Carleigh Bodrug arrived at Western as an aspiring TV news reporter. “Far from vegan and definitely not a cook,” she says she never imagined she’d one day amass millions of viewers, chopping and championing vegetables. But a report from the World Health Organization in 2015 prompted Bodrug to change her diet and the course of her career. Today, she’s a best-selling cookbook author, social media sensation and the founder of PlantYou. She’s on a mission to help people eat healthier, reduce food waste and save money.
Bodrug’s also a successful entrepreneur, attracting sponsors and marketing affiliates with creative content that’s engaged more than 11 million followers across her PlantYou social media platforms.
But it’s always been less about money and more about her motivation to help people put more plants on their plate, using simple recipes. “I’d be doing it even if I wasn’t making money,” she says. “And for those first couple of years I wasn’t, so you really have to have that greater mission driving you forward.”
By graduation, Bodrug, BA’14 (Media Theory and Production) thought she was headed toward her dream career, working as a radio news anchor and morning show co-host in North Bay, Ont.
Months later, the World Health Organization declared processed and red meat Group 1 and Group 2 carcinogens. Even though she was miles away from her family in Innisfil, Ont., the news hit close to home. “It was particularly shocking to me because my father is a stage 2 colon cancer survivor. I watched him go through surgery and chemotherapy, but nobody ever mentioned his diet could have played a role. He’d gone right back to eating the way he had before, with animal products in every meal.”
Once Bodrug began learning more about the health benefits of whole foods, she says “the decision to adopt a plant-based diet was easy, but figuring out what to eat was not.” To replace the boxed frozen food entrées that once were her staples, she began teaching herself how to cook in the tiny kitchen of her basement apartment. As she experimented, veganizing her favourite childhood meals, she documented her journey—and all of her “horrible first attempts”—on Facebook and Instagram.
Bodrug found most plant-based recipes were complex and required a lot of specialty grocery items. She took a simpler approach. More and more followers responded to her basic ingredients, colourful images and easy-to-digest format, hungry for more. “There was a real appetite for super simple, healthy, plant-predominant meals, and I knew from my experience, there weren’t a ton of resources out there.”
I learned 30 to 40 per cent of all food in Canada ends up in landfills and contributes more emissions than the entire airline industry.
In 2016, she moved closer to home, working in communications at the Orillia Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital Foundation. That’s also when she launched her PlantYou website for her blog and recipes. As the site gained more traction, so did her desire to become a full-time food blogger. “When I told my parents I wanted to quit my job and pursue this, they thought I was crazy. They were very nervous about my giving up a good job and pension.”
Knowing she’d need to make enough money to minimize her risks, Bodrug created a subscription-based weekly meal plan featuring fast, easy recipes and shopping lists. “It was a massive amount of work. I was working nine to five and then testing recipes when I got home, photographing all of them. Luckily, I was computer literate enough to set up a membership program on my site so I could assemble it myself.”
Bodrug launched “PlantAhead” (now the PlantYou app) in 2019, charging $7.99 USD ($11 CDN) a month. Once her subscription earnings surpassed her full-time salary, she submitted her resignation. “Leaving my job was one of the scariest days ever,” she says. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh, man, this is all on me now.’”
It was a gutsy move—and a good gamble. Three months after Bodrug resigned, a New York literary agent came knocking, asking if she had ever considered writing a cookbook.
“I told her I hadn’t, but that I’d love to!” As enthusiastic as she was on the outside, Bodrug was battling a severe case of imposter syndrome internally. When she landed a publisher, she panicked.
“I felt sick to my stomach. I had only ever taken photos with a cell phone and had never written a ‘proper recipe’ in my life. It seemed like I’d hoodwinked the publisher and was the biggest fraud in the world.” She dove in anyway, investing $1,000 of her savings into a lighting and camera kit. Photographing every recipe and every ingredient herself, she created the cookbook she wished was available when starting her plant-based journey.
PlantYou: 140+ Ridiculously Easy, Amazingly Delicious Plant-Based Oil-Free Recipes sold out within two weeks of being published, becoming a New York Times bestseller.
As she gained more followers on Instagram and TikTok, Bodrug continued to expand her knowledge about plant-based living and the environment. Some shocking statistics pushed her recipes into a new realm. “I learned 30 to 40 per cent of all food in Canada ends up in landfills and contributes more emissions than the entire airline industry. On top of that, the average family in Canada throws out about $1,300 worth of unused groceries per year, so it makes sense to reduce the food we’re wasting,” she says.
With a call to “stop throwing out your orange peels,” she posted a 30-second TikTok video showing how to transform fruit waste into gummy worms. Within hours it went viral, drawing a million views.
It became the first episode of her popular Scrappy Cooking series, and the inspiration for her second bestseller, PlantYou: Scrappy Cooking. She dedicated the book to her late mother, who was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive stage 4 cancer just one week after Bodrug signed the publishing deal. At first, she wasn’t sure she could fulfill her commitment to write and launch the book. But when her mother implored her to “pull up her big girl pants and get to work,” Bodrug hired her sister Jacqueline to help see it through.
Jacqueline remains part of the team today, along with a core of contractors, including a photographer and blog writer. “I’ve built my business in a way where I get to spend time doing what I think I do best and enjoy most, which is creating recipes and video content,” Bodrug says.
It’s a winning formula. She now tops Favikon’s 2025 list of leading vegan influencers in Canada—a hard-earned title for a role that’s often misunderstood. “It’s easy to look at it and assume it’s quite simple, but to be successful as a food blogger, you need to be a skilled entrepreneur with multiple streams of income. You need to future-proof yourself because you never know when things are going to disappear.”
With a third cookbook in the works and a new monthly newsletter on Substack, she’s grateful for her loyal followers, who grow along with her. “The majority of my audience is female, aged 29 to 34. When I started doing this, I was in my mid-20s, and they were too. Now, a lot of them are becoming parents.” Just like Bodrug, 33, who, with husband Jesse, welcomed her first child this past June.
She sees this next chapter of her life as a new frontier for her business. “Becoming a mom has given me an entirely new perspective on what it means to cook a recipe for a family and the time constraints parents face. I’m looking forward to creating recipes that fit that need and once my son is old enough to eat solid food, I’m excited to create kid-friendly plant-based recipes too.”
This new direction also aligns with Bodrug’s original mission to help people eat more plants.
“It’s very important to me, for our health and for our environment, and I appreciate the people who follow me for the opportunity to hopefully make an impact.”
Recipe
Marry me chickpeas
One of Bodrug’s most popular recipes, this version of “Marry Me Chicken” uses simple, affordable swaps to create a creamy vegan dish with just as much flavour as the original.
Servings: 4
Time: 20 minutes
Ingredients
1 tbsp olive oil
1 small yellow onion, minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1½ tbsp tomato paste
½ cup sun-dried tomatoes
1 tsp Italian seasoning
½ tsp red chili flakes
1 tsp salt
¾ cup vegetable broth
1 cup coconut milk
2 x 30 oz cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 handful spinach or basil, torn
Instructions
- In a large pan over medium heat, add the oil, onion and garlic.
- Saute until fragrant, approximately 5 minutes.
- Next, add the sun-dried tomatoes, tomato paste, Italian seasoning, chili flakes and salt.
- Saute until fragrant, approximately 3 minutes.
- Add the vegetable broth and coconut milk and stir until a sauce is formed.
- Stir in the chickpeas. Cover and cook for an additional 2 to 3 minutes.
- Finish with a handful of fresh spinach or basil and enjoy with toasted bread, rice or pasta, as desired.
