Take your time when incorporating more plants into your diet, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Fruits and vegetables should comprise the core of your diet, experts from fields as diverse as nutrition to cancer to climate change agree. And if you’re on board but haven’t yet been a big consumer of these foods, Johns Hopkins dietician Jaclyn Rose says, start with baby steps.

Rose: I recommend doing it slowly, experimenting with different recipes, maybe different plant based sources. So maybe you start with one meal out of the week, maybe that means its tofu or its beans or its lentils, seeing if you actually enjoy those foods, seeing if you like preparing that, seeing if they settle well in your GI system because we know increasing fiber dramatically can actually cause some GI distress. So I do recommend doing it kind of slowly and also it makes it a little bit more sustainable, it helps build that habit of incorporating more plant based protein as opposed to animal based protein.  :31

Rose says joining with others in exploring plant-based diets can also make it more enjoyable and educational. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.