HEALTHY EATING: Meal plan adds vegetarian menu

BY CAROLYN O’NEIL

You don’t have to be a vegetarian to eat like one. The health benefits of eating a plant-based cuisine may be the main motivation, but taste buds are rewarded, too, with dishes such as eggplant torta with goat cheese or Acapulco chili with kidney beans and cannellini beans topped with fresh chives over steamed brown rice.

“The big surprise when we introduced the new vegetarian menus was the number of nonvegetarians who signed up to receive the meals,” said Elston Collins of Good Measure Meals (www.goodmeasuremeals
.com), an Atlanta-based company that provides fresh gourmet meal plans that are calorie-controlled and nutritionally balanced.

Customer demand for vegetarian meals prompted the company — which donates all profits to Open Hand, a nutrition program for senior citizens and the chronically ill — to hold focus groups to find out what was important to vegetarians and to start testing recipes to fit nutritional guidelines. Vegetarian menus for breakfast, lunch and dinner are offered in 1,200- and 1,700-calorie plans.

Nutrition know-how

Registered dietitian Ashley Ritchie, who leads menu development for Good Measure, says that it wasn’t as easy as throwing a few more pieces of broccoli on a plate. “These menus were months in the making. We wanted to make sure there was enough protein without adding a lot of fatty proteins like cheese, and I had to control the sodium levels and make sure dishes still tasted great. And because there’s no fish on these menus, I wanted to make sure clients were getting enough omega-3s, so I included flaxseed, walnuts and canola oil.”

Getting enough fiber in the meals was easy, Ritchie says, because of all the whole grains and fruits and vegetables. Here’s a typical breakfast: whole-wheat pancakes topped with blueberries, cinnamon and flaxseed with mango sauce.

According to the Vegetarian Research Group, about 3 percent of American adults are true vegetarians who say they never eat meat, fish or poultry. But at least 10 percent of adults consider themselves vegetarians, even though they eat fish or chicken occasionally. The flexitarian model, where people say they “seek out vegetarian meals,” fits even more people; with estimates as high as 30 percent to 40 percent of the U.S. population.

While eating more like a vegetarian doesn’t automatically translate to a healthier diet (high-fat foods such as nachos smothered in cheese sauce or chocolate doughnuts are vegetarian, too), nutrition research identifies a plant-based diet rich in whole grains, beans, nuts, fruits and vegetables as being the best at preventing disease and obesity. Ritchie points out that the Good Measure meals are a nutrition lesson in themselves. “We’re not just feeding clients, we’re teaching them what a healthy vegetarian diet looks like, and we’re providing five weeks of different meals so they can experience a great variety of foods instead of grabbing a cheese sandwich.”

Perhaps the most compelling reason to spend more meal time with the vegetable kingdom is culinary. Executive chef Justin Wills of Good Measure said: “Our vegetarian clients are more adventurous, so recipes are really fun to cook. We have a curried lentil stew and vegetable samosas with fresh green chutney dipping sauce. We’ve always used every vegetable known to man in our regular menus, but now they’re the center of the plate.”

Carolyn O’Neil is a registered dietitian and co-author of “The Dish on Eating Healthy and Being Fabulous!” E-mail her at carolyn@
carolynoneil.com.