Lauren Toyota is hot for food… as long as it’s vegan! She’s cooking up vegan love and bringing the increasingly popular lifestyle to food fans across the globe. Her knack for creating vegan versions of popular comfort foods like mac and cheese, burgers, caesar salad, and even cheesecake is helping to catapult the vegan lifestyle into the mainstream and proving that plant based diets are far from boring.
You can regularly find Lauren sharing gourmet vegan comfort food recipes on the YouTube channel that now boasts nearly 450,000 subscribers and has over 40 million channel views since launching in February 2015.
Lauren Toyota is a bestselling author of two cookbooks, Vegan Comfort Classics: 101 Recipes To Feed Your Face (Ten Speed Press/Penguin Random House) and hot for food all day: easy recipes to level up your vegan meals, both available now wherever books are sold! The week of release, Vegan Comfort Classics was the #1 selling cookbook in America according to Nielsen BookScan, ranked in the Top 100 overall books on Amazon.com, and ranked #4 on the Globe and Mail Best Sellers List in Canada (it also ranked twice more at #3 the weeks following).
The debut cookbook was voted best cookbook in the 2018 Veggie Awards (VegNews Magazine), was a 2019 Gourmand Cookbook Awards National Winner, made the New York Times’s Summer Reading List, shortlisted for the 2019 Taste Canada Awards in Health and Special Diets, was an Amazon Best of the Month pick and it continues to be an Amazon bestseller. Lauren Toyota’s second cookbook hot for food all day (Ten Speed Press/Penguin Random House) was an International bestseller (BookManager) the week of release, ranking in the top 10 new releases.
hot for food has been featured on many television shows to spread the vegan message across Canada and the US appearing on programs like Hallmark Channel’s Home & Family, Pickler & Ben, The Marilyn Denis Show, CTV’s The Social, CityLine, Breakfast Television, CTV’s Your Morning and Morning Live (Ottawa and Vancouver), Global National News Hour, Global TV’s Morning Show (Calgary and Toronto), and CHCH Hamilton’s Morning Live. Recently Lauren Toyota was named Canada’s Top Vegan Influencer gracing the cover of IMPACT Magazine, she also represented Toronto vegan’s on the cover of Now Magazine, and was the cover girl for Chatelaine‘s issue featuring women changing the way you eat! hot for food was also invited by Gene Baur (the President of Farm Sanctuary and a global animal activist) to contribute an original recipe to his new book Living The Farm Sanctuary Life. The book is available now and also features recipes from famous vegans like Emily Deschanel, Chloe Coscarelli, and Moby.
The history of hot for food is short and sweet. It launched as a blog in February 2014 and earned over 10,000 visitors within the first week! hot for food was featured in Laika Magazine, Women’s Health Magazine, BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, Thrive, V-lish.com and contributed editorial for Clean Eating Magazine, FoodNetwork.ca, and Raw Food Magazine. In late 2014 Lauren started to create short-form recipe videos and created the hot for food YouTube channel which gained over 100,000 subscribers within the first year.
Prior to launching hot for food and dreaming of running a vegan empire, Lauren Toyota was a MuchMusic VJ and nationally recognized TV host and producer for nearly 10 years. Visit her website for more info. You can also find her vlogging what she eats in a day, her travels, and sharing more personal aspects of her life on her other YouTube channel, Lauren In Real Life.
Please tell us more about yourself
I am originally from Mississauga, Ontario (Canada!) but I moved to Los Angeles in 2019.
Could you share the story of your journey toward adopting a vegan lifestyle?
My official date of going vegan was Jan 1, 2010. But I did a couple months of transitioning animal products out of my diet prior to that. The reason I decided to make the change was prompted by my overall health. I had experienced stomach issues and general fatigue from food for a long time, and knew it was animal products that were the culprit of me feeling ill a lot of the time after eating.
But even still I wasn’t ready to make the change until I watched the documentary Food Inc. That motivated me immediately. I didn’t want to be part of corrupt food system and contribute to all of the problems. I also wanted to sustain my health for the long term and felt that going vegan was the best way to do this.
Were there any noteworthy experiences you encountered while embracing a vegan lifestyle?
During this time, I thought cheese was going to be the hardest thing ever to give up. But I remember it took less than 2 weeks for me to stop craving it. I had read a book at the time that likened cheese addiction to a real hardcore drug addiction and I didn’t like that idea. It literally does the same thing to your brain chemistry!
I discovered cashew cheese at this time and was instantly in love with it. I also started my blog/brand hot for food during the time I was transitioning into a vegan diet. It was a hobby that I enjoyed doing. It was also a way to keep myself accountable to my lifestyle decision. But eventually it became my full time job and something I found a lot of success with. I never thought that would happen!
What difficulties have you encountered when it comes to finding vegan or vegetarian food
I don’t find it very challenging at all anymore. When I first starting 2009/2010 we certainly lived in a very different world. There were no true vegan cheeses in the supermarket, there were only raw food restaurants, and meat substitutes were terrible. Now I feel like there’s everything and more. I rarely don’t have something good to eat when going out of the house.
Even though homecooking is always my first choice, I do feel like there are so many options everywhere in LA. When I travel outside of LA, I still don’t feel like I’m deprived of anything. I’ve even started hosting vegan holidays worldwide to show how one can travel abroad and enjoy a vegan lifestyle.
Now if I’m going to a friends place for dinner or a family gathering I often bring something or a few things that I’ve made and I bring enough to share. I can’t expect someone else to make me something great and vegan every time I go over to eat. But I have found my friends have become very interested in trying my recipes and other vegan options themselves.
What are your thoughts and emotions regarding your choice to follow a vegan lifestyle?
I feel great about it. It’s the single biggest change I’ve ever made, that has had the largest impact on all aspects of my life. It’s a value system, it’s part of a deeper spiritual connection I feel I’ve developed over the years, and it continues to teach me things as I evolve. I just wish I could say I made the change sooner!
How would you encourage someone who is not currently vegan to give meatless food a try?
I would just give it to them and not tell them what it is and what it’s made of. Of course, ensuring we’re not dealing with an allergy. But as soon as non-vegans are told what they’re eating they push their noses up at it and assume it must be bad for them or taste awful. It’s all a mind game really. I prefer to sort of trick people. When they see the food I make, it looks delectable and no different than dishes people are used to eating – I make familiar comfort classics – so they’re open to trying it. We eat with our eyes first so presentation is important!
Could you please recommend some great places or dishes that align with a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle?
I love some homemade vegan mac and cheese. The one pot version in my latest cookbook is awesome! It’s easy, creamy, and cheesy. Tacos are an easy go-to meal any time of day. I always say, when in doubt put it in a taco. You can turn practically any leftovers into tacos. I personally like my roasted poblano and jackfruit tacos with adobo cream. They feel meaty, but are light and very flavorful. In L.A. I like getting croissants and baked treats at Kitchen Mouse Bakery. Crossroads Kitchen is good for a fancier dinner – get the carbonara – or an epic brunch. And Pura Vita also has amazing pizza and pasta. There’s honestly a lot of great vegan food in L.A., I can’t possibly list them all.
What are some common misconceptions people have about vegans or vegetarians? How do you go about explaining or educating others to correct these misconceptions?
I find the biggest misconception is that one will be deprived of the foods they love if they go vegan and I have found the opposite to be true. People also tend to think that vegan food will be bland, boring, and not filling. Also completely not true. I educate by sharing the recipes and content that I make. I have found it’s been the best communication tool to just show how abundant my lifestyle is, share easy recipes, and examples of how to transform plants into delicious comfort foods that are still just as tasty and satisfying. Go to hotforfoodblog.com or my YouTube channel for more!
To someone who’s just beginning to go meatless, what is your advice?
I usually recommend just taking it small steps at a time and keep it simple. Find suitable substitutes for your go-tos. If that’s burgers, or chicken you can find all kinds of things now in the grocery store to make an easy swap. You don’t need to go reinventing every meal. In most cases you can keep the meals the same just replacing the animal protein with plant protein.
I want to add that any change, whether it’s one meal a day, or one meal a week to being plant based or vegan makes a difference. It will also start planting the seeds in your mind and body, likely leading to bigger changes over time. There can be a lot of pressure sometimes that people put on themselves to be a perfect vegan, and I really really don’t like that mentality. It’s not all or nothing, at least it doesn’t have to be in the beginning. I went on a journey and the community needs to be open to that for everyone who attempts to make changes to their diet and lifestyle.
hot for food by Lauren Toyota (vegan chef)
hot for food by Lauren Toyota (vegan chef)
@laurentoyota 👩🏻🍳🌱📍Los Angeles
cookbooks #hotforfoodallday and #VeganComfortClassics AVAILABLE NOW 📖
hotforfoodblog.com👇
all images courtesy of hot for food by Lauren Toyota (vegan chef)