Vegan-ism

The How's and Why's of My Journey

 
By Kelly Anne Roth
 What Is VEGAN
• Most simply described as eating a
100% plant based diet

• Consume NO animal products:

o NO butter, cheese, milk, eggs, meat, fish or
poultry

•Also
called "Pure-vegetarian“ or "Strict-vegetarian"
 What Is VEGAN
**Some vegans refrain from wearing or
purchasing leather, wool, or silk do to the
animal cruelty that occurs from production of
these products....this is often referred to as
"Living a Vegan Lifestyle" rather than just
"Eating Vegan"
What I Did BEFORE I Became VEGAN
• Read many books on Vegan-ism before beginning to
make changes in my diet:

o Becoming Vegan, Written by two registered dietitians

o Skinny B%$&h, This book was funny and informative

o The McDougall Program: Twelve Days to Optimum

Health, by Dr. John McDougall
 Factors That Helped Me Become Vegan

• I realized it was the most Green Eating Option

• I had a serious weight issue, I tried a few recipes from the

McDougall Diet, and REALLY LIKED THEM

• I ordered a free"Guide to Cruelty Free Eating" from

www.veganoutreach.org

o CAUTION: Contains graphic images of cruelty in

factory farms
 Perks of Becoming Vegan
• There is no cholesterol in plant foods so becoming vegan
is an excellent way to lower cholesterol
• Studies have shown that vegetarian/vegan diets can
significantly reduce the risks of the following diseases:
o Obesity
o Fatal Ischemic Heart Disease
o Hypertension
o Diabetes
o Arthritis
o Colon Cancer
o Prostate Cancer in males AND.......
 Studies have shown that vegetarian/vegan diets can
significantly reduce the risks of:

DEATH FROM ALL

CAUSES!
This is reason enough for me to
remain VEGAN!
Results taken from The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

View Full Article at:

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/70/3/532S#SEC4
Associations between diet and cancer, ischemic heart disease, and all-cause mortality in non-
Hispanic white California Seventh-day Adventists, Gary E Fraser, 1999
 Please...Do Your Research!
• People have gotten VERY sick from becoming vegans in
unhealthy ways.
• Need to be extra careful to get all the nutrients you need
from foods...vegans must eat A LOT of food to obtain
proper nutrition.
o It is important to limit consumption of empty calories
such as potato chips or soda, and increase
consumption of vegetables, whole grains, soy, beans
and legumes.
• Make sure vitamin B-12 consumption is adequate or
supplemented.
 Vegan Dietary Guidelines
• Taken from the USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans - 2005
Vegetarians of all types can achieve recommended nutrient
intakes through careful selection of foods. These individuals
should give special attention to their intakes of protein, iron,
and vitamin B12, as well as calcium and vitamin D if
avoiding milk products. In addition, vegetarians could select
only nuts, seeds, and legumes from the meat and beans
group. At the 2,000-calorie level, they could choose about
1.5 ounces of nuts (~1/3 cup) and 2/3 cup legumes
instead of 5.5 ounces of meat, poultry, and/or fish.
http://www.health.gov/DIETARYGUIDELINES/dga2005/do
cument/html/chapter2.htm
 Vegan Protein Sources
• Tempeh 1 cup - 41 grams of Protein
• Soy Beans, cooked 1 cup - 29 grams Protein
• Lentils, cooked 1 cup - 18 grams Protein
• Tofu, firm 4 ozs - 11 grams Protein
• Quinoa, cooked 1 cup - 9 grams Protein
• Peanut butter 2 Tbsp - 8 grams Protein
• Veggie dog 1 link - 8 grams Protein
• Spaghetti, cooked 1 cup - 8 grams Protein
• Almonds 1/4 cup - 8 grams Protein
• TVP, cooked 1/2 cup - 8 grams Protein
• Sunflower seeds 1/4 cup - 6 grams Protein
 Menu Showing How Easy It
Can Be to Fill Protein
Requirements Protein (grams)
Breakfast: 1 cup Oatmeal 6
1 cup Soymilk 7
1 Bagel 9
Lunch: 2 slices Whole Wheat Bread 5
1 cup Vegetarian Baked Beans 12
Dinner: 5 oz firm Tofu 11
1 cup cooked Broccoli 4
1 cup cooked Brown Rice 5
2 Tbsp Almonds 4
Snack: 2 Tbsp Peanut Butter 8
6 Crackers 2
 TOTAL 73 grams Protein
Protein Recommendation for Male Vegan:
56-70 grams
• based on 0.8-1 gram of protein per kilogram body weight for 70
kilogram (154 pound) male

Protein Recommendation for Female Vegan

46-58 grams
• based on 0.8-1 gram of protein per kilogram body weight for 57.5
kilogram (126 pound) female] 46-58 grams

from: Protein in the Vegan Diet by Reed Mangels, Ph.D., R.D.

http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/protein.htm
 Please Note:

• Additional food should be added to these

menus to provide adequate calories and to
meet requirements for nutrients besides
protein.

**This is just an example to show how easily

protein requirements can be met without
meat!
 Iron Rich Food Choices
*Examples of amounts of foods providing 2mg iron*

From The Vegan Society Website

Type of food Quantity (g)
• Pistachios 14
• Cashews (roasted) 32
• Whole lentils 57
• Chick peas (boiled) 95
• Apricots (dried) 59
• Spinach (boiled) 125

http://www.vegansociety.com/food/nutrition/iron.php
 Calcium Sources
RDA is 1000 mg/day
• Tofu, 4 ounces 80-330 mg
• Calcium-fortified orange juice 8 ounces 300 mg
• Soy/Ricemilk, Ca-fortified, 8 ounces 200-300 mg
• Commercial soy yogurt, plain 6 ounces 80-250 mg
• Turnip greens, cooked 1 cup 249 mg
• Tempeh 1 cup 215 mg
• Kale, cooked 1 cup 179 mg
• Soybeans, cooked 1 cup 175 mg
• Okra, cooked 1 cup 172 mg

http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/calcium.htm
 Vitamins D and B12
• Most omnivores and vegans obtain the necessary
amounts of Vitamin D from sunlight and fortified foods

• There is much disagreement amongst researchers as to

vegan sources of B12. This is the only supplement
commonly suggested for vegans, and is readily available
in tablet form.
• The disagreement comes from whether or not plant
sources of B12 can be utilized by humans.
• Items such as soymilk and nutritional yeast are often
fortified with B12, but if you're not sure....Take the
supplement to be safe!
Why Vegan-ism is the greenest choice!
• The livestock sector is responsible for 18 percent of
greenhouse gas emissions!
• Livestock are also responsible for almost two-thirds (64
percent) of anthropogenic ammonia emissions, which
contribute significantly to acid rain and acidification of
ecosystems. (EPA)
– http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2008/02/25/AR2008022502472.html

– http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/index.html
If everyone went vegetarian just for
one day, the U.S. would save:
● 100 billion gallons of water
–enough to supply all the homes in New England for almost 4 months

● 1.5 billion pounds of crops otherwise fed to livestock

–enough to feed the state of New Mexico for more than a year!

● 70 million gallons of gas

– enough to fuel all the cars of Canada and Mexico combined with
plenty to spare

● 33 tons of antibiotics
If everyone went vegetarian just for
one day, the U.S. would prevent:
● Greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 1.2 million tons of CO2

● 3 million tons of soil erosion and $70 million in resulting

economic damages

● 4.5 million tons of animal excrement

● Almost 7 tons of ammonia emissions, a major air pollutant

Kathy Freston, Huffington Post. April 2, 2009.

http://www.alternet.org/environment/134650/the_startling_effects_of_going_vegetarian_for_
just_one_day/
 Ghent, Belgium
The Flemish city has declared Thursdays
as Veggie Day!

• http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1900958,00.html
Meatless Mondays!
 A couple more reasons:
• According to Environmental Defense, if every American skipped
one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetarian foods
instead, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking
more than half a million cars off of U.S. roads.

o See how easy it is to make an impact?

 A couple more reasons:
• Globally, we feed 756 million tons of grain to farmed
animals. As Princeton bio-ethicist Peter Singer notes in his
new book, if we fed that grain to the 1.4 billion people who
are living in abject poverty, each of them would be
provided more than half a ton of grain, or about 3 pounds
of grain/day -- that's twice the grain they would need to
survive!..."The problem is that we -- the relatively affluent --
have found a way to consume four or five times as much
food as would be possible, if we were to eat the crops we
grow directly."
 Celebrity Vegans:
• Alanis Morrisette •Kevin Nealon
• Casey Affleck •Natalie Portman
• Demi Moore •Portia de Rossi
•River Phoenix
• Elijah Wood
•Sandra Oh
• Ellen Degeneres •Toby Maguire
• Emily Deschanel •Weird Al Yankovic
• Keenan Ivory Wayans •Woody Harrelson
• “We say that however close you can be to
a vegan diet and further from the mean
American diet, the better you are for the
planet. It doesn’t have to be all the way to
the extreme end of vegan. If you simply
cut down from two burgers a week to one,
you’ve already made a substantial
difference.”
•
~ Gidon Eshel, University of Chicago, Geophysicist