Going vegan?

Question

I've been a vegetarian for quite some time now, and I really want to become vegan. I'm still young, I'm going to be 16 soon..... my mom always says "you're still growing you need the calcium!" every time I mention the words "I want to go vegan". Is there any substitue for calcium?

I'd concider pills, but aren't most vitamins or supplements made with fish oil or something close to that? I guess I'd have to talk to my doctor.

I really want to convince my mom, becuase this is a serious lifestyle and commitment I want to make. She always says to me "what will we do when we go out to eat???"... So that's also an issue =/. But the main issue with her is the "calcium" though.

Answer 1

Calcium is in dark green leafy veggies, tofu, soy milk, orange juice, and many other foods. Animal protein reduces calcium absorption in the body so foods such as dairy that have high amounts of animal protein but also high amounts of calcium aren't as healthy and mineral rich as commonly thought. You can actually buy vegetarian vitamins with no gelatin capsules or animal derived minerals. If your mom is that concerned, you can take a calcium supplement.  When you go out to eat, you are probably gonna have to stick to salads, fruits, vegetables, and sometimes french fries as long as they dont add beef flavoring. You can go to vegan restaurants that have great food that even your mom would enjoy. You can research the vegan diet and tell her all of the health benefits that comes with it. People dont need any animal products and are healthier without them.. Good luck.

Answer 2

soy milk

it taste good

it's go with your beliefs

it's healthier

and it has the right amount of calcium

Answer 3

Tell your mom leafy green vegetables & broccoli are loaded with calcium.

Answer 4

Actually, she shouldn't be worrying about calcium.. she should be worrying about protein.

I tried being a vegan, and I lasted about a week. But I was only a vegetarian for like 4 weeks when I tried being a vegan, so I wasn't even used to giving up meat yet.

I'm going to consider being a vegan in the future, but after I start high school.. so probably when I'm about 15 and have been a vegetarian for about 2 years.

Anyways, try Boca's vegan burgers, they taste like steak actually. Really thin steak. Start getting used to soy milk. I'm a Lacto-Ovo vegetarian and even though i can drink regular milk, I drink soy milk because it tastes SOO good and it's way healthier than coy milk.

That's a good idea.. talk to your doctor. Your doctor may reccomend staying a vegetarian though. Do what you want to do... here's a list of vegan foods. http://www.peta.org/accidentallyVegan/ - tons of vegan foods.

Here's some vegan recipes - http://www.veganmeat.com/recipie.html

Try buying some vegan cookbooks from a book store. I have a vegetarian cookbook and it has a bunch of ideas!!

Good luck:)

Answer 5

Soy milk has great amounts of calcium! Soy Dream Milk actually contains more calcium than whole milk! And not to mention its the best Soy milk or just milk i've ever tasted!

Answer 6

First of all, this is a really good site to start from: http://www.nutritiondata.com

If you lookup 1% milk, you can see that, although it contains 29% calcium, it also contains 4% cholesterol.

Now, you can lookup broccoli and see that it only contains 4% calcium but 0% cholesterol.  Not to mention that it also contains natural Vitamin A (not added/fortified with), Iron and a huge amount of Vitamin C.

What are the other nutrients in milk?  Let’s see… 8% of our Saturated Fat intake (and not the healthy kind either), 4% of our Sodium intake and 4% or our sugar intake.

Of course, take into account that you’ll be eating other food throughout the day as well, not to mention that you can get calcium fortified foods and drinks such as Orange Juice.

I mean, 7 servings of broccoli (what it would take to equal the calcium level of milk) would be hundreds of times healthier for you than that one single serving of milk.

If you want to get even better, you can have a few handfuls of almonds – same amount of calcium as a serving of milk, with much better health benefits.  For that matter, switch over to almond milk in place of cow’s milk and you’ll really be in for a shocker!

There are a huge amount of calcium alternatives out there that have nothing to do with milk or dairy.  Any healthy vegan (or even non-vegan) diet would include a large amount of them in the general rotation of food.

Then if going out is a problem and you find yourself going to places that don’t serve many healthy vegan alternatives, you can argue that going out to eat is never as healthy as staying home to eat.  Of course you’d also be volunteering yourself to cook the family a meal at that point… wouldn’t you?