The Great Honey Debate.

The common definition of vegan is one who abstains from eating, wearing, using, or otherwise consuming animal products and by-products, so it is immediately clear that someone who identifies as vegan does not eat meat, eggs, or dairy. Honey, however, is often forgotten, and is also widely debated in vegan circles. I will admit that honey didn’t automatically occur to me when I first went vegan four years ago–but after I did my research, I decided to eliminate it from my diet. Admittedly, it is probably the ingredient I am most lax on (if I accidentally consume beer, for example, that I find out later contained honey, I feel guilty but not ill over it). I do, however, feel ill over colony collapse.

In 2006, Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) started wiping out honey bees in alarming quantities. Colony Collapse Disorder occurs when worker bees abandon their colony and leave behind their queen. This phenomena startled scientists and beekeepers as few dead bees are found near the hive, and reserves of both honey and pollen remain. There are a few suspected causes of CCD – among them increased pests, new disease, pesticide, climate change, and stress from transportation.

Honey bees are critical to bountiful harvest, contributing upwards of $14 billion to the value of U.S. crops alone. When bees gather nectar and pollen, they provide the very important service of pollinating the very plants we harvest and eat. It is estimated that two-thirds of the country’s colonies travel the U.S. annually pollinating crops, and in California alone, one million colonies are used to pollinate the state’s almond crops.

Though CCD numbers have been improving, honey bees are still at risk, and thus, so is our food (and the food we feed our livestock). There are a few great alternatives to honey as well, such as maple syrup and agave syrup. Both options provide similar textures and sweetness, and can be used in many recipes that traditionally call for honey. There are great alternatives to the beeswax traditionally used in candles, as well. Soy candles, anyone? And, as someone who suffers from year-round allergies, it’s not long after a sneezing fit hits before the suggestions roll in to consume local, organic honey to keep the seasonal allergies at bay. Fortunately, this myth has largely been debunked.

I’ve found a great resource that explains the ins and outs of the honey cultivation process and explores the Great Honey Debate in detail, for those who are interested.

As with everything, I recommend educating yourself fully on the practices used to obtain and create the food with which you nourish your body. Be good to your body–it’s the best tool you’ll ever have, and you only get one.

Vitamin D deficiency, and how I became a science experiment.

For as long as I can remember, I have felt like something is just not right with my health. I have a general feeling of malaise and lethargy that predated my veganism and seems to get worse with my age. When I get injured, it takes my body an incredibly long time to heal. I scar easily. I am susceptible to aches and pains. I sleep, a lot. I am constantly excusing my joints for hurting by saying “hmm, I must have just slept wrong last night.”

I avoided the doctor for many years out of fear and anxiety about what might be wrong with me. Around the age of 22, I started pursuing answers for my ailments when I experienced something I could no longer ignore. My muscles were constantly twitching, all over my body, but not a violent and obvious twitch–the kind of twitch that only I knew about because it wasn’t noticeable from the outside. This was when I discovered the term invisible illness. Things that are invisible are not taken seriously. I saw a neurologist for many months who kept telling me that my vitamin D was low and maybe if I just took this supplement, the symptoms would cease. I didn’t take him seriously. He suggested I had a rare disease–Isaacs’ Syndrome–which, at the time, had been studied very little. Over time, the symptoms disappeared. I chalked it up to stress and never thought about it again.

When I was 25, my health issues cropped up again. I had been running, hard, and my knees started to dislike me very much. When I was 15, I had my ACL reconstructed in my left knee, so it was a gamble any time I ran–which knee would hurt? The knee with the existing injury, or the other knee, which is constantly overcompensating? I would feel fine upon bedtime and wake up with knees so stiff I could barely make it down my stairs. I was referred to an orthopedist who said the words I didn’t want to hear: “You might have to stop running.” Being in pain all the time wasn’t worth it to me, so I did stop running. I also stopped eating well, and I started to pack on the pounds again. My blood pressure crept up, and so did my cholesterol.

Present day, the past six months have been some of the most physically painful of my life. I’ve been experiencing chronic hip pain that my doctor can’t figure out. Also, I’m 27, so when I show up with concerns typically reserved for the geriatric population, I’m not exactly taken seriously. I’ve undergone several blood tests over the past three months and only two things seem consistent: 1) There is inflammation, somewhere, but the location and cause are not determinable by blood (and so, an auto-immune disorder could be present). And 2) I have a severe and persistent vitamin D deficiency.

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Vitamin D deficiency is extremely common, especially in people who are vegan or otherwise not obtaining enough vitamin D-rich foods in their diet. It is also common among people who do not spend enough time in the sun, or people with darker skin. The typical symptoms include bone pain and muscle weakness. Vitamin D and calcium are very closely related: when vitamin D is deficient, the body cannot absorb as much calcium. When calcium levels are low, bones become brittle and susceptible to breaks, fractures, and disease such as osteoporosis. Higher blood levels of vitamin D are also linked to lower risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and depression.

The test that is ordered to determine vitamin D levels is the Vitamin D, 25-Hydroxy blood test. The standard range, according to this test (and there is much debate about this), is 30.0 – 80.0 ng/mL. My levels have been hovering around 15.0 ng/mL each time I’ve been tested.

This concerned me, because I take a vegan multivitamin, which I assumed was giving me adequate amounts of everything I needed specifically as a vegan. It turns out, my multivitamin does give me 400 IU, which is 100% of the daily recommended value. However. I have not been taking my multivitamin perfectly (in fact, I forget to take it quite often). Additionally, just because the vitamin contains 100% of the daily recommended value does not mean that my body is actually absorbing that amount. And, it can take several months to improve vitamin D levels.

Dietary vitamin D is primarily found in fortified foods, so vegans must take special care to consume vitamin-enriched tofu, soy milk, or soy yogurt, to name a few. It is also important for vegans to choose foods enriched by Vitamin D2 rather than D3, as D3 is derived from fish oil or lanolin. Exposure to sunlight is perhaps the best way to increase vitamin D levels–10-15 minutes per day is sufficient for fair-skinned people, 20+ minutes for people with darker skin, and 30 minutes for the elderly population. It is increasingly difficult for us to spend that time outside with our busy schedules–if your schedule does allow for some time in the sun, don’t forget sunscreen!

My doctor has personally prescribed me a once-a-week vitamin D2 supplement – 50,000 IU, to be taken for the next 12 weeks. I’m not saying that my vitamin D deficiency is the root cause of all of my health issues. I am saying, though, that as a vegan, there are specific needs to be considered for optimum health. Vitamin D is of specific concern, as is Vitamin B12–which can be obtained from the plant source of nutritional yeast. I will report back to see how my vitamin therapy is going. In the meantime: what are your experiences with vitamin D, calcium, and vitamin B-12 as a vegan or vegetarian? What works (and doesn’t work) for you?

Just because it’s vegan, doesn’t mean you have to eat it.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of being a junkfood vegan, especially now that veganism is more widespread and mainstream. There are plenty of junk foods that are “accidentally vegan” (think: fritos, oreos, skittles…) and now, due to the popularity of the vegan diet, there are plenty of “knock-off” items specifically made vegan, such as frozen pizzas, macaroni and cheese, plenty of meat substitutes, sweets, marshmallows…the list can go on. If it exists, it’s probably been veganized by now. They even make vegan shrimp!

When I first tried the vegan diet, it was specifically to eat cleaner, so I avoided a lot of the processed convenience foods and focused my diet on beans, lentils, and other healthy sources of proteins. (I also didn’t live near enough to a Whole Foods-type store that is stocked with vegan treats, so I had to make due with what I could get my hands on locally.) This required me to be creative and inventive in the kitchen–and I had a lot of trials and tribulations with foods I wasn’t familiar with, like beets and squash. I really didn’t know how to cook before going vegan, and I had to learn out of necessity. In my midwestern town, it was very difficult to find vegan meals at restaurants, and so cooking for myself was my main source of sustenance. First I discovered foods that I call “lightly processed” because they are processed foods, but I deem them less bad–items like tofu and seitan.

When I discovered seitan, a world was opened. Vegan philly cheesesteaks, vegan stroganoff, and any meal that traditionally contained beef or chicken was suddenly veganizable. My favorite vegan recipe to this day, stroganoff, may have nutritional yeast (a wonderful plant-based source of B-12) as an ingredient, but it also has a cup of vegan sour cream–which has a lot of chemicals that should probably be eaten sparingly, like carrageenan (which deserves its own post.)

Seitan was kind of my gateway drug. I discovered that I could veganize many of my favorite childhood meals–so cooking became less about nutrition and more about taste. I love that there are products like vegan pizzas and vegan macaroni and cheese, because indulging in comfort foods, moderately, is not inherently bad. The problem is when those convenience foods become your sole diet, which is a trap I fell into. When you stop consuming actual vegetables, you’re probably doing veganism wrong.

A while ago, I came across this article on VegNews – How I Became a Healthy Vegan. It touts the idea that “just because something is vegan, doesn’t mean you have to eat it.” I will admit that when I am somewhere, anywhere, that unexpectedly serves a vegan treat, I feel compelled to buy it and eat it, just because it’s vegan. I am still in the mindset that it is a rare treat to be accommodated as a vegan, even though the tables are turning and more and more restaurants are becoming veg-conscious. Especially now that I live 4 minutes from a Whole Foods, there is no urgency in consuming a vegan treat. I am trying to adopt an “it’s there,  it will be there tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day” mentality–in other words, I don’t have to eat that vegan chocolate chip cookie today.

In the end, what is important is this: that the food you eat makes you feel good, sustained, full, and well. I have decided that vegan junkfood does not make me feel those things. I know enough about myself that putting it on the “do not eat” list will only make me want it more–so I am okay with moderately splurging. For now, I am going to get back to my healthy vegan roots, and welcome lentils, beans, sweet potatoes, and quinoa back into my life. A recent spell of health issues indicates that I am probably not getting the nutrients my body needs to thrive, and while I do take a vegan multivitamin, I prefer that the foods I put into my body be my main source of the fuel it needs.

What are your thoughts on vegan convenience foods and “accidentally vegan” junkfood? Do you indulge? Where do you draw the line? Are you adamant about obtaining the nutrition you need through your food?

 

The Stigma of Being Vegan

Do you remember the teachers that would call on students even when they weren’t raising their hands? This was the bane of my existence in school–and not because I didn’t know the answers. I am a person who is vastly uncomfortable with the spotlight. I will go to great lengths to avoid unwanted attention…and yet, I seem to have a tendency of living my life in ways that other people feel encouraged to comment on. Being vegan falls under this category.

I’m a non-conformist at heart, but non-conformist lite. When I was a vegetarian, nobody wanted to fight me on my philosophies. People just shrugged–it was considered commonplace for a girl to not eat meat “to watch her figure” and nobody questioned it. When I stopped eating eggs and dairy, something strange happened. Suddenly everybody had an opinion about what I was doing with my body. Suddenly everybody was an expert on macros and ethics. I was expected to engage in spirited spars–and honestly, I didn’t care to. I became vegan initially because I wanted to lose weight–period. But even that was an uncomfortable topic (though I preferred it over discussing the conditions of factory farms with people who preferred to believe that their chickens ran wild and free. “The food I buy isn’t farmed that way,” a co-worker told me. #NotAllFood. #NotAllFarms.)

I’m not going to be a crusader. That’s just not me. People are going to believe what they want to believe, and I never felt like I could make a difference. The stigma of being The Preachy Vegan drove me in the opposite direction. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar–I’d rather take the friendly approach to veganism and let veg-curious friends and family seek me out for knowledge or info (or recipes!) I love to surprise my friends and family with traditionally meat- and dairy-laden foods, done vegan-style. I impressed my father with pancakes. I’ve impressed friends with potato salad and stroganoff. I bake a mean rocky road cookie. These interactions are far more empowering to me as a vegan than a dinnertime debate.

But still, despite my personal methods of handling myself, I am marginalized and treated like an unwanted intruder just for being vegan. It seems kind of ridiculous, right? We’re talking about food here. You’re threatened by my cashew queso and kale chips, bro? Me eating differently has a funny way of making my dinner companions’ walls go up. You can find me apologizing at any function that serves food (so…most functions) to friends, family, colleagues, waitors, and chefs alike. “I’m so sorry–I’m the weird vegan. Is there anything on your menu I can customize? I’m sorry again.”

A group of neo-nazis recently invaded a vegan cafe and started throwing sausages at patrons. I wish I could say that this completely unnecessary act of cruelty surprised me, but it doesn’t. If you scroll into the comments of the story, you quickly find the human race’s favorite vegan joke: “How do you know someone is a vegan? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.” Let me add that to the list of Uncreative Things I’m Tired of Hearing–along with other such top hits as “but where do you get your protein?” and “but cows aren’t killed for their milk!”

I also don’t particularly enjoy ruining another person’s appetite. I don’t ever answer questions like “why don’t you eat eggs?” (I found a bloody egg once and I haven’t touched an egg since) or “what’s so bad about dairy?” (the amount of pus in dairy products really skeeves me out) honestly at the dinner table. That would give my dinner companions justification to actually despise me. But I also don’t ask people their philosophical reasons for continuing to eat meat, eggs and dairy. That’s their business, not mine.

I’m proud to say that I know some really fantastic people who don’t single me out. They don’t make me explain myself and they don’t call on me when my hand isn’t raised. But there is a reason why I identified as a “closet vegan” for close to a year: I’m not in this for the attention. I am not going to try to convert you to veganism. The only time you’ll hear me talking about being vegan to a group of non-vegans is when 1) someone asks me yet again why I am vegan (you’d think I’d have a stock response planned after nearly 5 years…), or 2) I’m really freaking hangry because there are no vegan options at this establishment and I forgot my emergency store of nuts and fruit and OMG I’m going to have a meltdown.

And food is only part of the equation. If you really want someone to look at you like you’ve sprouted another head, start talking about vegan shoes. We’ll get to that in a future post.

If you’re vegan or vegetarian, I’d love to hear how you handle the prying questions and open disgust. You’re probably ballsier than I am, so I could learn a thing or two from you!

 

“Veginning,” Again.

Four and half years ago, I did the best thing for myself and my health that I have ever done: I went vegan. I was 23, overweight, unhappy, and dissatisfied with my life. I was never one for New Year’s resolutions, but that year, I decided to try a New Year’s Experiment: could I eat vegan for one day? One week? One month? One year?

You should know something about me: I have a history of indecisiveness as a general rule, but every so often, a decision presents itself to me and I thrust myself wholly and completely into it. My foray into veganism happened this way, just as my foray into vegetarianism almost exactly 10 years prior had.

I wasn’t a very well-educated vegetarian. It was a decision I had made when I was 14 on a spring break roadtrip with my family. We stopped late at night to eat at an iHop or a Denny’s or somewhere that serves breakfast all day, and I said to my parents, “Have you ever even really thought about what an egg is before? It’s kind of gross. I don’t think I’m going to eat eggs anymore.” They were eating scrambled eggs at that moment and asked me to please be quiet, but it was something I thought about for the remainder of our vacation. When I came back from our trip, I gave up red meat, and a week later, decided to give up all meat.

As a vegetarian, I never educated myself about my diet. I still ate dairy products and I assumed that I was getting plenty of the things I needed. I didn’t try tofu until I became vegan–and I didn’t know that marshmallows weren’t even vegetarian until I became vegan. I didn’t know that many Mexican restaurants add lard to their refried beans. I didn’t think to ask about the stock in my vegetable soups I would order at restaurants. I was clueless. And I loved cheese. And that was that.

I struggled with my weight through college and learned about veganism from a coworker when I was 23. For Christmas, I was baking cookies for the department, and wanted to be sure to include her. I googled a vegan recipe for oatmeal cookies and then had the most eye-opening visit to the grocery store I’ve ever had. I wasn’t sure what the rules were. The internet told me that refined sugar is not vegan, that sweetened coconut flakes are not vegan because refined sugar is not vegan, and almost every package of nuts I looked at warned that they “may contain eggs or dairy due to the use of shared equipment…” I was feeling pretty defeated by the time I even made it home from the store, and then, the cookies themselves were a disaster. They didn’t taste sweet enough, they didn’t hold together, I felt like I was gifting my coworker a pile of cookie-shaped goo.

As someone who loves to bake, this presented a conundrum to me, and it was a challenge that excited me. I am going to learn to bake vegan, I thought. I felt that I needed to redeem myself after the cookie debacle. I invested in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, and Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar, of Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s Post Punk Kitchen. I even attempted to create my own cupcake recipe. (That failed.)

It is interesting that I was so invested in vegan baking, being that my ultimate decision to go vegan was fueled by my desire to eat healthier and be less tempted by sweets. I successfully lost 50 pounds the first year I was vegan, with the help of an overhaul in diet, a cutting back in beer and wine, and my new interest in running. I was hitting the gym most days after work and steadily working up from not being able to jog for even 30 seconds, to being able to run 5k with 10-minute splits. I felt amazing!

Life happened and my newly-formed healthy habits fell to the wayside. I broke up with my ex and got engaged and eventually married to my husband. I stopped running. I discovered Whole Foods’ convenient, processed vegan junkfood and desserts. I lost sight of the person I was and the person I wanted to be. It wasn’t until a couple of months ago that a visit to my doctor confirmed my suspicion that I had gained back almost half of the weight I had lost four years ago. And even then, I wasn’t motivated to do anything about it. I was dealing with some Serious Life Stuff and putting my personal fulfillment and enrichment above that, to be honest, didn’t even occur to me.

But it’s time that changed.

I recently embarked on a process of self-discovery, and I have committed myself to a number of goals and interests to help me achieve the happiness I am aiming to find. Veggie Vidi Vici means focusing on me, my health, my body, and my overall sense of satisfaction in life. I want to learn to be a better cook and I want to enjoy the process of feeding my body the nutritious foods it needs to operate at its highest efficiency. I want to be active again, and I want to shed some of the excess weight I have found myself packing back on. I want to continue to learn, to educate myself, to write, and to participate in my life with a creative and ambitious spirit.

This blog will be a lot of things–a place of self-discovery and growth, a place for recipes, for trials and tribulations, for failures and successes–and I am so excited about it. Join me as a “vegin,” again.