7 Pegan Recipes That Combine the Best of Paleo and Vegan Diets (2024)

FAQs

What foods are both paleo and vegan? ›

Foods to avoid on the pegan diet

The pegan diet doesn't tell you how much you can eat or when. But a pegan diet severely limits or skips certain foods, including: Bread and most grains like barley, oats and wheat (except black rice or quinoa). Dairy products including milk, cheese, ice cream or yogurt.

The pegan diet is made up of 75% fruits and vegetables. The remaining 25% is divided primarily among meats, eggs, and healthy fats, such as nuts and seeds. Some legumes and gluten-free whole grains may be allowed in limited quantities.

The paleo vegan diet is built on a good foundation in that it encourages people to eat primarily whole, plant-based foods, which is associated with many benefits.

The “pegan” diet is a hybrid, combining the paleo diet -- which focuses on whole foods that might have been hunted or gathered, like fruits, veggies, meats, and nuts -- and the vegan diet, in which you eat only plant-based foods.

Focus on Nuts & Seeds

Not so nuts for nuts? Luckily, the list of approved foods also includes sugar-free nut butter (e.g., almond butter, peanut butter), so long as it's sugar-free.

To keep blood sugar levels stable, the Pegan diet advises picking low-sugar fruits like berries and avoiding high-sugar fruits such as bananas, pineapples, and watermelon, especially for those who need to keep their blood sugar in control.

More About the Pegan Diet

If you need a refresher, the paleo diet attempts to model what those living 2.6 million years ago in the Paleolithic era ate: vegetables, fruits, fish, meat and nuts. It excludes dairy, grains, legumes, sugar, oils, salt, alcohol and coffee.

“Hemp milk, almond milk, rice milk, cashew milk and oat milk are all good alternatives,” Raden said. “But be careful with the flavored varieties because they can have a lot of added sugars.” “Kale, broccoli, spinach, all greens are so important for the phytonutrients,” Raden said.

"This diet encourages unlimited amounts of non-starchy veggies like lettuce, broccoli and artichokes, plenty of healthy fats like nuts and seeds, avocado and olive oil, high-quality protein like grass-fed beef, wild-caught fish and pastured-raised eggs, low-glycemic fruits like berries, starchy veggies like sweet ...

Are potatoes pegan? ›

Stick with mostly nonstarchy veggies. Winter squashes and sweet potatoes are fine in moderation (1⁄2 cup a day). Not a ton of potatoes! French fries don't count even though they are the No.

Hyman believes you should eat what he calls a “plant-rich” diet. Around 70 to 80 percent of the food on your plate should be vegetables, nuts, and seeds, and fruit, he says.

No problem! Use up your extra vegetables to make this healthy plant-based dinner / lunch! Limit or reduce the honey if desired for the Pegan diet. The teaspoon per serving shouldn't give you any issues unless you are sensitive to sugar.

A modern paleo diet includes fruits, vegetables, lean meats, fish, eggs, nuts and seeds. These are foods that in the past people could get by hunting and gathering. It doesn't include foods that became more common when small-scale farming began about 10,000 years ago.

This has led to the development of a hybrid version of the regimen, a “lacto-paleo” diet. With this form of the diet, adherents still avoid excess sugar and processed foods, but they do include dairy products in their daily lives.

Dairy is decidedly not Paleo. Products like milk and cheese are too heavy on lactose and byproducts from the typical diet of factory-farmed cattle to be considered Paleo, in addition to the fact that our hunter-gatherer ancestors probably did not stop to milk wild game.

The typical paleo diet focuses on naturally raised meat and fish, as well as vegetables and fruits. It promotes avoiding dairy products and grains.