A whole food plant based diet is based the principles below:
Whole food describes natural foods that are not heavily processed. That means whole, unrefined, or minimally refined ingredients.
Plant-based means food that comes from plants and doesn't contain animal ingredients such as meat of any kind, animal milk, eggs, or honey.
With plant based food, you focus on a whole-food; plant-based diet that lets you meet your nutritional needs by focusing on natural, minimally-processed plant foods.
Major Food Categories
A quick overview of the major food categories on a plant-based diet, with examples:
Legumes: beans of any kind, plus lentils, pulses, and similar ingredients.
Whole grains: grains, cereals, and other starches in their whole form, such as quinoa, brown rice, millet, whole wheat, oats, barley, etc. Even popcorn is a whole grain.
Tubers: root vegetables like yams, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, sweet potatoes, beets, etc.
Vegetables: plenty of veggies including kale, spinach, broccoli, okra, cabbage, green beans, eggplant, radishes, lettuce, peppers, zucchini, etc.
Fruits: any type of fruit including mangoes, bananas, apples, oranges, watermelons, peaches, cherries, berries, grapes, grapefruit, apricots, pineapples, dates, papayas, tangerines, plums, cucumber, tomato, pears, pumpkin, etc.
Mushrooms: Cremini, white button, shiitake, Portobello, oyster, etc.