Comfort food without the cow

Lynda Santos believes you can eat junk and still be healthy.

Of course, “junk” is a matter of perspective. Her pizza, burgers and fries aren’t anything like what most people eat.

Santos, a former manager of vegan restaurant Native Foods at The Lab Antimall in Costa Mesa, opened Healthy Junk, a vegan fast food restaurant, in 2012 after she was approached by Lab owner Shaheen Sadeghi about a new business corridor he was opening in Anaheim.

“When Native Foods sold to a bigger corporate company, I decided it was my time to move on,” said the 65-year-old Costa Mesa resident. “I did some personal chef work in Europe, and Shaheen told me he bought this building along with three city blocks in Anaheim. He asked me if I was interested in opening a restaurant, and I thought that would be nice.”

Sadeghi, president and CEO of Lab Holdings LLC, said he approached Santos about a vegan eatery after he saw a need for more healthy fast food restaurants.

“I think what was happening out there was the vegan food was all about lecturing people and not about fun,” he said. “With this, we could meet a wider audience because of the type of food we were offering. We were told people in Anaheim don’t eat vegan food, and that drove me nuts. We wanted to prove it is fairly mainstream now to be on a vegetable-based diet.”

Vegetarians don’t eat meat, but vegans omit all animal products from the diet. The Healthy Junk menu is completely free of animal products and replaces typical junky items with vegan alternatives.

Pizza and burgers are topped with vegan “chez” made out of soy instead of dairy. Thousand Island dressing on the Bunny Mac — the vegan answer to McDonald’s Big Mac — is made with olive oil and no mayonnaise.

Some of the top sellers are the Mighty Kale Salad, which is made with vegan chicken comprised of wheat and soy, and the Kale and Garlic Flatbread.

Santos said her dishes are much healthier than meat products because they contain less fat, cholestrol and sodium.

“If you put my burger next to any meat burger out there, mine is going to come out on top as far as nutrition, fat and all of that,” she said.

Santos, a vegan since 2004 and a vegetarian since she was 16, said she believes vegan diets not only help the health of the individual consuming the food but the earth overall.

“We’re not going to be able to feed the world with the demand as it is, but we can feed the world with all the plant food that we can produce,” she said. “It’s a shifting that we have to realize. If we want to stay on this earth and want a healthy environment, we need to change the way we eat.”

Growing vegetables requires less water than raising sources of meat, and methane gas is produced by the overproduction of animals, she continued.

Last month, Santos hosted the second annual Vegan Faire in Anaheim, which featured more than 90 vegan vendors.

The vegan and vegetarian movement has been growing for years.

Greg Dollarhyde, CEO of the multi-location Veggie Grill, said the trend sets a good example for those who may be skeptical of trying an animal-free diet.

“We love the ‘better for you’ food trend and think it will last a long time as people discover they feel better eating that way,” he said in an email.

Some of Santos’ favorite moments are when people eat her food without realizing it’s vegan.

“I can put our vegan chicken in front of people and they don’t know that it’s not real chicken,” she said. “I had one guy come in, try the Chinese chicken salad and tell me that it was the best salad he ever had. But then he asked, ‘I thought you were vegan?’ I had to explain to him that the chicken was vegan. He couldn’t believe it.”

Santos said her goals are to open more Healthy Junk restaurants in Orange County — her Anaheim location is at 201 W. Center Street Promenade — and spread awareness about the health benefits of vegan diets.

“I want to help better people’s diets in this world because I know whatever affects you affects me, and whatever affects me affects you,” she said. “We’re all connected in this world, and the main thing that I really want to try to get over to everyone, especially our youth, is it’s really important how we eat. How we eat affects how the environment is. You can’t separate that.”