Microblog Memes

I haven't actually heard of TVP, I've heard of seitan though I've never had the chance to try it. But yeah that's the big problem, most of the plant based proteins that I'm aware of are either very high carb or you need a large volume of them to get that protein content. Both of which don't work with her restrictions.

I don't have particularly high hopes for seitan given what I've heard about it as far as like the texture aversions in the house go. She's in the spectrum too and most likely where there kids get it from. She actually got kind of informally diagnosed through them being diagnosed before her health started really going downhill. But I'm willing to give anything a shot, especially if there's a chance to make the food budget stretch a bit more with all these dietary restrictions in the house with our limited income. I'll be on the lookout for them.

The only problem with that is we live on a fixed budget as I don't work since they all need varying degrees of care around the clock. We live entirely off my wife's disability and whatever assistance programs we qualify for. I have neither the time, the energy, nor the money to prepare meals for myself entirely separate from their dietary restrictions.

Each kid eats maybe a dozen things themselves, 20 for the oldest, and there's maybe 6 that overlap between them. By the time I've figured out what they're willing to eat and made it I almost zero desire to even look at food let alone prepare an entirely separate vegan meal with all of that no money I have to purchase vegan ingredients that again likely nobody but me would be able to eat.

(Edit: I should add I'm not completely against the idea of changing my own diet. It's just that by the time I'm feeding myself I'm so done with the whole thing that my "diet" is whatever I can easily shove in my food hole without fussing too much about it)

I'm going to preface this by saying that I'm going to be adding some addendums/emphasis and providing some additional context for some things about her condition in here. I do not mean any of this to say that I believe that you personally are or plan on discounting her condition. It is meant only for emphasis because the particular bariatric surgery she had, the Duodenal Switch is significantly more involved than most other surgeries. A lot of people end up having to have the surgery partially reversed because they can't keep up with the vitamin supplementation and end up hospitalized and dying of malnutrition.

The malabsorption means that's already what she has to do. Then each of those meals needs to hit certain macros while being under that volume.

So like to give an example. She needs at least 200g of protein in a day while staying as far under 50g of carbs as possible (fiber included) to not be utterly miserable. That's not "the doctor told me to get this much" they told her to go for 150g. That's the levels she's found over the years result in her not being in significant gastrointestinal distress and actually having decent energy levels along with the roughly 50 vitamin supplements she HAS TO TAKE TO NOT DIE OF MALNUTRITION because and I cannot stress this enough the malabsorption means she CANNOT properly absorb most of these vitamins from food. They need to be very specific formulations at specific times of day to keep her levels up. Like 125,000IU+ PER DAY of Vitamin A (This is WILL KILL YOU levels for a normal person BTW) to still be partially night blind from deficiency (yes she has seen a doctor about it)

That 1.5 cups of black beans is around 22.5g of protein and 60g of carbs. So that's 2 entire "meals" of nothing but beans to have a little over 1/10th of the protein she needs in a day and 20% over the entire day's limit for carbs.