“I realized that the answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated question of what we should eat wasn’t so complicated after all, and in fact could be boiled down to just seven words:
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants”
― Michael Pollan
Being French, born and raised in Paris and therefore coming from one of the most renown culinary center in the world, I grew up around food, around a healthy, extremely delicious food. My entire family cooks at home, every one of them, each with its own specialty. Sea foods for my father; best homemade food, traditional cuisine for my mother; a creative, free-style cooking for my grand-ma, and all organic, whole-food, vegetarian for my sister. So, you understand that living in such a culture, the simple fact of meeting with friends and family, was always around a beautiful table, with an amazing food. We love to host diner parties. It is really a lifestyle around good food and good wine too!
Also, I remember, when living in Paris, I just couldn’t stop talking about food, before lunch, during lunch, after lunch, during dinner and so on. Thank god traveling was my other passion, so I could have a wide range of culinary topics to talk about! Anyway, aside from talking about food, I was cooking a lot, like the rest of my family but to the difference, that it was only vegetarian: French / Mediterranean cuisine, but also due to my travels to Asia: typical local Indian, Thai, Indonesian vegetarian cuisine.
Nowadays I continue exploring new cuisine, every time I travel abroad, I am always trying to attend at least one Vegetarian/ Vegan cooking class.
So, when I arrived to Brazil 8 years ago, my level of expectations was very high. Unfortunately, even though Brazil has an enormous variety of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, root crops; Brazil is also the world´s biggest producer of pesticides. Brazilian love meat, deep fried food, and as almost every industrialized country, processed foods, and it’s hard to find high quality food anywhere. So as those were not meeting my expectations, I decided that should I not have the quality I want, I will do everything by myself, everything from breakfast, snack, lunch and dinner, I bought all ingredients fresh separately and made the composition myself. From granola, cereal bars, tofu, tempeh, kombucha, plant milk. I learnt new techniques such as fermentation, germination, and discovered the real world of vegan culinary. I discovered a vaster spectrum of raw materials, combining ingredients, spices to create incredible flavors. Following Ayurveda, the traditional Indian medicine, a balanced meal should contain the 6 flavors of nature: sweet, sour, salty, spicy, bitter and astringent. Each taste is related to some emotion and, as we balance our diet, we automatically balance our feelings. Furthermore, in order to create and maintain a healthy body, our food must be nutritive, our digestion must be strong and our disposal efficient.
I believe that in order for Plant-based alimentation to compete with the monopoly of carnivore diet, Vegan chef has to be much more creative in their cuisine, it has to be extremely delicious and at the same time aesthetic, in order to prove itself. This is because we are confronted with people´s bias and lack of knowledge about nutrition, having this anxiety in the background about not eating enough protein. People usually, even though they would like to eat better and eat healthier food, sometimes don’t how to elaborate meals that are vegetarian and balanced (protein, carb, fat).
I love nature, I love animals, trees, plants, flowers … and entering the Vegan world, I discovered that I have never been closer to nature than today, understanding and respecting nature´s cycle. Indeed, with the industrialization we have little by little lost touch with its true gift, its seasonality and its incredible diversity in terms of fruits, vegetables, roots, grains, legumes, herbs, seaweeds, seeds and nuts. So it´s time to reconnect with ourselves, to reconnect with nature if we want to thrive in this challenging time.
