How Do I Choose the Best Fat-Free Vegan Food?

Your choice of fat-free vegan foods will come from among three main options: fruits and vegetables, certain vegan recipes for fat-free snacks and meals, and prepackaged snacks and meals. You’ll likely choose all, or a combination, of those options. Choosing the best fat-free vegan foods for you will depend on other areas of your vegan lifestyle. Such areas might include whether you lean toward a raw and living foods diet and what roles, if any, certain environmental and social considerations play in your vegan lifestyle. Regardless of which fat-free food you choose, you’ll need to follow a few tips to make sure it includes plenty of healthy nutritional benefits while avoiding those ingredients that, in excess, can be harmful to your health.

Generally, vegan diets consist of a lot of fruits and vegetables. Many kinds of fruits and vegetables, such as strawberries, apples, broccoli, lettuce, and most types of beans have no fat, which makes them ideal for those who want natural fat-free vegan foods. For those vegans who follow a raw or living foods diet, these kinds of fruits and vegetables are some of their only options for fat-free vegan food. Other natural foods, like bananas, have an extremely low fat content and are still viable choices for people following low-fat vegan diets. You can find these fruits and vegetables at varying prices in your grocer’s produce section, but since many vegans also follow environmentally and socially responsible lifestyles, you might prefer to shop at your local farmer’s market if possible.

Going further, you can take those fruits and vegetables and combine them with other fat-free ingredients to create, or follow existing, fat-free vegan recipes. Many websites as well as print magazines and recipe books provide recipes for fat-free vegan meals appropriate for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and even snacks. Learning to make such recipes can help expand your menu options and prevent boredom and burnout with other vegan foods. Since you have to purchase each of the ingredients, these snacks and meals can cost more than other options. They can be longer lasting, however, since many recipes are designed to produce more than one serving.

Of course, if you need on-the-go snacks or you’re just not into cooking, you can browse the various prepackaged fat-free vegan snacks and meals. How easy or viable an option this is for you will depend largely on where you live and your willingness to order and have delivered such vegan food and pay extra shipping and handling costs. For example, if your local grocery store doesn’t sell such snacks and you don’t live near the kind of grocer that specializes in fat-free kinds of vegan food, your only option might be to order the food. There’s no shortage of companies that take orders via their websites and magazines. Still, whether you feel comfortable with this method will depend on whether you feel comfortable with having items shipped from non-local vendors.

Keep in mind that when choosing the best fat-free vegan foods, it’s important to make sure the foods aren’t loaded with other kinds of unhealthy ingredients. This is especially true if you’re shopping for prepackaged snacks and meals. Be sure to check the nutritional labels of the foods you’re considering, paying close attention to cholesterol, sodium, and sugar levels. Check for levels of healthy features, too, such as protein, fiber, and vitamins and minerals. Generally, people choose vegan diets for health and moral reasons, but consuming foods that don’t provide enough nutrition can be counterproductive and even harmful to your health.