Whenever I go to family gatherings, some inquisitive (mostly sarcastic) elder always asks, “But don’t you miss bacon and eggs? Fried chicken?” Everyone looks at me with bated breath, wondering if I’ll break down and confess, “Yes, I do!” After more than 30 years of plant-based eating, thankfully, I haven’t missed swine and scrambled chicken embryos at all, nor have I missed any other type of “soul food.”
But it goes beyond that. During my first 20 or so years or so of plant-based eating, I attempted to replace all of the meat-based food I ate with plant-based alternatives. This is something that most people do when they convert to plant-based eating. We want to be reminded of the food that we loved growing up, until we made the smart move and converted to plants. However, those plant-based alternatives may be just as dangerous as the meat-based products.
Many chemicals are used to recreate the tastes we long for, and most of those same chemicals you may never be able to buy at your local grocery store. For instance, look at the ingredient lists for Beyond Meat and the Impossible Burger. If you created a shopping list for those items, you wouldn’t be able to recreate those “plant-based” meats in your kitchen. That said, are those products really “food” for the soul?
Years ago, I used to love to go to vegan conventions to try the latest “plant-based” products, but I’ve moved away from that over the last ten years. I now consider most of them “mand-made chemical-based” products that are devastating to the soul.
On a spiritual level, I’m of the belief that food that nourishes the soul is best prepared by a soulful human-being in his or her home. And, as you’ve probably guessed, it would be plant-based. Man-made, chemical-based concoctions simply pale in comparison to what nature has provided, which is the real soul food.
