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Credit: Disney ParksWhen visiting the Walt Disney World Resort, worrying about “healthy food” may not be one of your top priorities. Theme Parks are infamous for their greasy fried foods and absurdly sweet treats, making it hard to find healthy options. But the Disney Parks recently completed its mission of a more inclusive menu.
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Registered dietician and manager of health and wellness for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Cheryl Dolven has worked with Disney Parks’ plant-based initiative since the very beginning, calling her work with the health program a really exciting opportunity for Disney-goers. Dolven said:
“At the end of the day our goal was to ensure that our guests, whether they were living a vegan lifestyle, looking to eat a little bit less meat or wanting to try new and different things, would be able to find fun and flavorful plant-based menu items across our parks and resorts,” Dolven tells Yahoo Life. “We didn’t just want it to offer a few basic things — we really wanted those plant-based options to be plentiful and an integrated part of our guest experience”
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Dolven went on to say:
“We recognized very early on that the words ‘vegan’ and ‘vegetarian’ are not clearly defined as much as you’d think,” she says. “There’s a lot of people who just don’t relate to those labels, so we carefully crafted our own definition of plant-based, which refers to options that are made without animal meat, dairy, eggs or honey. Instead they’re made with ingredients from plants: vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, seeds and those types of things.
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Guests can now more easily find vegan-ized versions of classic dishes like spaghetti and meatballs at Tony’s Town Square in the Magic Kingdom which incorporates impossible meatballs.
The Vegetable “Wellington” at Steakhouse 71, a new restaurant that can be found at Disney’s Contemporary Resort, is made from chopped-up mushrooms and artichokes wrapped in pastry, served with Brussels sprouts and romesco, a sauce made of charred tomatoes and roasted red peppers.
Guests eating at Jungle Skipper Canteen, one of Magic Kingdom’s newer eateries can find a whole host of fun and unique foods. One dish which is plant-based is the Perkins Thai Noodles, a plant-based combination of tofu, vegetables, and rice noodles with a spicy soy-chili-garlic sauce.
Many Guests need to eat more healthy for dietary reasons as well so it is incredibly important that Disney includes more of these types of dishes. Recently, Disney got into some hot water however for suggesting that cutting down its portion sizes would also “be good for Guests’ waistlines’. This comment did not go over well with Guests unsurprisingly. Since then, some Guests have noticed smaller portion sizes or dishes. Find more on vegetarian, vegan and plant-based food at Disney World here.
Have you tried any of the vegan or vegetarian options at Walt Disney World? Let us know in the comments below!
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