Liv B's Vegan on a Budget: Book Review

One of the things that makes me reluctant to go all in with my own food company is that the wellness/nutrition industry is incredibly elitist. Whether you choose products for health, nutrition or for environmental awareness, you are going to have to pay a premium. That's why there is such a strong relationship between health and socioeconomic status!

So I was thrilled to be offered the chance to review Liv B's Vegan on a Budget cookbook.

Who is Liv B? Honestly, I had never heard of her (aka Olivia Biermann) before now. Perhaps that is because I am not vegan, though I suspect it has more to do with the fact that she is a Youtube star and I don't watch Youtube. In any case, turns out she is a 24-year-old (a baby!) with a huge following already.

I have written before about how to eat healthy on a budget, but I was curious to see what Liv's take on it is for eating vegan.

The book is packed with 112 recipes divided into chapters including:

Staples & Sauces
Breakfast & Brunch
Snacks & Small Bites
Soups & Sides
Sandwiches, Wraps & Salads
Mains
Sweets

The book has 2 pages at the beginning with tips on how to be vegan on a budget:

Cook at home
Buy in bulk
Make recipes that use similar ingredients
Use leftovers

It also provides a list of things to stock your kitchen with in terms of tools and pantry staples, etc.

Unfortunately, these tips can be said to be useful for eating ANY way on a budget. In addition, there is no other mention of cost or budgeting anywhere in the book.

Each recipe has a beautiful photo included, along with tips. number of servings and cooking/prep time.

Honestly, I found the book extremely disappointing. Liv doesn't say how each recipe is cost-effective and I didn't find a single recipe to be particularly unique. I've seen many variations of each one a hundred times. In the Sweets section, she has a recipe that requires fresh strawberries and not a single mention of how to buy them on a budget (only when in season!).

Also, many are far from healthy. Remember vegan doesn't mean healthy! She uses white flour and sugar (organic cane sugar is just friggin' sugar) in many recipes when there are far more nutritious alternatives. Really, not a single recipe particularly caught my interest.

So do I recommend this book? Only if you are looking for fairly simple vegan recipes with pretty pictures.

Disclosure: I was sent the book to review but all opinions on this blog are my own.

Comments

Book Review: The A to Z of Children's Health

Hey there, welcome to Monday! We had a delightful, relatively quiet weekend. How was yours? Hopefully no one in your home was sick...there is a lot of nasty stuff going around these days. If you're a parent, than you have probably spent far more time that you would like to desperately searching Google and/or parenting books trying to figure out if your child's rash, cough or fever warrants a trip to the doctor or if there is something that can be done to treat it. It's hard not to worry that it could be something more ominous that just an every day infection and while you'd make yourself (and everyone around you) nuts if you panicked every time your kid has the sniffles, as a parent, you naturally want to do everything in your power to prevent your child from harm. Recently I was sent The A to Z of Children's Health , written by doctors Jeremy Friedman, Natasha Saunders, and Norman Saunders, of Toronto's very own Hospital for Sick Children . One of th...

How to Look Like a Celebrity

Okay, I know you're going to be interested in this post! I am sure virtually every woman in North America has wondered how Hollywood celebrities achieve such 'perfect' bodies. Well, at CAN FIT PRO last week, one of Hollywood's top fitness trainers, Eric the Trainer , was there to tell us fitness professionals the secrets! Eric the Trainer, gave several presentations, and I caught the one on Celebrity Secrets, and it was most interesting!!! I also found some of what he said rather disturbing. First off, he was very upfront about the fact that celebrities come to him for improve their appearance. Not to improve their health or athletic performance. To look their best. He admitted that his approach then, is entirely dedicated to that end. Male and female celebrities are trained in completely different ways because Hollywood wants women to be lithe and thin and in his words, "look like they dropped out of heaven looking this way without every having ...

Blackfly Coolers: Product Review

Summer is over! Well, at least if you're a student. Officially it doesn't end for a few weeks, and it certainly still feels like summer. Yeah, I hate it. This f*cking hot, humid weather needs to end NOW! We made the most of our last weekend of the summer with our annual trip to the CNE on Friday, with a crowd of friends. It wasn't unbearably lot, thank goodness, and the girls and their friends had a blast on the rides. Saturday I had to work, and Sunday was errand day. Monday we took the girls berry/apple/pear picking but didn't last long due to the heat. I organized the house to prepare for the construction workers starting back up yesterday, while Adam took the girls for a swim in our neighbourhood pool. Yesterday was the first day of school. Grade 2 and Grade 5. Yep, the girls are growing up. We are fortunate that the girls don't have much anxiety about school, they are so much more confident than I ever was as a kid! But now, in the midst of our reno ch...

Healthy Life Lessons

Search This Blog