I want to go vegan, but i need my nutrition?

Question

i just spend the last half hour on peta's website watching the horrible videos on how chickens and cows and pigs and other animals are slaughtered. i'm already a vegetarian, but after watching how the chickens are treated just for producing eggs, and the cows for their milk, i want to go vegan. i just don't know about my nutrition. vegan is a serious step, so i need some advice please. also i'm 16, so i'm still growing and stuff.

Answer 1

Hi, i'm 14 and vegan.

Make sure you get soy milk (or other non-dairy milk) fortified with calcium and vitamin B12.

Try to get about 1 cup of legumes (chickpeas, lentils etc.) or 1 cup of tofu each day. Otherwise you can eat less than that but eat nuts/peanut butter or 5 cups of salad.

Walnuts are a good source of omega 3.

Tofu scrambles are great as a breakfast thing and contain a lot of iron/protein (recipes from www.vegcooking.com or type "tofu scramble into google and you'll get tons of results)

Try baking some nuts into muffins (recipes from www.vegcooking.com or theppk.com)

I suggest you find some good vegan cheese. I don't know what country you're in. In the UK/Australia we have Cheezly, which is really good.

Don't get too annoyed if you accidently eat an animal by-product. Its frustating, but just put that on your "no" list and remember not to get that next time.

You shouldn't need to take supplements if you think about getting nutrition and drink a lot of non-dairy milk. If you are concerned then take a daily multivitamin.

Good luck

: )

Answer 2

well done <3 on your decision. Have been vegan for a couple of weeks now and it is hard but ultimately rewarding. Im doing two days vegan and one day vegetarian to adapt myself slowly.

EDIT: LULU???? cows calves are taken off them the day or two after they give birth to provide humans with milk. I have NO idea what you are going on about. Its cruel and barbaric. A fully grown human does NOT need milk, our Western diets convince us that we need milk but we dont. Calves do not stay with their Mothers or receive the milk that nature intended for them to consume.

Answer 3

*Everyone* needs their nutrition.

Advice: pick up a copy of "Becoming Vegan" by Brenda Davis and Vesanto Melina and learn how to go vegan the right way.  They are both registered dietitians and the book is thorough coverage of vegan nutrition.

Answer 4

Your nutrition is going to improve after going vegan.  If you like milk, drink soy milk.  If you like cheese, drink soy cheese.  These have all the good stuff milk has and none of the bad stuff.

Answer 5

Well, the most important thing to do is to research, which you're doing right now. Kudos to you! I know too many friends who jumped in but didn't bother to find out what they could and couldn't eat and "survived" off of raw veggies until they got so unhealthy they had to go back to eating regular food. Vegan does take that extra effort, but it's worth it.

To replace the milk and eggs in your diet, you're going to need to up your protein and calcium in other areas. Soymilk does have calcium in it (at least the kind i drink does), and you're probably going to want to stock up on quinoa, tempeh, tofu, etc. It's definitely possible, and i admire you for taking the initiative at so young an age! (i didn't go vegan until i was 18, but had been veg at 14 or 15).

So I'd say invest in some cookbooks, find some easy and delicious meals (there are tons of websites out there), and go for it!

Answer 6

Vegan diet when used properly is more nutritious than a meat eaters.

Its a fallacy that people believe vegan and veggie diets are healthy.

Its about balance,you just have to eat in moderation and make sure you know what nutrients are in your food.

I have been veggie over 40 years,i lack nothing in the nutrients department,i run marathons and have a very active life.

I look younger than my meat eaters for my age,my hair nails and teeth are amazingly healthy,

If it was unhealthy,then i would have died years ago.lol. :)

Answer 7

well im 16, and im a vegan too!

i lovee it.

actually... my hair has gotten so much more healthier! im not sure if you cared about that or not..  but its good

i was worried of being a vegan because i wouldnt be getting the same amount of protein all the other girls do.

plus, i play varsity basketball... so i was a little nervous i wouldnt be as built still.

i did loose a lot of weight.. but. eating tofu, and veggie burgers by "boga burgers" and they have vegan burgers

tofu

organic beans and brown rice

organic peanut butter and apples are my favorite things to eat.

im not sure if you ever heard of the book "skinny *****"

all of my friends hate it, but honeslty its a reallly great book.

it turned me vegan and talked about all the bad things in foods and stuff and it gives lists of vegan foods and where to get them, and then the book "***** in the kitch" tells you recipes and lists of foods to cook with for those recipes

as long as you stick to

veggies

fruit

beans

whole grains

organic peanut butter

soy milks ( chocolate soy is sooo good!)

and tofu

and they have tofu eggs that are really good.. they talk about it in  the book skinny *****

they have all types of ways to get nutrition esp from getting organic food

its so much easier if your parents get you the stuff

i got my mom to go vegan with me so its easier since she buys me it

Answer 8

The only nutrient that hasn't been proven to be abundant in non-animal sources is B12 though it hasn't been disproved.

Since we are not sure, we should make sure to consume a B12 supplement or food that is fortified with B12 daily. I've been vegan for over five years but I don't stress about getting B12 every day and I have suffered no ill effects.

All other nutrients are proven to be found in plants more than easily.

http://www.veganhealth.org/sh

Answer 9

If veganism wasn't healthy, there wouldn't be so many vegans. :P

You can get protein from beans, lentils, nuts, seeds, etc. Tofu has about the same amount of protein as a burger.

You can get iron from everything above, plus most green vegetables.

A lot of soy milk is fortified with calcium. You can also get it from green veggies and almonds.

Answer 10

Just buy cage free and farm fresh eggs from a local farmer. You aren't taking anything away from the chicken....the egg isn't even fertilized so theres no chicken baby. It would just be thrown away anyways. And chickens from a local farmer I assure you are happy as can be.

As for nutrition, you can have perfectly suitable nutrtion and be vegan, you just have to eat a lot of high-protein grains like quinoa, and protein rich legumes, nuts, and seeds.

don't watch PETA videos. They film like 10 minutes of cruelty from a stretch of 4 days.

Not that I support animal cruelty, but PETA has its own agenda to push. I got a brochure once telling me that when you fish, you are pulling the fish cruely out of the water and rupturing its swim bladder and causing it to swell with pain and agony. Ya right. If that was true, fish wouldn't be able to jump out of the water to eat bugs. Not saying fishing is good, but they need to get their facts straight.

Don't base your ideas solely on what PETA says. Find your own reliable answers. I'm semi-vegetarian but not because PETA propoganda told me to be.

Buy local milk too. And besides, if you don't milk a cow it loses the ability to make milk. If you keep milking a cow after its baby is off the milk, the cow will still produce milk and the only place for it to go to avoid being thrown away would be to the consumer. Its not like the calf has any more use of it.

To the person below me: Not all cow farmers act like that. I have lived next to and on farms for all of my life and the cows here feed their calves with their milk and then when they get big enough to eat grass, we just keep milking the cow. The calf isn't using the milk, so why shouldn't we? If you can find a reliable source of milk there is no reason you shouldn't use it. Not all farms are gulags. Sorry PETA people. You don't live on a farm so you have no right commenting on farm practices.

I know that humans don't need milk, and I don't drink milk, but some other people do and they should have that right. Don't use that as an argument against drinking milk since humans have been drinking milk since the dawn of time and sorry to burst your bubble but without cows and milk and eating the occasional meat, our ape ancestors wouldn't even have made it out of Africa.