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

FAQs

What are the criticism of the pegan diet? ›

Pegan dieting restricts things that can be good for you

Entirely excluding dairy from your diet means you could potentially be depriving your body of things like calcium and vitamin D. "It's more difficult to get all of the nutrients you need if you eliminate or restrict entire food groups.

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. Foods with added sugar or a high glycemic index.

"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 ...

In essence, a pegan diet is the same as paleo, just with much fewer animal products; fruit, vegetables, and nuts make up three quarters of your plate, whilst meat, fish, and eggs fill the rest. A vegan paleo diet, however, doesn't contain any of these animal products.

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.

2. Fruits with high sugar content. 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.

You will want to limit your popcorn intake for the Pegan diet though. While Dr. Hyman specifies half a cup of grains for most getting started on the Pegan diet, I'm not sure if you can eat a whole half cup of kernels! I think 3 cups popped is a safe bet.

Eat mostly plants.

The more variety, the healthier. Stick with mostly nonstarchy veggies. Winter squashes and sweet potatoes are fine in moderation (1⁄2 cup a day). Not a ton of potatoes!

What does Mark Hyman eat in a day? ›

Dairy Alternatives: Like the vegan and paleo diet, the pegan diet promotes avoidance of or limited quantities of dairy products. This includes milk, cheese, yogurt, cottage cheese, sour cream and butter. Instead you can try incorporating almond yogurt (unsweetened), coconut milk, almond milk and cashew cheese.

With its focus on unprocessed, whole foods, sustainably sourced meats, and nutrient-rich veggies, there's a lot to like about the pegan diet. However, the diet limits nutrient-dense foods like dairy, grains, and beans, all of which have well-established health benefits you may not want to miss out on.

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.