Getting Started.

When I first talked to my friends about going vegan, the most popular question was, “How are you going to get enough protein?” Followed by “I'm not going to hang around so much if you are going to go on an all-bean diet!”

With some experience growing up in a lacto-ovo vegetarian house, being fed and cooking for lacto-ovo fishetarians I learned to balance foods for that diet plan. Readings of “Diet for a Small Planet” and “Let's Cook it Right” helped in that regard. I felt confident I could learn the balance for full vegan. That said, I am not a nutritionist, and I am going to presume few of those reading this are either.

At the end of my introductory piece, I was taking about the wonderful array of educational material available today. When charting of into the great unknown, or even leaping into waters a little deeper than you are familiar with, a little knowledge can go a long way. Today Google is your friend.

Now the internet is full of stuff. Some of it great, useful bits of insight that can help you step forward in the right direction. Others vague, almost crack-pot claims of cure-all diet plans which invariably lead to links to books or DVDs you should buy. The wonderful world of internet marketing means you will find a lot of these links. They all look different at first, but lead to the same place. Yeah, I passed on that.

Knowing specifically what I felt I needed to know helps me greatly in narrowing down my initial searches. My question was “what do vegan athletes eat?” In my mind, here was a group of people for whom getting the right balance of nutrients is vital, especially if they are looking to to perform at the world class level. Let's get one thing straight. I am not an athlete. I'm a renovations carpenter, not afraid to get on a bike and go for a cycle for a few hours, or place some squash, active , but NOT an athlete. Still my logic was, they understand the balance. Could I find anywhere where they could explain it to someone like me.

Enter Brendan Brazier and his Thrive, The Vegan Guide to Optimal Performance in Sports and Life. This book gave me a significant leg up on learning how to plan my diet requirements. Well written, it contains a simple, yet informative summary of how the body absorbs nutrients. I'm going to summarize some of the key chapter elements as I understood them.

1. Stress. In this Chapter, Brendan outlines the relationship between stress and your health, and more importantly from a dietary point of view, how poor nutrition, actually increases your stress levels.
2. The Thrive Diet. Here Brendan outlines how it works to reduce your body's internal stress levels, increase the body's ability to burn fat first and build lean muscle mass. The key component is 'high net-gain nutrition, a result of eating foods that the body absorbs quickly and easily, satisfying the body's nutritional needs.
3. Food Production, Energy Consumption and The Environment. In this chapter, he discusses the economic and environmental challenges to today's industrial food processing industry. This one I struggled with a bit. There were some valid points made of the energy costs of producing and distributing food, However, living in here in Canada, where fresh produce is not an option year-round, the argument needs more work. But hey, that is me asking questions outside the box.
4. Exercise. Pretty straightforward you would think. The body needs to exercise. Exercise allows the body to flow properly. (The body is mostly water – and if you think about of stagnant ponds and then think of the liquids in your body not getting swished around properly leaving stagnant pockets.... yeah I think about things this way sometimes. I'll stop now.) Most importantly here, Brendan also includes what foods to eat before and after exercise, so the whole routine is complimentary to your body.
5. Staple foods. What foods are ideally suited to giving your body high net-gain nutrition? How are they best prepared for them to be to be most efficiently absorbed into the body? Curiously (to me) the concept of nutritional absorption increases through sprouting or soaking some nuts and grains made me thing more outside that little box of what I know.

The final chapters cover recipes and meal plans. All good. But to me, the information contained in the previous chapters opened up the doors, turned on the lights and said “There you go Martin, you now have enough knowledge to be a little less dangerous and reckless with your path towards a successful Vegan diet”.

This is a book That should be read by all, vegan, vegetarian, and omnivores. I could read all I wanted about what foods have what nutritional value, but without knowing how nutrients were absorbed and worked through the body, I would still be struggling with the right balance.

Food Value Guides
We've all seen the National Food Guides as published by the government (whoever you are, they have one for you). I am a natural skeptic when it comes to information issued by the government. If came by me naturally, some would blame my father. On this charge, I think he's OK with it. We've all heard the “Hi I'm here from the government and I'm here to help you.” In my humble opinion, these national food guides (x amount of meat products, x amount of dairy, x amount of grains, x amount of fruit and veg.) are devised by those in whose interest it is to sell these products. Just have a look at who funds the research.

One online guide I refer to, was one I found through my friend, Mr Google. It is an online chart outlining the nutritional content of various foodstuff. Yes, these charts are 'guides'. The actual numbers will vary by source and food quality. The general outline is useful for those trying to keep track or vitamins, mineral and such. Check it out, The site does have some printable charts as well.

OK, on to restaurants I love to visit. Gojo's Little Africa Cafe has fast become a great place for me to get my Ethopian food fix. Well priced and conveniently located on Commercial Drive, just south of 12^th, it offers a simple, authentic selection of great tasting food. The vegetarian combo has me sated for under $15. Omnivorous friends have also said great things about their meat dishes. So yes, it is a place you can go to with people who need their meat fix.

Until next time.  

About half a year ago I left the world of meat and dairy products. There were a number of contributing factors and I won't go into them in this forum, but suffice to say, this was a move I have known I would be making for some time. That little voice had been inside my head saying “you know you should …...” for quite some time. I know there is no logic behind that, and it's all a bit airy-fairy, but that is the truth of it.

My first experiment into vegetarianism ended around 35 years ago. It wasn't an experiment I really had much input on. To this day, I'm not sure what triggered my parents to step into the world of Lifestream Foods, hand-ground grains, and the absence of meat products. One day I will sit down and ask and maybe the story will end up here.

I have two very distinct memories of that time and one oft repeated family story.

The first was probably the worst example of a vegetarian burger - ever. It was, I believe, completely indigestible. I mean it had to be. The expression chewing leather fit. Am certain that many people who dabbled into vegetarianism back then, and tried one of these, has spent the rest of their life scared to death of “mission bland and un-chewable”.

The second was a camping trip I took with the Navy League Cadets. I must have been all of about ten, or so. Time came to queue up at the mess tent and “oh, um I'm vegetarian”. I still see the expressions on the adult officers' faces, eyes somewhat bulged as if they were looking at an alien, or something. I ate salad, bread and potatoes for the weekend, much to the officer's concern. I never was more than a stringy skinny kid, they were very concerned that I was malnourished.

The family story relates to a visit of Ian and Liz, my uncle and aunt from Australia, bastion of steak on the barbie. The descriptive of what they felt they were forced to eat is fairly graphic, an experience burned into their psyche. I'll omit it from today's offering. The story is re-told at every opportunity. I promise that when they return, vegan/vegetarian fare will be a completely different experience.

The world of the mid-seventies was quite a bit different then, not that I can recollect much of it. I'm led to believe that most vegetarians, if you found them at all, were probably viewed as the long haired hippies off 4^th Avenue. Much of the knowledge about how foods affect the body didn't exist in the volume and with the scientific back-up that exists today. And as Al Gore hadn't invented the internet yet, Google, that great door into knowledge from around the world, was not even a twinkle in an eye, let alone a verb.

The 'bible texts' in our home then was Adele Davis' Let's Cook it Right (1947), Recipes for a Small Planet and Diet for a Small Planet both by Ellen Buchman Ewald. Standard fare that were most enjoyable were Rice con Queso and Complimentary Pie. We were lacto-ovo vegetarians then.


Through that process, and not being shy of getting in the kitchen, I learned much about 'balancing diets'.

Jump to today, and bookshelves are filled with mighty works extolling the virtues of vegan or vegetarian eating choices, offering recipes in styles inspired from every corner of the globe. There are web sites, blogs, stores, schools, and meet-up groups dedicated to helping one move into the world of vegetarianism painlessly and easily.

Most restaurants have something that is at least vegetarian, if not vegan on their menu. And unlike those decades ago, 'tofu' will not get you the 'I think you've turned blue' expression, heck you can serve it to omnivore guests and they won't think ill of you.

I give credit to two factors in the expanse of vegetarian food options available in stores and restaurants. The first is the rise in allergy awareness – peanut, mushroom, shellfish, lactose, gluten – people are aware of the consequences of eating the wrong foods for their own body, and restaurants have been forced to become adaptable. The second is the delightful expansion of truly ethnic restaurants. Foods from around the world are on your doorstep, with them wonderful tasty ways of preparing them. There is no excuse for bland any more.

So on to today, and given this grand library of knowledge. Where did I start? Where do shop? How and what foods do I prepare at home? What restaurants do I like to visit?

These stories will follow shortly with the first question first. Where did I start?

In ending each entry, I'll drop a quick note about a place I like to go for good vegan foods.

In this first entry on this blog, there can be no other place for me to start but a place I go to regularly, a small restaurant on Commercial Drive called Cafe Kathmandu. In the years, I have been going there, I have become fast friends with the owner and host Abi Sharma. We are brothers, if you will. The Momo, or steamed dumplings are legendary. His dal consistently delicious. If you like spice, Abi can make his foods as spicy as you like, and some of my friends REALLY do like spicy!