— Linda Oaksford

You know, this is one of those perennial issues that many cooks. struggle with as you know as as they make transition from the standard American diet this the so called standard American diet to the happier plant-based diet and certainly a question that I get from time to time and Now, you know on one hand if your audience is amenable to reading some of the research summaries some of the studies that have been published about the effects of more plants in the diet or a 100% plant-based diet than they might be convinced. They you know might Move over to this side of the aisle so to speak but that can be a hard sell. And yeah part of that is very simply, uh that is part of our culture and I'm you know, it based in the United States. And so definitely in the US meet is huge. You know, it's it's called the center of the plate in the restaurant industry and even at the consumer level and some context because it is so important culturally to us and then the other sort of part of this story is that we promote protein in our diets so strongly and you know animal sources of food or connected, you know with protein so strongly that it's very hard to convince of someone even after they have seen what would seem like plenty of evidence of what Animal certainly a heavy animal diet can do versus you know, a heavy plant-based diet, you know to the inside of one's body. So You know, you can certainly take that approach but it could be a long road don't give up but you know be be balanced I think in the approach. Yes. So that's what I would suggest the other thing is, you know, just very simply start making tasty plant-based dishes and there's no reason necessarily right why a person or a household needs to make the change. 100% in Cold Turkey, right. This is the Thanksgiving week after all and you can make a gradual change and introduce plant-based Foods or a more heavily plant-based menu to your audience and just talk to him about tasty food. First of all, I mean after all that's how we enjoy our meals right there. We're not eating. Protein right? We're not having a meal of carbohydrates per se. We're sitting down to enjoy a meal and then it certainly, you know, some people have the thought in their mind that it needs to nourish their body in a certain way. But really we choose certain foods even to nourish your bodies because they taste good and I think that's the avenue to take and in order to get there, right? We need to build up our cooking skills and our knowledge and understanding of ingredients and the cooking process and all of the supporting techniques that go into the joys of cooking. All right. So it's it's a long journey. It's the long durai right, you know as we say in anthropology, so be prepared, but don't give up, you know, enjoy the journey. All right. Thank you.