Another Veganism Post

This one's just going to be about how it's perfectly possible to be healthy as a vegan. So one question any vegan will probably be asked is how they get their protein. I'll be including links and commenting on parts of them. The first site I'm referring to is an article at veganhealth.org about, of course, protein. One thing I found notable was that "It's now been about 20 years since protein in vegan diets was determined to be a non-issue by nutrition researchers." And yet people are still convinced- and clinging on to the idea- that vegans (or even vegetarians) couldn't possibly be getting enough protein. As a 16 year old female, I'm supposed to get about 50 grams of protein per day. Half a cup of tofu has 8-11 grams of protein.

It must be one of those doublethink kinds of things, but it always seems odd to me that people can simultaneously think that vegans can eat nothing but tofu and that they couldn't possibly eat enough tofu to get much of any protein out of it. Half a cup of soybeans has 14.3 grams of protein. I certainly eat plenty of soybeans, although frequently indirectly. Tofu, of course, is made of soybeans. As is my vegan ice cream. As is soymilk; etc. And then vegetables have protein. You can look at the list if you're curious.

It also points out that unless they don't eat enough food in general or eat total junk food, vegans don't have to worry about protein. There's a brief snippet of this article that deals with the same issue. I'm going to take a possibly too large quotation from this:

"a varied diet of nutritious plant foods provides all the protein that you need. Unlike animal protein, plant-based protein sources usually also contain healthy fiber and complex carbohydrates. Animal products are also full of artery-clogging cholesterol and saturated fat, and consumption of animal protein has been linked to some types of cancer. Plus, it's suspected that the high sulfur content of animal protein weakens people's bones. (For example, a study by researchers at the University of California found significantly less bone formation in meat-eating women than in vegan women.)"

I knew I had heard somewhere that animal protein weakened bones. And you thought I made that up. And then this article points out that "with protein, more (than the RDA) is not necessarily better [...and] Diets that are high in protein may even increase the risk of osteoporosis and kidney disease ."

This article is also illuminating. It points out that "The meat and dairy industries spend billions of dollars to project their message right into your shopping cart through television commercials, magazine ads, and grocery store ads." Which makes sense. I'd point out more, but much of this stuff is repeated. You know what I should do? I should print out a copy of each of these articles and, say, attach them to my skin somehow. Alright, so I'm exaggerating, but people really seem to hate the idea that vegans can get enough protein.

Alright. So I've got protein covered. I may write another thing on, say, calcium, but I think I've written enough for now.

Vegan Junk Food

I watched the health care speech earlier today (I would have watched it yesterday, but I was far too exhausted). I thought about writing about it, but I'm not in the mood to think about such things (I really don't need to feel depressed again). So I decided I'd write about a much lighter topic: vegan junk food.

Anyone who knows me will attest to the fact that I have a huge sweet tooth. Back when I wasn't vegan, I'd consume large quantities of ice cream and such. I've been known to eat far too many donuts. Cinnamon buns, etc. But ice cream was always my favorite. In fact, when I thought about being vegan (not seriously entertaining the idea yet) for the first time, the main reason I didn't consider it further was that I didn't think I could give up ice cream.

Luckily, though, there's vegan ice cream! Very luckily. Some of it is better than others, but there's definitely good vegan ice cream out there. The Rice Dream brand was pretty awful. There was another kind that I didn't like, but I can't think of what it was called. My favorite brands are Tempt (this one appears to be hard to find, but if you find it it's good), Tofutti (much easier to find), and So Delicious (a newer favorite). The good thing about So Delicious is that it has more flavors than the others seem to. At least, more flavors that are easily procured. Vegan ice cream sandwiches I would say go by the same brands.

I technically haven't yet sorted out the vegan chocolate dilemma, but I'm close. I just don't like dark chocolate. I mean, it's better than nothing, but I much prefer milk chocolate or white chocolate. I gave dark chocolate another try, but it really wasn't going to do it. So earlier today I looked up vegan milk chocolate (I figured it had to exist. Maybe soymilk chocolate or something). Luckily, it did exist. Lots of people seem to like the Terra Nostra Rice Milk Chocolate. So I'm planning on procuring some of that if possible.

Then there are a few things I haven't figured out yet, but which I can go without if necessary. For instance, whipped cream. I did like to occasionally have my ice cream with a large mass of whipped cream. Maybe more than occasionally. I seem to be the best in my family at spraying out the whipped cream. The trick is to have it COMPLETELY vertical. Completely. Anyway, I still need to see if such a thing as vegan whipped cream exists.

The other thing is cookie dough. Mostly cookie dough ice cream. I'm not sure if I'll have any luck with that. If I do, though, it would probably be at least marginally healthier than regular cookie dough due to the lack of eggs...

One thing I really do need to find is vegan cinnamon buns. So now I'm going to continue my research (...on trivial matters, but still research).

Results: Ha ha! Vegan cookie dough ice cream does exist! Brands include Wheeler's, Purely Decadent, and Temptation. Vegan whipped cream, too, exists. The main brand seems to be Soyatoo. My cinnamon bun search was slightly less successful, but I did find about a million recipes. So it's not hopeless. Hah! And going vegan's supposed to be hard!

PETA

I really, really hate PETA. It has nothing to do with being unsympathetic to animal rights: I am going vegan, after all! No, it is because of their advertising strategies. Basically, these consist of in one way or another cruelty towards anyone who commonly gets discriminated against. Except for animal rights people. It's completely counterproductive. All it does is make people hate PETA. And sometimes that leads to rebellion, which results in more animal abuse! PETA's REALLY not helping ANYONE! PETA's really having problems when someone going vegan hates them. And I'm not the only one, either. (See the following links)

Vegan Hope
Feministe


And some more generally anti-PETA, but not necessarily anti-animal rights links:
Calorie Lab


And there's much more if you care to look for it.

Veganism

Well, I've been eating entirely vegan since last Wednesday (not this most recent Wednesday, but the one before that). Well, technically Wednesday evening. I say eating vegan for a few reasons. First of all, I'm not considering myself vegan until I have proven that I can keep it up. Second of all, veganism isn't only food. I mean, my shoes are unfortunately made out of leather (which is really bad, especially given that I haven't eaten meat for a long time, but in my defense, I haven't bought a pair of shoes at all recently), I haven't made sure that my toothpaste, etc. is vegan, and I haven't even begun to research clothing. Still, it's a good start. I plan to work on the non-food front when I return home.

So now I've decided to use the rest of this post to engage in the quite probably futile effort to convince someone (I don't have anyone in particular in mind) to at least eat fewer animal products or less meat. I can at least try. As whenever I try to articulate my reasons, all that I end up coming up with is that "they're really mean to the animals", which isn't exactly the most effective way of communicating what I mean, I plan on mostly linking to things. I think I mostly do this because if I ever learn any of the details I quickly try to forget about them, which I feel that I'm justified in doing as I still reform my behavior.

My fear of conflict is whispering in the back of my mind for me not to do this, but in such a situation I am able to ignore it. My current motivation is powerful enough to overwhelm such. There are a few categories under which arguments for veganism tend to fall, the most common one being concern for animals. But veganism also benefits the environment and is healthier.

I figure I should start off with the bit I've already explained in the past: the vegetarian part. First of all, killing animals is wrong. That alone was enough to make me a vegetarian. Then of course, the animals are treated horribly. They're generally kept in tiny cages where they don't have room to move around, and that's only the beginning. The free range thing isn't a good copout, either. It doesn't actually mean that they all get to wander around. I've also argued in the past that becoming a vegetarian is so easy that there's no excuse not to, but that argument isn't quite as effective when it comes to being vegan.

I'm going to make one more point and then I'll just post the links. It's not that hard just to replace a few things. For instance, soy milk in my experience tastes better than regular milk. Ricemilk is okay, too. I didn't like almond milk as much. You have to be a little pickier about ice cream (soy ice cream is kind of bad, as is rice, but hemp and tofu- yes, tofu: it actually tastes good- make good ice cream). Pancakes taste the same without eggs and with soymilk. I can't say I've had good luck with cheese replacements. There are egg replacements. Vegan bread tastes the same. Seeing as I'm sure people have heard this before and that this won't really convince anyone, I'm just going to leave the links. Hopefully at least someone will look at some of them just to humor me. ...Just be glad I spared you the PETA links.

Vegan Action
Vegan Outreach
Vegan Wolf (Don't ask me where they got that title...)
Veganic (Okay, so this one's by someone working for PETA. It was inevitable.)
Viva

Perhaps this isn't the greatest time to mention it, but I just realized that Starbursts aren't vegan or even vegetarian. ...I should have known that by now.

Progress So Far

I know I haven't posted in a while. I have a number of excuses, including that I went on a long hike, I wasn't feeling well yesterday, and I couldn't think of anything to write. Luckily, I don't think I have to come up with a reasonable excuse (not that all of those weren't true). I'm not going to have too much time to write today because I have a lot to do. I also need to pack because I'm going away for three weeks.

I'm slowly making progress on my goal. I'm still drinking soy milk. I even tried soy ice cream. I've known since I started considering this that giving up ice cream would probably be the hardest part. Ice cream's my very favorite food... I have a sweet tooth. Well, the ice cream situation will be a little harder than switching to soy milk was, but I think I may be able to manage.

There are a few difficulties with soy ice cream. First of all, it doesn't taste quite as good as regular ice cream. It's still good, but I suppose it's hard to compete with regular ice cream. Secondly, the number of flavors is very, very limited. In fact, when I went to Whole Foods to procure some, the only flavors I saw were, I believe, vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. So I got vanilla.

The thought of giving up cookie dough ice cream is very depressing, though. Someone needs to invent the equivalent of Ben and Jerry's for soy ice cream. Then again, cookie dough, for instance, isn't even vegan. Still: there has to be some sort of fake cookie dough that could be invented. ...Well, I guess it wasn't very healthy, anyway. But that doesn't make giving it up any easier.

But the soymilk and soy ice cream were more or less successful. The thing that didn't work out so well was the vegan yogurt. It didn't taste very good. I'm hoping that was just because when I tried it, I had a really bad stomachache. If not, I guess there are other brands. I'm still determined, though. Even if people do persist in pointing out how hard it will be to give up some of this stuff. Stubbornness does come in handy occasionally.

Well, at least if anyone tries to convince me it'll be bad for my health to attempt to go vegan, I can easily refute the claim. A lot of the unhealthy food I enjoy isn't vegan. So my health can really only improve from this. Also, just in case anyone brings this up, most Americans get too much protein anyway. ...But that's all I'm saying on the topic because I have to go.

Soymilk

Remember my post about how I wanted to become a vegan? Well, I've slightly modified that proposal, but I still want to try. Basically, my goal will be to limit my consumption of animal products. But my ultimate goal is still the same. So, last weekend, I got some soymilk. And I've been drinking it. It's not too bad. I mean, I prefer my regular organic milk, but that's more from habit than anything I think. Soymilk is almost sweet. However, it's also slightly overpowering for me. Still, I've been determinedly drinking my soymilk. Everything's easier when my morals and passionate beliefs are involved. Now I just have to figure out what to eliminate/replace next. Maybe I'll see about vegan yogurt.