Henry Firth - BOSH! Healthy Vegan

Welcome to the world of more beautiful plants on plates. Let’s get cooking!

Yours in Health,

Dr Rupy Aujla, MBBS, BSc, MRCGP

As BOSH!, it’s our mission to help you get more plants on your plate, more taste in your food and more joy out of your mealtimes. We want you to live a long, healthy, happy life. Our aim in this book is to share with you what we’ve learned about healthy eating and the power of plants.

Four years ago, we were slightly overweight meaties. We adopted a plant-based diet and found our lives changed for the better. The weight fell off, our sleep was better, and our energy levels improved. But a couple of years later, we had become indulgent eaters, often cooking and eating up to five meals a day as we tested recipes for our cookbooks. We had taken our focus off health and wellbeing and were eating too many white, processed carbs – classic vegan junk food! It was delicious, but our health had started to suffer.

So, we made some changes and started learning a new way of living.We learned how to balance fun food with fit food. We’ve done the hard work – and made the mistakes – so you don’t have to. In this book we share with you over 80 healthy recipes, meal plans and all the advice and guidance you need to be a happier, healthier, leaner you – whether it’s every meal, or one meal at a time.

But this isn’t a diet book. Quick diets and promises of instant transformation don’t work in the long term. If they sound too good to be true, that’s because they are. With the latest diet craze you may see short-term benefits, but these can often be at the expense of your future self.

Quick-fix diet plans can lead to an unhealthy relationship with food, encourage a negative self-image and they can even permanently change your body’s metabolism. More often than not, once the diet is over you’ll go back to your old eating patterns anyway and any benefits will be reversed. We’ve all been there.

We are going to show you how eating plants can transform your wellbeing, for good. Making a small change to the way you eat, you can feel incredible and live healthier. And the best part? The food is delicious!

When we adopted this plant-based way of eating, we felt more energetic, slept better, trained better, laughed a lot more and, hopefully, we will live longer, too!

This book is for everyone, whatever your dietary lifestyle. Whether you’re vegetarian, vegan, a flexitarian, a pescatarian, a meat eater – this book is for you. We’ll show you how to eat the rainbow, whether you’re looking to lose fat, eat for fitness, or just be the healthiest you can be. It’s about finding the balance that you feel comfortable with and incorporating plant-based eating into your life as much as you can.

If you’re looking to lose fat, become leaner or shape up, a plant-based diet is one of the best ways to do that. Eating the right plants will help you feel fuller for longer, which can help you start to shed fat.

If you’re looking to build muscle, you’re in the right place. Colourful plants are packed with protein and a load of vital nutrients to help you get maximum gains and experience optimum recovery after exercise. We’ll show you how plant-based nutrition can help fitness and muscle building.

If you’re just looking to be a healthier version of you, then this is for you. We want to help everyone reach their optimum health. These recipes will help your gut, blood, heart and immune system function at their best.

Our recipes are delicious, easy and offer the best in nutrition. They have been put together using the latest medical advice available for a plant-based diet, and according to government and NHS healthy-eating guidelines (the EatWell Plate) and other national food guidelines. And we’ve worked with a registered dietician to make sure that all our dishes are balanced, health-giving and well portioned.

The recipes all follow the principles of eating the rainbow. Packed with colourful plants and their unique health-giving phytonutrients, they reflect a varied plant-based diet. The meals are also full of dietary fibre and high-quality carbs, proteins and fats, and are low in salt, sugar and saturated fat (saturated fat has links with increased cholesterol, heart disease and stroke, so a diet that’s low in this is great!).

They have all been nutritionally analysed– you’ll see labels beneath the recipes indicating whether they are a particularly good source of protein or fibre, or are low in fat or sugar, as well as the calories per serving.

We’ll show you why eating plants is a great choice for your health. You’ll learn how to eat plants the right way, while discovering delicious new recipes. We’ll also give you some ideas for when you want to relax the rules a little, so you can enjoy life in balance. We all need a treat sometimes!

We’ll help you get healthy in other areas of your life as well– sleep, exercise, routine and lifestyle – so you feel more able to to start making positive, lasting changes.

We’re going to show you how to eat and live healthily. You’ll soon see just how good you can feel eating plants. Most importantly, this is still BOSH! food: hearty, comforting food that you want to eat – but with fewer calories, less sugar, and less fat.

We’re going to share with you everything we’ve learnedand help you find the best you. These changes could last a lifetime. And along the way we’ll share some of the tastiest and most vibrant recipes we’ve ever created.

We’re delighted you’ve decided to join us on our healthy vegan journey.

Henry and Ian x

In this book, you’re going to discover delicious, moreish, comforting food that is good for your body, will nourish your soul and help you stay healthy. And moreover, everything is easy and you won’t be spending ages in the kitchen.

You’ve probably heard that a plant-based diet is good for you. There’s a reason many of the world’s top athletes are adopting plant-based diets. It’s the new buzzword in fitness. And it’s being recommended increasingly by doctors as a lifestyle promoting long life, weight loss and health.

We have found that it has loads of other benefits, too, like better sleep, improved recovery after exercising, and more consistent energy levels. It’s better for the planet too. We felt like we’d discovered a superpower when we first made the switch. We are now fitter, happier and healthier than we’ve ever been.

Your parents always told you to eat your greens, and they were right! Eating more plants is a sure-fire way to turbocharge your wellness: most plants are absolutely jam-packed with phytochemicals which have various positive benefits for the body, from offering anti-oxidising properties, to providing vital vitamins and minerals, and supporting good gut health.

You may also find, as we did, that the higher fibre intake and a reduction of what are thought to be inflammatory foods characterised by eating vegan leaves you with better digestion and a healthier gut.