The Best Vegan or Plant-Based Influencers You Need to Follow Now

Whether you're on day five or year five of your plant-based journey, a new diet or vow to try to eat vegan can be daunting. It's natural to flip through a cookbook of thousands of beautiful recipes, slide a bookmark into the page you find most desirable, and then feel completely overwhelmed. Sometimes we need a guide to help us navigate next steps, such as an influencer's opinion or a chef's video tutorial on how to create these masterpieces and stay the course. Finding your favorite vegan influencers on Instagram will be the difference to actually following through on your best intentions.

To help you discover the visuals and voices you will love, here are six Instagrammers to follow for how to live a vegan lifestyle and make it delicious. And if you're a social media junkie like me, it's inspiring to wake up and check the recent posts and stories of your favorite vegan influencers -- I love the ones from the UK since they live a full half-day ahead and I can see what they are doing with their day before mine begins.

This week's plant-based influencers are inspired by my recent trip to Great Britain since I was impressed by the number of vegan options and how plant-forward the entire culture is. You can't step into a market or pastry without someone taking a picture of the vegan food there. The unique aesthetic of this trend that is ahead of the curve will make you hit follow, and want to catch up with the vegan scene across the pond. Follow these amazing accounts, and if more of us do, America can't help but catch up with England when it comes to living the vegan vida loca.

1. Beautiful British Caribbean Chef will make you want to dance. Follow @rachelama_

Looking for a laugh, delicious recipes, and vegan beauty secrets? Inspired by her Caribbean and African roots, Rachel Ama is bubbly, cheerful, and a hell of a vegan recipe developer. Based in London, Rachel knows the vegan scene inside-out and is frequently seen on UK cooking shows, like her latest one with Virgin Radio UK. If you want to get up and dance while making chickpea and butternut squash coconut curry, watch her YouTube videos and copy her recipes-- maybe her dance moves too.

Her tasty plant-based cookbook has five stars on Amazon and takes you through healthy plant-based recipes to make every day. Your friends will ask you where you learned to cook that way when you treat them to a dinner of Island-inspired veggie stir fry. Take a look at her blog where Rachel posts her recipes and instructions in full text, and her videos about the vegan lifestyle, like how she lost weight and cleared her skin by changing her diet. You will adore her personality and laugh along with her as you watch her authentic and lovable videos, especially my favorite: "A Rachel Day." Give her a follow!

2. Amazingly fit world traveler, with an avocado addiction. Follow @carolinedeisler

Caroline Deisler is a German babe living in London who spends a lot of time traveling to dreamy destinations like Tulum, Ibiza, Bali, and Cape Town. Founder of Caroswin, a luxury sustainable swimwear company with a European summer vacation style, she makes her entire line out of materials that are 100% made from recycled plastic bottles and are eco-friendly.

Caroline lives an extremely healthy lifestyle and specializes in making simple recipes that are easy to digest, including her favorite--fresh avocado toast that she seems to eat every day. Avocados are her go-to. She posts dozens of different ways to incorporate avocados into your diet and shows off fresh fruit bowls that look more photogenic than any postcard. Get ready to be motivated by Caroline's fitness routines. She is an exercise guru and posts stories of her morning runs, gym circuits, and her favorite sweat routine, boxing. If you have been contemplating signing up for a Rumble class, she will inspire you to do so, stat!

3. Vegan, gluten-free, all-natural cake-shop owner. Follow @mrshollingsworths

Previously working at a finance job, Emma Hollingsworth quit to follow her dream of opening a bakery that would be vegan, gluten-free, and even sugar-free (meaning no added sugar) for people who want to have their cake and eat healthy too. Now a talented vegan recipe developer, and a cake-shop owner, as well as an author, blogger, and a mom, Emma gives her followers true inspiration to follow your passion. Our only beef is she makes it all look so easy. You name it, she can do it. You will be inspired to try to make one of her vegan desserts from her IG posts, and of course, check out her cake shop's Instagram: @mrshscakeshop.

These cakes are unlike any other and look too good to be true, not to mention-- they are all vegan, gluten-free, added-sugar-free, and all-natural. So, the next time you're in London celebrating a special occasion, you can DM her account and request a specific cake and she will make it for you. Staying local: Her Vegan Treats cookbook on Amazon is a bestseller and is all about easy vegan, gluten-free, and refined-sugar-free bits and bakes. So now you can excite your family and friends at your next birthday party with a "healthy" cake.

4. Vegan entrepreneur and girl boss with a massive fan base. Follow @lucywatson

As gorgeous and in killer shape she's in, that's not what drives her 1.3 million followers to obsess and fan-girl over her. Lucy Watson is a girl boss, entrepreneur, and jack of all-vegan trades. You can't help but feel motivated to start a business or turn your passion into a lifestyle, as she has done. She has her own vegan, gluten-free meal delivery in the UK called Feed Me Vegan, which ships pre-prepared meals and desserts. You can also find her delicious vegan foods at her plant-based restaurant called, Tell Your Friends, that has the most scrumptious looking donuts, with over-flowing jelly and bits of Oreo cookies.

In addition, she is has launched a line of jewelry called Creature Jewellery inspired by her childhood memories about growing up on a farm.  "I have been planning Creature for over a year now," Lucy explains. "It was tough to start up and I re-did the designs over and over, to get them absolutely the way I had imagined. I have always been an animal lover, and I thought it was the perfect way to bridge the gap between fashion and animals, making high quality, affordable jewelry, inspired by something I am legitimately interested in.” The beautiful jewelry is affordable, and her zodiac collection is inspired by her passion for individuality.

Lucy is also one of the founders of All Hearts Global, which is a program that offers support to other charities and fundraises to causes involving animal welfare and the environment. Their goal is to help "re-home" animals in need from all over the world, wherever possible.

Now, she deserves an A+ in the vegan community and we should all be inspired by Lucy's determination to make a difference.

5. Avant-Garde Vegan Gaz Oakly is worth aspiring to. Follow @gazoakley and @avantgardevegan

You might have seen him on YouTube, in Barnes & Noble, or at Wagamama. Gaz Oakly is a vegan chef and author from Wales who lives in London and is the master behind @avantgardevegan. His upscale recipes are restaurant-worthy and look delicious, like his pumpkin risotto balls filled with vegan mozzarella. These recipes are totally worth making if you want to impress someone, or just for yourself. He truly deserves the name Avant Garde vegan due to his creativity and complexity of ingredients which raises the bar from cooking to artistry. But, if you are on the beginner level, like me, or a student, or simply super busy person, watch his five-ingredient vegan recipe video since it makes cooking a healthy vegan meal super simple. This video's probably my favorite.

The pan-Asian fast-food franchise, Wagamama teamed up with Gaz and launched his ground-breaking vegan egg dish in their 'Noodle Lab' and you can order it at any of their restaurant locations including New York City. The bowl is made with sweet and sticky BBQ glazed seitan, caramelized king mushroom oysters, asparagus, sticky rice, edamame, spring onion, carrot, and topped with a vegan egg made with miso-infused coconut and Sriracha mayo.  “I have been a huge fan of Wagamama since I was a kid and it’s so good to see them really supporting the vegan movement," Gaz explains. "They are never afraid to innovate so this felt like a natural partnership.

“I was really excited about coming up with the idea of the “vegan egg” as egg features so heavily in Japanese cooking," Gaz continues. "My social media channels are called @avantgardevegan because I’m always looking to push the boundaries and try new things.”

In addition to cool and innovative products, Gaz has his own vegan cookbook you can purchase in almost any book store. It's called Vegan 100 and has over 100 incredible recipes from his famous Instagram and blog, Avant-Garde Vegan. The book is helpful for anyone looking to cook vegan meals and doesn't know where to start but we also think that it would be great for any non-vegan who loves to cook land wants to incorporate more vegetables into their diet.

Don't miss Gaz's first travel and cooking documentary, called "Salt of the Earth" which premiers on November 25th. The film is based on his culinary journey through England and shows what the vegan-friendly culture has to offer in terms of food, people, landscapes, and nature. It opens first in the UK and we are hoping to see it on Netflix soon after.

We can't wait to find out which project Gaz is working on next. In his Instagram bio he hints to a new avant-garde restaurant coming soon.

6.  Environment and animal activism and advocate.  Follow @heidicaterina

Heidi Caterina is vegan for the sake of both animals and the planet. She stands up for what she believes in about the connection between the food we eat and the impact on climate change, environmental issues, and animal lives. Heidi shows images of herself eating at chic upscale vegan restaurants and also protesting throughout London. Her point: If you care about the planet or have ethical concerns about animal welfare, choose your meals accordingly. She has the 411 on vegan restaurants in her IG stories and she eats her way through the city while posting beautiful stories and reviews about her favorite spots like MOD Pizza UK, Crate Brewery, and Tart Clapham. We wish she would come to the US!

Focused on a healthy lifestyle and conscious of her consumer impact as a vegan, she wears stylish, ethical, and vegan clothing, and has a YouTube video about her wardrobe and the outfits she is wearing for the week. I love Heidi for her engaging posts and positive outlook on helping others and staying true to herself through all the decisions we can make every day.

If you have favorite vegan influencers to share with The Beet, please post it here or on our FB page, or email us at info@thebeet.com.