Whether you are a strict vegan or vegetarian, or just interested in adding the occasional vegetarian meal to your (or your kids’) weekly meal rotation, this post is for you! Before we go any further, I just want to take a minute to explain the difference between a vegan diet and a vegetarian diet. A vegetarian diet includes mostly plant based foods and excludes meat and meat products. A vegetarian diet may however include fish, dairy and eggs.
There are several types of vegetarian diets, and a vegan diet is the strictest form of vegetarianism. A vegan diet excludes meat, eggs, dairy products and all other animal-derived ingredients.
Keep in mind that you don’t need to choose to label yourself as strictly vegan or vegetarian. Eating a plant based diet focusing on whole, unprocessed, plant based foods, even when including modest amounts of lean meat and fish, can be one of the healthiest ways to eat: fruits, and especially vegetables, are some of the most nutrient-dense, fibre-rich and calorie-sparse foods on the planet.
Fruits and vegetables contain phytonutrients (plant nutrients) that protect our bodies against numerous types of illness and disease. In fact, plant based eaters live longer, weigh less and are healthier than their meat eating counterparts. Now that doesn’t mean that you need to exclude all animal products to reap the advantages of plant based diets— in fact, by just adding in just a few more vegetarian or vegan meals each week, you can drastically improve your health (and your grocery budget)!
Now, since we are talking about vegan and vegetarian lunches specifically, I want to make sure that we not just thinking ‘inside the lunchbox. ‘What I mean by that is you need to think beyond sandwiches and what you can fit into your physical lunchbox. If you just invest in a really good thermos and a wide mouthed, quart sized mason jar, you will see that your world of lunches has just expanded into a whole new world of possibilities. Now you can pack soups, stews, rice bowls, quinoa bowls, chills, curries, and pastas. These options are so much better than the old standby PB & J or the processed cheese & lunchmeat sandwich.
Now before I provide you with some vegan and vegetarian recipes to try, I want to provide you with a word of caution: just because a meal is vegan or vegetarian doesn’t mean that it’s good for you! I find that it is quite common to boast that a recipe is ‘vegetarian’ even though there is nothing nutritionally beneficial about the recipe, and is really just an excuse to pile on as much cheese and sour cream as possible. When adding in plant based meals, what you really want to focus on is adding in more fruits and veggies, because these are the healthiest foods on the planet! So to make it easier for you, I have compiled a list of recipes that are not only plant based, but also meet my high nutritional standards. And because we are talking about kid-friendly meals, I have also made sure that they passed the ‘four kids’ tastebuds’ test with flying colours.
- Buddha Bowls
- Soups, Stews, Chilis and Curries
- Wraps and Burritos
- Veggie Patties
- Vegan Pastas
- Salads
I hope this post will inspire you to experiment with some vegan or vegetarian meal ideas! If you have any other favourite vegan or vegetarian recipes that you have tried, I would love if you could leave a link to your recipe below.
