RIYADH: Around nine years ago, Raoum Al-Suhaibani started a blog with the aim of sharing recipes and articles about her plant-based diet and lifestyle.
Known online as “Sukkari” after the dates from her home region of Al-Qassim, she has gained a prominent following and cultivated more than 640 thousand followers across her social media platforms.
“I knew I had a message that I wanted to share with people. I hated seeing people just dieting for years and yo-yoing on that, and because I struggled at the beginning, finding my journey to eating healthy and actually enjoying it instead of it being a struggle,” she told Arab News.
To critics who say veganism is not a balanced diet, she states: “Protein is overhyped. If anything, people should eat more fiber. No one is getting enough fiber, and they’re all having digestive issues. But instead of looking into that, (they’re) just like ‘keep cutting more food and cutting gluten’.”
Published in September, her cookbook “Tamr wa Tahina” (“Dates and Tahini”) was in the works for five years and includes some of her first blog recipes.
It not only offers cooking instructions, but also explains the nutritional value behind certain ingredients, offers solutions to common digestive issues like irritable bowel syndrome, and provides tips for hair and skin care.
Al-Suhaibani was keen to create simple recipes incorporating easily accessible and common ingredients.
“I do have a few unique ingredients in certain recipes, like black garlic or whatnot, but they are always optional, and I always like to try to give alternatives to people, because I know not everyone lives in a big city and has access to things like tofu and almond butter,” she said.
Al-Suhaibani’s journey began when she started posting the vegan recipes she had created. After she discovered vlogging on YouTube, she became intrigued by the idea of creators connecting with viewers.
“With YouTube, you feel really close to the creator. You can relate to them, even if they live a very different life from you,” she said.
She explained the video platform also allowed her to figure out what she wanted her own life to look like by discovering other lifestyles, furthering her horizons beyond Saudi Arabia.
“It helped me figure out what I want, and it’s what gave me a purpose to start a YouTube channel. I was like, oh, it’d be nice to show people that you can live a healthy life in Saudi. You can be vegan. You can be active,” she explained.
Al-Suhaibani decided to try a vegetarian diet for one week while studying in the US.
“I used to absolutely hate vegetables, and I always joked that I would never be a vegetarian. And then, literally the next year, I became vegetarian,” she said.
She wrote a research paper for one of her classes about vegetarianism and its impact on health, the environment, and the economy.
“That played a role in convincing me that it’s not just for my health. After the week finished, I just absolutely could not go back to eating even chicken,” she recalled.
Her decision opened up a world of options and challenged her creativity to switch up ingredients and come up with innovative meal ideas.
“Everyone thought it was going to be a phase,” she said. “After I graduated, I started thinking about dairy and eggs and how they don’t really make sense for us to consume as humans. I started doing my research about that too, because I’m the type of a person that doesn’t commit to something easily, but if I commit, I’m committed.”
She embraced a vegan diet around the end of 2016. “I always tell people who want to be vegan to do it gradually,” she said, emphasizing the importance of educating oneself on nutritional and ethical aspects.
Around the same time, she began practicing yoga after taking a university course and completed her yoga teacher training in India in 2017.
“As someone who had zero knowledge about yoga, it was pretty challenging. But even with that I was still drawn to it afterwards, and I wanted to continue,” she told Arab News.
“Before I started yoga, I had a lot of anger issues, and I think it helped calm me down a lot … No matter what I’m going through, how sad I am, how angry or frustrated, whatever it is, it just centers me,” she said.
“Tamr wa Tahina” is available to purchase at Jarir Bookstore and online at Sukkari Store, which also offers an e-book version.
