Thinking about going vegan/vegetarian
I am new to this and have A LOT of questions. First, is it very difficult to follow a vegan diet? (obviously there needs to be a lot of effort and planning) Is it safe/healthy to be pregnant and nurse while being vegan? If I buy cage free eggs- or products from stoneyfield farms does that take away the need to be completely vegan since animals aren't being harmed and there aren't any hormones and antibiotics? Or are there other health effects I'm not reading about?
I would love answers to my questions- sorry to be a pest!
Thank you!
i also suggest you read Skinny Bitch by kim barnouin and rory freedman. they talk a lot about changing your lifestyle and why you should be a vegan. it's an amazing book you'll totally switch over after reading it.
Don't trust labels, they lie.
Honestly though, I was vegan for a week and didn't feel any more energized or happy than I did being vegetarian. Granted, I'm still mostly-vegan, but I eat humane dairy (still no eggs) when it's baked into things... like my awesome oatmeal-raisin protein bars. x) Overall, I don't think it would hurt you at all to be just vegetarian or even just semi-omnivore and only eat meat and fish on certain occasions. In the end, it's up to you.
In regards to "changing" your 1-yr old's diet, his or her diet up until this point should be really close to being vegan anyways, unless you bottle fed. But I think at this point, the baby should not be eating meat yet. So this would be really easy, as you can just not introduce any of these foods into the diet. I seriously wish my mom had raised me vegan, or at least vegetarian. How I would love to say that I have never eaten meat in my whole life!!
**brighteyes82, didn't you have an article posted in another forum about raising veg*n children? I don't remember where it is, but it is a great article and could probably help cmama right about now. Can you post the link for her here? I'll be looking for it in the meantime too. Thanks!!
Edit: Ok, so that wasn't hard to find at all!! Here it is cmama, I'm sure it'll help! http://caloriecount.about.com/forums/post/751 59.html
Hope that works, I haven't inserted a link in here yet!
There is overwhelming evidence that consumption of animal protein leads to the chronic diseases that kill 2/3ds of the developed world (heart disease, cancer, and autoimmune diseases like diabetes, MS, etc.). The safest amount of animal protein to consume is none. However, there isn't a dramatic increase in the occurrence of chronic diseases until the diet reaches greater than 10% of calories from animal protein. For more information on all of that, read The China Study by T. Colin Campbell.
It boils down to this. The healthiest way to eat is a whole foods, plant-based diet avoiding all meat, dairy, refined and processed foods (white pasta, white rice, doritos, basically anything from McDonald's, etc), free sugars, oils, etc. However, if you're out and about you'll be okay if your whole wheat bread has egg in it or if your veggie soup uses chicken broth. Oh, and there really isn't "a lot of effort and planning" to eat this way. My wife and I don't do things any differently than we ever did. We sit down one day a week and decide what we're going to make for dinner the next week by looking through our cookbooks and deciding what sounds good. The only difference is that now our cookbooks are all vegan ones. We use that list to make a shopping list and then we can put it out of our minds until next week. It took some time to find recipes and books we liked, but now that we've got them, we're all set. For more information about how to eat a vegan diet, read Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman.
No, it is not "nutritionally inappropriate" for a child to eat a vegan diet. Our child does and he's thriving. Quite simply, a proper vegan diet is the healthiest diet for anyone of any age. Don't let the "proper" qualifier scare you there. Just as a "proper" omnivore diet is much different than the standard american diet, a proper vegan diet is different than a vegan who eats oreos, white pasta, and coke every day. Junk food is junk food even if it doesn't have meat in it. To get an idea of how to feed your child, check out the book Disease Proof Your Child by Joel Fuhrman.
Definitely do the reading (I've got more where that came from if you're interested), you'll be shocked and amazed to learn that what passes as a good diet is actually killing us.
I have been vegetarian for many years, and in the last month or so, been converting to vegan. There are some great books out there...Being in Alberta, Canada (its all about meat here), I myself do not personally know another vegetarian or vegan, so Ive had to rely on books & internet to teach me.
A book thats great is "animal ingredients a-z" Kind of a book all vegans need, as they like to hide animal products in EVERYTHING...I believe you can get an online version too.
"Vegan Freak: Being Vegan in a Non-Vegan World" Its the book that made me make the final decision to become vegan. It helps with a very discouraging family that thinks Im gonna die from a lack of nutrition, or thinks the only place we can go for dinner is a salad bar.
Like most meat eaters, I was ignorant to where my food was coming from. Assuming that buying 'free range' eggs was solving the caging problems. Its not, at all...Thinking that cows need to be milked, but being ignorant to where those male babies go. I am glad to know where my food is coming from, I feel more educated. I am not gonna preach to meat eaters, but I will try to educate them on what really happens to the animals.
If you search online about 'free range' products, you will find that those chickens & cows suffer just as much as non 'free-range'...even though I tried to make myself believe for a LONG time that they are happy animals that are running around in the sun and playing all day...Educate yourself. It is a learning process, just like being vegetarian in the beginning was.
Oh and lastly, you can get a free 'starter guide' in the mail from veganoutreach.org that will help you with your decision. Good Luck!!
Original Post by cmama:
p.s. If I were to go vegan would I want to change my 1 year old's diet too? Or would that be "nutritionally inappropriate?"
cmama, I have a 1-year old too. Although I recently became Vegan, I decided NOT to feed my son a Vegan diet (although he is vegetarian).
I'm sure it IS nutritionally appropriate to feed your son a Vegan diet, but ONLY if you are confident you know how to do it. I don't feel confident so I haven't.
I'm sure the best answer is to seek advice and guidance from those who are more experienced in child-nutrition and nutrition generally before you make your mind up. Whatever you decide, good luck to you and well done on thinking about the food on your plate. I think it's great you're taking responsibility for the food you eat and considering where it comes from. :)
I raised my children vegetarian (not vegan). My doctor recommends staying with the vegetarian approach; there are problems that can arise with a person younger than 35 years of age, trying to go totally vegan.
Of course those people who might disagree with what my doctor tells me, certainly have a right to discuss what has worked well for them; however, I agree with "sudo" - none of us are carrying the type of credentials that give us any real authority to 'tell you' - other than what has worked for us.
I've been vegetarian for 41 years; some weeks it's 100% 'vegan' by 'accident'...I just prefer eating this way. I do know I've never been over-weight in my life; been very free of illness, and have good skin color and hair - no one ever guesses my age of 65 (most think I'm about 52). My daughter is 47; they think we are sisters, so I do believe staying free of as much meat as possible, is the first priority.
Keeping milk to 3 times a month (I haven't had it in 3 months now); an egg or two a month (again, I haven't had an egg for about a month) seems to work well for me regarding digestion and energy.
I eat everything fresh; sure saves time on my meal in the kitchen - only cook for my 72-year old husband who refuses to change his eating habits in favor of 'no meat', etc.
This is my 2 cents worth..............smile.
Be careful with children and vegan diets; there was an episode of House where the baby was taken away from the parents because they thought they were starving the baby by feeding them their "vegan diet." (there's a lot more to this story, but it's just something to watch out for and can be concerning).
and eating "free range eggs" would make you not vegan, vegan is no animal product - period.
Here is an excerpt written by 2 Nobel Prize winners as to why going vegetarian is not only good, but it reduces the chances of cancer.
Flesh was never the best food; but its use is now doubly objectionable, since disease in animals is so rapidly increasing. Those who use flesh foods little know what they are eating. Often if they could see the animals when living and know the quality of the meat they eat, they would turn from it with loathing. People are continually eating flesh that is filled with tuberculous and cancerous germs. Tuberculosis, cancer, and other fatal diseases are thus communicated.—emphasis added.Working with the Rous sarcoma virus, known to cause cancer in chickens, Bishop and Varmus found that a gene similar to the cancer-causing gene within the virus was also present in healthy cells.
In 1976 Bishop and Varmus, together with two colleagues—Dominique Stehelin and Peter Vogt—published their findings, concluding that the virus had taken up the gene responsible for the cancer from a normal cell. After the virus had infected the cell and begun its usual process of replication, it incorporated the gene into its own genetic material. Subsequent research showed that such genes can cause cancer in several ways. Even without viral involvement, these genes can be converted by certain chemical carcinogens into a form that allows uncontrolled cellular growth.
Because the mechanism described by Bishop and Varmus seemed common to all forms of cancer, their work proved invaluable to cancer research. By 1989 scientists had identified more than 40 genes having cancer-causing potential in animals.—"Bishop, J(ohn) Michael," Encyclopedia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2004 DVD.
If you're switching over to a vegetarian lifestyle because of the inhumane treatment the way they treat milking cows is terrible too. Boys you may not want to read this. I don't know if you nursed but if you did just imagine the pain of nursing a baby. Well imagine the sores and the tenderness that went along w/ it and this was just your precious baby nursing. Well milking cows are much like women after they have their babies and nurse them til the age they stop nursing their milk would dry us as well. just like us normal women. well instead they use machines to latch onto their udders and suck them dry over and over again. While the cows are bleeding and have puss and everything. Gross! Than that milk is turned into butter and cheese. I was a cheese-a-holic and believe me it totally changed me. I guess I was naive enough to think there was these sweet little farmers w/ a bucket. It's all about money in the meat and dairy industry. they don't care. Whatever makes them money faster. As for your child my son has always had an allergen to cow milk so he's always been on soy milk anyways. He's 6 and I'm slowly changing him over to a vegan. Luckily for me he LOVES health food. M & M's will be the hard thing. I've just recently changed to a vegan lifestyle so I'm working on me first and than the rest of the family. Good luck to you.
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