Vegans and Vegetarians

I've started to try Pescetarian and non-dairy lately, and I've been liking it.

Eat mostly fish for dinner, tofu or some other legume substitute for lunch, and typically eggs for breakfast.

I can't offer much advice, other than encouragement. It's a healthy, responsible, sustainable way to live and eat.

 

Don't do it because you love animals. Do it because you hate those damn smug plants, always going on about how green they are.

 

I went from meat eater, to vegetarian, to vegan, to vegetarian, to pescetarian. I really love fish and don't think i'll go back to vegetarianism. However, since I only have 4-6 oz of fish a day, I mostly eat vegetarian meals. Eatingwell.com has a ton of great recipes - this is probably my favorite...I could eat it everyday:

Gnocchi With Butternut Squash and Kale

 

Dang, that does look good. I've been doing green smoothies with Kale, but I'm gonna have to try that one. I'll have to watch myself with the gnocchi though........I can put the hurt on them.

 

I bought a Blendtec and love green smoothies. But I ain't givin' up meat or fish.

So do I get a name for that? Vegebeefetarian? :grin:

 

I'm vegetarian, not vegan.

Not hard at all to keep it up. I eat nuts and drink protein after workouts. I don't really have a diet. Just eat whatever's in front of me (as long as it's not an animal). I'm going to have to watch how much dairy I intake though. Been eating lots of cheese and am getting chubby.

I just can't stand the smell of meat. I have respect for the life of another living animal.

 

I'm vegan and have been a long time.

If you want to be healthy it is probably not the best diet, but I am on it anyway because I cannot bear to eat those other things. It began as an ethical thing when I was 18 (I am 43), then just turned into a thing where I could not anymore think of any of those things as food. Kind of like when I quit soda just to quit it and then two years later craved a soda and it tasted like someone had played a joke on me and given me a drink made entirely of saccharine. I have not had soda since except every few years in sips to remind me how much I cannot stand it. I drink hell of club soda though.

People worry about veg diets lacking protein but that is not a serious concern. There are so many proteins to be had in a veg diet, dairy or not, and anyway the need of protein in the levels Americans eat it is quite exaggerated. Especially compared to the real problems: Vitamins.

Vegans and vegetarians are almost always deficient in B-12. Vegans especially because B-12 is not found naturally in anything but animal products. And B-12 is critical to health, well-being, even living after a fashion. And the jury is sort of out on supplements and how they bind or pass right through the system. I am experimenting in this now. I have not regularly taken B-12 supplements (sublingual always as I was long ago advised) really ever though I have always bought and owned them. And I also have never until one month ago had my B-12 or D tested. They both came back low, very low.

My B-12 measured 270 which is very low but in the normal range according to American understanding of what is normal, so in America I am not officially deficient. In Japan, 550 is the lowest acceptable level for a person of health. So you can see how 270 is excessively low. Under 200 is, even here, cause for tremendous concern. My experiment is that, since I have to have a follow up test after 3 months, I am taking liquid B-12 in massive amounts under the tongue. I will try to remember to report back to tell if it took.

My D measured a 4. Normal is like 30 or 40 to 100. Under 30 is insufficient. Under 20 is deficient. Neither my doctor or anyone he knows has ever tested as low as 4. I think I already made a post about this. I am now on 50,000 units twice weekly and will be until follow up test on which I will try to remember to report.

These deficiencies can cause severe, long-lasting and sometimes permanent disabilities such as osteoporosis, dementia, blindness, um, death. And others.

You can get sufficient D in a vegan diet but you have to be vigilant.

I think the most healthy of diets is probably the one that DonnyMost described: vegan but for fish and eggs.

Now, where does a vegan get his dairy fixes, since you asked that...

Ten years or even five years ago the answer would have been nowhere that wasn't gross. The answer now is that the only thing that isn't easily mimicked by vegan products is cheese, though they are making progress.

Butter is so not at issue. Soy butter is awesome. Soy milk apparently is as well. I've never had a taste for milk but my girlfriend did and never misses the real thing. Vegan cream cheese is also really very good. It's the other cheeses.

Now. If you live in Houston, go to Radical Eats, a local vegan Mexican food place, try the homemade vegan queso and report back as to whether you found it good, bad, great or terrible. I think you will rank it good to great as my meat and dairy eating friends have thus far.

It is not easy, as I said above, to be vegan and healthy. But it is not hard, given a couple months, to stick with it and never look back. I never have. And I never miss meat or dairy.

In fact, on the strong advice of doctors when I was healing from surgery after badly breaking my leg, I tried to go back to meat and dairy for a month or so and found it absolutely impossible. Barforama.

If I'd ever been able to stomach either seafood or eggs (or milk) I might consider adding those things back in for health, though my heart would ache from doing so. But from the time I was wee I could not swallow fish nor eggs nor milk without barfing it right back up.

If you choose in the end to go with one of these diets or even need more meat subs, I can recommend a **** ton. There are great, great, and extremely delicious options should you choose this route or another, even one of less meat or dairy, which would not in itself be a bad idea for any reason at all.

 

I believe you can find the answer you seek here:

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I'm not, no. Maybe I should be, but I'm not really the guy to look to on matters of health. I let myself become vitamin deficient from my diet and I was a binge drinker and regular drug abuser until two years ago and a three-pack-a-day smoker until about eight months ago. So I'm not your health guy. I think DonnyMost would probably be good at answering such questions as I think I remember him being or having been a personal trainer at one point.

Anyway, I don't eat very much soy.

If you're concerned about soy, it's not that much of a deal to be veg or vegan without it. Most of your diet if you are veg should probably come from whole foods like vegetables and fruits and beans and rice and nuts rather than processed soy products though they can be very tasty.

The butter substitutes come in non-soy varieties and I can't tell the difference between the soy and non-soy, there is rice milk, there are all sorts of non-soy meat substitutes (seitan, wheat roast, falafel).

Oh, and here's a neat trick: sprinkle nutritional yeast on pretty much anything for an unusual but delicious cheese substitute. One of my favorite snacks is a non-dairy-buttered bagel with a healthy sprinkle of nutritional yeast and a slice of tomato on top.

 

Vegans do me a favor and don't eat at restaurants... You make cooking lame.

 

I'm vegetarian. I don't have a problem finding food to eat. But this is mainly because I'm not a foodie. I just eat for the functional sake of eating. I don't derive pleasure from eating.

Mostly just eat some sauteed vegetables with chili powder, plain avocados, falafel, tofu, rice and peanut butter.

I try to limit my bread and carb intake. I'll eat maybe a slice of bread per day. Pizza is good, but I eat that maybe once a month. Also don't drink milk either.

I train for marathons. Amongst the crew of people I work out with in the gym, I'm one of the stronger ones in terms of muscle mass and low body fat compositions. The others I work out with are former military types. I get my protein through soy protein shakes and nuts. The protein powder is plain and I just mix it with water. Tastes like drinking flour or something.

It's not that bad of a lifestyle. But for some people who really enjoy food I can see being vegetarian might be an issue.

For me its an holistic, simple way of living I developed after my time in the mountains of Nepal.

 

I presume from this that you work in a restaurant. If so, you can trust me, the feeling is mutual. You make eating lame. And what imagination it must take to soak everything in the sauce of a chicken or cow.

I can assure you that my decision to eat the way I do was not intended to punish you. But since I apparently have, I'll promise right here never to come to your restaurant. All you need to do is tell me where you work.

 

Surely if God didn't want me to eat animals he wouldn't have made them so yummy?

 

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Its not that you don't want to eat at my place of business, or enjoy the taste of meat, or have the by-products of an animal. Its that when certain eaters come in, and request a veg or vegan meal you second guess everything and to be blunt are very picky eaters. I understand this, as you have given your life, to a life without natural iron/cholesterol . When I cook at home its all EVOO and I rarely eat red meat, I respect what you do, but I could not do it myself.

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I don't think being a pescatarian is really all that notable. The only reason I say that is because I've done it for stretches in my life without intention and there are many places in the world where it is done just because of what is available.

 

No offense, but that sounds horrible.