Raise your hand if you want Dreena Burton to be your mom. Because seriously? best. recipes. ever. She’s really good at this healthy food stuff.

Thanks to her, Bob and Jenna Torres I’ve decided to give up white flour and refined sugar. It’s really unhealthy for you and I think it’s the best thing to do. I’ve been without white flour for a week and I feel a lot better. A lot less jittery also.

I think I will only have all purpose flour on special occassions. Now, this will affect some of my sweets baking but I’m sure I”ll figure something out. Wheat is not the only flour, as I’m discovering… so far Spelt is gooood.

Well, I’m hoping I can stick with it.

So, here’s another diet that is essentially making claims that don’t seem to comply. I had shown this to a couple friends of mine as well and they thought the same. I will leave it to you to come up with what you think. So… yeah. I don’t want to start in on this one because if I start, I’ll likely not stop.

Why do you think carbs make us fat?

What regulates fat tissue are hormones, just as they do every other tissue and organ in the body. Most hormones work to flush fat out of the fat tissue; insulin works to put it there and so stores calories as fat. There’s nothing controversial about this. Insulin is secreted in response to

carbohydrates. It’s just the way the body works. The catch is that everyone pretty much agrees that your risk of chronic diseases increases with your weight. The reason public health author­ities tell us to lose weight is because if we lose weight it will lower our risk of heart dis­ease, dia­betes, cancer and Alzheimer’s dis­ease. So if carbs make us fat, that means they also increase our risk of all these dis­eases. It’s kind of hard to avoid this conclusion.

So, the first thing is the Paleo Diet (I call it the Caveman Diet).

I saw this a few months back and it’s just kind of stuck in my mind as something VERY problematic. It’s, in a way, a rehash of the whole Atkin’s fad diet. Do you really want to clog your arteries? I’m going to give you an excerpt which gives the foods one can and can’t eat and a little more. If you want to read more, please go to the above link.

Unsurprisingly, some dieticians are sceptical about eating like our ancient ancestors. They consider it a big, artery-choking mistake. “It’s a dangerous diet that’s going to kill a lot of people,” says Dr Dean Ornish, whose book Eat More, Weigh Less (Collins) advocates a low-fat vegetarian diet. “I’d love to be able to tell people that steaks and pork rinds are healthy foods, but they’re not. The evidence shows that those are the foods that cause people to get heart disease and cancer and to age prematurely.”

It would have been easy to have been deterred by such comments. But evidence in favour of eating hunter-gatherer style is increasing. Recently, scientists at Lund University in Sweden found that eating like a caveman could prevent you developing diabetes. They compared two groups of glucose-intolerant heart patients. The first group followed a Paleolithic diet; the second ate a conventional low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet.

After 12 weeks, the study found that those on the caveman diet had normal blood glucose levels, while those on the low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet had suffered an increase in blood sugar. Dr Staffan Lindeberg, the study’s leader, said: “If you want to prevent or treat diabetes type-2, it may be more efficient to avoid modern foods than to count calories or carbohydrates.”

This is old news to Ray Audette, author of Neanderthin (Saint Martins Press). He’s eaten like a caveman for more than 20 years, after being diagnosed with diabetes. He looked into ancient diets, and “realised that grains, beans, potatoes, milk and sugar would not be edible to me,” he says. “After I stopped eating them, my blood sugar went normal within the week. I’d also been suffering from rheumatoid arthritis for about a dozen years before that. It went away and never came back.”

This way of eating is not for everyone. I’ve always liked meat and eaten fruit and vegetables, so it was easy for me. Five years after going Stone Age, I still take a size 32 in jeans and continue to have more energy. So there’s no going back; I’m staying in the Stone Age.

The stone age diet: what to eat

• Rule of thumb: If you can’t gather it from a bush or tree, or spear it, it’s probably best not to eat it.
• What you can eat: Lean meat and fish. Fresh fruit and vegetables. Eggs. Dried fruit (without added sugar or vegetable oil). Nuts and seeds.
• What you can’t eat: Sugars, grains (no oats, wheat, barley or rye, etc), beans, peanuts (a bean not a nut) and starchy vegetables (such as potatoes). Dairy products.

Carnivore cuisine

Owsley Stanley, known as the Bear, has eaten an all-meat diet for nearly 50 years. When he was young, he read that Eskimos ate only meat and fish, yet were very healthy and fit. This convinced him that humans are meant to be purely carnivorous. “I have eaten as a total carnivore for 48 years,” he says. “I am nearly 72 and I have much the same body as I did at 30.”

Stanley came to notoriety in the 1960s as an LSD chemist, celebrated in songs by the Grateful Dead and Steely Dan. It was Stanley who created the Purple Haze acid made famous in the Jimi Hendrix song.

Stanley recently posted his seven rules for healthy eating on the internet. They are:

• Eat only food from animals
• No vegetables
• Limit liver intake
• Avoid milk (except for butter and cheese)
• Eat as much fat as you like
• Don’t cook your food much
• Avoid salt

Stanley had a heart attack in recent years, but he blames it on the broccoli and other”poisonous” vegetables his mother used to feed him as a boy. (Stanley’s website is at www.thebear.org)

So, I’ve been trying to come up with exactly what the hell I should put on here. I think it will be a commentary on the life around me (both on and off-line).

With this having been said, I tend to watch vegan_snark on livejournal and some one from my friends list posted something that really annoyed me.

The question:

“Is it healthy to feed a newborn a vegan diet? How about the 2-10 crowd?”

One of the responses:

“Ever watched House?
It’s really not a good idea to do the vegan thing when they are infants or little kids.”

Friend’s:

is house REALLY where you learn about how the world works?

Response:

Obviously.
Lol, no i honestly have no idea whether that has any medical credit to it. I’m assuming it does because they have researchers on board and they research the different cases they are.
But yes. House is the center of the universe. obviously.

What I wanted to say but couldn’t because I’m not a member and haven’t been approved, yet:

The episode of House you’re referring to had a vegan family but it wasn’t the veganism that hurt the child. She had a previously undiagnosed health issue. You should recall that the mother’s uncle was an actual dietician and had told them how to feed their child.
If you need proof of a healthy vegan child go to veganlunchbox.blogspot.com.

If you’re going to try to use something to prove your point, make sure you know what the hell is going on. kthnxb Now, I’m going to go eat my melon while cuddling with my furbaby.

Hey, I’m still alive and am trying to come up with a way to utilize this journal while still not having to be all, “Oh look what I ate!” I am not talking badly of those sites, but I just don’t have the time. My hours with school are mad crazy and I rarely sleep anymore. So please bear with me while I try to figure out a format. I figure what I could do is post interesting things from a vegan’s perspective and the occasional recipe.

I hope this is something that you all would like to see.

I always welcome some input!

I’ve been a vegan for a month! And to celebrate?

•  Snickerdoodles
• Chipper Chocolate Chips
• Spaghetti with “meatballs”

Was it good? Oh hell yeah. Since I’ve never really had snickerdoodles I obsessed over the taste with my family and they think it tastes just like the original cruelty-filled version. The chipper chocolate chips are pretty good as well. They ended up having a heavier feel on the tongue but it wasn’t that bad. The dough? Totally eatable. I kept trying to sneak bites… So if you ever want to have a cliched break-up girly get-together complete with cookie dough this is the one to use.

And, I used to scoff at recipes that touted maple syrup, but it leaves an interesting aftertaste… and this is coming from some one who hates maple syrup. And it must be the real thing, not the imitation shit that’s so cheap.

Anway, I’m going to go for now but I think I’m slowly figuring out what I want to do with my blog. <3

All you guys know that I’ve started a new diet, and to celebrate my vegan monthiversary, I wanted to give out a bit of information.  While diets are generally better and healthier for the person doing it, there are some that are dangerous, but aren’t getting the coverage they need.  Here’s one of them: calorie restriction.  This is a link to a great article that talks about the diet, and how it can actually be a disorder in disguise.  Eat healthy, everyone.  No diet is worth your life.

Go vegetarian to save money

Staples such as rice, corn and beans can make trips to a grocery store less expensive. But the biggest savings may come in health-care costs years later.

By Scott McCredieWhat visitor to Whole Foods (aka “Whole Paycheck”) hasn’t stared in slack-jawed wonder at bluefoot mushrooms imported from Europe ($39.99 per pound), off-season organic grapefruit from Texas ($2.49 per softball-size fruit), organic almond butter ($14.99 a pound) or pine nuts ($13.99 a pound)?

In a world of $1 double cheeseburgers, it’s no wonder that many people suspect that a vegetarian diet is more expensive than one that includes meat.

But that’s generally not true. And though it’s difficult to tally the savings of illnesses or diseases avoided with a plant-based diet, the financial worth of good health is unquestionable.

Vegetarianism could extend your life by several years, as well as lower your risk of heart disease, cancer and dementia. It’s better for the planet, reducing water usage and global-warming gases. And it certainly improves the health of the cow or pig you would have devoured.

The cost depends largely on what course of vegetarianism you choose to follow:

• Many people keep a diet that’s known as mostly vegetarian — a typical American diet minus the red meat. Vegetarians drop poultry and seafood.
• A lacto-vegetarian eats dairy products.
• An ovo-vegetarian eats eggs.
• A pescetarian eats fish.
• A vegan eats no animal products at all.
• A fruitarian eats only fruit.

Basics are easy on the wallet

Most of the staples of a vegetarian diet are cheap. In fact, most of the world’s people eat a mostly vegetarian diet made up of inexpensive commodities such as beans, rice and corn.If you drop red meat, poultry and fish from your diet, you’ll find plant proteins cheaper than the equivalent amount of animal protein. The cheapest cuts of beef, such as ground round, average $3 per pound in U.S. cities (lean and extra lean); boneless chicken breasts cost $3.40 a pound; and canned tuna is about $2 per pound.

Contrast that with dried beans and lentils at less than $1 a pound and rice well below $1 per pound. (Although Whole Foods offers expensive wild rice at $6.99 a pound, it also has basic brown rice for 69 cents per pound. And though pine nuts are exorbitant, you can get sunflower seeds, with nearly the same amount of protein, at a fraction of the price.)

Even tofu, the chicken of the vegetarian world, is usually well under $2 a pound.

But when you try to dress up plants as meat, costs skyrocket. Soy hot dogs, for example, cost $5 a pound; turkey hot dogs are less than half that.

Fresh, canned, frozen or organic

Produce is little trickier to compare, largely because vegetarians consume a much greater volume. (Most Americans now eat only three servings a day, on average, compared with the seven to nine servings recommended for optimum health.)The prices of fruits and vegetables vary widely with the season and source. Locally grown fruits and vegetables are sometimes cheaper than those imported from far away and can be much cheaper in summer when there’s an abundance. Of course, canned and frozen varieties are available year-round.

If you take the plunge into organics, the price may double or triple compared with nonorganic produce. Why does organic produce cost so much more? The answer is that organic fruits and veggies are usually not grown on an industrial scale, so efficiencies aren’t as great. There are also significant costs involved in switching farmland from nonorganic to organic status. And there’s a lot more manual labor involved, such as weeding by hand.

A payoff in better health

In the long run, no matter how much you spend on a vegetarian or semivegetarian diet, you’ll likely see a payoff in better health, lower risk of chronic disease and reduced health-care costs compared with someone who eats a typical American diet.”Years of poor nutrition habits can lead to chronic disease,” said Ryan Andrews, a dietitian and exercise physiologist with the Johns Hopkins Weight Management Center in Baltimore. “These chronic diseases can have tremendous costs leading into old age. A bypass surgery or angioplasty procedure can cost nearly $60,000.”

Health insurance carriers have begun urging lifestyle changes to reduce the risk of chronic disease — and, not incidentally, soaring health-care costs. Those are estimated to be climbing 6% a year, an “unsustainable level,” said Scott Forslund, the communications director for Premera Blue Cross, which serves Washington state and Alaska.

Heart disease is the major target of this effort, so Premera is starting a program to educate the people it insures about the importance of controlling blood pressure, cholesterol, body mass index and blood sugar. Research shows that a more plant-based diet improves all of these key health indicators.

“The connection between a vegetarian diet and reducing the costs of these high-impact health conditions is clear as a bell,” Forslund said.

But there are no discounts for practicing vegetarianism under the current system.

If your healthful habits prevent a chronic disease, your insurance company or employer saves money. What about you? Well, savings may come your way in the form of pocketing the co-insurance fees you would have paid for doctor visits or medication. If you have a health savings account or individual catastrophic plan, you’ll definitely save by staying healthier.

Better quality of life

Dollars and cents aside, how much is it worth to live without heart disease, cancer or diabetes for the last decades of your life? How much is it worth to lower your risk of dying?Life insurance companies actually put a figure on it. Most companies require a fairly extensive physical exam before issuing a private policy. Although they don’t ask about diet, they look at cholesterol, blood sugar, body mass index, blood pressure, family history and tobacco use. People they consider the healthiest — those at the least risk of dying — will be charged roughly half the annual premium of someone on the other end of the scale. For a 54-year-old man with a $1 million policy over 20 years, that would amount to $2,500 a year versus $5,000.

With this kind of savings, you could afford to buy a few ounces of bluefoot mushrooms — or an occasional organic, grass-fed, beef tenderloin at $26.99 a pound.

Here are a few practical tips on how to save money with a vegetarian or mostly vegetarian diet:

• If you include an occasional piece of flesh (of whatever kind) in your diet, try to limit yourself to four or five ounces, which is about the size of a deck of cards.
• If you want to buy private life insurance, wait until you’ve been on a vegetarian diet long enough to improve your key health indicators (body mass index, cholesterol, etc.). It could save you thousands of dollars when an insurer reviews the results of your physical.
• Buy vegetable protein in bulk. Dried beans, rice, oatmeal and other similar commodities last a long time if properly stored, and they are far cheaper in larger quantities.
• If you get discouraged by the blandness of a vegetarian diet, buy cookbooks that explore Indian, Malaysian, Chinese or South American cuisines. Mixing novel spices and ingredients may perk up your taste buds and make the transition easier.
• If you can’t afford or prefer not to buy organic produce, remember that most experts think the nutritional benefits of eating conventionally grown fruits and vegetables outweigh the possible negative effects of pesticide residues.

Original posted here.

No sex, please, you’re a carnivore. A new phenomenon in New Zealand is taking the idea of you are what you eat to the extreme.Vegansexuals are people who do not eat any meat or animal products, and who choose not to be sexually intimate with non-vegan partners whose bodies, they say, are made up of dead animals.

The co-director of the New Zealand Centre for Human and Animal Studies at Canterbury University, Annie Potts, said she coined the term after doing research on the lives of “cruelty-free consumers”.

Cruelty-Free Consumption in New Zealand: A National Report on the Perspectives and Experiences of Vegetarians and other Ethical Consumers asked 157 people nationwide about everything from battery chickens to sexual preferences.

Many female respondents described being attracted to people who ate meat, but said they did not want to have sex with meat-eaters because their bodies were made up of animal carcasses.

“It’s a whole new thing – I have not come across it before,” said Potts.

One vegan respondent from Christchurch said: “I believe we are what we consume, so I really struggle with bodily fluids, especially sexually.”

Another Christchurch vegan said she found non-vegans attractive, but would not want to be physically close to them.

“I would not want to be intimate with someone whose body is literally made up from the bodies of others who have died for their sustenance,” she said.

Christchurch vegan Nichola Kriek has been married to her vegan husband, Hans, for nine years.

She would not describe herself as vegansexual, but said it would definitely be a preference.

She could understand people not wanting to get too close to non-vegan or non-vegetarians.

“When you are vegan or vegetarian, you are very aware that when people eat a meaty diet, they are kind of a graveyard for animals,” she said.

Taken from here.

What do you all think about this?

I can see where it would be more difficult–especially in two months of being meat-free just the smell of cooking meat kills me.  So,  yes, give me your thoughts.

My life has hit a spectacular all-time bore. I need to get back to the forum as well… I’ve just been reading or playing DDR and have been antisocial.

However, I’d learned that Walgreens now sells the J/A/S/O/N products that I’ve heard so many speak of. I really like it and it’s much cheaper than Lush. I also don’t have to drive two hours just to purchase it. And it’s cheaper on the whole. It’s definitely something to check out if you’re in the market for a new shower gel. Quite lovely. They have a few scents: Tea Tree Oil, Aloe and Lavendar. I don’t know if they had other ones but that’s what I’d seen and let me tell you: The lavendar smells lovely. Oh, and their suntan lotion (for kids) works magnificently. I’m the palest girl .ever. and it kept me from burning for 5.5 hours out in the sun. I usually burn within 15-30 minutes. So, buy it!

Anyone have any thoughts on that Castille Soap? I saw all the religous-seeming writing on it and it kind of creeped me out… but then I also remember it being mentioned in the forums that it may not be vegan? I’m not sure. I didn’t think to check the ingredients with my ipod list of animal ingredients. (By the way, if you don’t have it and read labels, get it here.)

My lovely friend Carol sent me two cook books in the mail and I can’t wait to try recipes from them! (Thanks dear! I LOVE YOU!) And you need to come back home soon so I can cook some vegan yum yums for you.

Something else that is helpful: A list of companies that do test on animals and a list that doesn’t.

Gonna go for now. <3