Vegan Diet Guy

Tokyo is a city famous for its convenience, but unfortunately not so for vegan eating.

Maintaining a healthy vegan diet in Japan and other countries where veganism has not caught on often means having to make everything from scratch, from breakfast cereals, breads, egg-replacers, non-dairy milks and mock meats, to vegan mayonaise, cheeses and ice creams.

On my latest trip to the States, I went out of my way to sample a number of vegan ready to eat and convenience foods. Since meeting Tal Ronnen last year, I was intrigued by the Gardein plant-based products he is developing–which according to some vegans–feel too much like eating meat. (more…)

Been thinking about your New Year resolutions?

Perhaps you’re considering going on a vegan diet, but can’t see how you’ll ever get there. Maybe you’ve dreamed about running a marathon, too, but abandoned it as impossible?

If so, just think of the expression by William Arthur Ward:

“If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you can dream it, you can become it.”

Five short years ago, I had not begun a vegan diet, nor had I run more than an occasional 1-2 miles on the running machine (staring at the wall at the fitness club, it felt like a death sentence). Growing up, I had been a miserable athlete, skipping all PE classes from the 9th grade to save myself embarrassment.

Just as a plant-based diet often begins with small steps, such as avoiding meat one meal a day (or one day a week) or eliminating a single kind of meat from your diet, until you’ve actually begun running, it’s totally natural for you to believe you’re not capable of getting in shape to run a marathon. (more…)

Fast Tube by Casper

Recently, when I told a new acquaintance I was vegan, he said that explained why I look emaciated. He was just out of university, making him roughly 25 years younger than me. At first, I felt offended, then pondered writing an “Emaciated Bastard” Cookbook.

Just by coincidence, someone sent me this video, “Sugar-The Bitter Truth,” which says people in modern countries weigh 25 lbs more on average than 25 years ago. It dawned on me these statistics probably don’t apply to the majority of vegans, even guys like me who have only been vegan for a few years.

Recall the October CNN interview where Bill Clinton reported his weight and waist-size were the same as when he was in high school, after only a few months of his having begun a plant-based diet? Indeed, PETA’s website confirms that adult vegans weigh 10 to 20 pounds less than adult meat-eaters on average. (more…)

Tastes great when you're 5 miles high.

Airline meals were the butt of many jokes until they were largely eliminated from domestic flights. Now, all you hear is how much people miss them! However, international passengers can still look forward to airline meals, if only to break up the monotony of long-haul flights (or deride in their blogs).

Most airlines offer a wide variety of “special meals,””  including various kinds of vegetarian ones, such as Asian vegetarian, and lacto-ovo vegetarian, in addition to vegan.

Not long ago I wrote about a suprisingly good vegan meal served up by Philippine Airways. After writing PAL to commend them, PAL’s customer service quickly provided me with photos of their lunch as well as a description of the dish. (more…)

Could your morning cappucino or latte fix possibly be keeping you from giving up dairy products and progressing toward a healthier diet and lifestyle?

For many people, switching to a non-dairy milk in their coffee takes more than a little getting used to. It doesn’t help that the big chain coffee shops charge extra for soymilk, but eliminating dairy milk from your espresso drinks may be just what you need to build momentum for becoming vegan. (more…)

While some visitors to this site come searching for first-hand vegan diet advice and easy and delicious vegan recipes, others wind up here simply curious about how vegans can live without consuming any animal products, including dairy or eggs.

A vegan diet is widely described as a “strict vegetarian diet”, and apparently even vegetarians see it as too difficult to follow. On the other hand, many long-term vegans cannot identify with the challenges of those trying to go vegan.

All the hyperbole over a vegan diet can be overwhelming to someone just considering beginning one. To ease the journey, I recommend the term “plant-based diet”–focusing on the vast number and variety of plant foods available, instead of what you perceive you’ll be giving up.

When I first read “The China Study” and decided I was ready to take author Colin Campbell’s One-Month Challenge (“You’ve eaten cheeseburgers your whole life; a month without them won’t kill you.”), I wondered why the publisher didn’t commission a China Study diet plan and recipe book to aid the transition to a plant-based diet.

Well, Rip Esselstyn’s “The Engine 2 Diet” is about as close as you can come. (more…)

Before becoming vegan, parmigiana “you name it” was one of my favorite dishes. Who could resist anything coated in oil, two or three kinds of cheese, and tomato sauce?

So when I spied a pack of decent sized “American (globe) eggplant” the other day (vs. the smaller and more commonly available Japanese variety-this is Japan, go figure!), I knew it was time to try out the low-fat version of eggplant parmesan I had seen on FatFreeVegan.com.

(more…)

Being vegan in Tokyo can often make one feel isolated in the world’s most populous city, but last weekend my partner and I counted ourselves a very lucky minority to meet acclaimed vegan chef and author of the “The Conscious Cook” cookbook, Tal Ronnen.

While Japan is known for originating the predominantly vegetarian macrobiotic diet, and “macrobi” restaurants are ubiquitous here, veganism is extremely rare in Japan. As a result, our vegan cooking school and vegan recipe website came up near the top of the web search Chef Tal did before his recent visit to Tokyo.

We were aware Tal had cooked for Oprah Winfrey’s 21-day vegan cleanse and catered Ellen DeGeneres and Portia De Rossi’s wedding, but not of his fondness for Japan, inherited from his Australian father who had lived in Japan 3 years. Tal said Japanese food was his favorite, and asked our recommendation for Shojin Ryoori (traditional Buddhist temple food). (more…)

A lot of omnivores, and even many vegetarians, think vegan cooking is hard, but in reality, it’s no more difficult than non-vegan cooking. Getting into the mindset where you are ready for a plants-based, vegan diet is the most challenging. If you’ve landed on this page, you are obviously headed in the right direction.

Spaghetti alla Puttanesca is one of those old standby recipes that I hadn’t touched since becoming vegan, that is–until my sister served a delectable anchovy-less rendition for New Year’s dinner. And, like so many other dishes I couldn’t fathom eating again (due to the elimination of a supposedly “core ingredient”), I am now rediscovering it. (more…)