L. Tylka has conducted large-scale studies to assess three main elements of intuitive eating: eating for physical rather than emotional reasons, unconditional permission to eat, and reliance on hunger and satiety cues. She concludes that intuitive eaters are aware of and trust their bodys internal hunger and satiety cues and use these cues to determine when and how much to eat.

Current research indicates that intuitive eaters are less prone to binge, have lower BMIs and have less disordered eating. They also experience more body appreciation, self-compassion and optimism as well as higher self-esteem.

It appears, after all, that you are not what you eat. For people like me who have lived by clean eating, its hard to let go of long-held ideas of good and bad food. But has all the food shaming benefited anyone?

For everyone ready for dramatic change in the next decade, Sole-Smith offers a simple anti-diet challenge: Dare to enjoy your food.

She added: You really cant have a healthy relationship with food if you cant take pleasure in food.

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Intuitive Eating: What It Is, And Why It Could Work For You - HuffPost

NEW YORK As we launch into a new year, 70% of us who made resolutions have vowed to shred the weight for 2020. One diet that's getting lots of buzz? The keto diet.

From Hollywood to the gym, from professional athletes to your Instagram feed, chances are you've seen keto testimonials, full of six-pack abs. But what's the skinny on all that cheese, fat and bacon?

Jaime Herrera, owner of La Lotera in Greenwich Village, transformed his Mexican restaurant into a keto-friendly joint after doing a keto challenge with friends.

"I did it for a month and a half. We used a nutritionist and I lost like, 15 to 20 pounds," Herrera told PIX11. "I felt better than when I was eating carbs!" he gushed while building one of his signature keto tacos in his restaurant's kitchen.

Sausage, cheese, avocado and spicy mayo on his carb-free taco shell made from jcama.

The basic rules of the ketogenic diet, or keto for short, are: Eliminate virtually all carbohydrates, eat mostly fat and some protein, and limiting any carbs you do eat to vegetables and fruits that have the last amount.

But that's an eating approach that Dr. Shivam Joshi says can be a prescription for problems. Dr. Joshi is the clinical assistant professor for the department of medicine at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

As an attending physician at New York City's Health and Hospitals at Bellevue, Joshi said the keto diet can lead to issues. "It is high in fat, so will it raise your cholesterol? Will you get a kindey stone?" he warned.

Joshi said that while the keto diet was originally used for epileptic patients, to calm seizures, today's popular version raises a lot of concerns.

Keto devotees make a variety of claims; Having more energy, brain fog lifting and most notably, shredding their bodies. Joshi wants to see the proof. "There really isn't a lot of evidence supporting this," he said.

Joshi will admit, however, that some of the keto basics, like eliminating empty-calorie carbs, are healthy changes.

The doctor said "a lot of unhealthy carbs, sugars, corn syrup, high calorie foods," are smart to get out of your diet.

However, Joshi warns that keto limits many foods beneficial to our well being. "The diet does cut out a lot of healthy foods. It cuts out fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans. These are some of the healthiest foods on the planet."

The real answer to weight loss according to the doctor? "Alternatives to keto are any diet that cuts calories," he advised.

Head here for more information on how to enroll in a doctor-supervised weight-loss program through Bellevue Hospital.

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Keto diet craze: Does it work and is it healthy? - WPIX 11 New York

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Adele got ahead of the "New Year, new you" trend and revealed her nearly 50-pound weight loss in 2019. She first made headlines at Drake's birthday party and a recent Caribbean vacation, perPage Six, but has yet to speak publicly about her weight loss.

Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File The secret to Adele's slimmer physique, according to personal trainer and Pilates instructor Camila Goodis, is not hours spent at the gym, but a complete overhaul in her regular diet. Goodis met the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter during a training session with Adele's friend and former X-Factor judge Adya Field. While the "Someone Like You" singer is not currently one of Goodis' clients, the trainer believes that "90 percent" of Adele's weight loss is a result of a change in her diet, including eliminating processed food, sugar, and soda.

I dont believe she liked exercise much, but she has changed her lifestyle," Goodis told The Sun. Giving up processed food, sugar, soda and get into an exercise routine, like cardio and strength training, will change peoples body.

Adele has been trying out the Sirtfood Diet, per the New York Post. The Sirtfood Diet is an eating plan that focuses on sirtuins, a.k.a. proteins in your body that specialize in cellular health and metabolism. According to the Post, the diet includes kale, extra-virgin olive oil, buckwheat, matcha, blueberries, and arugula, but also allows for red wine and dark chocolate.

However, nutritionist Glen Matten, who helped develop the program, told the publication that even with those few indulgences, the diet is hard. For three days, participants are supposed to only eat 1,000 calories a day of sirtuin-heavy foods and green juices before increasing their caloric intake to 1,500 calories a day.

Beyond changing up her diet, Adele did work with a personal trainer. The singer started her new exercise plan and worked out three times a week, according to US Weekly. She does 60-minute sessions that include cardio, circuit training, and Pilates, a source told the publication in July 2019. Shes found a routine thats working for her and is enjoying it more.

So, hello from the other side.

Gallery: The worst diets that you'll want to avoid in 2020, according to nutritionists (Prevention)

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Adele's Recent Weight Loss Is Mainly Due To The Sirtfood Diet - msnNOW

TEMPLE, Texas The keto diet is one of the most popular diets of the year and every January, thousands of people try to jump right into this way of eating.

In this week's "Your Best Life," 6 News Evening Anchor Leslie Draffin talked to a health professional about what keto is, what it's not, and how you can incorporate it into your life in a healthy way.

The keto diet has made headlines since it burst into the mainstream a few years ago. But what exactly is it?

According to Natural Grocers Nutritional Health Coach Helena Linzy, "The Keto diet is essentially just a diet that's high in healthy fat, moderate in protein and ultra-low carbohydrates. Generally speaking, carb-intake is kept to a ratio of less than 50 grams per day. And that number drops to 20 grams, if you're inactive."Linzy said even though you're eating a lot of fat in the Keto diet, you also eat healthy proteins and an abundance of low carb non-starchy veggies. This can include things like broccoli, cauliflower and spinach.

The good news, and contrary to popular belief, fruit is allowed!

"Yes, the Keto diet does allow you to eat some fruit, small amounts of fruit, and generally, these fruits will be low in sugar so think berries, Linzy said.

According to Linzy, the Keto diet is meant to retrain your body to burn energy from fat instead of energy from carbs or sugar.

"When you eat a lot of fat, your body produces ketones as an alternative energy source. Ketones are like this magical source of energy that can be used by the brain and in your body much the same way that sugar is used, but it's a much cleaner burning fuel source, and it's kind of just like a lasting energy fuel source," Linzy said.

The problem is, you can't jump right into Keto without risking something called the Keto flu.

"So, symptoms of the Keto flu include headaches, low energy and brain fog, and this is literally your body detoxing from carbohydrate addiction. So, your body is so used to using sugar for energy and it hasn't yet built the metabolic machinery that's needed to burn fat and keytones. So if you cut your carbohydrates too much and too quickly, you run the risk of experiencing those unpleasant symptoms."

Linzy said you can avoid all of those symptoms by first doing a 21-day reset where you follow a Paleo diet first. This will help you slowly decrease your carb intake. Then you can cycle into Keto for four-six weeks and finally go back to Paleo. Paleo is a diet where you eat healthy proteins and fats along with a moderate amount of carbohydrates.

"Our bodies know how to burn fat for energy but because of our standard American diet. Our bodies have kind of forgotten that we've all been running on sugar. So, the four-six weeks there initially is to kind of retrain your body to burn fat after those initial four to six weeks then you go back to more of a paleo-style way of eating, and then maybe you can go do the Keto cyclically like only on the weekends."

Also remember, Keto isn't made to do forever but it can be beneficial for many people for many reasons.

"Anybody that's looking to improve their overall health can benefit from the keto diet. So, whether it be blood sugar balance, healthy weight, someone that's looking to support cognitive function-- your brain really loves to use ketones for energy so that can help with memory and focus."

But Linzy stresses, Keto isn't for everyone including women who are pregnant or nursing, children or teens, and diabetics.

Natural Grocers

She also reminds anyone thinking of starting keto to talk to your doctor first.

If you're interested in finding out more about the keto diet, Natural Grocers is hosting free seminars all month long.

You can register and find more details on the natural grocers website.

You can also hear more from Helena Linzy and Dr. Patricia Sulak, Thursday, January 9th at 6 p.m. Theyre hosting a free seminar called Food Fads & Supplements at the Temple ISD Administration Building.

Natural Grocers

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What exactly is the Keto Diet? | Your Best Life - KCENTV.com

Kylie Jenner is one of the most famous women in the world. Her namesake helped her establish a massive fan base, which, in turn, led her to creating a global cosmetics brand thats made her worth more than $1 billion. The Kardashian-Jenner sisters are all very into fitness and healthy eating, but that could be the one way Jenner differs from her other famous siblings and were loving it.

When youre a member of the Kardashian family, appearance iseverything. The women arent shy about their use of facial fillers, cellulitereducing machines, and body foundation. Plus, they all love to workout. KhloKardashian is arguably thefittest member of her family and even has her own reality show aroundlosing weight and becoming healthy. Meanwhile, Kim and Kourtney Kardashian arealways posting photos and videos of their workouts, and Kendall Jenner, who isa model, makes fitness a top priority as well.

Jenner is a bit more relaxed than her sisters when it comes to working out. She hardly posts videos of her workouts and, though she has a toned body, seems to dine more casually than her sisters as well.

Whenever Jenner posts photos of food to Instagram, the dishes are usually pretty modest. She enjoys pizza and fries, and she once posted a photo admitting her love for Fritos Flavor Twists. On Jenners reality show, Life of Kylie, which had a pretty short run, Jenner made it clear she doesnt enjoy going out to fancy dinners. When she was eating with her mother at an upscale restaurant, she hated the sound of everything on the menu. Jenner is much more content with more basic foods, such as grilled cheese (she even once made a Snapchat video showing fans how to make the perfect grilled cheese).

Jenners siblings care a lot about their health, and she likely does, too. But she doesnt appear to stick to the strict diets that the other Kardashian-Jenners do. Jenner enjoys many different foods, and while she does eat healthy foods, such as avocado toast, she also loves to spoil herself with greasier, less-healthy options. On her recent Instagram story, Jenner posted a photo of a pepperoni pizza (it looked amazing) and some French fries (they might have been sweet potato fries, but it was tough to tell).

Jenner followed the images with a post of a glass of white wine, showing that she was clearly enjoying her feast and not worrying about counting calories.

Something surprising about the beauty mogul is that sheactually enjoys cooking. Though most of her meals are basic (such as thegrilled cheese), she does post photos of the meals she cooks for herself.Despite being a billionaire, she knows what foods she likes and how she likesthem. So why not cook for herself? Its possible Jenner hires a chef for eventsor certain occasions, but its nice to know that, in some ways, shes just likethe rest of us.

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Kylie Jenner's Diet Isn't As Healthy As We Thought -- And We're Loving It - Showbiz Cheat Sheet

Fitness guru Joe Wicks talks to Liz Connor about why so many New Year diets fail - and how we can create a healthy new mindset in 2020 instead.

January usually happens like clockwork: a slew of new self-help books, articles and slimming blogs encourage you to 'be your best self', often by adopting a radical new diet that promises to blitz those spare inches around your waist for good.

The problem is, many crash diets encourage periods of miserable fasting and cutting out sometimes entire good groups overnight, and demonise food to the point where you're whole relationship with eating can be under threat.

According to fitness guru Joe Wicks - who has successfully helped thousands of people to lose weight - staying on these restrictive diets for a long period of time is often unrealistic and unhealthy. Even if you do lose weight initially, it's not unusual to gain it again (plus even more, in some cases) before the spring comes around.

Thankfully, attitudes around diet culture are changing. A new survey commissioned by recipe box company Gousto (gousto.co.uk) has found two-thirds (68%) of UK adults believe the one-size-fits-all model just doesn't work.

So, how can you shed those excess pounds in a safe and effective way? We asked Wicks to give us some quick tips...

Why should people avoid restrictive diets in January?

"It's the time of year now where everyone wants to make changes to their life, whether that's with exercise or food, but the last thing you want to do - especially if you're someone who really loves food - is to go on a low-calorie diet," says Wicks, 33.

"Sure, it will work in the short-term and you'll probably lose weight on the scales, but emotionally it's going to absolutely ruin you. You're going to be so exhausted, you won't enjoy it and it's not going to be a sustainable approach.

"Try to think about a long-term vision, as opposed to a quick crash diet. Incorporate it with exercise and cooking with fresh ingredients at home; you're much more likely to succeed throughout the year."

Why do people fail at New Year's diets?

"Because they're awful, aren't they? Dieting is normally all about how little you can eat and how much exercise you can do. When you combine those two things, it effects your sleep, your mood and your energy levels.

"If I could give you one tip, it's to focus on getting yourself moving instead. I always tell people to start with 15-20 minutes a day of exercise at home; this will get your energy levels up and your self-esteem boosted. Exercising is going to have a massive effect on your food choices and your ability to go into the kitchen and cook yourself something healthy.

"Trying to do everything all at once is a bit much," he adds. "Focus on fitness first, and the rest will hopefully follow."

What other tips do you have for those looking to lose weight this year?

"Have a look at your portion control. I'm not saying to count calories, but to keep your plate to a healthy size. The good thing about exercise is that it elevates your mental health and your mood so much that you don't want to go and put junk food in your body afterwards.

"Meal prepping is one of the best things you can do too. If you leave the house without food, you're going to grab options on-the-go, which will likely be unhealthy convenience food.

"That's fine to do once or twice a week, but if you're doing it a lot, you're never going to truly know exactly how much you're consuming. The simple act of making some overnight oats for breakfast, or a salad for lunch can make a huge difference over time when it comes to staying lean."

What are you favourite ingredients for healthy eating?

"I really think it's great to have chopped tomatoes, coconut milk, curry powder, spices and tins of lentils, pulses, grains and beans in your cupboard. With these key ingredients, you can make really amazing veggie curries, or you could throw some chicken in there for some extra protein. Rice is also a great staple for making quick stir-fries after work.

"There's no magic fat-loss food; it's all about getting a good balance of everything and getting lots of fruits and veg in your diet.

"It's good to be a bit intuitive with it - ask yourself what foods make you feel energised and healthy? Don't think you have to jump onto a certain diet because everyone else is doing it."

Do you follow a flexitarian diet yourself?

"Yes. I eat a lot of veggie meals and with Gousto, I get four recipe boxes delivered per week that I can make at home. Three of those will be vegetarian and one will be meat-based.

"That's a massive step for me. During the process of researching and writing my veggie cookbook, Veggie Lean in 15 (16.99, Pan Macmillan), I realised that you can get really amazing food as a vegetarian. I'm still not fully committed to going hardcore vegan though."

Many people feel like they don't have time to cook healthily, do you think that's untrue?

"I really think you have to remove that time barrier from your mind. We know full well that we can smash a Netflix series in a couple of days or watch our soaps, so we can all find half an hour to exercise or cook well - if we prioritise it.

"It doesn't need to be hours in the kitchen either. My whole philosophy with my Lean in 15 series is that you can make a really healthy and nutritious meal in just 15 minutes, and have some leftover for lunch the next day.

"It's that kind of mentality of prepping in advanced and being organised that works in the long-run."

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Food: Joe Wicks on why you shouldn't try restrictive dieting this January - HeraldScotland

Another year, another skirmish in the culture war. The launch of Greggs latest offering, a plant-based steak bake, has revived the kerfuffle that surrounded the bakery chains vegan sausage roll. Amid a flurry of hot takes and taste tests, up popped Piers Morgan to complain: A meatless steak is not a bloody steak.

Meanwhile, some vegans have been complaining about KFC and Burger King adding plant-based burgers to their menus. One animal rights activist told the Guardian last week: Theyre trying to buy us off with these products, and pretending theyre our friends. Happy Veganuary, everyone.

This may seem a peculiarly modern obsession can science produce something that has a similar taste, appearance and texture to meat, but isnt meat? but it has been simmering for over a millennium. As early as 965, the frugal-minded Chinese magistrate Shi Ji was promoting tofu as mock lamb chops, according to William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagis study, History of Meat Alternatives.

The Chinese often used tofu (made from soya) and seitan (from wheat gluten) because of their availability and physical properties. You can manufacture them into squishy, lightly fibrous substances, says Malte Rdl, a research associate at the University of Manchesters Sustainable Consumption Institute. By the 1620s, the process was so advanced that Buddhist monks at a banquet had to be reassured: This is vegetarian food made to look like meat.

In Victorian Britain, where the first vegetarians were motivated by health concerns as well as a belief that eating animals was immoral, meat, though expensive, was central to an aspirational diet. So early vegetarian propaganda emphasised the poor quality of most cheap meat, as well as the virtues of self-denial and thrift not so different from the modern fixation with wellness and minimalism. The debate among vegetarians over how much to sacrifice their ideals in order to appeal to those still eating a mixed diet is also reminiscent of the current scepticism about fast food chains.

The Victorian vegetarians were very concerned with not wanting to be like meat-eaters, says Rdl. Some people say: We shouldnt give in, but then other people say: We need to become more popular.

But the repetitiveness and simplicity of a diet of mostly vegetables hamstrung the efforts of reformers, with the Daily News reporting in 1897 that the vegetarian movement had yet to make their fare appetising. And so, from the late 19th century, meat substitutes started to emerge, made from nuts, seeds or grains.

Many came via the Seventh Day Adventist church in the US. As director of the churchs Battle Creek Sanatarium in Michigan, Dr John Harvey Kellogg pioneered several meat substitutes, among them protose, a nut-cereal preparation which, he said, resembled meat to a considerable degree having a slight fibre like potted meat.

But in general throughout history, meat substitutes have suffered from the curse of comparison to the real thing, says Rdl as though there were even one single thing to aim for. All meat tastes differently depending on how it is cured, who manufactured it, what spices are added, he points out. There might be some meat that you like, or dont like, but you wouldnt say its not meat, because its from an animal but for meat alternatives, that argument doesnt work.

If people dont like it, theyll say its not like meat, therefore its not good. As soon as you know its not an animal that youre eating, you are immediately more critical.

The idea of meat alternatives as a second-rate option was reinforced during wartime, when consumption of less meat was either encouraged or mandated through rationing. During the first world war, nut meat was advertised in national newspapers, and even wholegrain bread was marketed as a meat alternative, on the strength of having a higher protein content than white bread. These meatless and less-meat diets predictably receded in peacetime.

During the second world war, soya was used to replace or fortify products though not very palatably. Soya was left with an image problem that persisted until the 1960s, when the US company Archer Daniels Midland developed the meal extender textured vegetable protein (TVP), offering all the protein but less of the unpleasant aftertaste.

In 1971, Frances Moore Lapps bestseller Diet for a Small Planet was credited with making vegetarianism fashionable in the US. Seth Tibbott, then a college student in Ohio, was among those to convert, although plant-based products were not widely available at the time. He recalls eating soy grit burgers: ground-up soya beans combined with wheat flour and fried: They tasted horrible, but they digested worse. I was very keen to find a soy product that digested well and tasted good.

In the 1980s, he went into business producing tempeh, made from fermented soya beans. It wasnt very profitable, he admits. It was way before there was any interest in plant-based foods, thats for sure.

Then, in 1995, spotting a gap in the market for Thanksgiving, he created a turkey substitute from wheat protein and tofu and named it Tofurky. It really hit a chord, he says. No meat alternative had caught fire in the way Tofurky did then, and in the way that Beyond Burger and Impossible Burger are catching fire now. It just became part of American culture.

But the potential of soya, and TVP in particular, was viewed with scepticism in the UK. A 1975 Guardian editorial headlined A soya point arched an eyebrow at the faux-bacon, ham and sausages on sale in the US, noting: No one has yet managed to produce a meat flavour which is totally convincing, particularly beef.

In 1960s Britain, meat alternatives had been mostly associated with the hippy movement, and the macrobiotic food trend from Japan. Gregory Sams, who is credited with inventing the veggie burger, fashioned a patty from seitan at his London restaurant Seed, which was frequented by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Later, in 1983, Sams sesame- and soya-based VegeBurger got a commercial release; an Observer report remarked on its pleasant texture and agreeable, if a little bland taste.

Then, in 1985, along came an undisputed hit in the form of Quorn, a low-cost meat substitute based on a microorganism in the fungi family and a process of fermentation. It had been 20 years in the making one decade in development, another awaiting food safety approval. Key to its popularity were the meat-free mince, sausages, patties and even pepperoni and nuggets that could be seamlessly subbed in for meat products. Today it features in Greggs sausage roll and steak bake. Rdl says people are far more receptive to plant-based proxies for processed meats than they are to, say, a soya steak (although, he adds, there are now really nice ones available).

Where we started with the Quorn pieces and vegetable pie, we now have over 120 products in the UK market, says spokesman Alex Glen. This makes it very easy for people to replicate their animal diets. Yet, until relatively recently, Quorn was mostly targeted at vegetarians and vegans, rather than meat reducers: people who have no intention of giving up meat altogether but want to eat less, typically for health reasons. That market emerged in the 1990s, says Tony Watson, who in 2012 founded the soya-based brand Meat the Alternative.

The former butcher saw the writing on the wall and switched to working on improving meat analogue technologies for the DuPont organisation. Those technologies have not changed much in the past 15 years, says Watson pea is increasingly being used as a meat substitute, but still has a long way to go with regards to texture but the market has, with phenomenal growth in the number of consumers eating less meat in the past two years.

YouGov research carried out for Waitrose last year found that a third of Britons were eating less meat and fish than two years ago, with 32% planning to reduce their consumption even further. Just about every high-street chain, including Pret a Manger and Wetherspoons, is increasing their meat-free offerings as result.

But Watson says it is frustrating to see many companies throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, being overly led by the tiny but vocal vegan community (less than 1% of the British population, he points out) and producing poor-quality products not suitable for meat-reducers. He expects many small meat-proxy producers to be driven out of business by rivals with bigger budgets for product development or marketing.

Among the biggest are Impossible Foods and Beyond Burger (which became a publicly listed company last year), both offering plant-based patties that are sweeping fast-food menus in the US and UK for their similarity to beef down to the blood. Their success and the momentum it is creating for meat alternatives has great impact for sustainability, says Rdl.

But it also highlights a strange paradox underpinning the centuries-long pursuit of the perfect meat proxy: by trying to seamlessly remove meat from our diets, we are actually reinforcing its importance. Theres this kind of association of meat and the good life a bit of luxury, a nutritious diet that means people want to replicate it in vegetarian terms, says Rdl. Because meat is so entangled with how we understand diets historically, its really hard to imagine ways outside of it.

He points to a vegetarian sausage producer he interviewed for his PhD thesis on meat alternatives. She had no desire to replicate the texture or flavour of meat in her vegetable-only products but nonetheless spoke with pride of the traditional springiness of the casing. In other words, she was congratulating herself on enveloping her meat-free product with something modelled on animal intestine.

When we successfully replace meat with a meat-free substitute, we overlook the possibility of a diet that is free of it altogether. It just kind of keeps this idea of meat-eating as the centrepiece, says Rdl of food culture, if not our diet. Counterintuitively, the strange and storied history of the hunt for the perfect proxy really proves the point: We dont have an exit strategy from meat.

Seth Tibbotts memoir, Search for the Wild Tofurky, will be published in April.

Read more from the original source:
From tofu lamb chops to vegan steak bakes: the 1,000-year history of fake meat - The Guardian

Healthy New Years resolutions can be challenging to keep, especially through the full year. For many, committing to a resolution means setting health goals, such as getting into an exercise routine, losing weight or adopting a healthier diet.

Lifestyle Medicine physician Melissa Mondala, MD, is challenging people to take on a workplace challenge for their New Years resolutions. She is encouraging people to eat a purely plant-based diet for one month, following the UK-based campaign called Veganuary that encourages people worldwide to follow a vegan diet for the month of January.

Since 2014, Veganuary has inspired and supported more than half a million people in 178 countries. A vegan diet helps combat weight gain and provides multiple health benefits, including increased energy levels, elevated mood, lower cholesterol levels and lower blood pressure, Mondala says.

While many people stick to a vegan diet to keep their bodies healthy, Mondala says plant-based meals can keep your mind healthy as well. Several studies have shown a whole food, plant-based vegan diet has benefits that help to prevent and even reverse major depression symptoms and improve mental health when compared to a diet that includes meat and dairy.

If thats not enough motivation, a vegan diet is also the most environmentally friendly diet available. Eating animals is the most significant contributing factor in habitat loss and extinction, with millions of acres of forest felled each year to make way for livestock production.

Its been calculated that if you stick to a vegan diet for one month, youll be responsible for saving 33,000 gallons of water, 904 square feet of forest and 602 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, according to a study recently published in the journal Climate Change, Mondala says. Thats better than giving up your car for a month!

Change is difficult, but theres comfort in the company. Mondala suggests connecting with a friend, spouse or family member to take this challenge with you. This is a great way to get more involved in your health and nutrition, and it can be a fun bonding experience, she says.

If you want to try a vegan diet, but you dont know where to start, try the Veganuary Challenge for January. Upon signing up, youll be sent a free 2019 Veganuary Celebrity Cookbook to download. Youll also receive 31 days of support emails to inspire, motivate and help you through your vegan month with everything from recipes and meal plans to tips on where to get your nutrients and how to stock your cupboards.

Consider alifestyle visitconsultation with one of our Lifestyle Medicine physicians at the Center for Health Promotion. They will work closely with yourprimary carephysician to improve your overall health and wellbeing. Please call theCenter for Health Promotionat909-558-4594to make your Lifestyle Consultation visit today.

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Can you be plant-powered for a month? - Loma Linda University Health

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