Just decided to become vegan for health, and so far my diet has consisted of kale/swiss chard, sprouted red/brown rice and quinoa, some veggie burgers, sprouted grain and seed bread, nut/seed butter, organic pasta sauce. I know I should include beans (picking those up tomorrow) but I was wondering what else I could include in my new lifestlye and possibly your thoughts on what I currently eat?
✅ Answers
🥇 Best Answer
Look at Indian recipes and ingredients. And look at Japanese. They japanese eat red beans, sesame and black seasme, soybeans, edamame, seaweeds, miso soup, lots of pickled vegetables called “tsukemono”, and udon ( the buckwheat grey noodles with are often eaten cold with sova sauce, my god it’s so good), and all kinds of bitter greens. They don’t really eat wheat much.
They always eat seaweeds- wakame, nori,hijiki etc, every meal, and miso soup and bitter greens and always sesame seeds. They do awesome vegan food.
Try making a simple “Onigiri”. It’s the triangular wedge shaped rice ball wrapped in Nori and usually stuffed with something. Use red beans, soy beans, natto ( I belive this is the presence of a living deity on earth), or sauted veg like bean sprouts, cabbage, sesame seeds. And in the rice, they’ll put crumbles of nori, sesame seeds and other tiny pieces of herbs and seeds.
Here’s a recipe.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvcLstjNl…
golden rule is greens, beans, nuts, seeds, fruits, vegetables. At least one fruit and vegetable a day of each color. You should have 9-11 serves a day of fruit and vegetables, and beans count.
some examples of different colored foods:
Red: tomatoes, kidney beans, watermelons, cherries, raspberries, red lentils, strawberries
Green: kale, aragula, collard greens, broccolli, spinach, beans, peas, green lentils, parsley
Blue: red cabbage, eggplant, blueberries, black beans,
Orange/yellow: oranges, sweet potato, pumpkin, squash, yams, mangoes
White: onions, garlic, white beans (butter beans, cannellini beans, pinto beans), potatoes
these are some recipes on this site (most link to other sites, but they fit in with Dr McDougall’s program. http://www.drmcdougall.com/forums/viewfo…
this can help you. at first it goes through a lot of processed foods, but a little after he goes into the real food: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYlTElxeD…
this is a huge recipe site. not all is healthy, but it’s vegan: http://vegweb.com/recipes
Dr McDougall, Dr Esselstyn, Dr Klaper and Dr Fuhrman are some vegan doctors with info on their websites.
So you just decided to radically change your diet without doing any research? Good thinking.
There are lots of great vegan websites with all the info you need, but here’s one tip. The v-e-g stands for vegetables, try more than two kinds for a balanced diet.
Also, veganism is about more than diet. If you don’t avoid ALL products that co modify animals, you are at most a strict vegetarian. Nothing wrong with that, just sayin’.
you could go for some of the foods on the vegan food pyramid
http://www.chooseveg.com/vegan-food-pyra…
or make one of the 10s of thousands of recipes on vegweb
http://www.vegweb.com/recipes
http://www.happycow.net vegan restaurant finder
http://vegan.meetup.com parties
bengali lentil soup
1 cup red lentils
4 cups water
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1 cup canned tomatoes
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons oil
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoons yellow or black mustard seeds
1+ jalepano pepper
4 cups onions (2 large) finely sliced
5 teaspoons garlic (3 to 4 cloves) sliced
1/2 cup fresh cilantro leaves chopped
add lentils to water in a large saucepan. add turmeric and stir. bring to a boil and then simmer for 20 minutes
until the lentils are soft. add tomatoes and salt and cook for a few minutes longer. reduced heat.
meanwhile heat oil in a skillet. add the cumin seeds and mustard seeds and saute until fragrant for just a few minutes.
cook at a low heat and be careful not to burn the seeds. add jalepano, onions, and garlic and cook until golden brown (about 10 minutes)
add onion mixture to lentils and cook for a few minutes longer, stirring occaisionally
remove from heat. add fresh cilantro leaves to the soup and cover to steep for minute. serve while hot
Pumpkin seeds or sesame seeds/tahini for zinc and many other vitamins and minerals. Sesame/tahini is also high in calcium.
Sunflower seeds, almonds or almond butter for vitamin E and many other vitamins and minerals.
A little bit of sunchokes makes just about the best prebiotic. It’s in the produce section.
A B12 supplement.
A vegan omega 3 supplement: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1…
Good grain and vegetable choices by the way. Yes lots of beans are good too.
There is no “vegan for health”.
Veganism is a philosophy opposing animal commodification and the resulting lifestyle, of which diet is but a small part.
If you mean strict vegetarianism,
my thoughts are that your diet sounds super high-carb.
Are you an athlete?
Where are the vegetables? Those are the staple of any healthy diet.
find your nearest asian food store and checkout their dried pulses – lentils for example are very nutritious and provide something to experiment with in cooking and balancing meals.