Veggie Planet Takes You Around the World on Plant-Powered Food
Veggie Planet will make you an informed and confident vegan traveler, whether at home or thousands of miles away
Veggie Planet, by world traveler Wendy Werneth, shows you how to enjoy tasty plant-based food from 11 cuisines. Wendy includes easy-to-find foods you probably never knew existed from countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, as well as Mexico. This highly readable, upbeat, and fun book is excellent for anyone who enjoys trying new and flavorful options, at home or while traveling, regardless of their current diet.
Wendy has traveled to 100 countries, and has been vegan for several years. She shows you that vegan travel is a treasure hunt crammed with numerous rewards, from snacks at street vendors, to meals at restaurants, to authentic home-cooked traditional dishes that the locals regularly eat. Her many food descriptions will allow you to enjoy food in abundance, even at places that are only “accidentally vegan.”
Not a world traveler? Wendy tells you how to find flavors you might never have known about in restaurants you can choose while touring around the US, or even near your own home.
WENDY, YOUR VEGAN TRAVEL TOUR GUIDE
I had met Wendy through her information-packed site, thenomadicvegan.com, and connected with her to ask her more about Veggie Planet. I was interested in why she is such an avid traveler. She let me know “What I like best about traveling is exploring new places, cultures, and cuisines, and learning to look at the world through a different lens. Travel really is the world’s best teacher. And actually, veganism offers the same thing. Becoming vegan completely changed my worldview and enabled me to connect with nature and with my fellow earthlings in a way I never had before. By combining travel with veganism, I’m able to view the world through a whole new window and experience places in a way that most other tourists don’t.”
Veggie Planet is full of useful words and phrases for vegan travelers, as well as links for pronunciation. I asked
Wendy Werneth is an enthusiastic vegan traveler who has journeyed in 100 countries. This photo was taken in Thailand
Wendy about her love of languages. She responded, “I don’t think I’ll ever feel like I’ve mastered any foreign language, but I can order food and hold a conversation in Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Mandarin Chinese. I also know some basic Russian.
I’ve been fascinated by languages ever since high school. My love for languages and my love for travel really go hand in hand and feed off of each other. There’s no better way to learn a language than by immersing yourself in a culture where it’s spoken, and there’s no better way to immerse yourself in a culture than by learning to speak the local language.”
As she travels, Wendy has found many people around the world are curious about her vegan choices. “When interacting with people, I’m always aware that I might be the first vegan this person has ever met. So I try to be a good ambassador for the movement and show that I am grateful for whatever they are able to serve me, even if it’s just some boiled vegetables.”
Wendy will be leading on-the-ground vegan tours soon, as she shared with me. “I’m excited to announce that, in 2018, I will be leading two vegan tours in collaboration with Veg Jaunts and Journeys. The first tour is to Lisbon and surrounding sights in Portugal, and that will be in June 2018. The second tour is to Italy, which is my favorite country in the world. In addition to Rome, we will also be visiting the historic walled city of Lucca and the many
Wendy’s love for animals is a major force in her choice to be vegan
medieval, Renaissance, and baroque sights of Bologna. Our visit to Bologna will be timed to coincide with VeganFest, which is the largest vegan event in the world!”
LOTS OF RESOURCES
One of the most useful aspects of Veggie Planet is the abundant resources to hone your vegan traveling and cooking skills. For each chapter, Wendy lists plentiful resources relating to the cuisine she just described. These include cultural and historical tidbits, cookbooks, restaurants, and local veg groups (often on Facebook) that you can contact to get more local resources.
In the conclusion of Veggie Planet, Wendy shares even more tips for plant-based traveling and information on why you would want to thrive on veg food choices. She suggests books, films, podcasts, websites, apps, and more.
With so many ideas for new foods in an array of cuisines, you might have trouble deciding what to try first. I suggest
Veggie Planet’s list of cuisines includes Ethiopian. You will learn how to get amazing meals such as this one
choosing one of the countries in the book that is convenient for you, whether through traveling, nearby restaurants, or recipes you’d like to try. Then experience a couple of Wendy’s suggestions, and move on from there to more and more yummy choices. Enjoy!
If you are excited about vegan travel, you may want to read my earlier interview with Wendy Werneth.
Intrigued? Now you can use our Whole Foods Blog Finder to target informative, fun postings on whole foods, plant-based diets. Quick information at no cost!
Post written by Janice Stanger, Ph.D. Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet: How to Lose Weight and Get Healthy Now With Six Kinds of Whole Foods. This book outlines a whole foods, plant-based diet that you can feast on at home or traveling.
Tags: vegan travel, Veggie Planet, Wendy Werneth
