The Flavors Factor offers readers a truly nourishing whole-food, plant-based lifestyle that helps them avoid the pitfalls of junk-food veganism. Why was this an important book for you to write?

I noticed that many compassionate people were making ethical choices for animals without realizing they could also dramatically improve their own health. I understand that many weren’t concerned about their diet beforehand, so naturally continued on the same path with vegan equivalents, and that’s where I thought the book could make a difference. It’s written primarily for vegans who need a little encouragement to take advantage of these nourishing foods and to show that replacing their favorite meals with plant-based alternatives needn’t feel restrictive. Their decisions can help animals and benefit themselves; that’s a genuine win-win!

The eight food groups that make up “The Flavors Factor” give the book a clear structure. How did you develop that framework, and why those eight categories?

I came up with the idea of a structure within a structure. The external structure is the LEAD framework, which guides the reader from learning about the foods to designing their own meals with them. The eight categories encompass all the plant foods that are needed to thrive on a whole-food vegan diet. Then it suddenly occurred to me that they could all come together in the word FLAVORS, bringing the best of vegan and whole food plant-based together into one memorable foundation. The foundation is the internal structure and the basis of The Flavors Factor. I didn’t want the book to be just a cookbook, and the recipes included are purely examples, as the possibilities are truly infinite!

You share personal memories, including your childhood in Scotland. How did your own experiences with food shape your philosophy about eating well?

Looking back, I never connected food with health as a child, and Scotland’s not known for healthier dietary choices overall. We cooked everything in an enormous block of fat that was solid at room temperature, and then poured the melted fat from the sausages over the mashed potatoes, and it tasted great! My dad would then spread butter exactly 1/2 inch thick on each slice of bread. Some childhood experiences left me with a lifelong dislike of hospitals, which led me to look for ways to keep out of them, and researching how to eat well grew naturally from that. It led me to the whole-food vegan diet that I have followed and enjoyed for the last thirty years.

Looking back on the journey of writing this book, what has surprised you most about the conversations it has sparked with readers interested in healthier, more sustainable eating?

What surprised me most was how open people were. Even readers who weren’t vegan told me they wanted to eat more whole plant foods once they saw the approach wasn’t about perfection or restriction. Many also appreciated separating the nutritional aspect of eating from the ethical one, as it made the ideas easier to understand and apply. Of course, diet is only one part of a healthy lifestyle, and I still think “How to Avoid Getting Hit by a Bus” is the most unexpected chapter heading in a nutrition book!

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