Frightful Fruit Snacks

On a night where processed junk food reigns supreme, showcase nature’s candy with these clever and tasty fruit treats that will delight All Hallow’s Eve revelers.

Ghostly Bananas & Pumpkin Patch Clementines

Peel bananas and cut them crosswise about three-quarters of the way down to make a flat base. Using a dab of nut butter, stick three dairy-free chocolate chips onto each banana to make a ghostly face. For pumpkins, peel clementines and insert a short celery stick into the top to create the pumpkin stem.

Caramel Apple Monster Mouths

A frightfully fun twist on the classic candy apple, cut an apple into three or four wedges. Carve out a wedge-shaped slice in the center of each apple chunk (ensuring you don’t cut all the way through) and fill the cavity with our Raw Chocolate Caramel Dip. Place peanuts around the edges for teeth and a sliced strawberry for the tongue. Complete your munchy monsters with candy eyes or dairy-free chocolate chips (you can use more of the caramel dip as glue).

Spooky Watermelon

This fruity fiend comes from Carleigh Bodrug of PlantYou, and it works perfectly as a show-stopping centerpiece for your Halloween party table. Per Bodrug’s instructions:

1. Draw a jack-o’-lantern face on a medium sized watermelon. Slice the bottom off so it can sit flat, and then carve out the face using a sharp knife.
2. Remove the inner flesh of the watermelon using a spoon or melon baller. Mix the balled watermelon with blueberries, grapes, cantaloupe, or any other fruit you desire.
3. To serve, place watermelon on a large platter or cutting board, and arrange the fruit so that it starts inside the “mouth” and spews outward.

Very Scary Veggies

For some kids, the thought of eating veggies is akin to a horror movie. Make snack time more fun with these healthy Halloween treats that play into the spooky aesthetics of the season.

Celery Stick Frankensteins & Carrot Witch Fingers

While not everything in this spooky spread is compliant with a whole-food, plant-based diet, Chef Katie Simmons shared some excellent ideas from a vegan party platter she created for a Halloween gathering. Our favorites are the Frankenstein Celery Sticks and the Carrot Witch Fingers in the center of the shot, both of which come together in a flash. For the Celery Sticks, fill each stick with nut butter or hummus and top with a sliced black olive for the hair. Add raisins, chocolate chips, or dollops of black bean dip for the eyes. For the Witch Fingers, slice a horizontal sliver off the top of a baby carrot and use nut butter to attach a slivered almond as the fingernail. You can also carve lines into the carrot to make it look like knuckles! Surround them with an assortment of your favorite dips, baked chips, and other dippers for a suitably spooky WFPB platter.

Stuffed Mushroom Eyeballs

These haunting stuffed mushrooms are the perfect canapé to serve during a rewatch of the classic family Halloween film Hocus Pocus. Jacki Sobon of Vegan Yack Attack stuffs each mushroom cap with a savory tofu filling before using olives and sun-dried tomatoes to create the eyes. Bake them to tender perfection, and watch how quickly your little goblins gobble these up.

Jack-o’-Lantern Crudités

Hosting a Halloween party? Place a festive jack-o’-lantern crudités arrangement at the center of the table with a side of Vegan Ranch Dressing to delight your ghoulish guests. Carrots, celery, and cucumber slices work perfectly for this easy and adorable appetizer.

Whole-Food Halloween Mains

Why stop with snacks? Keep the creepy concoctions coming with these delightful main dishes that are ideal for fueling hungry tummies before an evening of trick-or-treating.

Batty Bento Box

To decorate sushi rolls, use a sharp knife to cut bats and cats out of nori or mini orange bell peppers. Take a look at our collection of vegan sushi recipes to pick one that looks tasty, and then start decorating!

Spiderweb Soup

This great idea by Dreena Burton transforms any blended soup or dessert into a Halloween-themed dish. Create a web design using plant-based sour cream for savory dishes and vanilla bean whip for sweet ones. Fill a small sandwich bag with the sour cream or the vanilla whip, and cut off a small corner with scissors. Carefully pipe the white decoration onto your soup or pudding in concentric circles starting in the center. Insert a clean butter knife into the center circle. Drag it outwar to create a webbed effect. Do this a few times until your design is finished, wiping off the butter knife each time.

Pasta Brain Peppers

Neatly cut off the very top of bell peppers and seed and core each one. Using a sharp knife, cut out the jack-o’-lantern face. Fill with pasta and sauce of your choice, and bake at 350℉ for 25 to 30 minutes until the peppers are tender and the stuffing is slightly oozing out of the faces.

All Hail the Pumpkin King

Ditch those sugar-filled pumpkin spice lattes and celebrate the flavor of this special squash with a whole-food, plant-based recipe! When cooking with pumpkins, be sure to select a variety that’s bred for eating, such as small sugar pumpkins or pie pumpkins, because they have thick flesh and a low moisture content which makes them perfect to use in the kitchen. Whether you chop it up to stick in a stew or make your own pumpkin purée for a velvety dessert, there are tons of ways you can transform this classic Halloween decoration into a tasty treat. Check out our favorite pumpkin recipes to celebrate gorgeous gourd during its peak season:

• Fall Fruit Trifle with Pumpkin Gingerbread
• Pumpkin Ice Cream
• Pumpkin Seed Granola with Millet and Oats
• Or take a look at our full collection of vegan pumpkin recipes

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After Eating Plant-Based as a Kid, What Prompted You to Return to This Lifestyle as an Adult?

Qadira Ali Huff: I gained a tremendous amount of weight during my pediatrics training and was living what I call the “anti-lifestyle.” I wasn’t sleeping well because of the long shifts at the hospital. I was very stressed out. I was eating anything in sight—fast, sugary, fatty foods. I had a couple wake-up calls in terms of small health scares, and I got to a place of reckoning when my husband and I were thinking about starting a family. As a doctor I knew it was risky to enter into pregnancy if I wasn’t at my healthiest, so that’s when I closely examined my own diet and went back to the plant-based roots of my childhood.

Why Was It Important to Your Parents To Maintain a Plant-Based Household?

QAH: Both my parents were very much into the Black liberation activist community in Washington, D.C. They wanted to contribute to Black community-building … and a huge component of that was food as a pathway toward autonomy and self-actualization. They recognized that we can’t blossom into the people we want to be if we’re physically sick and tired. So that inspired them to get into a plant-based diet.

How Did You Decide to Launch a Virtual Health-Coaching Platform?

QAH: Sprouting Wellness was born from a desire to dig deeper with parents and kids. It’s easy to think of chronic disease as only impacting adults, but what I’m seeing in my primary-care practice is that [it’s] starting really early on in life. I’m regularly diagnosing diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol in my young patients. Those 15- or 20-minute visits in a hospital setting are inadequate [for] empowering parents with the information that they need. With Sprouting Wellness, people can learn from the comfort of their homes and take the time they truly need to be receptive to all the knowledge lifestyle medicine has to offer.

What Exactly Is Lifestyle Medicine?

QAH: It’s about empowering the individual to take charge of their health using tools [such as] a plant-forward diet, exploring sources of joyful movement, getting adequate rest, having strong social connections, and viewing stress reduction as a necessity instead of a luxury.

Can You Speak More About the Importance of Equitable Access to Healthy, Plant-Based Foods?

QAH: Plant-forward diets were originally eaten across the whole continent of Africa, and there’s a really robust movement right now to recapture and normalize that in the Black community. On top of the dysfunctional relationship with food that slavery imposed on the Black community early on, we’re also dealing with [structural] factors like food deserts (areas with low proximity to high-quality, healthy food) and food swamps (areas that have highly concentrated amounts of disease-promoting food). So it’s a double whammy for communities of color. But we do have the power of our plates while we work for policy changes to help shift food equity on a more structural level.

3 Healthy Snack Swaps

These easy, healthy, kid-approved snack swaps from Dr. Huff are perfect to tide over hungry tummies.

Cheez-Its → “Cheesy” Kale Chips

Preheat oven to 300°F. Use a knife to carefully remove the thick stems from 1 bunch kale; tear leaves into bite-size pieces and place them in a bowl. Add 3 tablespoons nutritional yeast, 1 teaspoon onion powder, ¾ teaspoon garlic powder, a squeeze of lemon juice, and a pinch of sea salt. Mix to coat. Spread leaves in a single layer on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake 20 minutes.

Prepackaged Popcorn → Jazzed-Up Microwave Popcorn

Place ⅓ cup corn kernels in a lidded silicone bowl such as the Cuisinart Collapsible Microwave Popcorn Maker. Microwave 2 minutes or until the sounds of popping begin to slow. In a small bowl whisk together 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast; ¼ teaspoon each garlic powder, paprika, and sea salt; and 1 pinch cayenne pepper or another seasoning of your choice. Toss with popcorn.

Potato Chips → Crispy Roasted Chickpeas

Preheat oven to 400°F. In a large bowl combine one 15-oz. can chickpeas, rinsed and drained; 1½ teaspoons each garlic powder and onion powder; and 1 pinch paprika. Toss to coat. Spread chickpeas in a single layer on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake 25 minutes or until lightly browned.

The post Meet Dr. Qadira Ali Huff, the Plant-Based Pediatrician Helping Kids Stay Healthy appeared first on Forks Over Knives.

For more fun cooking inspiration, check out our favorite easy plant-based recipes.

5 Tips for Cooking with Kids

1. Don’t try too hard

Relax. Enjoy the experience. Being together is half the fun. Show them your tricks and learn new ones together. A love of preparing great-tasting nutritious food sets best when allowed to simmer over time. No pressure required.

2. Never too young to start

As long as they’re supervised and given age-appropriate tasks, it’s never too early to have children in the kitchen. There’s always something they can do. When my daughter was a year and a half, she loved putting sticks into chocolate-banana fruit pops.

3. Keep it clean

Cleanup is part of food preparation, so once young people are old enough, expect them to be part of that too. Putting things away as you use them will keep your kitchen halfway clean. But, let’s face it: It’s a messy business. Try and be relaxed about it, too.

4. Be adventurous

There are plenty of kid-friendly vegan meals, including pizza and mac ‘n’ cheese. These are a good place to start, but don’t stop there. Get into salads, soups, risottos, and everything else. It’ll stimulate interest in new flavors and may ignite interest in foods they would otherwise avoid.

5. Let go of the reins

Food is front and center of most family festivities. But when it comes to entertaining, it’s easy to take control of everything. At the next family celebration consider letting younger family members take on a role, maybe even taking charge of one of the dishes. You might be surprised at what treasured family rituals evolve.

13 Simple WFPB Recipes to Get Started

Ready to get started? Check out Forks Meal Planner, FOK’s easy weekly meal-planning tool to keep you on a healthy plant-based path. To learn more about a whole-food, plant-based diet, visit our Plant-Based Primer.

This article was originally published on April 16, 2020, and has been updated. 

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The comprehensive study looked at data collected from more than 6,500 adolescents through the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to identify trends in the rates of prediabetes—a condition marked by higher than normal blood sugar, which, if left unchecked, can lead to Type 2 diabetes and lead to other serious  health issues such as heart disease or stroke. 

In reviewing the data, the researchers found that in 1999, 11.6% of kids aged 12 to 19 were prediabetic. By 2018, that number had risen to 28.2%, a more than twofold increase. 

The increase in prediabetes was consistent across almost all subpopulations regardless of income, ethnicity, or education. However, young boys and teens who were overweight were found to be at an even higher risk for developing the disease. 

“If we do not intervene, the children who have prediabetes have a higher risk of developing diabetes and also have a higher risk of all cardiovascular diseases,” study author Junxiu Liu, PhD, an assistant professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, told CNN. 

The study authors noted that more in-depth research is needed to understand the cause of the skyrocketing cases. A 2018 report published in Current Diabetes Reports suggests sugar-sweetened beverages such as soda and juice may play a significant role in the increased rates of adolescent prediabetes. A 2020 review in The Journal of Pediatrics suggests that intervening with intensive lifestyle modifications that target nutrition and exercise can help mitigate the risk of the disease progressing in children. 

A number of recent studies have linked healthy plant-based diets with lower rates of Type 2 diabetes, including a meta-analysis published in Diabetologia just this month. 

More than 415 million people have diabetes worldwide, and the World Health Organization reports more than 95% of people with diabetes have Type 2, which is largely caused by lifestyle factors such as a poor diet, lack of exercise, and obesity. 

To learn more about a whole-food, plant-based diet, visit our Plant-Based Primer. For meal-planning support, check out Forks Meal Planner, FOK’s easy weekly meal-planning tool to keep you on a healthy plant-based path.

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Brown Rice Instead of White Rice

One of the simplest things you can do is upgrade your rice from white to brown. While white rice has been a staple in many diets around the world for a long time, brown rice is a fiber-rich whole grain. If you don’t have time to cook it from scratch, stock up on boil-in-a-bag or microwaveable versions; just make sure you choose a brand that doesn’t contain hidden oils and lots of unnecessary preservatives. 

Popcorn Instead of Potato Chips

Is it movie night at your house? Is there a big game on TV? Instead of setting out potato chips and other highly processed foods for your family to snack on, up your nutrition with popcorn! Air-popped popcorn is one of the best snacks you can have on the couch, especially if you are looking to up your fiber game. It’s also delicious. If you’re buying microwavable popcorn, opt for a variety with a short ingredient list free of oil and artificial flavorings. (Quinn is a good option.) Or purchase a microwave popcorn popper, which you can pour kernels directly into.

Vegetable Broth Instead of Oil

Your first thought when cooking in a skillet might be that you need to add a little oil to the pan to help things cook—but even a small amount of oil can add significant fat to an otherwise healthy meal. Instead, keep things moving by adding 1 to 2 tablespoons of vegetable broth. Your kids will love the flavor, and it will be much easier on everyone’s bodies! See more tips for cooking without oil.

Oats Instead of Highly Processed Cereals 

Most of the breakfast cereals you’ll find on grocery store shelves contain a lot of added sugar. Opt for rolled oats instead. At my house, I like to make a mean oatmeal with tons of fresh fruit piled on top and a sprinkle of cinnamon or a drizzle of maple syrup to keep things interesting. If you like to sleep in or are often rushed in the mornings, skip the cooking altogether and make some overnight oats. With just a few ingredients and a refrigerator, you’ll have a delicious breakfast waiting for your family in the morning. Berry-licious Overnight Oats and Carrot Cake Overnight Oats are fan faves!

Pure Maple Syrup Instead of “Pancake Syrup”

Think you’ve already got maple syrup in your pantry? Check the label. “Pancake syrup,” “table syrup,” and even “maple syrup” are highly processed imitations of pure maple syrup, often containing high-fructose corn syrup (or other forms of added sugar) and artificial flavoring. Look instead for single-ingredient pure maple syrup, which makes a great whole-food alternative to white sugar and can be used to sweeten sauces, nice cream, and more. 

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Your health, the environment, the animals: No matter what motivated you to transition yourself or your family to a plant-based diet, only good things can come of it.  For parents, transitioning one’s family to plant-based presents certain challenges: While we have the internal confidence of knowing we are doing the right thing, a plant-based diet might not be perceived as “cool” for our kids in their social interactions at school, birthday parties, or at a friend’s house. So what can we do as parents to help their plant-based coolness thrive?

Plant the Seed of Confidence
When you talk to your kids about a plant-based diet, talk about it confidently and proudly. They will emulate you. The feeling you want to try to communicate is that by eating this way they will be superheroes. No, we don’t want them trying to fly or lifting heavy objects, but we do want to start this “journey to cool” with them.

Different kids respond to different things. Let’s say, for example, we want them to understand that eating healthy foods such as fruits, veggies, beans, nuts, and seeds will help keep their bodies strong. We could communicate that by saying it a few different ways. Here’s a sample of some fun things you could say depending on their age range:

Ages 3-4: “Way to go, buddy. You keep eating that broccoli and you are going to turn green, just like Hulk—and you know how strong Hulk is! What does Hulk say?” Every time they eat broccoli, you can celebrate by shouting “HULK SMASH” together at the top of your lungs.

Ages 5–7: “I am so happy to see you eating your broccoli. When you do that it shows that you really care about your body. Is that a bulging muscle I see coming out of your arm there? Do you think it might be because of the awesome food you’re eating these days? Way to go, bud!” Follow with a hug.

Ages 8–11: “Whoa, did you just eat all the broccoli on your plate? Nice move! Do your friends at school eat broccoli?” If the answer is no, ask: “Why do you think that is?” Creating an awareness of their healthy decision and letting them own it is awesome. For this age, strive to facilitate the thought process, allowing them to come up with the idea for themselves.

Teenagers: We all know that teens can sometimes be a bit tough because, at this point in their lives, they feel they know it all. And no matter how much you tell them that they are awesome, your mom and dad powers might not be as potent as they used to be. So enlist the help of someone cooler than yourself: Find a celebrity who’s eating a plant-based diet. If your kiddo is into sports, show them some of the top-performing vegan professional athletes out there. If your teen is a musician, you’ve got a lot of inspiring figures to choose from, as many of music’s hottest names are vegan or plant-based. Heck, search the web for “vegan celebrity” and you will find a ton of folks you didn’t even know were fueled by plants!

Cool comes from within, so work with your kids to plant the seeds of plant-based confidence.. You are already leading by example, but instilling the “why” sprinkled with a little bit of “parental marketing” on top might just be the perfect recipe for success.

Ready to get started? Check out Forks Meal Planner, FOK’s easy weekly meal-planning tool to keep you on a healthy plant-based path.

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Beginning with the 2019-2020 school year, all New York City public school cafeterias will provide their students with meat-free breakfasts and lunches, free of charge.

New York City’s Meatless Mondays program was initially tested at 15 public schools in Brooklyn in spring of 2018. Following the pilot program’s success, the city expanded Meatless Mondays to all public schools in Brooklyn, and now throughout New York City’s five boroughs. Positive feedback from students and participation metrics from the test program played an important role in the decision to take the cost-neutral initiative citywide.

“We want [our kids] to be as healthy as they can be,” de Blasio said. “We want them to learn as well as they can learn. And Meatless Mondays will help create more balance in their lives.”  

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams is a vocal advocate of a healthful plant-based diet and has cited the documentary Forks Over Knives as a helpful resource. He said in a statement, “I stood beside Mayor de Blasio and then-Chancellor Fariña in 2017 to announce that 15 schools in Brooklyn were undertaking Meatless Mondays. In less than 18 months, we can announce that Meatless Mondays has spread to more than 1 million children at every school across the city, putting us on the path to make our kids, communities, and planet healthier.”

According to Chancellor Carranza, New York City students from low-income families often rely on free school meals as their primary source of daily sustenance. Those students, and all others, will now have access to healthier meals, thanks to the citywide Meatless Mondays policy.

Ready to get started? Check out Forks Meal Planner, FOK’s easy weekly meal-planning tool to keep you on a healthy plant-based path.

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From The China Study Family Cookbook

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