Plant-Based Before It Was Cool: Wisdom from Food Traditions

Plant-based eating isn’t a new trend — it’s an old, living wisdom.

Long before the words “plant-based” filled headlines and product labels, cultures across the world were already living in ways that honoured plants at the centre of their meals. Driven by necessity, spirituality, ecology, and community, countless traditions wove plants, grains, legumes, and local harvests into the heart of everyday life.

Today, as we navigate a world of hyper-processed convenience and fleeting food trends, looking back offers something powerful: not nostalgia, but remembrance. A chance to reconnect with lessons that sustained generations — lessons that still matter.

Here’s what we can learn from traditional cuisines that celebrated plants long before it was "cool".

🇮🇳 India: The Spiritual Roots of Plant-Centric Eating

In India, the tradition of plant-forward eating stretches back thousands of years, deeply intertwined with the principle of ahimsa — non-harming — especially within Jainism, Buddhism, and strands of Hinduism.

Lentils and pulses (“dal”) became everyday staples, simmered into endless varieties that reflected the region, the season, and the cook’s creativity. Dal wasn't just food; it was resilience, nourishment, and adaptability.

Yet India's food story is not monolithic. While large communities embraced vegetarianism, especially among Jains and certain Hindu castes, others continued to include meat and fish, with profound regional diversity. Plant-centric eating in India has evolved over centuries and is shaped by faith, environment, economy, and social identity.

Lesson: Eating with reverence — whether for the earth, for life, or for health — can be a quiet, daily act of compassion.

🇯🇵 Japan: Mindfulness on the Plate through Shōjin Ryōri

In Japan, Zen Buddhist monks developed Shōjin Ryōri: an elegant, disciplined cuisine rooted in mindfulness, compassion, and seasonality.

Free from meat, fish, and pungent ingredients like garlic and onions, Shōjin Ryōri focused on seasonal vegetables, tofu, grains, and wild plants. It honoured the "five colours" and "five flavours," creating balance and harmony on every plate.

Though broader Japanese diets shifted over time, and meat returned to everyday meals in the modern era, Shōjin Ryōri remains a profound reminder that food can be a form of spiritual practice.

Lesson: Cooking and eating mindfully transforms food into gratitude — a way to honour the effort of every seed, every season.

🇪🇷 Ethiopia: Faith, Fasting, and Plant-Powered Resilience

In Ethiopia, religious tradition shaped a vibrant plant-based culinary heritage. Followers of Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity observe extensive fasting periods—sometimes up to 180 days a year—abstaining from all animal products.

This gave rise to a remarkable repertoire of plant-based stews: spicy misir wot (red lentils), creamy shiro (chickpea sauce), sautéed greens (gomen), and fragrant vegetable medleys—all served atop injera, a tangy, spongy flatbread made from ancient teff grain.

Beyond nourishment, these meals are about gathering, sharing, and celebrating resilience.

Lesson: Food isn’t just sustenance; it’s ritual, community, and a way of enduring with grace.

🌎 The Indigenous Americas: Ecological Wisdom in the Three Sisters

Long before colonisation, Indigenous peoples across the Americas cultivated the "Three Sisters": maize (corn), beans, and squash. Planted together, they nourished the soil, sustained communities, and offered balanced nutrition.

Corn provided a trellis for beans to climb; beans fixed nitrogen, enriching the earth; squash spread low, shading out weeds. Each plant nurtured the others, and together, they fed entire nations.

Colonisation disrupted these ancient food systems, but the ecological brilliance of the Three Sisters still inspires regenerative agriculture today.

Lesson: True sustainability grows from the relationship between plants, people, and the earth itself.

🌍 The Mediterranean: Simplicity Rooted in Place

The traditional Mediterranean diet — especially in mid-20th-century Crete and southern Italy — celebrated vegetables, legumes, grains, fruits, and olive oil, with modest use of fish, dairy, and meat.

Meals were simple yet abundant, shaped by seasonal harvests and local traditions. Sharing food around the table wasn’t a luxury; it was a daily act of connection.

It’s important to remember: this diet evolved over centuries, influenced by trade, migration, and necessity. It wasn't a "perfect" timeless ideal — it was life, adapting to place, season, and circumstance.

Lesson: True nourishment is local, seasonal, communal, and shaped by both joy and resilience.

✨ What These Traditions Teach Us

Across continents and centuries, these foodways whisper the same truths:

• Cook with what’s in season. Nature offers its gifts in rhythm. Listen.

• Use what you have. Waste nothing. Every part of the harvest has value.

• Keep it simple. A handful of humble ingredients can create abundance.

• Eat together. Meals nourish not just bodies, but communities.

• Honour where it comes from. Food is not a commodity. It’s a relationship.

These lessons don’t call us to romanticise the past or ignore its hardships. They invite us to remember that good food traditions are rooted not just in what’s eaten, but in how and why.

Plant-based isn't new. It's old. It's resilient. It's sacred.

Not a trend. A heritage.

And one worth carrying forward.