— Svetlana Hanson

So I'm gonna tell you why I built the Food Coach Academy and why I built it not as a vegan program or a strictly vegetarian program. And if you've heard me speak before, you know the stats. 5% of Americans are vegetarian and 3% are vegans. If we as food coaches, if we as clinicians, if we as chefs set up an unattainable goal for 95 to 97% of the population, we just unnecessarily stress them out and give the message that unless you do this, unless you're pure plant-based, you will not reap any benefits. And nothing could be further from the truth. In the Food Coach Academy, we constantly lay out how you can introduce more plant-based foods into one's diet. And then because it's based on motivational interviewing, the client gets to decide how far down that plant-based world they want to go. I have food coaches that are vegetarian, some are vegan, some are, I will not touch an animal product. How can I take the course? Well, Rouxbe and I already thought of that. Of course, you can show co uh, cooking competencies like roasting and brazing with a head of cauliflower if you want, instead of a piece of beef if it really offends you. And I get that and I honor that. For those of you that are wanting to cook with a more broad range of audience who do have meat, either they're eating a ton of it and you wanna help them get to a point where they're eating much less of it, then I would say it's important for you to take the, one of the courses is animal-based protein. One of the courses is about fats and oils. We have a whole course on sugar and a whole course on salt. So those of you that want to be really strict about it, we got you. Right? But now I wanna talk about the Whole Foods plant-based vet, Lana that you talked about. Absolutely. This program's great for that. When it comes to no sugar, oil and salt. In the sugar class, we teach you how to teach others to cook with fruit, mostly fruit. And for those that do make, let's say, uh, zucchini bread or something, how they can reduce the amount of sugar using an algorithm that is, uh, the baker's percentage or we have some tips and tricks for you to lower the amount of sugar in someone's food. For someone to go totally sugar oil and salt free, you're probably looking at less than 3% of the population. But if that's who you want to work with solely, then absolutely you will learn science in each of those chapters. You will learn how to use motivational interviewing to help someone reduce their, their salt intake and how to make flavors sing without the use of salt or decrease the amount of salt. As same with sugar. You teach them how to lower the amount of sugar. And again, if you want them to be the bosses of their own life and they're like, okay, this is enough, I need to have a little bit, like some people will say, I just need that one half a teaspoon, uh, in my coffee in the morning.