Episode 10 – 5 reasons to go all in with plant based foods

Five reasons to go all in with plant based foods. You’re listening to the daidokoro video podcast. Hi, I’m Pat tokuyama And you’re about to discover some of the tastiest ways to feed your mind, body and soul. A pharmacist by training you may know me as the founder of all day I eat like a shark, the food blog, YouTube channel or as author of several Japanese cookbooks, if you desire to live a healthy life and are looking for a different way forward with a hunger for growth, then this video podcast is for you. Daidokoro is a Japanese term for kitchen. And I’m glad you’re here with each episode, we’re going to be bringing clarity to your cooking by blending Japanese tradition and life lessons into bite sized bits that even a shark would enjoy ready to make some magic happen.

In today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about five different things that have sort of influenced me as far as incorporating more plant foods into my life. So the first is going to be money, I’m sure money is important to you. After all, it is what you work for all your life. And it is what you need to sort of live your life. And one of the immediate benefits of going plant based is that you’ll be able to save money, as you may know at the grocery store or Farmers Market wherever it is that you get your food for cooking. Usually animal products as well as seafood tends to be a little bit more pricier than their plant counterparts. So for talking specifically about a protein source, for example, beans, legumes, whole grains, things like that tend to be a lot cheaper than any sort of chicken steak or fish in general. And that includes both by weights, even when things are on sale, and throughout the year in general. So that’s just the immediate payoff, we’re talking more long term. 

The reason that plant based foods can help you save money is with regard to your health. So as you may know, as you get older, some people may have certain diseases, chronic diseases like diabetes, hypertension, or high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, that are becoming sort of a problem for many different reasons, some of which may have been in their control and may not have been under their control. But if there was a way that you can prevent the chronic disease from happening in the first place, that would be an easy way to save money, wouldn’t it. Because if you imagine if you do get sick, if you have diabetes, for example, that’s going to require you to go to the doctor to get checked up, do some lab tests, lab tests cost money, doctor visits, cost money. 

And if you need treatments, or your prescription medications may cost money. And certain chronic diseases can be prevented for many of us if you decide to choose to live healthier as it pertains to your food that you eat your exercise overall well being and make that a priority in your life. And on top of those medical expenses, not to mention the time and energy that you’re going to be spending to go to the doctor go to the pharmacy, and just have something extra on your mind that you may not necessarily need to have on your mind in the first place.

 If you’ve joined any of my live trainings in the past, some of the things that I’ve talked about are things like primary prevention, which is sort of like a, I guess a medical term, which means to prevent the disease from happening in the first place. And as it pertains to doing that in my life plant foods helped me live out that primary prevention. And in doing so hopefully, in the long term, it’s going to save me money, as I mentioned in terms of medical expenses, and time, and energy. And if you’d like to get some concrete examples for how switching from animal or seafood based sources of protein to a plant based source of protein such as tofu, you can check out the link in the show notes and play around with the tofu possibilities tool, which is a little calculator tool thing that I put together a few years ago to show people how much you can actually save over the course of a month, several months, six months or even a year, depending on your family size. 

So go ahead and check that out if you haven’t played around with it yet. And once you play around with it, you’ll soon discover that all it takes is just one meal per week to see a benefit. So sort of tagging on to this topic of money and how plant foods can save money for you in the long term. 

Let’s talk about health. So I sort of touched on health as well. But as you may know, when I was younger, I used to be a little chubby little fatter on than I am today and actually got teased for it when I was in Japanese school. So my middle name is Jun they call me Jun Jun, the big fat balloon. And ever since I was bullied at Japanese school, I knew that I wanted to be healthy and no longer overweight or chubby.

So for me health has always been one of the priorities in my life. And I think plant foods is another tool that you can use to help keep yourself healthy or get healthier. If you feel that there’s room for improvement. And that little story there about always wanting to be healthy is one of the reasons why I decided to become a pharmacist because I knew that would give me some basic knowledge as far as medicine goes. drug therapy, the treatments that are used to treat disease, and would also enable me to use my science interests. 

And as far as that goes, it’s kind of ironic, I guess that’s I now advocate plant foods so that people don’t have to take medicine. But that’s what I believe in. Especially because I have learned that plant foods can help prevent chronic diseases from happening in the first place. There’s also a growing body of clinical evidence, or basically clinical trials where plant based lifestyle has been evaluated to see what its effect is on people who already have certain chronic diseases when I was studying biology, in college, and also when I was in pharmacy school, a lot of the things that we learned about as far as chronic diseases and how they occur and how they’re prevented and how they’re treated. 

One of the things that some of these had in common was lifestyle. So that’s kind of where I guess I come in here with the plant based food topic. And, you know, those are the some of the reasons why I personally have decided to make the change and incorporate more of these so that I could live a longer, healthier, happier life. That’s the goal. 

And that’s what I would like for you to the third reason that you might want to go all in with plant based foods are that it’s a great way, it’s a fun way, it’s a delicious way to explore and express your creativity. So as you may know, cooking is a very creative activity. I mean, you’re making something from nothing. And it’s a great way for you to test yourself, challenge yourself, because there’s a lot of different ways that you can cook with plants. And sometimes you might be surprised. I know, for me, I grew up sort of eating a pretty standard American diet, as well as a very small variety of ethnic cuisine. So mostly Mexican food, Chinese food, and Japanese food, I would say those are probably the most common ethnic foods I growing up, in addition to just standard American cuisine. And because I grew up with that I sort of cooked those things, as well, most often in college, and then during pharmacy school.

 But then after I graduated, and I decided to explore all the different cuisines that are available in San Francisco, which is where I went to school, as well as Los Angeles, which is where I lived during residency, I realized that there’s a lot that I had been missing out on. So part of expressing your creativity may sort of depend on how you were raised your peers, your family, your environment, the people and what they ate those that you were closest to kind of like myself where I was sort of somewhat limited. I feel like until I started to travel more on my own outside of the country, I don’t feel like I had much exposure to all the different types of cuisines that are enjoyed and cooked all around the world. 

So as it pertains to plant foods, or vegetarian food, vegan food, and those similar types of cuisines, each culture, I think each country has some sort of a vegetarian dish that you might be able to enjoy and try cooking. If you haven’t just yet. 

The fourth reason to go all in is because you enjoy the pursuit of knowledge of using your hands to do things learning. And what better way to do that, then with something that you can actually eat and enjoy at the same time. So perhaps if you haven’t started yet, with plant based foods, this is a new opportunity for you to get started. It’s a new way for you to discover ways that you can enjoy cooking with plants, seasonal produce, maybe that tastes good, that’s colorful, that smells good. 

Maybe even has a good texture when you bite into it. And maybe it’ll be something that you never knew could be enjoyed that way. I think vegetables are a lot more versatile than you may realize. And I know one of the things that surprised me was when we were traveling in France several years ago, Emy and I my wife now we went to one of the villages in Provence at a nice restaurant. It was Michelin rated. That’s how I found it because I use the Michelin guide when I’m usually looking for restaurants to eat at while traveling. And we decided to get one regular meal or one regular course and one vegetarian course. And that vegetarian course is literally one of the best meals I’ve ever had in my whole life that was vegetarian, it was that good. 

And ever since then, I have been super inspired and have started to look for other ways to prepare vegetables similar to what I experienced in France. And perhaps maybe you’ll enjoy a plant based dish or meal that will inspire you like I was inspired by my experience at that restaurant. And I’ll see if I can put some pictures up on my blog alldayieat.com so that you can see some of the dishes that we ate. Maybe you can even visit yourself someday. 

And last but not least plant foods are going to make you feel good. They may cause a little bit of stomach discomfort if you’re not used to eating like a bunch of beans, for example, but your body’s gonna get used to it over time, I think and it’s going to be less of an issue for you because you’re going to have such a good time enjoying the food that you are going to be cooking and eating. So in addition to that, I think it helps you to feel good not only physically but also mentally as well. Like my mind is a little bit clearer when I’m not eating A bunch of animal products also, that could just be psychological, of course. 

Same with the emotional aspect, I feel a little bit in a better mood when I have a vegetarian meal or a bunch of meals for the day or the week, for example. And also, even from a spiritual perspective, I think there’s a reason why other religions or other faiths, like Hindus or Buddhists practice vegetarian diets, maybe there’s a reason for that. And yeah, plants are alive, right. And some may say they have spirits too, but they’re there for a reason. And we can be grateful to have the opportunity to enjoy them in so many different ways. 

And if you haven’t grown your own food yet, I think one of the simplest ways that you could get started are with microgreens microgreens are baby plants. And you may have seen them at a restaurant, maybe they were used as a garnish on a salad or other dish. Or if you’ve eaten a lot of Japanese food, you might have found them in your sushi, for example. And they’re easy to grow super simple. And it only takes a few days to see the results or the fruits, or the plants of your labor. Give that a try. 

If you haven’t tried growing microgreens, you really only need a handful of things, including the seeds, a container, usually and some water to grow them in. And I’ll link a resource that I put together a while ago for you to get started if you haven’t given that a shot yet. So let me know. Did I miss anything? What was the reason that you got started with plant based foods if you have already and if you haven’t, let me know which one of these stood out to you most? I’d be curious, let me know in the comments. 

And everything that we talked about all the resources will be available in the show notes if you want to check those out, links in the description. Now I would say for me, those are the five most important things that got me to change my diet and my life as it pertains to plant based foods. 

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