Vegan food is very popular in most countries. This food is considered as the most "healthy" to eat.
Vegan food is part of Cretan cuisine. The Cretan food is based exclusively on plants, with some health benefits, it may put some people at a higher risk of nutrient deficiencies.
Legumes, Beans, lentils, and peas. It’s advantageous to soak, ferment, or cook legumes well. Legumes (or pulses) are known to be real health boosters and they are widely cooked in Crete. Legumes are great sources of fiber, protein, iron, phosphorus, zinc, calcium and magnesium, while being low in calories and having a low glycemic index.
They also contain significant amounts of folate, antioxidants and B-group vitamins.
- Cretan vegan dishes have been like this for centuries. This vegan food style emerged from what the Cretan soil provided, which is in short fantastic olives as well as fruits, vegetables and herbs. Crete Olive Oil product of Crete island, the place that locals produce more than 75.000 tons of olive oil every year and sometimes reach the incredible number of 100.000 tons! Crete is the island with the best quality of olive oil, many times first in world competitions, named as “extra Virgin oil”.
- Cretan tomatoes are very much juicy and tasty, they are small in size but really play important role in Cretan cuisine.
- Cultivating cereals and making bread is a really ancient human activity, dating back millions of years. Almost every diet on the planet relies on some form of bread made of milled cereals.
- Most used vegetables that are widely known in Cretan cuisine are: tomatoes, green beans, string beans, okra, peas, aubergines, courgettes, peppers, artichokes, kauli flowers, brocolis, garlics and onions.
Nuts and seeds are great additions to any vegan refrigerator or pantry. That’s in part because a 1-ounce (28-gram) serving of nuts or seeds contains 5–12 grams of protein. Protein is important to be received for a healthy diet!
Patzaria or beetroot for salad cooked in hot water and served with olive and vinegar. Flax seeds: These seeds have special nutrient profiles that deserve to be highlighted, they are most eaten for this reason.
Vegan food Crete
The Cretan plant based diet is enhanced by bitter greens, cultivated or handpicked on Cretan mountains. They are consumed raw, boiled or cooked; for example in red sauce and accompanied by potatoes. They also form part of delicious cretan green pies (“hortopites”). Bitter greens apart from being full of A, C and K vitamins, fiber, potassium and folate, they also have amazing body cleansing properties.
Cooked snails with bitter greens is a tasty vegan cooked food served in most restaurants of the island!!
CRETAN HONEY - Vegan food
Crete produces a variety of natural therapeutic substances such as herbs, honey, various types of teas, types of herbs and more. From the ancient Greeks came most of the information we already know about their miraculous properties, as they studied thoroughly and in detail everything related to human well-being and the medical field in general. One of these is Cretan honey.
Cretan honey is considered to be one of the best in the world, is considered to be some of the finest on a global scale due to the unlimited summer sun, even though there are many countries which really have tasteful honey too. A special aroma of Cretan honey is due to medical plants and aromatic herbs growing abundantly on the island, which is known to be one of the European regions with richest endemic plants.
Honey is an easily digestible food. It helps the body get rid of harmful substances and toxins as well as of consequences of bad habits like smoking or exposures to radiation.
Crete is rich in self-seeding plants, such as thyme, sage, bramble bush, oregano, pine, acacia, and arbutus as well as in, of course, cultivated citrus trees. Cretan honey is processed by natural methods without exposure to high temperatures, which destroy vitamins. According to official data, there are more than 2 thousand beekeepers on Crete, and it ranks fourth at the national level in terms of honey production.
There are many taverns to eat and explore the tastes of Crete, the real Cretan vegan food!