Veganism: How Healthy Is It Really?

Posted by Brandon Harshe on January 5, 2008

Obviously, there’s a lot of talk around here about going all raw and/or vegan. For goodness sakes, there’s been all sorts of talk about that stuff in our household, too. I feel like it’s everywhere. That’s good, though. I like being surrounded by people and topics that force us all to look at our health and how to constantly improve it.

However, I do have one monkey wrench to throw into the whole vegan thing. Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t think going vegan is bad. I think it’s actually a great thing… if you do it a certain way.

What do I mean by a certain way?

Whenever I hear a vegan talking about his/her diet, it seems to me as if he/she is trying to substitute everything they would normally eat in a non-vegan diet. Things such as bacon, sausage links, hot dogs, turkey, chicken, beef, ice cream, etc. When someone goes vegan, to me, that means you concentrate on sticking to whole foods such as fruits, vegetables, legumes, grains, etc. When I think vegan, that’s just what pops into my head.

But, many, many vegans choose to substitute their meat products for processed vegan products. This is where my "beef" lies. Take Tofurky, for example. I looked at the list of ingredients for the "Foot Long" Veggie Dog off of the Tofurky website. This product’s first questionable ingredient is isolated soy protein, which very often contains monosodium glutamate (MSG). Then you get to natural vegetarian flavors and natural smoke flavor. These two ingredients can very often be umbrellas for a concoction of up to 300 different ingredients, of which can contain excitotoxins like MSG. Next up is yeast extract. This is a sludge-type concoction that almost always contains MSG.

If you don’t already know, MSG is a salty food additive used to make foods more flavorful. MSG is an excitotoxic ingredient that can penetrate the blood brain barrier and destroy brain cells in a chain-reaction-type effect. Considering vegan or vegetarian items can taste terrible sometimes, the reasoning is understandable. But the methods are questionable at best.

Next, I looked at the Chipotle Franks. Some of the same stuff, except now this contains autolyzed yeast extract. This is similar to yeast extract, except that it is more processed and is guaranteed to contain MSG.

Next, I looked at the Beer Brats. These contained textured wheat protein. Any protein that gets a "textured" in front of it, always contains MSG.

In all fairness, a lot of the Tofurky products look okay, but the fact that they use these ingredients in some of their items definitely raises my suspicion.

I also checked out StarLite Cuisine, which makes some meatless chicken taquitos that are actually quite good. I ate these once, before looking at the ingredients and was disappointed at what I saw. They contained the dreaded yeast extract. Darn it! I liked these things, too.

You’re probably wondering how all these ingredients can actually contain MSG. Well, the FDA made it legal for food companies to omit MSG from their ingredients if the substance that contains it contains less then 90% MSG. So if a preservative contains 89% MSG, according to the FDA, you don’t need to know. If you want to know more about MSG and other excitotoxins, I recommend Russell Blaylock’s book Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills. You can actually buy it from our website if you look over to the right of this post.

My point is this. I think being vegan is cool, but if all you’re doing is substituting meat products for meatless products, the food companies have to make you want to eat them again somehow. Whereas sticking to a whole foods diet really is the best bet.

I, personally, am not vegan. I can live with vegetarian, but I don’t really have the desire to label myself one or the other at this point in my life. I love to eat 2 organic eggs every morning cooked in coconut oil. And although I haven’t had it in a while, I’m still eating fish. Especially since you can only get the important Omega-3 oils, EPA and DHA, from fish, unless you can find a spirulina or algae supplement that actually contains EPA and DHA. Oils like flax seed oil only contain ALA, which is good, but doesn’t nourish your brain cells like EPA and DHA. Besides that, I eat mostly raw fruits, veggies, nuts and/or seeds throughout the rest of the day.

If you’re a vegan who’s not a raw foodist, I’m curious to see if you eat these items or not. If you do, does this kind of information bother you at all?

Meal Replacements Shakes

Posted by January Harshe on December 12, 2007

I’ve been researching a raw vegan diet for a few days now. I have decided to go completely raw. So, in my last post I lied. Not really, but I did change my mind. What are you gonna do? We were surfing the web and looking at different meal replacements available. We went through the ingredients of all of them, even the "natural" ones. Basically, they are all crap. I don’t care what they tell you, they are no good. Sorry, get over it! Soy Protein Isolate is just not good for you no matter how you cut it. You can read why at Dr. Mercola’s site, because I just don’t have time to spell it all out for you. (Hey, a moment w/o one of the 3 kids on me are few and far between!)

You can do a "meal replacement" by yourself that will benefit your body much more than the scientifically proven a million times and then some that are available on the market. Why don’t people do this? Laziness. That’s right, people are lazy. They rather have a scoop of crap than take the time to peel an orange and put it in a blender. Maybe, it’s not laziness, but still hoping for that magic pill, or in this case the magic fake chocolate powder! They all seem to have their own patented blend of something. Be honest, you have no idea what that really is and they aren’t going to tell you!

If you want a meal replacement or a something to make sure you are getting better ingredients or whatever the reason, DO IT YOURSELF. The only way to know what is in you are eating is to make it in your own kitchen. Buy the food, prepare the food, eat the food and love it! You can make the most incredible, nutritious shakes on your own. I would personally invest in a Vitamix! They are worth every penny. You can make raw, whole fruit veggie and fruit smoothies, soups, dips, nut butters, milk and the list goes on! I use mine a couple times a day! It will change how you eat.

So, stop being lazy, or whatever other excuse you have handy and make yourself something whole, raw and yummy!

Be Conscious of What You Eat

Posted by Brandon Harshe on December 10, 2007

One of the things I always do, no matter what, is read the ingredients. I don’t care what it is. It could be the healthiest, organic-iest thing around… I’m still reading the ingredient label. I’ve learned a lot about different ingredients and what they contain and whether they will be a benefit or a detriment. Because of that, I’m very picky about what I eat or drink.

In my opinion, the first step toward a healthier life is to read the ingredients. The way I look at it, if you look at the ingredient label and see a long paragraph of scientifically wordy items, avoid it at all costs. I’m talking about things you can’t pronounce, things you can barely read, things that end in -ine, -ite, ate, etc. It’s even worse if it’s a two-word ingredient and they each end in -ine, -ite, -ate, etc. If I see this, I put it back on the shelf… whether I’m at Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, or Safeway. Who, am I kidding? I don’t shop at Safeway.

If you already have food at home that contain these novels of ingredient lists, and chances are about 100% that you do (unless you are a vegan-raw-foodist), look up what they are. Seriously, just Google it. You might be very surprised as to what you are eating.

Once you do find out what’s in the stuff you’re buying, you might reconsider what you have been buying. It’s not that exciting to find out that you bought something really tasty and it contained yeast extract… which contains MSG… which can give you a killer headache as it’s destroying brain cells… etc., etc., etc. At that point, you might want to reconsider what you are putting into your body by being a little more discretionary.

So, read ingredient labels, make sure you can pronounce the ingredients, and if you can pronounce them, make sure you know what the ingredients are.

From that point, you should be good to go!