How much do you know about plant-based diets? Take our quiz to find out

1. Where does the term ‘plant-based’ diet originate from?

   1. It was invented by Gwyneth Paltrow, five years ago, in one of her deeply inspiring newsletters.

   2. Oh gawd – probably some scientist or other?

   3. A well-known supermarket made it up, all the better to sell their vegetarian ready-meals.

2. What is the difference between a plant-based diet and a vegan diet?

   1. Vegans will not consume any animal-based food products – a plant-based diet has no restrictions, but is simply mostly plant-based.

   2. “Plant-based diet” is just a trendy rebrand of veganism – they are exactly the same.

   3. “Plant-based” is just like chilled-out veganism – no meat, but it’s totally cool to wear leather.

3. Does a plant-based diet contain everything your body needs to function healthily?

   1. Yes, absolutely. In fact, it’s categorically healthier than the average meat-based diet.

   2. No: you’ll need to take vitamin supplements if you don’t want to waste away.

   3. It entirely depends on what you eat!

4. Who was the first western celebrity to popularise tofu?

   1. Paul McCartney – he tried it when the Beatles played in Hong Kong in 1964 and couldn’t get enough.

   2. Benjamin Franklin – he sent a letter to a pal mentioning it.

   3. Marco Polo – he got a taste for it at Kublai Khan’s court.

5. What’s the difference between ‘lab-grown meat’ and ‘plant-based meat’?

   1. Lab-grown meat is grown in a lab. Plant-based meat is … based on a plant?

   2. Lab-grown meat is just hypothetical, like flying cars or teleportation. Plant-based meat actually exists.

   3. Lab-grown meat is actually meat. Plant-based meat is not, in fact, meat.

6. Historically speaking, who were the first humans to adopt a plant-based diet – even if they didn’t call it that?

   1. The ancient Egyptians? They got up to some pretty fruity stuff.

   2. Logically you’d imagine it would be an Indian thing, given Hinduism is broadly vegetarian.

   3. It’s all a modern thing, surely.

7. Which of these plant-based foods is actually edible?

   1. Irish moss.

   2. Lucuma.

   3. Seitan.

   4. All of the above.

8. Which of these celebs hasn’t advocated a plant-based diet?

   1. Robert Downey Jr.

   2. Beyoncé.

   3. Leonardo DiCaprio.

9. What do you know about plant-based drinks?

   1. Milk an almond? Milk a soybean? Milk hemp? It’s completely unnatural and you’ll have no part in it.

   2. Plant-based drinks don’t involve the milking of plants, but they can include every possible plant-based liquid – from tea to tequila, oat drink to orange juice. The key thing is that there are no animal products involved.

   3. Plant-based drinks are strictly harvested by the first full moon of every month.

10. Cheese: delicious guilt-free, meat-free snack? Or is there something else going on we need to know about?

    1. Well, it’s obviously not desperately healthy for you, is it? But you can only get so wound up about lovely, innocent cheese.

    2. How can you take offence at cheese? They’ll be saying you shouldn’t drink water next. Eat as much cheese as you damn well like. In fact, can you drink it? Is cheese drink a thing?

    3. Obviously everybody loves cheese. But regardless of being high in cholesterol, as a dairy product it has significant hidden costs, such as the fact that you need a huge methane-belching herd of dairy cows to make it.

Solutions

1:B - The term was coined – or at least, made popular – by the venerable American biochemist T Colin Campbell, who has spent his career advocating the idea that a plant-based diet is simply the healthiest thing you could possibly eat., 2:A - A plant-based diet is just that: a diet, not an ethical code. Different people will have different takes on it, but at its core it’s asking you to mostly cut animal products out of your diet. Some people will be as strict as being vegan, some won’t, but the point is it’s not questioning your moral purity if you happen to really love a massive cheesy pizza., 3:C - While some studies show that a good plant-based diet is healthier for you than a typical meat-based one, it’s also absolutely the case that you could have a really bad plant-based diet. A massive portion of chips cooked in vegetable oil, followed by a cloud of candy floss bigger than your head, all washed down with a gallon of lager is technically a plant-based meal. But if you have that every day for a year you’ll soon know about it., 4:B - OK, you can probably reasonably question whether Franklin’s posted letter to his friend John Bartram in 1770 that mentioned tofu actually sparked a culinary revolution (it didn’t). There’s also the small matter that he was under the impression that tofu was a type of cheese. Nonetheless: the American polymath is said to be the first westerner to write about tofu – not his greatest achievement, but perhaps his randomest., 5:C - You’re unlikely to have tried any lab-grown meat yet: the first sausages aren’t due to hit British shelves until 2023. It will probably revolutionise the way people eat. But it is meat, just grown in a lab, not taken from an animal. Plant-based meat mimics meat via a spectrum of clever treatments – some hundreds of years old – but crucially it really isn’t meat, but based on plants., 6:B - While there was an Egyptian pharaoh, Akhenaten, who banned the consumption of all animal products on spiritual grounds, he was an outlier: the first “true” vegetarian cultures who we have records of are early Jains and Buddhists from India, from around the 6th century. Historically, Asia and the subcontinent has been the cradle of many religions and philosophies that discourage the eating of meat. The west has been slower on the uptake – and the term “vegan” was coined quite recently: in 1944, American Donald Watson came up with it as a way of distinguishing himself from vegetarians who he didn’t deem hardcore enough. , 7:D - Irish moss is, in fact, a sea vegetable that can be used to thicken sauces and puddings. Lucuma is a fruit that works as a natural sweetener, and in its native Peru it’s the go-to ice-cream flavour – just like vanilla in the UK. Seitan, aka “wheat meat”, is a plant-based meat substitute made from gluten, praised for its meaty texture., 8:C - It’s widely thought that DiCaprio is at the very least a vegetarian, but he is so opposed to talking about his personal life that nobody really knows for sure. However, he did eat raw bison meat while making The Revenant, which loses him some points. Downey Jr is on record as being off the meat and has invested cash in plant-based startups; while Beyoncé has publicly advocated her trainer Marco Borges’s 22 days nutrition plan, a programme designed to move you towards a plant-based lifestyle, just like hers., 9:B - Besides taste and nutritional value, one big appeal of plant-based drinks is that they have less environmental impact than animal-based drinks. A study from the University of Oxford shows that the greenhouse gas emissions used in the production of plant-based drinks are lower than for dairy milk., 10:C - Fortunately, these days there are some great plant-based cheeses out there, and they won’t give you nightmares. Try camembert-style cashew cheese, crumbly soft cheeses flavoured with truffle and chilli flakes, or experiment with a plant-based cheese kit that makes it easy to create your own.

Scores

1. 10 and above.

   Your plant-based knowledge is impressive. A plant-based diet is more than just a healthy way of living for you – it’s a lifestyle, a hobby, some would say an obsession all rolled into one. And why not? You’re doing a good thing – for yourself and the planet. Just remember to be cool about it.

2. 9 and above.

   Your plant-based knowledge is impressive. A plant-based diet is more than just a healthy way of living for you – it’s a lifestyle, a hobby, some would say an obsession all rolled into one. And why not? You’re doing a good thing – for yourself and the planet. Just remember to be cool about it.

3. 8 and above.

   Your plant-based knowledge is impressive. A plant-based diet is more than just a healthy way of living for you – it’s a lifestyle, a hobby, some would say an obsession all rolled into one. And why not? You’re doing a good thing – for yourself and the planet. Just remember to be cool about it.

4. 7 and above.

   There’s room to grow your plant-based knowledge. There’s a lot to take in, and you’ve taken in … quite a lot of it. But let’s face it, the differences between vegan, vegetarian and plant-based are pretty damn nuanced before we get into the wilder stuff. You’ve grasped the basics – well done!

5. 6 and above.

   There’s room to grow your plant-based knowledge. There’s a lot to take in, and you’ve taken in … quite a lot of it. But let’s face it, the differences between vegan, vegetarian and plant-based are pretty damn nuanced before we get into the wilder stuff. You’ve grasped the basics – well done!

6. 5 and above.

   There’s room to grow your plant-based knowledge. There’s a lot to take in, and you’ve taken in … quite a lot of it. But let’s face it, the differences between vegan, vegetarian and plant-based are pretty damn nuanced before we get into the wilder stuff. You’ve grasped the basics – well done!

7. 4 and above.

   There’s room to grow your plant-based knowledge. There’s a lot to take in, and you’ve taken in … quite a lot of it. But let’s face it, the differences between vegan, vegetarian and plant-based are pretty damn nuanced before we get into the wilder stuff. You’ve grasped the basics – well done!

8. 3 and above.

   You know almost nothing. Whether by accident or design, the advent of plant-based diets has passed you by, to the point that you find all discussion of them totally baffling, like a cave person trying to join in a chat about The Apprentice. But it’s never too late to learn! And frankly, you’ll probably end up having to learn anyway.

9. 2 and above.

   You know almost nothing. Whether by accident or design, the advent of plant-based diets has passed you by, to the point that you find all discussion of them totally baffling, like a cave person trying to join in a chat about The Apprentice. But it’s never too late to learn! And frankly, you’ll probably end up having to learn anyway.

10. 0 and above.

    You know almost nothing. Whether by accident or design, the advent of plant-based diets has passed you by, to the point that you find all discussion of them totally baffling, like a cave person trying to join in a chat about The Apprentice. But it’s never too late to learn! And frankly, you’ll probably end up having to learn anyway.

11. 1 and above.

    You know almost nothing. Whether by accident or design, the advent of plant-based diets has passed you by, to the point that you find all discussion of them totally baffling, like a cave person trying to join in a chat about The Apprentice. But it’s never too late to learn! And frankly, you’ll probably end up having to learn anyway.

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