Three years ago, Jesse Rubboli was suffering from poor health. With a culinary background, he decided to change his diet to try and improve his health. That’s how the Sensitive Vegan was born.
Rubboli started a recipe/health blog as a way to share recipes with others who were questioning how their diet was contributing to their poor health.
“I personally suffer from an autoimmune disorder and inflammatory disorder with a lot of sensitivities and allergies,” said Rubboli. “I created these recipes for myself, but I wanted to connect with whatever audience was out there to bring anti-inflammatory solutions to some of the problems a lot of people suffer from, and most people don’t know it is based on their diet.”
He started with Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, and being from Powell River his early exposure was locally with the Peak.
Rubboli’s recipes were published weekly over a 10-week period in 2019. Since then, he has been featured in several interviews and articles and was recently featured in an hour-long interview with Dr. Steven Gundry, a former cardiac surgeon who now runs his own clinic in California investigating the impact of diet on health.
“My work is based on the diet by Dr. Gundry, known as the plant paradox diet, which is widely known as not a vegan diet, but I was already vegan,” said Rubboli. “I wanted to create some plant paradox options, basically some anti-inflammatory options for anyone who was interested.”
The majority of the recipes Rubboli creates are comfort food options such as pizza, pasta and hearty meals, foods that people who suffer from sensitivities don’t normally get to eat because there are a lot of grains. With the plant paradox diet no grains are consumed.
“I produced a bunch of alternatives and I tried to copy the flavour profiles of those dishes to really give people who were missing out an equal opportunity in those flavours,” said Rubboli.
The podcast with Dr. Gundry, which has been shared with more than 344,000 viewers on YouTube alone, has connected Rubboli with an even bigger audience.
“It was really cool and there’s kind of a little bit of a buzz around me now, and a lot more subscribers and followers,” he added. “What that [interview] really did was put me in the proper light to my proper audience: the people who I think are suffering and looking for more options. It just connected me with that audience and that’s all I really wanted, to create the conversation for people who are suffering from these sensitivities. I want to lead that conversation with my work.”
Dr. Gundry also posed the question to Rubboli about producing some dessert options, which can be tricky because “how do you make something sweet while not using sugar?”
That is how a recipe for sugarless dark chocolate, pistachio-moringa and strawberry pudding was born.
Rubboli is currently producing a website to connect with his audience further and is expanding his repertoire of recipes to produce more alternatives for people with food sensitivities.
The Sensitive Vegan can be found at youtube.com/channel/UC4Ri6t4zQ2BcBE0CgYEK5-A, facebook.com/thesensitivevegan and instagram.com/thesensitivevegan/?hl=en.
The podcast with Dr. Gundry can be heard at drgundry.com/the-sensitive-vegan.
