vegan

it might be just just me, but i just recently realised im not eating enough protein, we need 0.8 g / 1 body kg, every day, which doesn't sound a lot, but most foods barely contain any, so check those labels

First of all, congrats! And thank you for letting your compassion and empathy affect change in your life and the many many lives of animals.

Second, meal prep. Get some good Tupperware (I use the Pyrex snap wear stuff) and learn some recipes that taste good leftover or even cold.

Lastly, Always have something to eat with you. Protein bar, fruit, or a Tupperware of leftovers.

Good luck!

I would try and be strict in the beginning. personally. it takes a while to get the right habits. Make sure you have some snacks in your house for the times you are hungry. try to eat clean. Don't be too hard on other people who are not vegan. that was you two weeks ago. Enjoy your food, it comes guilt free now.

First I want to say welcome! Making this change is a brave one and you should take pride in having the courage to even try.

There are a few things that really helped me when I was starting out.

One was reframing how meals should be constructed. The way I've seen most people think of a meal is they first pick their protein. That becomes the "base" of the meal. Then they decide how to season and cook it, which side dishes that would go with it, etc. The trap is then "okay... vegan food is that, but take away the meat and the butter and... Uh, anything else that adds flavor? Yeah, nobody wants to just eat plain potatoes and steamed carrots, that's not a meal.

Instead, think of one vegetable as the base of your meal. Eggplant, tofu, spaghetti squash, beans, and mushroom are all good options. Then build a meal on top of that to compliment the flavors. I.e. for eggplant, you could do stir fry and rice, or fried eggplant in spaghetti sauce covered by vegan ricotta, or baked, fileted, then fried eggplant "Phish" tacos.

Another piece of advice would be to try and avoid finding 1:1 replacements for some of your favorite animal based foods for at least a few months. While fake meats and cheeses have improved greatly over the last 10 years, I don't think they will "scratch that itch" so to speak until you've adjusted your pallet to eating without animal products. One of the physiological changes that will occur will be your tastebuds. Instead, try a new vegetable you've never heard of maybe 1-2 times a week if you can, or at least a couple times per month. Depending where you live and your life experiences this might not be as true for you, but a typical American grocery store sells the same limited selection of veggies. Basically just 2-4 versions of peppers, onions, tomato, potato, cabbages, squash, and herbs which are the same no matter which store you went to (coupons are variety I guess?). I found that going to grocers from other cultures in my area, such as the Asian and Mexican grocers, I was able to find tons of foods I'd never even heard of. The sheer variety of beans alone is enough to keep you busy for a few months. This will keep things interesting and help limit cravings for your old diet.

I'd also find a few YouTubers to watch for different things: Recipes you can follow are great for seeing new ideas. I personally like Sauce Stash and Derek Sorno, but they can sometimes be less organized and might be slightly difficult to follow. Sauce Stash Chickpea Mac & Cheese is a solid and simple recipe, and Derek Sorno's wicked kitchen king oyster mushroom pulled "pork" sandwich is amazing. Two recipes I make multiple times a year and they go quite well together if you really want to indulge in comfort food.

In addition to recipes it might be good to get a bulwark against some of the talking points that come up quite a lot. You will very likely find that merely mentioning veganism as the reason why you're politely declining an offer of food from someone will sometimes cause them to immediately mock or try to argue with you about the merits of veganism. It can be good to have ways to politely correct misinformation or redirect questions back at them. I find Earthling Ed has a very good Socratic way of handling these situations and has well reasoned arguments against almost everything you'll probably ever hear.

My final piece of advice is going to be that nobody is perfect and you're going to have bad days. Maybe Burger King is the only option when you're traveling and they gave you a regular patty instead of an impossible one and you didn't realize until you were half way into the burger, maybe you find out that Jello has gelatin and that comes from pigs after you eat some, or that your favorite Mexican restaurant uses ard in their beans. Don't be disheartened, all we can do is our best any given day. We've all been through something like that and it doesn't change your intentions. You're going to be shocked at the sheer quantity of things that have milk in them for no damned reason. There's no way overnight you're going to learn all the different ways animals are snuck into your food. Just learn from these events and carry on, and try to not let it get to you too much.

Welcome again, and good luck!

Congratulations!

My two best tips are:

If you remove non-vegan ingredients from non-vegan recipes without adding anything else, or substitute vegan meat/cheese/dairy for the real thing, you'll always think something's off because it's never going to be exactly the same. And meat substitutes that are highly processed to try and match the texture and flavor of meat are as bad for you as highly processed anything else.

So my recommendation is: practice cooking recipes that are naturally vegan. There are a lot of vegan dishes in Indian and Chinese cuisine, for instance. There are old recipes from before factory farming when meat was for special occasions instead of every day.

Pizza is flatbread with sauce and toppings, and there are a ton of naturally vegan flatbread recipes. Experiment. Go wild. I'm not telling you not to try vegan cheese, but also try pizza dough with (eg) pesto, shallots, and four different kinds of mushrooms, and see how that goes 🍕 🍕

My second tip is: forgive yourself if you slip.

Food is an addiction. And I mean this quite literally. Fat is psychologically addictive, sugar is psychologically addictive, meat is psychologically addictive. Millions of people in the West don't feel a meal is complete without a meat dish - by which I mean they literally don't feel full unless they know they ate meat. I was one of them. It took months before I could finish a vegan meal and not still feel hungry after.

Doing the right thing is hard when the world wants you to do the wrong thing and your body agrees with it.

So if you have cravings you can't beat and go buy a pizza - forgive yourself and promise yourself to do better tomorrow.

I only committed to being vegan like 6 months ago, so the tips I needed for the beginning are still in recent memory 😄

1. Install Happycow and check out lots of vegan restaurants in your area. Find some dishes you really like, so that you have something to fall back on if you're really craving super tasty food. Your own cooking might suck for a while until you figure out some of the tricks to getting vegan foods right, and you don't want to reinforce the notion that vegan food tastes bad.

2. If you need exceptions, take them, but be aware of the slippery slope.
   When I was deciding whether to stick with being vegan, my biggest problem was that I am absolutely unwilling to give up my pet snake. I'm aware of how shitty life is for feeder rodents, and having them right next to the beyond burgers in my freezer is certainly aesthetically uncomfortable... but in the end, it seemed like a stupid excuse to not be as vegan as I can be, just because I can't do 100%.
   There are a lot of stories from vegans who slipped from "oh, I could have some milk in my coffee if there's no other options" to "Cheese once a week is okay" to "Might as well have a burger if I feel like it" so be aware of that pipeline. I'd suggest actively reframing all exceptions to "Because I have this exception, I gotta be extra diligent with everything else" ^^

3. Find some positive reasons to stay vegan. Anger about the world can be a strong starter, but being angry all the time isn't great for your health. And Anger doesn't last indefinitely. So instead, be introspective in your first few weeks and see what positive reasons you can find for sticking with it. My personal reasons are currently mostly that I just really like the predictability of vegan foods (weird textures, random sinew and bone parts and weird smells really upset me when I was eating meat, the fact that I don't have to deal with that anymore is quite freeing). I'm also very excited about the progress in food science that I'm financially supporting -- things like Precision- and Microfermentation and general research into alternative food sources is just pretty cool! I also kinda like being extra. As in, I got socialized to always compromise and never inconvenience anyone else, so having a hard line "No, I'm not eating that no matter how annoyed you are" feels very empowering.

4. Nuts!! They're great. Get a big bag of mixed nuts and eat at least a handful every day. They keep away cravings for other fatty foods really well.

5. It's not brownies, but this vegan chocolate cake is absolutely incredible. The frosting is sooo good!!

Best tip, get real handy in the kitchen.

Been vegan 25+ years and there is no way in hell i could afford to eat out for half my meals. There are tons of decent cheeses for different uses (and a ton of crap cheeses, but it’s subjective). I get Myokos regularly at my local grocery outlet.

Trader Joe’s has some rectangular crusts that are rad. Try to recreate the vegan buffalo sauce they discontinued with roasted broccoli and some sort of mock chicken nugs. Pesto with olives sun-dried tomatoes and Violife Parmesan is killer too.

You can make cheese yourself too. Lots of recipes out there. Some are cashew based, some are oat milk and lean on nutritional yeast (a bit heavily). My nacho cheese recipe can be Yukon potato, onion, pickled jalapeño and carrot (among other things) and is slammin’. Grab some vegan lactic acid to add a tang to your recipe. Just don’t go too heavy on the nutritional yeast. Gets bitter. Oh and mind the milk. Go as neutral as possible and don’t forget the fats/oils.

There are crazy options nowadays compared to when I started. It’s pretty neat. Especially abroad. Europe has become very friendly to plant-based diets.

Just don’t expect everything to be 1:1. It’s going to be different, but in a way that will become increasingly fulfilling.

Creatine and B12 is good to take as a vegan too. Greens have enough iron to get by. I only take creatine and work out regularly. Never had a worrisome blood test. Just generally eat well, not convenient. You can have a crap diet as a vegan too.

Apologies if that wasn’t a particularly structured response. It’s hot AF out and the beer isn’t helping me think.

Cheers, and welcome aboard

Best tip I have is to think through the philosophy and understand your ethical motivations for not exploiting sentient beings. Whether you focus on the rights of the animals or your own values, deontology is your friend. With the ethical foundation in place, you'll always find a way to figure out the practical aspects.

I have another tip!

Michael Pollan has a dictum for health: eat "real food". And by "real food" he means food containing only ingredients your great-grandmother would recognize.

(Or someone else's great-grandmother in some other region/culture, if you're eating food from somewhere else. Food you'd see on a farm or in a market before the rise of industrial food processing, is the point.)

A way to do that in a modern supermarket is "shop the edges" - do most of your shopping in the produce section, the bakery, for non-vegans the meat and deli sections, the fresh unprocessed food sections that are located on the edges of the building in a typical American grocery. Then duck into the middle of the store for staples like rice and beans and oil and stay far away from the frozen food section.

And when you do that - when you avoid pre-processed food, buy fresh ingredients, and make your own food - it's easier to eat vegan because you control every ingredient that goes into your food. Your food will not have mysterious chemicals that may or may not be animal derived. Your food will just be food.

And not only will you be eating more ethically, you'll end up a lot healthier.

Get a B12 supplement, maybe Omega (DHA type), install Happy Cow or Vegan Maps, or both (and maybe some local alternatives, like some cities have vegan delivery apps), on your phone to see vegan places around. Oreos are accidentally vegan, chips depend on flavor, lactose free milk is not vegan. Honey is not vegan for a lot of different reasons that were hard for me to internalize and one that was not: honey bees are not native pollinators for a lot of flowers and regions, and are forcing the native pollinators out of business. It’s like what would happen if every bird was replaced with free-range chickens.

Eggs are not vegan because the conditions are horrible and even when they are not, the gender for new generation of egg laying chickens is checked after birth, by “sexing” the chicks. And the male chicks go into a shredder to become cat good I guess.

Cat food and owning cats (or dogs, or pet chickens) is a difficult topic you should rather not raise. There are vegan pet foods but availability and prices vary a lot.

Don’t expect miraculous health benefits. A bit better heart health, a bit lower blood pressure and a smaller cancer risks are hard to actually notice even if they are shown to be present in studies. Better bowel movement if nice though if you actually start eating more veggies and not just continue eating (vegan) junk food.

And remember that the definition of “vegan” is what is “possible and practicable” so don’t beat yourself up for buying a shampoo without checking if it was peta approved or getting pills and finding out they have gelatin cases. The nightmare world we live in doesn’t always make it practicable to live a 100% pure life.

Oh, and be prepared to see your opinion of peta to change for the better the first time you try to explain to someone why you are vegan (or worse - try to convince them to reduce consumption of meat, milk, eggs and other animal products). Most people don’t even know cows need to be pregnant and give birth before they can start giving milk, and it seems impossible to convince them even of this one simple fact.

I thought I hated beans until I tried cooking them in the air fryer, but it totally changes their texture. Gives them a nice crunch for wraps, tacos, pasta, salad topping, whatever.

Oh also get one of those huge cannisters of MSG. That shit is magic.

I'd echo the tip previous, that vegan-substitutes for things (like cheese) are not going to be exactly the same, so don't go in to things thinking "this has to be exactly like X". Instead of cheese sauce, it's just a really nice sauce made from cashews and potatoes and carrots and nutritional yeast.
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Also cravings fade with time. I used to think I couldn't go vegan because I loved pizza and ice cream so much. Now I don't really miss them. And it's easier than ever now to indulge those cravings when you really want to, with all the great options now.

pizza is my favorite food, and I believe replicating it will be fun

Same here friend. My tip: use vegan cheeses sparingly, let the other toppings shine, the cheese is a garnish. Also cheese goes on top so it actually cooks.

Me personally, lately I've been going with small dollops of some vegan mozzarella I've been getting at whole foods (forget the brand, I'll get back to you) and finishing with Violife Parm (the block, get a microplane if you don't already have one).

My wife does kite hill ricotta on her pizza, since vegan cheese often struggles to melt, starting with something softer is great.

Ultimately though, the fun part is trying new recipes! Go forth and explore.

My real tip is this: try really hard not to limit yourself. Your new diet sets some bounds on what's out, but for everything else that's in, go nuts and try everything.

Don't just try and recreate old favorites, and try and let go of any past food grudges!

Whatever vegetable you "just don't like", you probably didn't have it cooked the right way, or it was never served ripe.

Not a fan of Indian food? I guarantee you haven't tried every dish from every region - go forth and try new dishes.

You may already be an adventurous eater, in which case great, but I've known folks who have gone vegan only to give up after 3 months of eating nothing but impossible nuggets and canned chili.

Welcome, fellow vegan!
Others have already given great tips about food, so I'll try to cover some people and ethics. I remember a T-shirt I saw at a protest: I went vegan for love - now I fucking hate everyone. This is very true because you will hear a lot of bullshit from non-vegans. Don't let them trigger you. Stay calm, strong and friendly. Read the Vegan Bullshit Bingo, it will come in handy often. Long press a tile to read a reply.
Watch this video on carnism. It makes it easier to understand why everyone around you is so cruel.
Remember, you don't have to be perfect. We're not a cult:

"Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude — as far as is possible and practicable — all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals."
~ The Vegan Society, 1944

This trailer for Dominion still makes me cry. It's so powerful and edited perfectly, as it shows everything that needs to be said about global animal abuse without saying a word.
Last, these are great Brownies. :)