Losing weight and an appropriate vegan diet

[brimstoneSalad]

Great outline.

-Unsweetened Cashew Milk - (almost always at least one cup, usually two, sometimes three)

Not bad. I would recommend choosing unsweetened soy milk instead if you like it. Edensoy is pretty good.

-Orange Juice

Sounds like you already know you should cut back on/eliminate this.
If you have to drink juice, at least choose a berry juice with dark color and lots of phytonutrients.

-Whole Grain Pitas - (I may have about two to four of them per day.)

Excellent.

-Flax Seed Hummus

No on the prepackaged stuff. You can make hummus easily in big batches (and save huge amounts of money, and trash), and keep it in your fridge and freezer.

Buy dry chickpeas, soak them, cook them, put them in a food processor with Sesame tahini (which you can buy at most stores), garlic, lemon juice, salt (or add the salt after), and optionally pepper and/or cumin.

Really easy.

Sesame seeds are high in calcium (one of few seeds that are), but they don't have a good fatty acid profile (too much omega 6), and they're also high in metionine (potentially bad).
As a consequence, I'd recommend using as absolutely little sesame tahini as you can tolerate. OR maybe use walnuts instead (or partially instead) by throwing them in the food processor with the chickpeas (they should blend right up, walnuts are soft).

About flax seeds: They are probably bad already in those packages. Buy them milled, in nitrogen flushed bags; that keeps them from going bad quickly. It's useless to eat flax seeds if they aren't broken, because they'll pass right through you (the hulls protect them from digestion). Once you open the bag, they will spoil quickly when exposed to air. Keep i the fridge or freezer and eat within a couple weeks.

You can also just blend flax seeds into your hummus when you make it. That will protect it from rancidifying as quickly.

-Chick Peas/Romano Beans/Black Beans etc.

Yes! But use black beans and lentils instead. You're already eating tonnes of chickpeas in the hummus (which is what it's made from). Eating them again is kind of redundant. It's better to eat some variety, of course.

with Rice - (Most often when I have it, I have it with quickly microwaved, prepackaged brown rice which isn't ideal I've come to understand.

Yeah, that's no good. The microwaving isn't a problem, but the packaging is wasteful, and brown rice isn't good for you (it's barely better than white rice, which is terrible).

More recently I've had it with boiled wild rice ... Something I've thought of is making larger amounts of the wild rice than I would want in one serving, and storing the extra servings in glass containers and put those inside the fridge, so that I don't have to spend an hour+ waiting for the rice to be done every time.)

Wild rice is excellent. And yes, make a huge pot of it. The fridge is good. You can also freeze it. It will last about a week in the fridge before it starts to get ropey, it should last a very long time in the freezer.
It will also last at room temperature for a day or two, but at that temp it will get ropey fast.

I can talk more about ropiness and Bacillus strains if you want, but keep it cold and you should be fine to make too much.

-Walnuts - (for a while there I was making sure I ate at least 50 grams a day, though it's varied more recently and I've been eating probably somewhere from 15 to 80 grams some days.)

Yes.

-Baby Carrots - (my consumption of them has dwindled a little more recently, but for a while there I ate about 90 grams per day, whereas more recently it might be 50 grams some days, 20 grams others, or some days not at all. Recently they've been eaten raw.)

These are OK. 90 or even 500 grams of carrots aren't substantial in terms of calories, and they tend to be very useful at filling you up (and cheap).
Pro-tip: Use bigger carrots, they're cheaper, and slice them into round chips to dip in hummus or other bean dip. They hold dip better than babies as slices.

-Yam/Sweet Potato Fries
-Fries

As you can probably guess, this stuff is terrible. It's actually not the salt in ketchup that's a big problem, it's the sugar; the stuff is like 20% corn syrup.

The salt issue is complicated, but it's usually blown out of proportion. Salt consumption is a bigger issue for Asians because they tend to eat WET soupy salty food (don't eat salty soup. Ever.), and drink very little beyond salty broth (which increases the overall concentration of salt in the stomach from ALL substances that enter it and mix together, since there's no non-salty liquid to dilute the salt, which is carcinogenic due to making pathogens like H. Pylori more virulent. If you eat something salty, drink some water or eat it with something very not-salty.)
Salt has an impact on blood pressure, but it's very small, and not cumulative (it goes up slightly when you eat salt due to fluid retention, then right back down). Only people with dangerously high blood pressure need to avoid salt, and it's not a solution -- it's a band-aid. The solution is lowering blood pressure by cutting down on saturated fats and cholesterol, etc.
Sodium (which is really what we're talking about when we talk about table salt) also competes with Potassium in the body. So, the ratio of Sodium (Na) and Potassium (K) is important. King of like the Omega 6 and 3 issue. Too much sodium with not enough potassium is like too much omega 6 without enough omega 3.
There's a little leeway there, and if you eat a lot of veggies you're probably getting enough potassium. But that's also why I like salt that contains potassium chloride "lite salt"; however, you have to be careful with it. Used in excess it can be more dangerous than sodium chloride, and I don't think 100% KCl should even be sold as a salt substitute. Talk to your doctor about it if you have any health problems, and don't give it to young children.

-Baked Potatos - (usually either one or two potatos by themselves, about once or twice a week.)

Yes.

-Vegan mock meats - (for a while there I didn't have them all that often, but more recently I've had one about every two or three days. I figure that when I do have them I'm probably eating larger portions than necessary, and similarly to some other foods I'm eating, I worry about how much salt, saturated fat, and Omega 6 fat I'm getting from it.)

These aren't too bad, as a snack every few days it's fine.
It depends on the brand.
Mockmeats don't usually have much saturated fat in them. They are quite high in salt, so I'd at least eat them with something not-salty. Omega 6 in them may be a problem. Omega 6 isn't too bad as long as you balance it out with enough Omega 3 though. Processed oil isn't good, but as a treat now and then it's probably not going to be so bad in the smaller amounts in mock meats.

-Pasta

Whole grain?

The pasta is either topped with a tomato/vegetable sauce, which I think is pretty decent nutritional wise, except for that it has way too much salt for the amount I'm eating, so I'm going to be looking for some reduced salt ones.

Make it yourself, in a HUGE batch.
Buy tomato paste (giant value sized cans), and Italian spices. If you like Onions, buy a bunch of those. Or dried Onions (which are faster). Lots of garlic.
When it's done, put it in glass jars and keep it in the fridge, freeze it, or 'can' it in special reusable glass jars (see internet for instructions on canning).

If it's not a pasta that I'm topping with tomato sauce, then I'll usually be making Vegan Mac 'n' Cheese, though I haven't made that recently, it's basically the pasta with some soy/cashew milk and Daiya Cheddar/Mozzarella shreds, and one or two tablespoons worth of Vegan butter all mixed together. Though, I've been trying to eliminate palm oil from my diet, so I may not try to make it again until I'm sure it can be done without Vegan butter.

Glad you're avoiding palm oil. You'r making cream sauce wrong though. Use a blender or food processor to blend up WHOLE nuts with water or soy milk. Cashews, almonds, walnuts, flax seeds, even a little sesame to taste. Add some salt, some lemon juice, a small splash of vinegar, garlic, maybe basil. You can make a really nice nut based cream sauce straight in the blender without the other junk.
Also, if you want to up the protein and lower the fat, you can blend in some silken tofu.
Cauliflower (well cooked) is another popular option to blend in to make it lower fat and add in some vegetable.
Mix and match, and figure out what you like. Refrigerate or freeze. I would NOT recommend canning cream sauce, because it's low in acid and high in fat and protein (dangerous combo for canning).

-Daiya Pizzas

Like you said, probably a good idea to cut those out.

DIY pizza is good. See above about making a nut cream sauce? That can be used for cheese on a pizza if you blend it thick, and mix in a little food starch. The heat in the oven will solidify the starch.

Nutritional yeast is another popular additive to make those sauces more cheesy, if you like it.

-Daiya Pizzas

-Pop Chips - (these aren't too bad for chips, but they're far from ideal. I usually get the ones with olive oil. I haven't had them recently, but I used to get them a lot about a month or two ago.)[/quote]

I don't really know what these are.

If you want crunchy goodness, enjoy air popped red or blue popcorn (not white or yellow).
You can enjoy as much of it as you want, guilt free.

An air popper is a good investment in your healthy snacking.

-Some fruit here and there

I'm generally anti-sweet-fruit. Freakish mutant strains with too much sugar (particularly those giant candies called bananas and apples).
I'm very pro-blackberries though. You don't need to moderate your consumption of blackberries. Other berries can also be good in moderation, despite the sugar, due to the high antioxidant and phytonutrient content (redeeming qualities).

If you want to enjoy fruit, I recommend enjoying berries. You can also buy them frozen, where they're a bit cheaper.

However, ONE shitty fruit (like banana) a day is probably not a problem, as long as the rest of your diet is pretty reasonable. It's good to have a reliable source of vitamin C. Beyond one is unnecessary and probably more harmful than helpful.

Further in the past I was eating stuff like steamed broccoli

You should start eating more broccoli.
Your calcium consumption is probably low.

Also, collard greens, and mustard greens. Buy them frozen, it's cheaper and more convenient. Eat a pound a day.
And have them with a little mustard powder (Dr. Greger talked about this -- very good idea).

I'd avoid the quinoa unless it's grown in the USA or Canada. Environmental/economic issues with South American sourced quinoa.

Also, OATS. Oats are great. Start making oats as big a part of your diet as you're comfortable doing. Not the tiny packets, but the gigantic tubs or bags. Oats are very healthy, and cheap.
You can also buy steel cut oats, and eat them kind of like rice (oats don't have to be eaten as a sweet dish!).

If you do like sweetened oatmeal, try to do it with berries and/or artificial sweetener.

[Dream Sphere]

Dream sphere
Have you used cronometer.com
It's an online site (the app is less good IMO) where you add the food you've consumed on a day and the quantity and it estimates the amount of nutrients' RDA fulfilled. You could try that for an estimate on what your diet may be lacking in.

Once you figure out a particular nutrient that it is less in, you can go to whfoods.com and search for that nutrient. It will give you a list of the foods highest in the nutrient to choose from.

Do post on your findings if you do try this.

I'll definitely check out Cronometer further sometime. The reason why i hadn't now is because I wasn't expecting that I would need to make an account/sign up for it, but I will go and make one in the near future. I will however quickly post the nutrient amounts from what I've eaten today, just to get a rough picture of what my diet yields nutritionally.

A quick note that I ate all this stuff in one meal, and on a normal day I would be eating more and probably get a slightly better variety of foods. That's because earlier in the day I was fairly busy, and made a bad decision to not eat anything until this recent meal. Also, I suppose that by going by the "Nutrition Facts" labels on these foods that these labels don't entail all of the nutrients present in the foods.

I had.

-Four Whole Grain Pitas-
per 1 pita - (multiplied by four)

57 grams (228 g)
160 calories (640 cals)
Total Fat - 1 gram (4 g)
Saturated Fat - 0.2 grams (0.8 g)
Sodium - 260 milligrams - 11% (1040 mg - 44%)
Total Carbohydrates - 31 grams - 10% (124 g - 40%)
Fibre - 3 grams - 12% (12 g - 48%)
Protein - 6 grams (24 g)

Calcium - 4% (16%)
Iron - 10% (40%)

-Two Small Containers of Hummus-
per 1 container - (multiplied by two)

57 grams (228)
140 calories (280 cals)
Total Fat - 9 grams - 14% (18 g - 28%)
Saturated Fat - 1 gram - 5% (2 g - 10%)
Sodium - 210 milligrams - 9% (420 mg - 18%)
Total Carbohydrates - 9 grams - 3% (18 g - 6%)
Fibre - 2 grams - 8% (4 g - 16%)
Protein - 5 grams (10 g)

Vitamin C - 2% (4%)
Calcium - 2% (4%)
Iron - 6% (12%)

-200 Grams of Steamed Broccoli-
per 85 grams (rough multiplication of 2.5, this will result in slightly larger amounts than what I actually ate)

30 calories (75 cal)
Sodium - 10 milligrams - 1% (25 mg - 2.5%)
Total Carbohydrates - 5 grams - 2% (12.5 g - 5%)
Fibre - 2 grams - 8% (5 g - 20%)
Sugar - 1 gram ( 2.5 g)
Protein - 3 grams (7.5 g)

Vitamin A - 8% (20%)
Vitamin C - 50% (125%)
Calcium - 2% (5%)
Iron - 4% (10%)

-200 grams of Spinach-
per 100 grams (multiplied by two)

30 calories (60 cal)
Sodium - 70 milligrams - 3% (140 mg - 6%)
Total Carbohydrates - 4 grams - 1% (8 g - 2%)
Fibre - 3 grams - 12% (6 g - 24%)
Sugar - 1 g (2 g)
Protein - 3 grams (6 g)

Vitamin A - 70% (140%)
Vitamin C - 10% (20%)
Calcium - 10% (20%)
Iron - 15% (30%)
Vitamin E - 30% (60%)
Thiamine - 6% (12%)
Riboflavin - 15% (30%)
Niacin - 2% (4%)
B6 - 10% (20%)
Folate - 60% (120%)
Magnesium - 30% (60%)

-Two cups of Vanilla Flax Milk-
per 1 cup - (multiplied by two)

70 calories (140 cals)
Total Fat - 2.5 grams - 4% (5 g - 8%)
Saturated Fat - 0.3 grams - 2% (0.6 g - 4%)
Omega 6 - 0.3 grams (0.6 g)
Omega 3 - 1 gram (2 g)
Monounsaturated - 0.6 grams (1.2 g)
Sodium - 90 milligrams - 4% (180 mg - 8%)
Potassium - 5 milligrams - 1% (10 mg - probably not enough to warrant 2%)
Total Carbohydrates - 12 grams - 4% (24 g - 8%)
Sugar - 11 grams (22 g)

Vitamin A - 10% (20%)
Calcium - 30% (60%)
Iron - 2% (4%)
Vitamin D - 40% (80%)
Riboflavin - 25% (50%)
Vitamin B12 - 50% (100%)
Phosphorous - 15% (30%)
Zinc - 10% (20%)


-Total Nutrients of Today's Limited Diet Based Solely on Nutrition Facts Labels-
Calories - 1195
Total Fat - 27 grams
Saturated Fat - 3.4 grams
Sodium - 1805 milligrams
Total Carbohydrates - 186.5 grams
Fibre - 27 grams
Sugar - 26.5 grams
Protein - 47.5 grams

Vitamin A - 180%
Vitamin C - 149%
Calcium - 105% (45% if barring the flax milk)
Iron - 96% (The amounts of these four nutrients are almost always present on food nutrition labels, but other nutrients are only sometimes present for some reason.)

Vitamin D - 80% (That's all fortified into the flax milk, but I spent time out in the sun today for over an hour, so I should be fine with this)

Vitamin E - 60% (maybe other stuff I ate had it, but the Spinach is the only one which accounted for it on its label)

Thiamine - 12% (likewise, maybe other stuff had it, but wasn't accounted for. This amount has me worried though, since it's a part of the vitamin B complex and I know I don't want to be deficient in them)

Riboflavin - 80% (50% is from the flax milk)

Niacin - 4% (I understand that this is also part of the B complex like the past two, and am even more worried at its very low level. I think I've seen it labelled in modest amounts on bread, maybe peanut butter. I think I'll be looking into where I can find better sources for it. I've also heard though, that this is one of the worse B vitamins to over consume, is that right?)

B6 - 20% (I'm doing better than I thought I would for this, regardless it's still very low, and I'm curious whether some foods I eat do happen to have it, but not have it labelled, I guess one of those websites could help me find out better foods to eat more of for this.)

Folate - 120% (I'm not surprised, I've figured this is one of the easier B vitamins to get good amounts of in my diet.)

B12 - 100% (but only because of the flax milk, which I will finish the carton of and not buy again. I'll start supplementing it instead.)

Magnesium - 60%

Phosphorous - 30%

Zinc - 20% (I'm curious of the last three in what important benefits they give me from consumption. I'm guessing they are probably essential, so I am concerned a bit, but will look into their functions, and later try to find better sources for them. Also, I've seen stuff like Selenium and Copper on bread's nutrition facts labels, and am wondering of how important those nutrients are? I think I remember doing a quick wikipedia search not too long ago on selenium which said that most people are pretty much bound to get adequate amounts however that is, I don't remember, and only particularly deficient people need to supplement or make sure they're getting good amounts of it. Whether that's right or not I'm unsure.)


Thanks for the other website recommendation too. It sounds like it could be quite helpful for me in figuring out how to build my new diet.

Great outline.

-Unsweetened Cashew Milk - (almost always at least one cup, usually two, sometimes three)

Not bad. I would recommend choosing unsweetened soy milk instead if you like it. Edensoy is pretty good.

I don't think I've ever seen Edensoy around here. Is it recommended because it would have better amounts of protein? That's something which I've seen really lacking in store bought nut milks, and especially flax milks. In terms of other nutrients, the various motherless milks seem pretty much the same except some, like almond milk, tends to have vitamin E while some others, like flax milk, don't. Other brands of unsweetened soy milk would be more-or-less, by small margins, the same, right?

-Orange Juice

Sounds like you already know you should cut back on/eliminate this.
If you have to drink juice, at least choose a berry juice with dark color and lots of phytonutrients.

I'll probably cut juice out of my diet entirely. So, instead for those nutrients, may eating berries whole provide all that and more, probably?

-Whole Grain Pitas - (I may have about two to four of them per day.)

Excellent.

Would you still say that after seeing the nutrition amounts I put up for them? I'm curious because I think I may have made it seem like they were better than they are. They aren't some multi-grain kinds which I've seen around, though I guess while they're not as good as those probably, they're still better than the refined, completely white flour pitas.

-Flax Seed Hummus

No on the prepackaged stuff. You can make hummus easily in big batches (and save huge amounts of money, and trash), and keep it in your fridge and freezer.

Buy dry chickpeas, soak them, cook them, put them in a food processor with Sesame tahini (which you can buy at most stores), garlic, lemon juice, salt (or add the salt after), and optionally pepper and/or cumin.

Really easy.

Sesame seeds are high in calcium (one of few seeds that are), but they don't have a good fatty acid profile (too much omega 6), and they're also high in metionine (potentially bad).
As a consequence, I'd recommend using as absolutely little sesame tahini as you can tolerate. OR maybe use walnuts instead (or partially instead) by throwing them in the food processor with the chickpeas (they should blend right up, walnuts are soft).

About flax seeds: They are probably bad already in those packages. Buy them milled, in nitrogen flushed bags; that keeps them from going bad quickly. It's useless to eat flax seeds if they aren't broken, because they'll pass right through you (the hulls protect them from digestion). Once you open the bag, they will spoil quickly when exposed to air. Keep i the fridge or freezer and eat within a couple weeks.

You can also just blend flax seeds into your hummus when you make it. That will protect it from rancidifying as quickly.

I ate some of the prepackaged stuff today, but I won't buy any more of it, and will start to make my own very soon. I asked my Mom a bit about this today and she let me know that we do actually have a food processor in good condition here, which I wasn't even aware we had. Thanks for the advice, it seems like it should be easy enough. I'll just need to find out where to buy dried out chick peas, but I figure they're fairly common, I'll probably check around my local grocery stores a bit for them in the coming days. I will also probably experiment a bit with the amount of tahini compared to the rest, and settle on whichever uses the least which still tastes pretty decent.

Also, thanks for the info on flax seeds, I'll also look into getting them when I go to find out about the chick peas.

-Chick Peas/Romano Beans/Black Beans etc.

Yes! But use black beans and lentils instead. You're already eating tonnes of chickpeas in the hummus (which is what it's made from). Eating them again is kind of redundant. It's better to eat some variety, of course.

with Rice - (Most often when I have it, I have it with quickly microwaved, prepackaged brown rice which isn't ideal I've come to understand.

Yeah, that's no good. The microwaving isn't a problem, but the packaging is wasteful, and brown rice isn't good for you (it's barely better than white rice, which is terrible).

More recently I've had it with boiled wild rice ... Something I've thought of is making larger amounts of the wild rice than I would want in one serving, and storing the extra servings in glass containers and put those inside the fridge, so that I don't have to spend an hour+ waiting for the rice to be done every time.)

Wild rice is excellent. And yes, make a huge pot of it. The fridge is good. You can also freeze it. It will last about a week in the fridge before it starts to get ropey, it should last a very long time in the freezer.
It will also last at room temperature for a day or two, but at that temp it will get ropey fast.

I can talk more about ropiness and Bacillus strains if you want, but keep it cold and you should be fine to make too much.

Yeah, I'm going to be having wild rice with the beans from now on then. I haven't checked out that link yet, but I will soon, and thanks for offering to give info on it expiring and all of the stuff related to that. I may be interested in hearing about it, but I'm not sure if it's really necessary for you to tell me, unless you may just want to, since I figure that I'll always be refrigerating it, and will have eaten any batches before a week's time has past after making them. I'll also check the stuff before I eat it of course, though it might be worthwhile for me to have a better idea of what to look out for as an indication of it having expired if it wouldn't be obvious.

Now all I need to do is find a place which sells wild rice in bulk at a decent price, I'm guessing probably a place like Costco, since it seems that from my Mom's trip to the grocery store when I originally asked for her to pick up some wild rice, that all she could find were really expensive, really small packages of the stuff, of which's main reason for costing so much very well may have been due to the brand/packaging. At least that's hopefully why it cost so much, (okay, not really a whole lot, but relatively speaking it was quite so.)

-Walnuts - (for a while there I was making sure I ate at least 50 grams a day, though it's varied more recently and I've been eating probably somewhere from 15 to 80 grams some days.)

Yes.

-Baby Carrots - (my consumption of them has dwindled a little more recently, but for a while there I ate about 90 grams per day, whereas more recently it might be 50 grams some days, 20 grams others, or some days not at all. Recently they've been eaten raw.)

These are OK. 90 or even 500 grams of carrots aren't substantial in terms of calories, and they tend to be very useful at filling you up (and cheap).
Pro-tip: Use bigger carrots, they're cheaper, and slice them into round chips to dip in hummus or other bean dip. They hold dip better than babies as slices.

-Yam/Sweet Potato Fries
-Fries

As you can probably guess, this stuff is terrible. It's actually not the salt in ketchup that's a big problem, it's the sugar; the stuff is like 20% corn syrup.

The salt issue is complicated, but it's usually blown out of proportion. Salt consumption is a bigger issue for Asians because they tend to eat WET soupy salty food (don't eat salty soup. Ever.), and drink very little beyond salty broth (which increases the overall concentration of salt in the stomach from ALL substances that enter it and mix together, since there's no non-salty liquid to dilute the salt, which is carcinogenic due to making pathogens like H. Pylori more virulent. If you eat something salty, drink some water or eat it with something very not-salty.)
Salt has an impact on blood pressure, but it's very small, and not cumulative (it goes up slightly when you eat salt due to fluid retention, then right back down). Only people with dangerously high blood pressure need to avoid salt, and it's not a solution -- it's a band-aid. The solution is lowering blood pressure by cutting down on saturated fats and cholesterol, etc.
Sodium (which is really what we're talking about when we talk about table salt) also competes with Potassium in the body. So, the ratio of Sodium (Na) and Potassium (K) is important. King of like the Omega 6 and 3 issue. Too much sodium with not enough potassium is like too much omega 6 without enough omega 3.
There's a little leeway there, and if you eat a lot of veggies you're probably getting enough potassium. But that's also why I like salt that contains potassium chloride "lite salt"; however, you have to be careful with it. Used in excess it can be more dangerous than sodium chloride, and I don't think 100% KCl should even be sold as a salt substitute. Talk to your doctor about it if you have any health problems, and don't give it to young children.

Okay, I'll be cutting back on the fries a fair bit for sure. Also, what did you think of the amount of sodium I had had today? Plus, to address something else, I wasn't expecting to have that flax milk which was sweetened. I think I had mentioned being interested in it to my Mom one time, which was some weeks ago, and she got it today which I wasn't expecting. So, I'll probably just finish that off and go with unsweetened soy milk from now on, to make sure I'm not getting too much sugar on days when I'm eating all of my meals.

-Vegan mock meats - (for a while there I didn't have them all that often, but more recently I've had one about every two or three days. I figure that when I do have them I'm probably eating larger portions than necessary, and similarly to some other foods I'm eating, I worry about how much salt, saturated fat, and Omega 6 fat I'm getting from it.)

These aren't too bad, as a snack every few days it's fine.
It depends on the brand.
Mockmeats don't usually have much saturated fat in them. They are quite high in salt, so I'd at least eat them with something not-salty. Omega 6 in them may be a problem. Omega 6 isn't too bad as long as you balance it out with enough Omega 3 though. Processed oil isn't good, but as a treat now and then it's probably not going to be so bad in the smaller amounts in mock meats.

I think I'll just have them occasionally from now on then. I'll probably also try to gauge the ratio of Omega 3's to 6's I'm getting someways down the line once I start buying flax seeds by themselves and all that.

-Pasta

Whole grain?

The pasta is either topped with a tomato/vegetable sauce, which I think is pretty decent nutritional wise, except for that it has way too much salt for the amount I'm eating, so I'm going to be looking for some reduced salt ones.

Make it yourself, in a HUGE batch.
Buy tomato paste (giant value sized cans), and Italian spices. If you like Onions, buy a bunch of those. Or dried Onions (which are faster). Lots of garlic.
When it's done, put it in glass jars and keep it in the fridge, freeze it, or 'can' it in special reusable glass jars (see internet for instructions on canning).

If it's not a pasta that I'm topping with tomato sauce, then I'll usually be making Vegan Mac 'n' Cheese, though I haven't made that recently, it's basically the pasta with some soy/cashew milk and Daiya Cheddar/Mozzarella shreds, and one or two tablespoons worth of Vegan butter all mixed together. Though, I've been trying to eliminate palm oil from my diet, so I may not try to make it again until I'm sure it can be done without Vegan butter.

Glad you're avoiding palm oil. You'r making cream sauce wrong though. Use a blender or food processor to blend up WHOLE nuts with water or soy milk. Cashews, almonds, walnuts, flax seeds, even a little sesame to taste. Add some salt, some lemon juice, a small splash of vinegar, garlic, maybe basil. You can make a really nice nut based cream sauce straight in the blender without the other junk.
Also, if you want to up the protein and lower the fat, you can blend in some silken tofu.
Cauliflower (well cooked) is another popular option to blend in to make it lower fat and add in some vegetable.
Mix and match, and figure out what you like. Refrigerate or freeze. I would NOT recommend canning cream sauce, because it's low in acid and high in fat and protein (dangerous combo for canning).

No, the pasta I'm having isn't whole grain, though I could switch it out and replace it with whole grain pasta easily, which I'll do. Thanks for the tips on creating nut based cheese-like sauces, I'll definitely try those out sometime, though I figure I just won't have Vegan mac 'n' cheese for the near future anyways, so that should give me time to figure out how to make nut based cheese sauces pretty well.

-Daiya Pizzas

Like you said, probably a good idea to cut those out.

DIY pizza is good. See above about making a nut cream sauce? That can be used for cheese on a pizza if you blend it thick, and mix in a little food starch. The heat in the oven will solidify the starch.

Nutritional yeast is another popular additive to make those sauces more cheesy, if you like it.

I have a fair bit of Daiya shreds in my fridge, so I'll probably make a few DIY pizzas until they're all used up, then similarly to the Vegan mac, I won't have them until I've figured out how to make a good nut based cheese sauce.

-Daiya Pizzas

-Pop Chips - (these aren't too bad for chips, but they're far from ideal. I usually get the ones with olive oil. I haven't had them recently, but I used to get them a lot about a month or two ago.)

I don't really know what these are.

If you want crunchy goodness, enjoy air popped red or blue popcorn (not white or yellow).
You can enjoy as much of it as you want, guilt free.

An air popper is a good investment in your healthy snacking.

Yeah, I was thinking I should've specified what I was talking about better, since I figure they're more of a regional brand here. I'll see about posting the nutrition facts for them tomorrow.

-Some fruit here and there

I'm generally anti-sweet-fruit. Freakish mutant strains with too much sugar (particularly those giant candies called bananas and apples).
I'm very pro-blackberries though. You don't need to moderate your consumption of blackberries. Other berries can also be good in moderation, despite the sugar, due to the high antioxidant and phytonutrient content (redeeming qualities).

If you want to enjoy fruit, I recommend enjoying berries. You can also buy them frozen, where they're a bit cheaper.

However, ONE shitty fruit (like banana) a day is probably not a problem, as long as the rest of your diet is pretty reasonable. It's good to have a reliable source of vitamin C. Beyond one is unnecessary and probably more harmful than helpful.

I do really enjoy black berries. Also, here's the golden berries' wiki page with nutritional information if you're interested in comparing them, (I've yet to compare them.) -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physalis_peruviana -- Also, are there more specific names for these phytonutrients?

Further in the past I was eating stuff like steamed broccoli

You should start eating more broccoli.
Your calcium consumption is probably low.

Also, collard greens, and mustard greens. Buy them frozen, it's cheaper and more convenient. Eat a pound a day.
And have them with a little mustard powder (Dr. Greger talked about this -- very good idea).

I'd avoid the quinoa unless it's grown in the USA or Canada. Environmental/economic issues with South American sourced quinoa.

Also, OATS. Oats are great. Start making oats as big a part of your diet as you're comfortable doing. Not the tiny packets, but the gigantic tubs or bags. Oats are very healthy, and cheap.
You can also buy steel cut oats, and eat them kind of like rice (oats don't have to be eaten as a sweet dish!).

If you do like sweetened oatmeal, try to do it with berries and/or artificial sweetener.

Well, I ate some broccoli today, though I was surprised to see how small an amount of calcium was present in them on the Nutrition Facts label. I ate quite a bit, or at least it felt like quite a bit in volume, though the calories gotten from them weren't all that much. The spinach seemed to fare better in calcium, though it still wasn't a lot. I understand many of these vegetables/fruit are mostly water, but I'm unsure how to go about eating the amounts of them I would need to to get my daily values of some nutrients. I guess the soy milk I'll be drinking should cover the rest of my needed calcium, however I'll still be looking out for other whole foods like spinach and others to meet my requirements of course.

About quinoa, I think all of it that I've gotten has come from Canada, but I'll make it so that I'm absolutely sure that all future purchased quinoa is coming from ethical quinoa producing places in the future.

Well unlike wild rice which I'm unsure about, I am sure that I can get oats in bulk for good prices, and I have liked them quite a bit when I've had them before, except for the gross sweetened packet ones, actually, . So, I'll be looking to get those sometime soon as well. Also, thanks for the tip on mustard powder for the frozen greens, and all of the other informativeness of your reply.

[brimstoneSalad]

Calories - 1195
...
Protein - 47.5 grams

Your fat consumption is probably adequate, but neither your calories nor your protein are adequate.
You could also be eating a LOT more sodium.
Keep in mind the points above about how it's probably more about the context of the salt than the amount.

Calcium - 105% (45% if barring the flax milk)

Your flax milk is heavily fortified. You will need to eat a lot more vegetables, unless you decide to take a supplement.
I don't discourage calcium supplementation, although eating veggies is better, it's often hard to eat enough of them.

Avoid spinach. Collard and mustard greens are superior in nutrition, and less likely to give you stones.
I strongly recommend eating them with pasta, and cooking them into your pasta sauce. So it's red sauce with lots of collard or mustard greens mixed in. And buy them frozen, much easier/cheaper.

Other brands of unsweetened soy milk would be more-or-less, by small margins, the same, right?

Yes, also this:

I'm curious because I think I may have made it seem like they were better than they are. They aren't some multi-grain kinds which I've seen around, though I guess while they're not as good as those probably, they're still better than the refined, completely white flour pitas.

For the most part, whole wheat is whole wheat, and there's not a lot of variation there, whether it's pasta or pitas or whatever (provided a bunch of oil and sugar and other stuff isn't added - which it is not traditional for pita).

Multi-grain is better, if those grains are things like oats, and teff, or something good and not brown/white rice.
Sprouted is also better.
Calcium fortified flour is also better.
Yeast free is also better (probably), but less delicious
Lacto-fermented with beneficial microbes is also better (probably)
Cooked at lower temperature (like steamed) would probably also be better

Sprouted, whole,multi-grain, lacto-fermented, yeast-free, calcium fortified, steamed bread would be awesome.
And throw in enzymatic browning and dehydration so it's not wet.
Probably also something like $2 a slice.

You could DIY if you were really determined.

So, instead for those nutrients, may eating berries whole provide all that and more, probably?

Yes.

I asked my Mom a bit about this today and she let me know that we do actually have a food processor in good condition here, which I wasn't even aware we had.

Great news! Post a thread about making hummus and I'll help you (and some others might have tips too).

I'll also check the stuff before I eat it of course, though it might be worthwhile for me to have a better idea of what to look out for as an indication of it having expired if it wouldn't be obvious.

Ropiness is exactly what it sounds like -- ropes in your food. Search youtube for some video of natto.

Here's one of the first I saw, you can see him messing with it about half way in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RRHiDlAyZs

See all of the "ropes" of slime? When you slice ropy bread, or take some ropy rice out of a pot, you'll see all of those trailing ropes like spider webs.

Natto is totally healthy, but there are some strains of the bacteria (Bacillus) that are not. I don't know what your odds of it being fine to eat are, probably like 99% chance it's still perfectly healthy to eat.

Rice can also spoil with yeast if it gets contaminated, but that's less common if you keep a lid on it and didn't contaminate it by adding anything uncooked to it. Heat kills yeast, but Bacillus have spores that survive the cooking. It's one of the most durable common bacteria on the surface of the Earth, actually.

Now all I need to do is find a place which sells wild rice in bulk at a decent price

That you won't find. Wild rice is expensive. Online is your best bet for the cheapest you can find it, but that's like talking about cheap diamonds.
You will probably be able to find black rice cheaper than wild rice.

I don't eat wild rice often, it's just not a very practical staple due to cost.

Like I mentioned, you might want to consider oats instead. Steel cut ones can be eaten kind of like rice, and they're going to be much cheaper than wild rice and much healthier than white/brown.

Save the wild rice for holidays and dinner parties, I'd say.

Okay, I'll be cutting back on the fries a fair bit for sure. Also, what did you think of the amount of sodium I had had today?

Try to find an alternative you like. Your salt consumption is not a problem.
I'd say keep it under 6 grams a day, but that's not really something you have to work hard to do.

The more important thing, as I said, is context.

I do really enjoy black berries. Also, here's the golden berries' wiki page with nutritional information if you're interested in comparing them, (I've yet to compare them.) -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physalis_peruviana -- Also, are there more specific names for these phytonutrients?

Search Anthocyanins. There are some others too; these are all non-essential, mainly antioxidants and such.

I would not eat golden berries. They lack the dark red, purple/blue pigments and antioxidants that make berries so good for you. Avoid pale colored fruit in general.

Well, I ate some broccoli today, though I was surprised to see how small an amount of calcium was present in them on the Nutrition Facts label.

Collards, mustard greens, and even kale will be better for this. You didn't eat much broccoli though. If you want to take it seriously, you need to be eating a pound or two a day of veggies.

I guess the soy milk I'll be drinking should cover the rest of my needed calcium

If it's fortified, perhaps.

About quinoa, I think all of it that I've gotten has come from Canada, but I'll make it so that I'm absolutely sure that all future purchased quinoa is coming from ethical quinoa producing places in the future.

Good to hear.

Glad if I was able to help.

[miniboes]

Do any of you have good, simple salad recipes? I'd like to eat more salads but the only one I really enjoy is a spinach+fruit salad, which is good but not particularly helpful for calcium. I'm not a fan of very spicy or bitter foods.

[brimstoneSalad]

Do any of you have good, simple salad recipes? I'd like to eat more salads but the only one I really enjoy is a spinach+fruit salad, which is good but not particularly helpful for calcium. I'm not a fan of very spicy or bitter foods.

Not really. I don't eat Salad. I don't consider it a useful way to consume greens, because it has to be HUGE to make any difference. Although I'm a supporter of salads that have a bunch of nuts and beans in them, and pasta salads (not sure how much those count).
It's usually better to cook your greens, and just eat a little bit raw. Cooking helps you eat more of them.

The closest thing to salads I'll usually eat are wraps and spring roll kind of things. Maybe try that if you're after raw greens? Wrapping them up puts pressure on the greens and packs them into a narrow tube that's easier to eat. Then you just need to make a good dip for them.
A spicy mix of peanut butter (or another nut butter), soy sauce (or miso), and hot sauce will usually do the trick.

[PrincessPeach]

Do any of you have good, simple salad recipes? I'd like to eat more salads but the only one I really enjoy is a spinach+fruit salad, which is good but not particularly helpful for calcium. I'm not a fan of very spicy or bitter foods.

Sprouted mung beans and chickpea's are a great addition to any salad with grated carrot and radishes with an extra virgin olive oil dressing with your choice of vinegar...

Throw in some sesame seeds/hemp seeds/poppy/ pumpkin/ too after you've put the dressing on to make them stick!

When I cook rice I throw in sesame seeds after the first five minutes with broccoli and or cauliflower + grated carrots
it steams it perfectly and yummy yum yum!

Throw flax seeds into your lentils and be amazed they sprout while you are cooking and the lentils get all jiggly and gooey and they keep their shape!
I like pumpkin seeds in my lentils as well..

[Jebus]

I don't get this. Isn't the priority to get as many vital vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants as possible out of each calorie? Do you perhaps mean that you are looking for a certain balance of fats to protein to carbs in the foods. If so, what balance are you looking for?

In general, in terms of whole plant food, protein to calorie ratio reflects the content of vitamins and minerals. It's not perfect, but it's a pretty good rule of thumb.

I just saw this reply. Earlier in the thread you wrote that you are looking for a high macronutrient to calorie ratio. If I understand you correctly, you are looking for a high protein to calorie ratio.

Also, am I understanding you correctly in that a high protein profile also brings with it a higher micro and phyto nutrient profile than would a food with a high carbohydrate or fat profile?

I often hear about amino acid profile? Do you think this is something that should be considered when choosing a high protein per calorie food?

[brimstoneSalad]

If I understand you correctly, you are looking for a high protein to calorie ratio.

Protein, fiber, essential fatty acids. The really good stuff.

It's not so much that I demand a high ratio, as I want a reasonable one. One wherein if I have eaten 2000 calories of a food, I have gotten enough protein (around 50 grams) to not become malnourished.

Most grains are pretty reasonable, despite storing a larger number of empty calories as carbohydrates. Rice stores an absurd number of extra calories (white/brown), and contributes to malnutrition because of it. Also, white/yellow corn. This is of course exclusively because we've bred them to do so (wild rice and blue/red corn are fine, so is black rice).

Same thing with most sweet fruits, but they do it for a different reason (to make us eat them and spread the seeds)-- the plants don't need to nourish us properly to get decent seed dispersal.

I'm not saying you can't eat these things as part of a nutritious diet, in the same sense that there's no reason you absolutely can't tread water with a small anchor chained to your foot, it's just a lot harder because the poor nutrient ratio of these foods is dragging you down rather than supporting you. The more rice (white/brown or white/yellow corn) and sweet fruits you're eating, the bigger that anchor and the higher the chance you'll drown in calories without adequate nutrition along side it.

Also, am I understanding you correctly in that a high protein profile also brings with it a higher micro and phyto nutrient profile than would a food with a high carbohydrate or fat profile?

Yes and no. Yes to carbs. Not necessarily to fat (with regard to nuts, and some other sources).

Fat is more of a special case, because it contains a lot of lipid soluble vitamins, and more importantly, fat (omega 3 and 6) IS an essential nutrient, carbs are not. Carbs are nothing but energy. A very good source of energy, but they contribute nothing beyond energy to your health (which is in abundant enough supply anyway).

Both carbs and fat are ways that seeds (in particular) store extra energy for the new plant to grow. They're not the "stuff" that will become the plant, they're just a little booster pack.
To the contrary, protein IS the stuff. Cells are made largely from protein. Nothing (that I know of) stores protein as an energy source, that would be incredibly inefficient. So if there's protein in something, that's because there's an essential store of nutrients in terms of cells and/or the stuff to make them.

Protein = living matter (not storage of empty calories) or stuff to build living matter from = loads of micro nutrients. (Generalization, but almost always true; I know of no exceptions among whole plant foods).

Carbs and fat are just storage mechanisms, and don't necessarily contain any additional nutrients. Unless the fat is a nutrient, but that's just polyunsaturated fat, and only when the Omega 3 is in decent amounts.

I often hear about amino acid profile? Do you think this is something that should be considered when choosing a high protein per calorie food?

Depends on how much protein you're eating, but it's not really a concern if it has very high protein, because the limiting amino acid will still be in high enough supply to fill your daily needs even from a relatively poor source.
E.g. if you're eating 150 grams of protein from beans, which are high in lysine and low in some others like methionine and cystine, you're probably still getting more than 50 grams of complete protein from that total, I'd guess more than 100 because they're not *that* low in anything, but I'd have to make a spreadsheet and check particular beans to be sure.

You may find this interesting: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3081312/

If you're only eating 50 grams a day, then it's very important to consider the ratio of amino acids in that 50g (or at least try extra hard to pair your proteins; whole grain and legume.
But as long as you're eating substantially more (I'd say) than 75 grams a day, you're almost certainly safe to ignore it for *most* foods. Except corn, perhaps, which is famously low in lysine (and apparently also isoleucine)... BUT that's also less true for blue/red corn varieties IIRC, so as long as you avoid too much of the white/yellow corn, you're probably safe to ignore it for that too.

That said, there ARE also bad proteins, just as there are bad fats.

There's growing evidence that Methionine is a bad guy.
It's an essential amino acid, so you NEED to eat it, but try to eat as little of it as you can and just barely meet your needs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methionin ... estriction

This may be the culprit that makes animal protein inherently unhealthy. Or, at least one of them. And it's what makes beans so awesome (because they're low in it).

Note that it's also high in Sesame seeds, and Brazil nuts. So, maybe cut back on those two.
I love sesame (tahini, hummus), so that's kind of a shame.

Treat methionine like you'd treat Omega 6 fats. It's needed, but try to keep the ratio pretty low and be mindful of over-eating it. As long as you're not eating animal protein, or sesame seeds and brazil nuts a lot, you're pretty safe.

There may be other bad proteins potentially present in plants too, but that's all I'm aware that we know of for now. Lots of proteins in animal tissue are harmful (particularly if cooked, such as in the case of transforming creatine into a pretty potent carcinogen)

[Jebus]

Thanks. This was helpful. I will start looking for food with a high protein content. I will have to eliminate brown rice, which I eat a lot of.

Are you aware of any other exceptions of low protein foods that are worth eating, i.e. high carb foods with important micro/phyto nutrients?

[brimstoneSalad]

Thanks. This was helpful. I will start looking for food with a high protein content. I will have to eliminate brown rice, which I eat a lot of.

Glad to help.
Black rice is excellent, however, IF you can get it cheap where you live.

http://nutritionfacts.org/video/brown-r ... lack-rice/

Red rice is closer to brown in nutrition, though maybe not quite as bad, But Greger said that it has a higher antioxidant content than black, so... it might be worth eating? Maybe.

Personally, I think he made a bad move there in switching to red since it has a higher starch content.
Yes, it has more antioxidants, but IMO if you're trying to get your antioxidants from rice you're looking in the wrong place.
To me it's an extra bonus that black has more antioxidants, but I'm more interested in the other nutrients in it.
In terms of antioxidants, there are other more affordable sources.

http://nutritionfacts.org/video/superfood-bargains-2/

I'd say stick with black rice, oats, buckwheat, or other more protein rich (thus likely more rich in other vitamins and minerals) grains (and legumes of course) for your macro nutrients, and enjoy super high antioxidant veggies for the anthocyanin boost on a budget.

I just eat purple cabbage (which, of course, is very high in nutrients and low in calories).
The leaves make good wraps, to put your rice in if you want. I'm pretty sure I never end up cooking it.

I'd love to see Greger do an antioxidants per calorie video. Black rice is more competitive with red in that case since it's lower calorie. Also, as a side note, I can't even find red rice that's not partially dehulled (so has lost maybe half of its antioxidants already), and there are so many different strains, I don't trust those numbers.

Are you aware of any other exceptions of low protein foods that are worth eating, i.e. high carb foods with important micro/phyto nutrients?

Some nuts which have a lot of Omega 3 are worth eating despite having more calories than protein (in terms of ratio), because of the good fatty acids.
Walnuts are the only ones I know of.

Flax seeds and hemp seeds are both fine (lots of protein), but I can't find the former fresh (they're almost always rancid, which is really terrible for your health) so if you eat those keep that in mind -- don't eat them if they taste off at all.

With larger nuts (like walnuts), if you eat a rancid one, you KNOW it right away and you can spit it out, and can usually visually tell it's rancid too (if you'll be grinding them for a dip or something) and pick it out with a quick visual inspection since they're so big and obviously nasty. Unlike flax, you don't need a microscope to tell it's gone moldy, and several hours to inspect the thousands of them in a cup.
With small seeds, they're all mixed in and you can't really avoid the rancid ones or selectively spit them out.

So, for that reason I think Walnuts are worth eating (hard to find reliable and SAFE Omega 3 elsewhere in some regions).

Carbs though? I'm not sure.
You'd mostly just be after high carb foods like fruits for antioxidants. But purple cabbage as mentioned by Greger is the best cost value, and also low in calories. So, it seems hard to justify eating high sugar fruits for antioxidants when there's a better option.
Maybe vitamin C? But we don't need much of that, and it's actually better to avoid too much vitamin C, and get antioxidants in other forms instead.

I would say it's worth eating one fresh sweet fruit a day just to hit your vitamin C needs (if you're eating a lot of cooked foods like rice and beans), but that after the one, it has diminishing returns and an additional fruit probably isn't nutritious.
Try to stick with the better fruits, like berries (one being a hand full, about the weight of an apple or banana), and blackberries being high protein (will give you more than 50 grams in 2k calories).

Although, red peppers beat most sweet fruits in vitamin C by a huge margin, are both low in calories, and give some spice to you food (if eaten raw and chopped up in stuff). So, that's another option.

That said, if you're making junk food (less unhealthy junk food), use fruits to sweeten it instead of sugar. Cookies made with bananas and raisins are still WAY better than dumping sugar into them.
I use fruit mostly in baking (or making raw food) sweets. I think the important point is that the final product you create is, on balance, more protein and nutrient rich than calorie rich. My cookies and ice cream will still serve you up 50 grams of protein in 2,000 calories.
IMO, all recipes we share and advocate should be idiot proof to prevent people from making real junk food that will malnourish them. If every vegan recipe on the internet served up at least 50 grams of protein in 2k calories, we'd have a LOT lower recidivism from idiots who don't know how to properly balance their diets.