An Interview With Louise Palmer-Masterton, Founder of Stem & Glory

I’m very excited to share an interview with you today, where I asked a few questions to Louise Palmer-Masterson about veganism, animal rights and the environment. Louise is the founder of multiple award-winning restaurants Stem & Glory; hip and trendy but accessible plant-based restaurants, serving delicious gourmet vegan food from locally sourced ingredients, 100% made on site. Stem & Glory also offers click-and-collect and local delivery in London and Cambridge. If you would like the check out the website, click here or go to www.stemandglory.uk.

As a vegan nutrition expert, what do you believe is the most important thing about maintaining a healthy vegan diet?

Louise: I am a firm believer in a varied diet of natural, unprocessed foods and fresh vegetables. So natural produce rather than meat substitutes and as close to its natural state as possible. I’ve been interested in macrobiotics for a long time and the idea that the best possible foods for us are those that grow near us in our climate, this makes a lot of sense to me. There is such a huge abundance of food growing around us in this country. There are some amazing natural processes you can apply to fresh foods, such as fermenting, pickling, dehydrating, and macerating. You learn as a vegan that creating taste and flavour is all about applying technique and flavour pairing. For example small bursts of what we call ‘flavour bombs’ such as our pineapple kimchi, juxtaposed against salty flavours give such a satisfying experience that you don’t feel the need to eat too much, or eat bad food!

What are your views on the government’s recent “tackling obesity” policy? Do you believe a widespread adoption of plant-based diets may improve the obesity crisis?

Louise: Plant-based food can play a huge part in tackling obesity, and if you do just one thing to help with weight loss, then simply turning vegan is moving in the right direction. But moving away from processed food, vegan junk and meat replacements, towards natural unprocessed food is the right way to achieve optimum health and healthy weight.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that just eating plant-based food without attention to nutrition and calories will automatically lead to better health and weight loss. The first vegan I ever met was very large and overweight. He lived on a diet of potato chips!

The messaging has to be move away from junk across the board, if it’s plastic wrapped and in the supermarket deli fridge, it’s probably best avoided – whether it’s vegan or not!

Many people believe following a vegan diet is too expensive and time consuming. Do you have any recommendations as to how vegans on a budget could incorporate nutrition into their diets in a time efficient way?

Louise: Honestly, the same as the above; avoid processed foods, and just eat vegetables and wholefoods. It’s all too easy to grab the pre-made burgers or fake steaks, but if you make your food from lentils and vegetables, you will be able to eat well very inexpensively. It can be time consuming if you are into fancy-pants cooking like I am, but one pot vegan meals are very easy and tasty, as long as you pay attention to layers of umami flavour – things like tomato paste, herbs, seeds, spices. Take dal for example (I am obsessed with cooking dal!), it usually involves frying some onions, garlic and spices, adding lentils and water, and cooking for 20-40 mins depending on the lentils. The magic happens at the end when you add what the Indians call a ‘tarka’. These are additional spices and herbs lightly fried and stirred through the lentils just before serving. It literally transforms the dish. There are so many different lentils and pulses out there and dal is one of those things that is an art. Many use different lentils combined, but it’s essentially a very simple dish. Lentils are highly revered in Indian cooking, and they also feature in Italian and French cuisine.

I also LOVE soup. In my house we also eat something that we now fondly refer to as ‘Stoup’ a cross between stew and soup! It’s basically soup but with less stock. I love whole green or Puy lentils with rich tomato sauce, herbs and seasonal vegetables. Really simple and highly nutritious.

Although they are not necessarily healthy, many vegan meat and cheese substitutes are still healthier than the alternatives. The convenience of them may also encourage people to become vegan who would not do so otherwise. What are your thoughts on meat substitutes and vegan cheeses?

Louise: The explosion in vegan cheese is a bit of a red flag for me. A high fat and highly processed product can never be healthy in my view. There are a few vegan cheeses on the market made from more natural ingredients, but most are really processed and unnatural. I am also not convinced that they are currently good enough to convince a cheese eater to switch!

I don’t think that we will solve the vegan cheese thing until someone creates engineered cow milk. BUT if real dairy products are a problem for health and weight loss, then when we do eventually have an engineered cow milk product with all the same nutrients as real dairy, then unfortunately that will carry all the same health and weight loss risk as real dairy.

I am far more interested in creating a new type of plant-based artisan cheese from all natural ingredients, which is what we are currently doing at Stem & Glory.

I do think meat replacements play a part in the conversion to eating more plant-based foods and less animal products, BUT I don’t believe they are a sustainable solution for health and well-being. Should be viewed as occasional ‘treats’ maybe, rather than day-to-day staples.

Many of our readers live in rural areas of the UK and lack access to vegan friendly restaurants, cafes, and supermarkets. How would you suggest somebody in this environment maintain a healthy, vegan diet?

Louise: I actually live in one of those areas myself! I think most supermarkets are reasonably vegan-friendly these days. The Co-op for example has a lot of clearly labeled produce, including their own brand. With most larger supermarkets, it’s the same. But again, as above, the best diet of all is one rich in natural, unprocessed whole foods and vegetables, and these really are widely available, perhaps even more so in rural areas. Our local farm shop in the next village sells loose lentils grown just a few miles from here. Doesn’t get much more healthy and sustainable than that really! So, I guess my advice would be to get out there and see what’s available in your local area outside of the supermarkets, you’ll not only be getting healthy food, but also helping your local economy. Maybe consider opening a small vegan cafe yourself 🙂

At Friendly and Free, we believe eating ethically involves not only removing animal derived foods from your diet, but also being environmentally aware. This includes making choices based on carbon footprints, packaging, the use of unsustainable products such as palm oil, the importance of fair trade, and the reduction of energy consumption in food production. Is this something you try to implement in your restaurants?

Louise: Yes, of course, all of the above! As a vegan brand, we are even more scrutinised than non-vegan brands as to our sustainable credentials, so we really do have to go that extra mile across the board. I would, however, like to stick my head above the parapet on one subject – and that is packaging. Packaging is a complicated subject that we’ve been immersed in researching for some time, and here is what we have learned: The only truly sustainable, circular solution for packaging is to use products that are made from 100% recycled post-consumer waste, which are then endlessly recycled. So, we are no longer using single use anything. Compostable is not the answer to the issue of single use, as compostable containers are widely made from virgin materials, which increase the carbon footprint of the product, and do nothing to solve the issue of mass disposability. Until such a time as the world is plastic free, whilst we have such huge amounts of post-consumer plastic waste, the most responsible thing we can do is recycle it. If demand for 100% recycled plastic were greater, demand would also increase for manufacturers to buy post-consumer waste plastic. And so it goes on.

It’s a big step for us all to make in our heads because plastic has been vilified for so long, but research shows it’s moving away from single use anything that has the greatest carbon impact. The leap we all need to make is to start viewing plastic as a valuable commodity and recycle it over and over again.

Replacing one single-use packaging with another – even if it’s compostable – does not tackle the problem of mass disposability. We all need to change the volume of consumption and our attitude towards it. We will be rolling out other initiatives from our new Cambridge site opening later this year too, such as reusable containers and a lunch box exchange system.

I hope you enjoyed today’s article. Please check out the Stem & Glory social media hubs on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Let me know what you think in the comments below!