howvegan

HOW VEGAN

Top 10 Tips … for breaking bad eating habits and going vegan, all in one fell swoop!

Juliet Gellatley, director of the UK’s Vegetarian & Vegan Foundation, gives her checklist for feeling and staying healthy

In pursuit of feeling, looking and being healthier, you have presumably already eliminated meat. If so, now it’s time to do a few more important things.

1. Ditch dairy. Use soy, rice and oat milks instead. Wean yourself off saturated fat and cholesterol-laden cheese and eat more good foods – fruit, vegies, nuts, seeds, whole grains and pulses.

2. Give fish a miss – it’s loaded with small amounts of deadly poisons such as mercury, PCBs and dioxins and fish eating is causing the ecological collapse of almost all our oceans. Get your essential fatty acids from flax seeds and oil, walnuts, walnut oil and canola oil. Use the oils cold for omega 3’s and get even more from dark green leafy vegies and soybeans, especially tofu.

3. Dump saturated animal fats and hydrogenated vegetable fats in favour of good fats. Use flax seed oil as a salad dressing and cook mainly with extra virgin olive oil – and try sesame, hazelnut and coconut oils. Hydrogenated fats are widespread in products such as cakes and biscuits and are usually listed in the ingredients. Junk food outlets such as McDonald’s and KFC use them – avoid them like the plague!

4. Reduce caffeine – try decaffeinated coffee and tea.

5. Eat 8-10 portions of fruit and vegies a day. If you find this hard, invest in a juicer and pop in a mix of fruits for a delicious vitamin-rich drink to start your day. Also make smoothies with nuts and fruits and soy or oat milk.

6. Eliminate carbonated drinks and replace them with still water – from the tap is fine! Try to drink 8 glasses a day plus fresh fruit juices.

7. Say shoo to sugar, including artificial sweeteners and honey. Try adding fruits to your breakfast cereals instead of sugar. Try soymilk sweetened with apple juice in tea. Instead of snacking on high-sugar cakes and biscuits, eat mixed unsalted nuts with sultanas or dry-roasted pumpkin seeds or fresh fruit. If you work, put them on your desk so you automatically reach for them when hungry.

8. Ditch refined carbohydrates such as white bread (some say you may as well eat wallpaper paste), white pasta and white rice and replace with wholemeal and rye breads, whole grain pasta and brown rice. Add other grains to your diet such as quinoa, couscous (use like rice), oats and millet (try sprouting it and use in salads). At least half your diet should be based on energy-rich complex carbohydrates.

9. Replace animal protein, which is strongly linked to heart disease and cancer, with vegetable protein, which helps protect your health. Eat more peas, beans and lentils. Broaden your horizons from baked beans to include kidney beans, butter beans, borlotti beans and chickpeas.

10. Make cooking easy and fun! Throw out the processed foods containing lots of chemicals and become proficient at six to 10 delicious and quick recipes that you can knock up in a flash. Add more elaborate recipes to your repertoire as you gain confidence. Play music and have a sip of something good while you’re cooking – enjoy yourself!

Reprinted with kind permission from Veggiehealth, the magazine of the UK’s Vegetarian & Vegan Foundation www.vegetarian.org.uk

Juliet Gellatley

What every vegan should know about vitamin B12

Very low B12 intakes can cause anaemia and nervous system damage. The only reliable vegan sources of B12 are foods fortified with B12 (including some plant milks, some soy products and some breakfast cereals) and B12 supplements. Vitamin B12, whether in supplements, fortified foods or animal products, comes from microorganisms. Most vegans consume enough B12 to avoid anaemia and nervous system damage, but many do not get enough to minimise potential risk of heart disease or pregnancy complications.

To get the full benefit of a vegan diet, vegans should do one of the following:
· eat fortified foods two or three times a day to get at least three micrograms (mcg) of
B12 a day or
· take one B12 supplement daily providing at least 10mcg or
· take a weekly B12 supplement providing at least 2000mcg

If relying on fortified foods check the labels carefully to make sure you are getting enough B12. For example, if a fortified plant milk contains 1 microgram of B12 per serving then consuming three servings a day will provide adequate vitamin B12. Others may find the use of B12 supplements more convenient and economical. The less frequently you obtain B12 the more B12 you need to take, as B12 is best absorbed in small amounts. The recommendations above take full account of this. There is no harm in exceeding the recommended amounts or combining more than one option.

A natural, healthy and compassionate diet

To be truly healthful, a diet must be best not just for individuals in isolation but must allow all six billion people to thrive and achieve a sustainable coexistence with the many other species that form the "living earth". From this standpoint the natural adaptation for most (possibly all) humans in the modern world is a vegan diet. There is nothing natural about the abomination of modern factory farming and its attempt to reduce living, feeling beings to machines. In choosing to use fortified foods or B12 supplements, vegans are taking their B12 from the same source as every other animal on the planet - microorganisms - without causing suffering to any sentient being or causing environmental damage.

Good information supports vegan health, pass it around.

Further information:

Vitamin B12: Are you getting it? by Jack Norris http://www.veganhealth.org/

This information sheet was prepared by Stephen_walsh@vegans.fsnet.co.uk, a UK Vegan Society trustee, and other members of the International Vegetarian Union science group (IVU-SCI), in October 2001.

Kerrie K. Saunders PhD on vitamin B12 (from The Vegan Diet as Chronic Disease Prevention)

Vitamin B12 is made by bacteria and can be found in tiny amounts in our saliva, in the liver's bile and in the intestines, but nutrition experts caution not to rely on these sources, or on the often-quoted statement that our liver stores B12 for three to five years, to meet our B12 needs. Animals typically accumulate B12 in their flesh or milk by consuming manure, commercial feed, water and B12-rich soil. However, the use of synthetic herbicides, pesticides and other chemicals that have a sterilising effect on soil and plants has all but eliminated natural, plant-based foods as a reliable source of this bacteria-driven nutrient, and the similar effects of pasteurisation, irradiation and other processing methods suggest that even those who eat animal flesh or drink animal milk should ensure adequate B12 from fortified foods or supplements.

Apart from dietary intake, impaired absorption may also be a risk factor for B12 deficiency. According to Brenda Davis RD, over 95% of cases of B12 deficiency do not occur in vegans and are not due to inadequate B12 intake. The inability to absorb the protein-bound form of B12 found in animal foods occurs in 10-30% of people over age 50, due to reduced gastric acid and pepsin enzyme secretions.