I have had many realizations over the past few months of trying to go vegan. I've shared this in discussions with family and friends, both online and offline :-). Thought I should summarize them here for the benefit of anyone interested who might be following this blog. Some of these are taken verbatim from my conversations with friends on Facebook.
1. It is tempting to think that you are automatically leading a healthier lifestyle by going vegan, but really, you still need to watch what you eat.
2. You could be sacrificing your health by focusing too much just on veganism without the surrounding context of a certain (vegan) product. Reducing processed foods is just as important. I have been discovering many things in this journey, and it's exciting. I've been blogging about some of it here. But one thing worth noting for anyone trying to go vegan, is recorded in this post. People just tend to think of soymilk/almond milk as milk substitutes and don't look into what actually goes into them. This could have impact on long-term health. I have decided to make soymilk/almond milk at home now. Just waiting for the current store-bought batch in the fridge to get over!
3. The thing I didn't explicitly point out in the post referred to in the previous point is that, organic and non-GMO is not enough. You need to read the labels carefully to see what else goes into it. This is true not just for almond milk/soy milk or vegan products, but for everything we buy in general. But I guess with the new trends in veganism, there is this added danger that there might be questionable things added to products to market them as vegan, at the same time preserving the form, taste and texture of an equivalent non-vegan product.
4. The best chocolates (to my taste) are vegan cause they're bittersweet dark chocolate, pure cacao and some cacao butter, no milkfat. It's only when you start looking at the labels that you discover so many things. One of those discoveries, and possibly the only positive one yet is that a lot of dark chocolate is vegan anyway. Here's one of the brands I tried recently that I really liked. You get it at Whole Foods:
1. It is tempting to think that you are automatically leading a healthier lifestyle by going vegan, but really, you still need to watch what you eat.
2. You could be sacrificing your health by focusing too much just on veganism without the surrounding context of a certain (vegan) product. Reducing processed foods is just as important. I have been discovering many things in this journey, and it's exciting. I've been blogging about some of it here. But one thing worth noting for anyone trying to go vegan, is recorded in this post. People just tend to think of soymilk/almond milk as milk substitutes and don't look into what actually goes into them. This could have impact on long-term health. I have decided to make soymilk/almond milk at home now. Just waiting for the current store-bought batch in the fridge to get over!
3. The thing I didn't explicitly point out in the post referred to in the previous point is that, organic and non-GMO is not enough. You need to read the labels carefully to see what else goes into it. This is true not just for almond milk/soy milk or vegan products, but for everything we buy in general. But I guess with the new trends in veganism, there is this added danger that there might be questionable things added to products to market them as vegan, at the same time preserving the form, taste and texture of an equivalent non-vegan product.
4. The best chocolates (to my taste) are vegan cause they're bittersweet dark chocolate, pure cacao and some cacao butter, no milkfat. It's only when you start looking at the labels that you discover so many things. One of those discoveries, and possibly the only positive one yet is that a lot of dark chocolate is vegan anyway. Here's one of the brands I tried recently that I really liked. You get it at Whole Foods:
5. In relation to the above points about reading labels, here is one example. How much thought would you put into the innocuous Peanut Butter? But here's the labels from two different brands:
A good rule of thumb is: check the ingredient list, and-
a. The shorter the list the better.
b. The more the number of things you don't recognize, the more wary you should be.
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