Poisoned by Vitamins!

Being vegetarian I sometimes take a multi-vitamin to supplement my diet. But not all vitamins are good for you.

A lot of multivitamins have super-high dosage, which may be bad for us. Maximum does not mean optimum.

Also, our bodies cannot process synthetically-made vitamins as well as the vitamins naturally found in food. Not a surprise! Unfortunately, vitamin makers do not have to specify how vitamins are made.

This article explains the science behind this and advises you to detect the difference between natural and synthetic vitamin supplements by reading in between the lines on their labels:

The most notable difference between natural and synthetic vitamin supplements is in their claimed potencies. Natural vitamins as in plant foods are never highly concentrated. Nature provides us with balance, complexity and bioavailability but not with a high potency. Conversely, synthetic and crystalline (chemical isolated from natural source) vitamins do appear in high unnatural potencies.

When examining products labeled as natural vitamins, note that labels of truly natural food based vitamins, should indicate the exact natural source from which each of the vitamins is obtained. Simply put, if the vitamin concentrations are high and/or their natural sources aren't listed, most likely these vitamins are synthetic. Chemical sources for synthetic vitamin supplements include petrochemicals, coal tar, chemically manipulated sugar and inorganic minerals.

The take-away:

Get your vitamins from food, not supplements. They are meant to just be supplementary.

For vitamins, more does not mean better--get the vitamins that are less concentrated and more likely thus to be from natural sources.


Photo by takomabibelot

Why fermentation?

Culture your Food

I started fermenting after reading Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz, full of good recipes and tips and stories. He makes fermentation sound like fun, easy, delicious, and political—all of which it is.

Political: Because our food system is premised on mass production, which favors industrialization, sterility, uniformity, usually at the expense of nutrition and flavor, reclaiming food autonomy by making food ourselves is a political act.

Easy: And fermentation is easy! Mostly, what you need are ingredients + container + culture (what we call the mold or bacteria—I like to call them my beasties!) + time! Sandor says that fermenting vegetables is even easier than making yogurt, which is already pretty simple. I just need to find a large ceramic or glass jar. And patience to wait anywhere between 3 days and 3 years!!!!

Delicious: Plus, my kombucha, soy yogurt, tempeh, nut cheeses, strawberry honey wine/mead, preserved lemons are delicious! They are my babies! Actually, I take that back. I didn’t like the preserved lemons so much, but I may not have had the right recipes to help them shine.

Fun: I like having a more intimate relationship with what I eat. By making it, I can tweak it to my taste. But more than that, I like the rhythm it confers on my life. Making yogurt and kombucha every week gives my kitchen life a cycle. As spring wakes after winter’s hibernation, so relive kombucha and yogurt creation weekly or biweekly in my kitchen. I find certain comfort in making patterns in my life.

One of the most personally important reason is that, through fermentation, I participate in fertility—in the most extravagant understanding of the term. Other people may have plants and pets. I generate more life by feeding my beasties at the right temperature. Cultivating life in the right environment is easy. My beasties are resilient. In fact, they kill the germs that would make me sick. After I eat them in yogurt, they become a part of my internal microfloral landscape and keep me healthy and safe. I give to my bacteria communities and receive from them. Is it too much to claim that we are accountable to each other?

You can hear Sandor Katz speak on Awesome Pickle.

Nutritional tidbit of the day: I knew that table salt was bad for me. In the talk, Sandor tells me why: table salt is so cheap because they who make it don’t make money from selling it. How do the salt sellers make money then? They strip natural minerals from the sodium chloride and sell the minerals to vitamin producers! That explains why unrefined salt, though less processed, is more expensive than table salt. But it is better to get your minerals with your salt rather than in pill form. It is always better to eat whole foods rather than processed foods—and vitamins are processed!

Image from howsyrface (totally crazy image, no?)

Day 4 of no cow torture

Dairy products are products of cow torture!

This new vocabulary should help me stop liking products of tortured cow secretions.

Originally, I had planned to write about the things I have eaten since starting my two weeks of no cow torture that may have been made from the secretions of tortured cows. But being vegan is not about being perfect or being pure. I don’t need to be 100% dairy free. Animals don’t care about purity. Animals care about suffering less and not dying.

This 14-day experiment helps me see how much power I have to decrease suffering.

In these 14 days:

I break through my belief barriers and live my truth rather than live my excuses.

I take full pleasure in eating and pay closer attention to life rather than
sleepwalking through the suffering around me.

I open my heart and take responsibility for my power to end suffering, so as
to live large and fully.

In that spirit, I will NOT focus on what I ate that may have had crossed the line. Knowing what they are and why they tempt me will help me avoid them in the future, however. Mostly, I need to think before putting something in my mouth—that is the tagline of this blog: eat consciously! Don’t eat accidents!

Eating no dairy, Day Half

I got inspired to stop eating dairy for 14 days.

I already ate dairy on Day 1 of my 14-day experiment without eating dairy.

This morning I completely forgot as I spread some butter on my morning bread.

And then there were cookies at the office. Dutch stroopwafels! Unfortunately, I ate them without thinking and then fished the plastic bag out of the kitchen trash can. Under the tea leaf, I found out that the cookies were made with glucose syrup and butter as the first two ingredients.

Otherwise, I was so happy to know that the cinnamon bread I get at Beumer & Lutum every morning is made with margarine. It is vegan!

And my lunch was a raw vegan salad, as always: 1 cucumber, 1 yellow bell pepper, 2 tomatoes, a few brown button mushrooms, and a handful of almonds.

Depite the setbacks, I am not at all disappointed in myself. These bumps on the road are keys to staying vegan. Now I know my barriers to eating vegan: butter and free sweets lying around. Why do I love butter on good bread? And why do I love eating sweets, especially free sweets? When I figure these answers out, I can release them.

Eating Vegan Changes the World and Me

I followed the Internet machine's cookie crumbs and came to Sean Bonner's post about eating vegan to change the world. He has an excellent series of posts about how to change the world--specifically, the environment--through our own personal actions. Being vegan was the first suggestion because of the huge impact it could have on healing the environment.

I have been toying with eating vegan for almost two months now. I am not fully vegan yet, but I am making progress towards it. Right now, I am learning the skills to make eating vegan delicious and triumphant for myself. For example, I am buying less dairy and eggs, making delicious and nutritious dairy substitutes (rather than just buying icky processed soy dairy substitutes), and expanding my repertoire of vegan recipes.

I don't want to force myself to eat vegan. One day I will find eating vegan makes me happy, healthy, and satiated, and I won't want anything else. For now, I have to confess, I just ate a homemade crustless quiche because that was what the leftovers in the fridge called out to me to make. I am not ready yet. But I am learning more and eating more vegan every day.

For the longest time, I couldn't imagine going vegan because that would have meant drinking coffee with soy or rice milk. I loved the bitter cut with creamy, and soy and rice milk just don't cut it because they are too watery. So in February, I just decided to stop drinking coffee. Then I don't add milk to my drink! Now I drink mostly green tea in the morning, because it is the only kind of tea that I don't want to cut with milk.

It is now almost May, and I haven't drunk coffee in a cup--even though I have had a few tiramisu slices and a scoop of accidentally-ordered mocca latte ice cream. It was quite easy, like my going vegetarian. One day, without much forethought, the idea just occurred to me to eat vegetarian or to replace coffee with tea. And even though sometimes I see how much easier and convenient it might be to eat meat or drink coffee, I don't go back. Like those phases of my life are in the past now, dead to me.

The irony is that I occasionally drink a chai or tea latte. Yes, I quit my caffeine addiction in order to support my vegan exploration but still indulge in frothy milk drinks. Perhaps one day my brain will decide that the time is right for me to eat no more dairy or meat products. And I won't ever go back.

Carol J. Adams, author of The Sexual Politics of Meat, says : "You think change is too hard; not changing is harder, you just haven’t found that out yet."

Pros and cons of eating vegan

Photo by striatic

One of the reasons I started this blog was to figure out for myself how I want to eat with integrity. I have been reading more about eating vegan as well as eating raw, and for a long time now, I have tried to eat as organic and local as possible. However, none of these labels really fit the way I want to eat. At least, not in a way that would be in alignment with my values.

Veganism aligns with my values to not harm animals, but the way many vegans eat is counter to my food values. The fact that an organic vegetarian/vegan fast food restaurant could be lauded boggles my mind. Of course, sometimes I do crave a simple veggie burger with a side of fries and a shake, but vegan fast food goes against a few values I feel strongly about. I believe that taking the trouble to cook good, real, whole food is worthwhile. And any movement that celebrates substituting meat with industrially-produced chemical-based meat substitutes rather than delicious vegetables gives me pause to join them.

For a long time I have been attracted to veganism's ethical treatment of animals, but so much of vegan food depend on meat and dairy substitutes. Many of these have unhealthy flavor and mouthfeel additives, especially those made with soy protein isolate. Whether I care to replace meat or not is another topic, but soy protein isolate is not healthy. For one, Monsanto monopolizes the soy bean and, as a result, the soybean is heavily genetically-modified. Worse, soy protein isolate is heavily processed and far from a whole food. Soy protein isolate is the protein part of the soybean separated from the soybean's fat and carbs through heavy chemical processing. Then fake flavor, color and nutrients are added back to it via more processing. If anything, soy protein isolate is the industrial vegan food par excellence. Many soy products like soy ice cream and soy cheese contain soy derivatives.*

Besides the fact that vegan food often seemed fake, vegan food sometimes did not seem so delicious. In fact, vegan recipes almost seemed apologetic for substituting meat. Why would one want to replace meat in their vegan meal, in any case? To maintain a meat-ish dish as the center of a meal seemed to express that vegetables, legumes, grains, and fruits could not center a meal like meat or a meat-like substitute could. Fake meat is not only usually made from unhealthy soy derivatives but also disrespectful of the flavor that vegetables, legumes, grains, mushrooms, and fruits bring to the table.

In addition to eating real, whole, AND delicious food, I also want to explore and respect local food cultures of where I lived and traveled. When I lived in France for almost three years, as a vegetarian I couldn't eat most of France's traditional meat-based food, but I feasted on cheese discoveries, delicate buttery pastries, and glorious sourdough bread. Of course, as a vegan, I could explore its alcohol cultures, its vegetables and fruits, but it just seemed too limited socially because I love getting to know cultures through its foods.

And one last thing that turns me off about veganism: the divisiveness of its militancy. I don't believe that all militancy has to be divisive, but the way many vegans approach their militancy seems divisive to me. I respect the sanctity of life, but friendship is also sacred to me as well as respecting people's decisions for themselves. More on that later...

* More information about soy: Vegan chef Lagusta separates the good soy from the bad soy in a very informative article. Out of all the vegans whom I have met (online or in person), she is the one who really made me seriously consider eating vegan with her delicious vegan truffles.

Welcome to Eat with Integrity!

I am starting this blog to help me eat with integrity. Part of eating with integrity will include defining what integrity means to me.

For a while now, I have been playing with the idea of going raw for 30 days. But I decided that I didn't want to be 100% raw. Then I started reading the Vegan Sourcebook and decided that I want to try eating vegan for 30 days. The temptations are many, even when I have been a vegetarian for almost eleven years.

One of my challenges going vegan is that I don't like soy or rice milk in my coffee. It simply isn't creamy or thick enough. I thought about substituting coconut milk, but eventually settled on the simpler and healthier solution of cutting coffee out of my morning routine. I replaced it with some nice green tea which I supplement with fennel or mint whenever I need a little something extra.

So while I am not able to eat completely vegan yet, as a by-product, this month, February 2009, I am going without coffee.

I would like to explore the twists and turns of my eating journey as well as document my DIY education in eating healthy with integrity.

Eating with integrity means eating according to my values. Some values I would like to live by:

+ cultivate my taste buds
+ pay attention to hunger cues
+ resist instant gratification for cooking at home
+ eat until only 80% full
+ cook well and eat well
+ eat with friends

On a more practical level, I would like to say goodbye to
- white sugar
- white flour
- dairy*
- eggs

* Except that I would like to make an exception for raw cheese and yogurt with live cultures. I love my lacto beasties, not sure if I can give that up. I still want to make kefir and work at a sheep's cheese farm in, say, northern Spain or on Crete. I have not evolved enough to give those dreams up!

And say hello to:
+ raw vegan lunch on weekdays
+ raw smoothie dinner/appetizer 3x per week
+ raw shakes on Sat and Sun mornings

I already eat a raw vegan lunch most weekdays unless I am celebrating a co-worker's birthday or having lunch out with a friend. On average, this happens 3 x a month.

I got the idea for a raw smoothie dinner three times a week because going to class straight after work 3x a week makes cooking tiring. So why not drink it up?

And I thought that it would just be a good idea for weekend mornings to wake me up.

To eating with integrity in 2009!