If you’re eating traditional food and considering becoming a vegan / start a plant-based diet, that’s a very good question.
Strictly speaking, the most important question.
How you deal with this question and how long you are willing to search for answers will determine your way of life.
At first it just comes to mind to just leave out meat and eat everything else. It will probably not last long, it will be too monotonous. There is a great risk of going back to traditional food.
If you are curious enough, the question will keep you occupied and you can go on an interesting path. What foods are there and how can I prepare them so that I like them? This path and the preoccupation with the fundamental question of what you can eat is interesting and ultimately also fulfilling. When you have come a little further on that path, you will ask yourself how you used to eat such monotonous meals before, namely meat with a side dish. Unimagined possibilities will open up. That was my experience.
Just 2 examples:
One day when a friend invited me to dinner and I saw that it was something with white cabbage, I was disappointed. I didn’t like white cabbage. But then I was surprised how she prepared it. Roasted with a lot of ginger and black pepper on noodles, it had a sharp taste that I really liked. It was a new experience.
The other example came from another friend who, as a traditional meat eater, went on a 2-week tour through India. The lunch and dinner buffets included daily were not only varied, but also exclusively vegan, he said. The surprising thing was, he said, that there was never the same meal in the 2 weeks.
Vegan nutrition takes a certain amount of time, that’s how I see it. And it’s not cheaper either. When I want to eat a vegan burger, it costs around 4 times as much as meat. But it’s not always that much more expensive.
In any case, with plant-based food you go your own way and don’t follow the habits passed down from previous generations.
All the other benefits of vegan nutrition can be found in various sources.