Hi, and welcome to my frequently asked questions! If you don’t find the answer to your question here, feel free to email me at kitchen (at) fatfreevegan (dot) com. While I appreciate every email I get, I regret that I’m not able to answer every one, but I’ll try to help if I can. If you have a question about a recipe, please ask in the comments of the recipe so that others can benefit from my answer (or, better yet, add their own answers).
Who are you?
I’m Susan Voisin, and I’m a vegan–in other words, I don’t eat or wear anything that’s made of or by animals. I went vegetarian in 1988 because I didn’t want to eat animals. Then, about 6 years later, I eliminated all animal products from my diet (and as many as possible from my life), learned how to cook without added fat, and lost over 100 pounds. (Just to be clear, childbirth, age and just life in general have put some of those pounds back on, and I now focus more on eating low-fat for health, not weight loss.)
Since 2004, I’ve maintained the Fatfree Vegan Recipes website, a collection of over 1400 low-fat vegan recipes sent in by hundreds of people, and I’ve been blogging here since January of 2006. Blogging has led to many opportunities: My recipes have been featured in books and magazines, and I have been the photographer of three of Nava Atlas’s books: Vegan Holiday Kitchen, Wild About Greens, and Vegan Express. Check out my Press page for more.
For most of the years I’ve been writing this blog, I lived in Jackson, Mississippi, with my husband, D, and (occasionally) our daughter, E, who test my recipes and offer helpful criticism. (Or at least they think they’re being helpful!) We now live in Hammond, Louisiana, with a menagerie of furry family members who, at the time of this update, include 3 rescued Pomeranians and 4 cats.
What’s this “fatfree” business all about?
In general, I don’t cook with refined fats (oil, margarine, and shortening). This simply means that instead of sautéing in oil, I use water or broth. In baking, I substitute apple sauce or flax seeds or some other substance for margarine, butter, or shortening. When absolutely necessary, I use a tiny amount of oil to wipe on a pan to which the food would otherwise stick; this is never enough to increase the overall amount of fat in a recipe so much as a half a gram. I do use a little sesame oil now and then because a little bit imparts a lot of flavor. One or two of my very old recipes contain a little olive oil, but they are rare exceptions.
Wait a minute…I saw a recipe with coconut milk…and another with walnuts. Those aren’t fat-free ingredients!
You’re very observant! Yes, in a few older recipes I use lite coconut milk (though I also give suggestions for substitution), and I do include avocados, nuts, and seeds in my diet as forms of healthy, unrefined fat. (This blog probably should have been called “Oil-Free Vegan Kitchen,” but when I started my website, I modeled it on a very popular email list called Fatfree that had been discontinued.) Whenever a recipe gets more than 15% of its calories from fat, I add the tag “Higher-Fat” to it, which you can see at the end of the blog post.
But if you don’t use any fats, how do you get your Essential Fatty Acids?
Actually, all foods contain some fat, even lettuce and apples. So there’s no such thing as a truly fat-free diet–and we wouldn’t want there to be! But I also use limited amounts of avocados, nuts, and seeds in my cooking. In fact, what you don’t see from looking at the blog is that just about every day I eat walnuts and flax seeds on my lunch salad. Flax and walnuts are both excellent sources of Omega 3 fatty acids. I definitely believe in getting EFA’s, just not in the form of refined oils but in their natural “packages,” along with all the other beneficial nutrients that nuts and seeds contain.
But don’t you want to enjoy eating? Isn’t it important to enjoy food?
Yes! Though I do believe that what we eat affects our health, I also think that food feeds our senses and affects us emotionally as well as physically. Food to me is something of a celebration, and cooking is a gift I give to my family and friends; I want it to taste good to them as well as be good for them. That’s actually why I’m writing this blog. I wanted to show others that a healthy vegan diet does not have to be boring and bland. If it did, I would have given it up long ago!
I don’t follow a fat-free diet. Can I add oil or margarine to your recipes to make them taste better?
My recipes are all about tasting good while keeping the fat, sugar, salt, and processed ingredients to a minimum. I experiment with ingredients to get the best taste without using oils or margarine, and sometimes I increase the seasonings to compensate for the reduced fat. If you want to sauté in oil or substitute oil or margarine for the apple sauce in some of my baked goods, I certainly can’t stop you. But I can’t promise that the spices and seasonings will work as well as in the original recipe, and changing the ingredients in baked goods is usually a recipe for disaster.
Is there a name for this type of diet? Any books about it?
Yes, there are actually several. Eat to Live is a book and way of eating created by Dr. Joel Fuhrman. Another very low fat vegan diet is the The McDougall Program, by Dr. John McDougall. You can discover more at his website. And recently Caldwell Esselstyn has done research showing that a fat-free vegan diet can Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease.
Frequently Asked Blogging Questions:
What kind of camera do you use?
When I started the blog, I used a 4 megapixel Olympus Camedia 4000. In August of 2006, I moved up to a Canon Rebel XT, a digital Single Lens Reflex camera, and a 50mm lens. In December of 2007, I treated myself to a Canon 40D; its larger viewfinder and LCD appealed to my aging eyes. I upgraded again in December 2012 and currently use a Canon 5D Mark iii.
Do you accept products for review? Do sponsored posts? Allow guest posts?
In general, no. With only a few exceptions (a book or two), which are clearly noted, any products or books I recommend in my blog posts were bought and paid for by me, and I recommend them only when I like them. PR people are advised not to waste their time emailing me with offers of products; they are welcome to contact my ad network, Mediavine, about placing ads.
I do not do sponsored posts or accept money for mentioning products. If I mention a product, it’s because I’ve actually used it and genuinely want to tell you about it. The only compensation I ever receive is through affiliate sales (such as when you buy through my Amazon links), and I disclose that in the header of every page.
Because this is my personal blog, I don’t often have guest posters and don’t respond to solicitations for guest posts from strangers.
Do you endorse the products advertised in your sidebar and at the bottom of posts?
No. While I appreciate my sponsors, the products in my sidebar and at the bottom of each post are paid advertisements, and I have no experience with most of them.
While I would love to keep non-vegan ads off the blog, the reality of modern-day ad networks is that I have little control over the type of ads shown. Please let me know about anything truly offensive by clicking “Report this ad” and try to ignore the rest. The only way I am able to afford to keep this blog up and running is through earnings from advertising and Amazon sales.