— Char Nolan

So, and you have to be careful. So I'll give you a statistic. 3% of Americans identify as being vegan. 5% identify as being vegetarian. So if, if the person that I'm following, and a lot of them are, and if you look at the Eat Lancet report, which came out and basically said in a nutshell, if you don't stop eating meat, the planet's gonna die and you're gonna die. Okay, let's, that's just paraphrased, right? Like, it's not good for your health and it's not good for the health of the planet. So you take all that in. And that didn't budge people, I, I thought, oh, that'll make a lot of people stop eating meat. Mm-hmm. But when you look at the data, what you see is that almost 50% of individuals identify as wanting to add more plants into their diet. So the Culinary Institute of America came up with this term plant forward diet as opposed to plant-based. And what that means is that you add more plant-based foods into your diet and you, and then I add onto it, and you decide when you've had enough. Because if I tell someone they have to be total vegetarians or vegans, I am setting them up for failure. I'm asking 'em to give up everything that they know all at once and follow a diet that I know from statistics, very few are gonna be able to sustain that, that type of eating. Is a vegetarian diet and a vegan diet healthy for you? Absolutely. But can you also add some meat to your diet and stay healthy? Yes, you can. So I, I purposely don't, I, I go everywhere looking for recipes, right? I'm everywhere looking for recipes, but I am not, and there's nothing wrong with following someone who speaks to your heart. And that's what I'm all about. Right? It's what I said before, if you find someone you really love, follow 'em. Absolutely. I I don't wanna set people up for failure. So my, the way I practice is I'm gonna give you the information, I'm gonna teach you how to cook it really, really well, and you're gonna decide, and I'm gonna ask you to increase little bits, little baby steps. And then you decide how far you want to go if you don't need to go or don't wanna go all the way. You know what, that's fine.