{"id":2,"date":"2009-05-16T14:30:15","date_gmt":"2009-05-16T21:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.straightupfood.com\/blog\/?page_id=2"},"modified":"2025-04-10T11:36:55","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T18:36:55","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.straightupfood.com\/blog\/about\/","title":{"rendered":"About"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This blog is full of recipes and information on how to eat a plant-based diet that is free of added salt, oil and sugar. The focus is not only on consuming a vegan diet (avoiding animal foods and ingredients), but one that actually *promotes* excellent health. Toward this, the recipes are based on whole foods (still in their naturally grown state) except for a handful of minimally processed foods used for convenience (such as canned beans, frozen produce, non-dairy milks). Substitutions to lower fat, and all recipes are gluten-free are often noted. Recipes are easy to prepare and call for ingredients that are easy to find. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who are you?<\/strong>
I am a cooking instructor at TrueNorth Health<\/a>. I started working at TrueNorth in 2010. I started this blog in 2010 to offer my students more of my gluten-, salt-, sugar- and oil-free plant-based recipes. I made a serious commitment in 1999 to begin changing how I ate, and have continued to learn and fine-tune my diet in the years since. I have a certification in basic nutrition, and am a self-taught chef, having learned on the job. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who is this blog for?<\/strong>
This blog is for anyone interested in shifting to a whole-foods, plant-based diet, and it's especially for you if (1) your health has been in the dumps for a while and you\u2019re ready to try a new approach, (2) if you\u2019re a parent who is concerned about raising your family in today\u2019s world of overly engineered and processed foods, or (3) if you\u2019ve been vegetarian or vegan for a while but want to clean up your diet even further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What kind of vegan chef are you?<\/strong>
I consider myself a whole-foods vegan chef. This means that I do not use many of the packaged and processed foods you may have seen in some vegan cookbooks and restaurants, such as foods that look like meat but are soy- or wheat\/gluten-based (like hotdogs, burgers, Tofurkey). I also avoid vegan mayonnaise, vegan cream cheese, and plant-based butters (made from soy and olive oil). These products are often stepping stones for people transitioning from the standard American diet to a vegan diet, but I don\u2019t recommend them longterm since so many of them are highly processed and full of salt, sugar, oil and other unhealthy fats, chemicals, preservatives and\/or other ingredients that do not promote health. \u2014Cathy Fisher<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This blog is full of recipes and information on how to eat a plant-based diet that is free of added salt, oil and sugar. The focus is not only on consuming a vegan diet (avoiding animal foods and ingredients), but one that actually *promotes* excellent health. Toward this, the recipes are based on whole foods...<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":{"0":"post-2","1":"page","2":"type-page","3":"status-publish","5":"entry","6":"has-post-thumbnail"},"yoast_head":"\nAbout - Straight Up Food<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.straightupfood.com\/blog\/about\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"About - Straight Up Food\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This blog is full of recipes and information on how to eat a plant-based diet that is free of added salt, oil and sugar. 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