Enter your email & we’ll send it to your inbox. Plus, get great new recipes from us every week! By submitting this form, you consent to receive emails from Hurry the Food Up. This lentil spaghetti bolognese is a healthier, meat and dairy-free version of the classic pasta recipe, for those of you looking to transition to a more plant-based diet!
Why is our lentil bolognese better than beef?
Our vegan lentil bolognese recipe might not be entirely true to the Italian classic, but it is certainly healthier (as are all our favorite vegan mediterranean recipes)! Following in the footsteps of previous recipes like our bean and pasta casserole, we have designed a healthy pasta sauce recipe that swaps out ingredients like meat and butter for lighter alternatives like lentils and a little olive oil. Let’s look more closely at some of the swaps in this vegan spaghetti bolognese!
Better than butter: olive oil!
Instead of butter, our vegan bolognese uses olive oil. Butter contains saturated fat, the unhealthy kind that raises cholesterol. However, olive oil contains mainly unsaturated fat, the healthy kind, which actively lowers cholesterol. Healthy swap number 1, TICK!
Why meat gets the chop!
The biggest swap we have to make is meat, of course – we are a vegetarian blog after all! Traditional bolognese uses red meat, usually beef, but we have opted for lentils, in order to make sure this is a healthy vegetarian pasta recipe (btw, we’ve made sure all these vegetarian pasta bakes are healthier than their meat alternatives too!). Here’s a table comparing 100g beef to 100g lentils, so you can see the benefits for yourself! Sure, beef does outstrip lentils on protein content, but in every other area, lentils outrun beef every time! 0.38g fat instead of 11.8g fat? I’ll take a lentil bolognese every time! If you are looking for this healthy vegetarian recipe as part of an effort to lose weight as a vegetarian, you should also check out our vegetarian weight loss meal plans! There’s a lot more where this comes from!
