Any Hints for a new Vegetarian?

[revned04]

So I've been thinking alot recently about becoming a vegetarian, due to the general disgust I have with factory farms and the state of the world food crisis and was just wondering if anyone has any hints. I've read parts of diet for a new America so sort of have a general idea about balancing proteins and such, but am in the process of reading it cover to cover. I'm also lactose intolerant so I will probably mostly end up being vegan. Thanks and any pointers would really help.

 

[lollerskater]

Diet for a New America is an awesome book; I think reading The Omnivore's Dilemma would be an excellent addition to reminding yourself just how horrible today's meat/egg/dairy production is, both from a health perspective as well as a moral one. TOD is actually about responsible omnivorianism (sure, that's a word), but what I found was that it opened my eyes to just how much is out there to eat without consuming animal products.

The hardest part about cutting out meat tends to be getting away from the idea that a meal = meat + veggie + carb. Framing meals and snacks around the protein + fiber and filling in the rest with whatever you like tends to be a good starting off point. Figure out how to cook pinto beans and that'll set you up for a lot of possible variety, and don't shy away from eating nuts and nut butters-- they have fat, sure, but you're not getting any animal fat so it evens out.

If you really lack creativity, there's a plethora of soy fakies that you can use in place of pretty much everything. Just drop by a health food store and throw random stuff in your cart, if nothing else.

 

[Mike45697]

I've been a vegetarian for close to 5 years now. My one piece of advice is to make sure you take a multivitamin or supplements. I was probably the most unhealthiest vegetarian in the world for about two years because I didn't get any sort of vitamins...so yeah, just make sure you make up for lost nutrients.

 

[lollerskater]

^ Word. And invest in a good multivitamin, not just some flintstones chewables.

 

[Mehm]

Omega-3 fats are VERY important for one's nervous system. I highly recommend supplementing this if you stop eating fish.

As for protein, if you eat both beans and rice/wheat, you are probably good to go. It depends on how much protein your body requires. I would look into a local egg source if possible.

Also, remember that hominids have eaten meat for millions of years.

 

[psychedelic food]

http://www.westonaprice.org/basicnutrition/dietdangers.html dont pay attention to number 8

 

[belarki]

...Omega-3 fats are VERY important for one's nervous system. I highly recommend supplementing this if you stop eating fish.

As for protein, if you eat both beans and rice/wheat, you are probably good to go. It depends on how much protein your body requires. I would look into a local egg source if possible...

Good advice; flax seed oil is good but goes off quickly, must be kept cold and in the dark etc etc. There's an Udo's oil for vegetarians too.

My biggest advice is variety, the more the merrier

Multivitamins, spirulina etc help too.

 

[Dtergent]

Don't torture yourself! Try to make it as pleasant as possible-- try to enjoy vegetables more and focus on maintaining your quality of life. DON'T go the way of carb-stuffing (white vegetarian), pizzastuffing (red vegetarian), or overdosing on soy and the like.

I'd suggest beginning to go the other way by transitioning with food that has bits of meat (being Asian, the best example I can think of are our predominantly veg foods that have bits of meat sauteed in for flavor).

Eat lots of kinds of vegetables-- salads, main dishes, side dishes, of all colors and shapes and flavors.

Try to plant your own stuff, or cladestine-garden nearby. This has really helped me. I don't supplement with any vitamins but my tests are always good because of this and because I focus on variety.

 

[R.ticle One]

Don't just not eat meat! This is what I did for a while when I was a vegetarian. I practically lived off of grains and bread and fruit.

Get used to soaking beans overnight for faster cooking and easier digestion.

Don't overdo the soy. Eat vegetables, a lot of vegetables! I know that sounds stupid to say, but again, see my first line. I knew a vegan once who, as she ate a chunk of convenience-store-candy, said to me, "I'm a vegan! I'm invincible!"

Wrong approach.

Have fun!

 

[Roger&Me]

Eat a large variety; eat well and eat often. Combine beans with whole grains to match the amino acid profile your body best assimilates.

Essentially if you eat fresh whole food in variety you'll be fine, that's what humans evolved to do.

Oh and make sure to munch a lot of wood (no not that kind, pervz ). Wood being nuts (almonds are like little chunks of oily wood), apples (you're literally eating a tree when you eat when you eat an apple, and you can't get more wood than tree)..all that woody shit. We evolved from forest-roving monkeys, so we need to eat forest.

 

[RhythmSpring]

Hey, I'm in the same boat as you! I am a vegetarian + lactose intolerant = pseudo-vegan supreme.

The only animal products I eat are fish, eggs, and... honey? Yeah. I left in the fish and eggs for those awesome omega 3s and the vital Yang energy (macrobiotic jargon).

Yes, eat lots of vegetables, but make sure you're not skipping out on your iron and calcium. Green leafies won't give you that much, and even multivitamins don't include a lot of those two essential nutrients.
To get enough, you're going to need to eat fish, eggs, seeds and nuts, and some dirt.

If you're looking for something to give you a cheese-like satisfaction, I would look into tahini... it's really delicious and a good source of iron and calcium.

 

[belarki]

Hey, I'm in the same boat as you! I am a vegetarian + lactose intolerant = pseudo-vegan supreme.

The only animal products I eat are fish, eggs, and... honey? Yeah. I left in the fish and eggs for those awesome omega 3s and the vital Yang energy (macrobiotic jargon).

Yes, eat lots of vegetables, but make sure you're not skipping out on your iron and calcium. Green leafies won't give you that much, and even multivitamins don't include a lot of those two essential nutrients.
To get enough, you're going to need to eat fish, eggs, seeds and nuts, and some dirt.

If you're looking for something to give you a cheese-like satisfaction, I would look into tahini... it's really delicious and a good source of iron and calcium.

Fish isn't 100% necessary, there are other vege-friendly options for those essential oils, they are just less efficient

Good call on tahini, I'm just getting into it myself, mixing unhulled tahini 50/50 with peanut butter. By itself it's a little bitter. Making your own hummus & tabbouleh is cheap, easy and super yummy.

Speaking of which, look at cuisines from cultures that implicitly use little meat. There are tons of good vegetarian recipes that have been honed over generations in Indian, Pakistani, Nepalese, Middle Eastern and North African food.

You won't have much luck finding many vege options in East-Asian or typical European fare though.

Spot on to the other posters in this thread; useful advice aplenty! Edit: well psychadelic_food's post is kind of taking it to an extreme. In general good advice but I know I wouldn't give up liqour, caffeine, or dairy and I'm not sure about the synthetic vitamin point? Each to their own

 

[inverse_agonist]

I've been vegan for six months or so, so I'm not the guru of it or anything, but I'd really encourage you to go vegan if you're already considering it. It's not like egg-laying hens or milk-producing cows are treated any better, or like those farms are good for the environment.

You really don't need to worry about protein deficiency. When I first read it, this question really made it clear to me: have you ever met or heard about anybody in the developed world having a protein deficiency, at any point in your life? Me neither. Your body stores amino acids for later use, so it is no longer believed that you need to eat complete proteins at every meal. Just eat a variety of foods. You'd do that anyway, just so you don't get bored with your food. "Incomplete" protein foods still have all of the essential amino acids; it's just that one or more of them is present in small amounts. If it came down to it, you could get enough protein by eating large amounts of a single food, even potatoes. More detailed explanation of this, along with super simple example diets that get you more than enough protein here:

http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/protein.htm

I'm probably guilty of overdoing soy, myself. I like fake meat, Gardenburger type stuff. No matter what foods you like and are having a hard time giving up, there are vegan substitutes for it that usually taste good as long as you don't expect them to taste exactly like meat. Soy milk, cheeses made of yeast or cashews, tofu scrambled "eggs," etc.

Omega-3 fatty acids are something you probably should put some thought into. You don't need to eat fish. It is probably true that you won't get as much of these fats in your diet as someone who eats fish, but you'll be fine with flax, hemp, nuts, etc. The "big deal" fatty acids in fish are EPA and DHA. The fish, in turn, get those fatty acids from algae that they eat. If this is a concern for you, algae-derived "fish oil" supplements are available. Minute Maid even sells a pomegranate/blueberry juice with algal DHA in it, and I get that from an ordinary grocery store. Even if you have no ethical problem with eating fish, eating fish obtained by unsustainable fishing practices might be a problem for you.

Vitamin B12 is the biggest thing to worry about, since it's not present in any amount in wheat and so forth. It's found in nutritional yeast, which is used in products like "Macaroni and Chreese" that I think taste good. Soy milks and breakfast cereals are often B12 fortified, and the industrial source for this vitamin B12 is bacterial (like insulin).

If you want to be vegan/vegetarian on principle, DO IT. It's good to live life consistently with your ethical principles (about food or anything else). DO NOT listen to people who try to scare you with how hard it is. It's only annoying in social situations where everyone insists on going to a pizzeria, and that sort of thing. I have no problems feeding myself, and I'm not weak and anemic. I've gotten stronger at the local climbing gym since starting a vegan diet. Carl Lewis, the Olympic track star, is vegan.

Don't let people who eat hot dogs lecture you about nutrition. This guy at work who lives off Panda Express and Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pies gives me shit about my diet...

 

[Coolio]

Important foods for healthy veganism or vegetarianism:

1. Eat a lot of hemp. Hulled hemp seeds (they're similar to sesame seeds or small sunflower seeds but have a texture and flavor closer to butter) are great raw (avoid cooking hemp, it degrades the omega-3 fatty acids) in soups, salads, sandwiches, pizzas, stir fry, curry, pasta, etc. You can also eat them plain. Hemp nuts (toasted hemp seeds) are delicious and easy to snack on, even though they're less nutritious. Hemp seed oil is great as salad dressing, on toast or bagels, or poured into rice or curry after it's done cooking, etc.

If you make sure to include hemp seeds and hemp seed oil in your diet on a daily basis, they will take care of your need for the following important nutrients: OMEGA-3 FATTY ACIDS, VITAMIN E, MAGNESIUM, MANGANESE.

2. Beans, beans, and more legumes. Black beans, soy beans, pinto beans, red lentils, split peas, etc. These are the best way to get fiber in your diet, which will slow the digestion of other foods to decrease your insulin resistance.

A hearty meal of black beans, pinto beans, soybeans, lentils, and most other common legumes takes care of: DIETARY FIBER, FOLIC ACID (B9), MOLYBDENUM

3. Eat yeast. It's almost pure protein and dietary fiber! I mean specifically nutritional yeast, which is a yellow flakey dehydrated product that tastes like cheese, or a brewer's yeast extract like Vegemite or Marmite (these have such a strong flavor that they provide minimal nutrition when used as sparingly as a condiment). With nutritional yeast you can make faux-cheese sauces for pasta and macaroni with this, sprinkle it on popcorn, mix it in rice and beans, bake a casserole with it to replace the cheese, etc.

Nutritional yeast takes care of: THIAMIN (B1), RIBOFLAVIN (B2), NIACIN (B3), CYANOCOBOLAMIN (B12)

4. Spinach is delicious and nutritious and goes great with just about anything.

1/2lb of organic spinach (which is a lot for a raw salad, but easy enough to eat in one meal when sauteed in butter or cooked into soups or curry or an omelette or pizza) takes care of the following daily requirements: VITAMIN A, VITAMIN C, IRON

5. Swiss chard is the perfect base for any salad or vegetable wrap/sandwich. It tastes so much better than romaine or iceberg lettuce. Once you switch to swiss chard (and other more 'exotic' leafy greens than the usual lettuce) you'll probably never go back.

Swiss chard takes care of the following needs: VITAMIN A, VITAMIN K

6. Citrus fruits like grapefruits and oranges and tangelos. Definitely not fruit juice - those are a waste of money and nearly as bad for you as soda. There are so many phytonutrients in citrus fruits, and probably many undiscovered benefits as well.

Citrus fruit can be your daily source for: VITAMIN C

7. Nuts. Each nut has different purpose in an optimal vegetarian diet if you aren't allergic to them. Walnuts are my favorite common nut because of the fact that even 1/2 cup of them is enough to supply you with sufficient omega-3 fatty acids. They are great sources of vegetarian protein and fiber, just like every other kind of nut and seed available at the store.

Walnuts take care of: OMEGA-3 FATTY ACIDS
Peanuts take care of: CHOLINE
Brazil nuts take care of: SELENIUM

8. Sweet potatoes are a drop-in replacement for potatoes. In some places sweet potatoes are called yams by mistake - but yams are not orange on the inside. Yams are more like yucca root and very bland in comparison to sweet potatoes.

Sweet potatoes are tied with carrots as the best easily obtained source of: VITAMIN A


There are a few other concerns with avoiding meat, dairy, and eggs. Calcium is in lots of things from greens to beans, but you have to monitor your calcium intake and make sure it's closer to the daily recommended value than it is to zero as there isn't a lot of calcium in any one food. Iodine is found in drinking water, seaweed, and iodized salt mainly. You might get enough of it from your drinking water, but it's best to put a sprinkle of iodized salt in your food once a day. If you don't eat yeast every day, a replacement source for the B vitamins is mushrooms. You do have to eat a lot of mushrooms to get reasonable doses of B vitamins. A Vitamin B complex multivitamin is probably necessary. If you don't eat hemp every day, then you might need to look for other sources of Vitamin E, or a Vitamin E supplement. Vitamin D for vegetarians should come from sunlight or very high dose (1000 IU to 10000 IU) daily supplementation. I take a few capsules of calcium-magnesium-Vitamin D supplement daily and I can never get enough sunlight. Don't forget that all vitamins must be taken at the same time as a meal containing fat and fiber if you want them to be absorbed properly.

If you enjoy the 8 foods I listed above and make them staples of your diet, it won't really matter what else you eat as long as it's not just simple carbohydrate foods like bread and white rice or white potatoes. You'll get the rest of the vitamins and minerals you need in lesser amounts alongside the vitamins and minerals I listed.

 

[*Love*Lite*]

1. portabello mushrooms grilled are way yummier than steak or burgers

2. try putting straight Flax powder (buy flax seed and grind it up) and put it on your salads, it gives it nice texture and some of that healthy nonsense too.

3. soy milk and soy products in general are WONDERFUL, they take a bit of getting used to but now I love soy milk more than almost anything

4. try to eat something of each color each day and youve got your vitamins covered

5. protein... this is my biggest hang up... i probably only consume 1/2 of what I should, but dont let people tell you that if you dont eat meat that you wont get all the protein that you need... there is protein in cereal, broccoli... things that you wouldnt expect.

Im going on 16 years of being a veg. and I love it! Karma free food baby!

 

[Mehm]

Really great posts everyone. Thanks for the suggestions.

It's not like egg-laying hens or milk-producing cows are treated any better, or like those farms are good for the environment.

I would contend that cage free organic eggs are indeed better treated than industrially farmed milk and meat. For one thing, they have to be given room and a clean environment or they will get sick without anti-biotics. Furthermore, the hens are fed organic grain, which is much better for the environment.

Also, free range, grass fed cow has two traumatic events in its life. Its sterilization and death. Otherwise, this form of raising meat is actually less soil intensive than raising a bean crop.

 

[lollerskater]

Although I'd agree with you about the grass fed beef, "cage free" and "organic" are of little meaning when it comes to chickens. All that cage free refers to is them having a door to the outside that is within view and open for at least some time during the day-- this door is not opened until the hens are 5 weeks of age and they are slaughtered a mere two weeks later. As for the antibiotics, federal regulations prohibit the use of antibiotics in chickens-- which is why eggs that contain female chicks are injected with them before hatching. Fertalized eggs containing male chicks are discarded.

But yes, grass fed beef is a relatively humane choice, and ironicly much healthier than farmed salmon.

 

[Coolio]

lollerskater, why would they inject eggs with antibiotics?

 

[lollerskater]

Not edible eggs, eggs that are ready to hatch female chicks (future hens). It's a preventative measure, same as the antibiotics added to the food supply of factory farm cattle.

 

[mrs_mia_wallace]

Oh, you're like me (I'm vegetarian and lactose intolerant too)

These are the staples of my diet/my preferred foods that give you all the nutrients you need: (should be anyway):

Protein: tofu, tempeh, beans, lentils, soy meat products (imitation meat)

Fats: nuts, avocado, olive oil, seeds, soy cheese, nut butters

Carbs: rice, whole-grain bread, Asian noodles (soba, udon, somen, have always heard they are more nutritious)

Other staples: dried fruit, kale and all green leafy veggies, soy milk, orange juice, oatmeal

Really easy meals to incorporate all of these things in to: vegan burritios/tacos (beans, soy cheese, tortillas, guacamole, rice, corn, imitation ground beef, etc) stir-fry’s (tofu or tempeh, noodles, veggies, oils like peanut and sesame work great) sandwiches (fine a vegan bread (easy) and you can throw the above ingridients together really easily) and salads (easiest!).

If you have time to prepare your meal, with some effort you can make a vegan version of pretty much anything (vegan lasagna w/ tofu and soy cheese, vegan spaghetti and meatballs with vegan meatballs, vegan cheeseburger w/ veganaise, soy cheese, and soy meat patty, etc).