What is the difference between whole-foods and plant-based?

One of the questions I was asked in my blog comments is “What is the difference between whole-foods and plant-based?” The best way to describe this is taken directly from my inspirational companion book Forks Over Knives by Gene Stone.

Plant-based means anything that has never had a face or a mother. In other words, avoiding all meat, fish, dairy and eggs. What can be eaten are grains, fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, and legumes.

Whole-foods means the food is as close to intact as possible or minimally refined. Overly processed foods include bleached flour, refined sugars, and extracted oils. While these come from plants, they have been stripped of most of the nutritional properties they once had. A person can eat a 100% plant-based diet and have potato chips, pretzels, dairy-free pastries, and low-calorie soda. Hence the “fat vegan” as I describe myself. I do love my pita chips.

But I have to say that it is all-OK. Pita chips and coconut milk ice cream got me through my first year of eating a plant-based diet. That in itself was a dramatic life change. But if I am ever going to lose weight I have to work harder at focusing on whole-foods.…and eating a lot less fats (bye-bye handfuls of peanuts!) and exercising.

I guess I never mentioned that I am very happy with this lifestyle. Very happy indeed!

I bought ingredients to create one of the recipes in my book, but won’t be able to cook it till later this week. In the mean time, the photo above is a dinner that my hubby and I made tonight. We saw a picture of it on a blog we enjoy following called “Get Sconed!” (http://getsconedpdx.com). It is orechiete (we used whole wheat) pasta with sautéed red and sungold cherry tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, red pepper, black pepper, and fresh basil. We served it with asparagus and mushrooms drizzled with balsamic vinegar. It was a quick and filling meal - in fact I ate only half of what you see in the photo.