Eat, drink and be healthy

Welcome to the “Lots of Food” issue! Inside, you’ll find loads of delicious plant-based recipes to take you from Thanksgiving through to the new year.

Our feature is on Gaz Oakley, one of the UK’s most beloved plant-based social stars, and the breakout year he’s had with his popular Avant-Garde Vegan website and social feeds. In 2018, Oakley published two cookbooks, secured a new gig as executive chef at The Vurger Co. and hit half a million YouTube subscribers, to name a few highlights. Naturally, we had to nab recipes from his newest cookbook, Vegan Christmas, to carry you from Christmas brunch to dinner.

We’re also featuring Greek recipes from Maria Koutsogiannis’s first cookbook, Mindful Vegan Meals, and protein-packed pasta recipes from Chloe Coscarelli’s latest, Chloe Flavor. Plus, we’ve veganized must-have holiday foods like eggnog and stuffing, and we’ve transformed decadent holiday treats into something way healthier: smoothies. In our Next-Level Performance section, we focus on whole plant foods that fuel your body (and your immunity!).

Food is for sharing, of course—ideally at not-boring parties. We’ve got great advice from Susan MacTavish Best, aka the “party whisperer,” on how to throw a party with purpose. She hosts wildly popular salons in Silicon Valley and beyond where a wide variety of guests discuss important topics and enjoy her homemade food.

In our Innovation Spotlight, we explore Motiv, the revolutionary tech company that has taken a fitness and sleep tracker and compressed it into a ring. Weighing the same as a penny, yet capable of capturing heart rate, distance traveled and amount and quality of sleep, all automatically, this is innovation that deserves a closer look.

Finally, if you’d like the ultimate present this holiday season, Thomas Greither, health entrepreneur and founder of Flora, is giving away his personal Tesla Model 3. You can enter for a chance to win up until the end of December (visit https://www.florahealth.com/teslasweepstakes for details).

Happy plant eating! Brendan Brazier Editor-in-Chief