Vegan Diet Guy

Fast Tube by Casper

Unless it’s every night that another U.S. celebrity talks about going vegan, it sure was a coincidence I happened to see Mike Tyson on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” yesterday.

When I visited the States last November, I caught Janet Jackson on Leno discussing her “on again off again” vegan diet and favorite vegan restaurants, and then Craig Ferguson poking fun at World Vegan Day.

This time around–jet-lagged after being back just 3 days–I was just about to sleep when the late night host announced Tyson would be his next guest. Tyson adopted a vegan diet last May, and (although any reason for giving up meat is a good one) I was curious if the boxer would be discussing what triggered his decision.

Struggling to stay awake through endless commercials, Tyson finally came on to plug “The Hangover Part 2”.  Fortunately for me, within a minute, the conversation turned to his vegan diet.  Looking remarkably fit, Tyson mentioned that he had lost 130-140 pounds since becoming vegan.

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While many of us took our own mother’s cooking for granted while growing up, eating over a friend’s house provided our first taste of exotic foods, even those from just across state lines.

My best friend’s mother from West Virginia served navy bean soup on top of a piece of buttermilk cornbread topped by a pat of butter. Thirty years passed before it occurred to me to bake cornbread instead of having my usual whole wheat pasta or brown rice with soup. And who needs buttermilk when you can make a vegan buttermilk using soymilk and vinegar or lemon juice?

After trying several recipes, Post Punk Kitchen’s still reigns as my favorite, although I replace white flour with whole wheat pastry flour and reduce oil and sweetener, too.  This time, I ran short of whole wheat flour and partially substituted with Bob’s Gluten Free all-purpose baking flour. Though a little chewier than usual, it came nice and crispy, especially after cooling and re-toasting. (more…)

Ethical vegans may object to those who adopt a vegan diet vegan for health reasons alone and other incremental measures toward veganism espoused by popular media.

Rather than expecting carnivores to give up their Western diet habits overnight, “Veganist”, the latest book by Kathy Freston, health and wellness expert and author of “Quantum Wellness”, encourages people to “lean into” the vegan lifestyle.

According to Freston, who became vegan 7 years ago, “Taking small, manageable steps toward the changes we want to achieve has a more profound effect than trying to radically alter any one behavior.” As an example, she cites how she first gave up dairy products, then gradually became vegan by giving up eating one animal at-a-time.

Freston goes on to discuss the benefits of vegan eating including effortless weight loss, reversal of disease, environmental responsibility, and spiritual awakening. “These are just a few of the ten profound changes that can be achieved through a gentle switch in food choices.”

For those who discovered vegan diets as adults and took months or years to completely give up eating animal products, it makes sense that the greatest potential for change is in our daily actions: (more…)

You often see high profile vegan coaches and chefs coming clean about how they have fallen off the wagon: If they’re raw vegans, they may have eaten something cooked, while those on a vegan diet may have eaten something containing animal products.

Adopting a vegan diet made me extremely conscious of what I eat, so eating non nutrient-rich plant-based foods, or even healthy ones to excess–is also falling off the wagon for me.

After using an online meal planning system for a few months to ensure I was getting enough nutrition from plant foods alone, I became much more aware of the size of the portions I should be eating, too.

For example, in the past, I would eat much of a 1lb bag of nuts (chips, popcorn, etc.) by the handful–out of stress or while distracted–without realizing that a “proper” serving size was a single handful, or around 2 oz. (56g). Not long ago, I thought people who weighed their meals were a little whacky, but  now I use my kitchen scale often to keep me on track. At least I don’t carry it around with me, or I’d really be off my trolley.

Recently, I stumbled upon “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think” by Brian Wansink, PhD, which described an experiment demonstrating how movie-goers ate more popcorn if served in a bigger bag, regardless of whether it tasted good or not. (more…)

Everyone (at least everyone who’s seen a tub of Quaker Oats) knows oatmeal is good for your heart. Now, if only everyone understood the most effective way to reduce cholesterol and dramatically improve your health is–plain and simple–by eliminating animal products from your diet.

In Honolulu airport recently, I glimpsed a large sign outside Starbucks with a photo of a bowl of oatmeal. Later, an article in January’s Entrepreneur Magazine confirmed the trend: While Starbucks in U.S. has offered oatmeal since 2008, more quick-serve restaurants–including, of all places, McDonalds–plan to offer healthier options, such as fiber rich and whole-grain oatmeal, to meet calorie and labeling requirements of federal healthcare reform.

Although eating oatmeal for breakfast is a far cry from everyone adopting a vegan diet, influential restaurant chains offering oatmeal (hopefully not laden with dairy products, sugar or chemical preservatives) can only help to make people more aware of health benefits of plant-based foods. (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…)

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…)

Sushi was one of the hardest foods to give up after I resolved to adopt a vegan diet. After all, my passion for sushi was one of the things that brought me to live in Japan in the first place. And while Japan is infamous for exclusive sushi shops that charge $500 per person, even low-end sushi (such as kaiten, or “conveyor belt” style) is fresh and inexpensive compared to other countries, making it hard to resist.

For some time after I had bid sayonara to meat, eggs and dairy, I continued the Japanese institution of going out for sushi with friends and family. At first, I ate varieties consisting of mostly vegetables such as natto (fermented soybeans) and green onions, cucumber, takuon (pickled radish), kampyo (dried gourd), as well as inarizushi (fried bean curd filled with sushi rice and black sesame seeds). (more…)