beanpole

i've been 100% vegan and have been cooking only with with whole, unprocessed, nutrient-rich foods for a couple of months now and i feel awesome! my food is more flavorful than ever before, my energy is through the roof, and my bodily curves are totally chizzled. and i am 100% positive i will never go back to eating animal products/refined/processed foods ever again. my hubby hates it. he told me i'm crazy and that i've gone over board because earlier this year i found out i had hypoglycemia and everything we ate changed hugely except we still had dairy/meat but he was happy because he DOES want to eat healthier. obviously since then, i went vegan. i saw enough to understand that the commercial stuff is infested with all sorts of dangerous things and the abuse of those animals is extremely discussing in itself. i have no problem eating meat from a wild elk, fish, local free range chicken eggs, or organic cows milk from non-abused cows (but haven't had any desire thus far for health resons). i personally refuse to play any part of it, and i want to teach my kids healthy eating habits without exploiting animals. they are still very young (6 months and 3 years), so it shouldn't be hard to take a big turn at this point. i don't condemn others for doing it, and i don't preach about it, i keep it between myself and my kids and try to leave it at that. here is my problem, first off i LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my hubby, he is my best friend and he is an amazing person. that said he is so annoying when it comes to food. he is the most picky person i have ever met in my life, and he is rubbing off on my kids in a major way. i will make a very healthy vegan meal for dinner, and i just try to ignore the fact that he won't eat it, thinks it's discussing, and i don't take it personal. i figure he can eat it or starve (he can't cook anything, and he doesn't have time to go grocery shopping and since i refuse to buy commercial animal products or refined foods, it's like eat it or starve right?). he will come through the kitchen and get himself a bowl of ramen noodles, or anything else that he can scrounge up still lingering in our cupboard from our life before, and then my daughter says i don't want this mom, i want what dad is having? not just that, but i feel bad cause he looks like is literally starving to death, and it's just sad. it's almost like abandoning your 5 year old who is helpless to make but a limited amount of things for themselves. do i endulge him and buy/make something he will eat or just wait it out until he comes around?

i use mine in food and in shakes that have lots of other ingredients/flavors, so i am thinking i'll just start with a simple vanilla or chocolate flavor. one question tho- do you guys add sweeteners to yours? and if so which one? do you add any of their optional ingredients? i don't really know how to customize my order.

has anyone tried True Protein Gemma Pea Protein Isolate??? and if so, would you reccomend it?

i found some recipes for tvp as a ground beef mock, and all of them sound pretty yummy but they are a little obsessed with using soy sauce as a seasoning. i don't mind soy sauce, but my hubby and kids hate it, and it's really not good for you anyway. talk about sodium overload! what else can i use to season mock beef that is vegan-friendly and readily available as well. i don't even really care if it resembles the taste of beef either, just want something tasty!

well, i WAS eating breakfast... ha, ha. all of this sounds really gross. i actually breastfeed currently and, i can only get about 30 oz a day, and that is considered above average. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? i see the families in my town who wander down the dairy isle... 4 lbs of cheese, 3 gallons of milk, a couple pints of cottage cheese, a tub of whip cream, a few cups of yogurt, maybe a tub of butter, and then if your lucky that is all that is on the "dairy" section of their grocery list. there is no way in heck nursing women could keep up with supply and demand. but of course there is always hormones, cloning, machinery to make pumping breast milk a lot faster and we could work around the clock, plus if you take our babies away from us when they are born, then you'd be rid of that 'little drag' on the production line. if and when we stop producing they can just kill us.... somehow i don't think that would go over so well. something gives me the hint that if you reversed the rolls and gave the milking jobs to humans and gave people a taste of their own medicine they suddenly wouldn't "need" dairy anymore. seriously tho, i'm just joking around, but it's kind of really how it is for cows.

thanks for all the help. i just discovered tvp. that is working awesome. at least it will give me a start until i can find some more protein rich goodies

In simple layman's language, hypoglycemia is the body's inability to properly handle the large amounts of sugar that the average person consumes today. It's an overload of sugars and or carbs (which convert into sugars if more is taken in than the body needs). I have functional hypoglycemia, which is the oversecretion of insulin by the pancreas in response to a rapid rise in blood sugar or "glucose". All carbohydrates (vegetables, fruits and grains, as well as simple table sugar), are broken down into simple sugars by the process of digestion. This sugar enters the blood stream as glucose and our level of blood sugar rises. The pancreas then secretes a hormone known as insulin into the blood in order to bring the glucose down to normal levels. In hypoglycemia, the pancreas sends out too much insulin and the blood sugar plummets below the level necessary to maintain well-being. Foods high in protein, and/or grainy foods like oatmeal take longer to digest and therefore the keep the blood sugars in check. high carb foods are really bad. you can have carbs, but in a healthy quantity and you want to balance it with a source of protein. straight carbs alone will wack your blood sugar out like no other. and anything refined is bad news. that is why i want to go vegan. i am almost 75% there (aside from the protein issue). i am a big environment-friendly person, and i'd really love to top it off and go all the way by eliminating meat. however because i work out so heavily, and i have hypoglycemia, and i am breast feeding still, it's like double wammy on my body as far as protein. just the breast feeding alone is made up of 65% whey protein. to replenish that alone not including what my body takes to repair itself after working out, and then to balance my blood sugar, am lost as to how i can do it. i really want to. i guess where there is a will there is a way... hopefully i can figure something out. my hubby and daughter don't eat meat and some of my close relatives are vegan, and i can barely stomach meat at this point, so i'm ready, just got to be really careful.

hi, I am new to the whole idea of veganism, and have been playing with the idea for a few weeks now and so i've been checking out a bunch of different recourses to learn if it's something I could really live with. recently i developed hypoglycemia and i've been able to keep a handle on it for the most part, but it does require a good amount of protein throughout the day to keep my blood sugar in check. currently my family and i eat super clean other than the lean animal products (which really helps my hypoglycemia... but we all know that's ONLY the protein content talking). however, after becoming exposed to the REAL truth about the animal consumption industry, i almost can't even stomach it if i wanted to. i am at a loss as to what to eat now. i have been trying different vegan recipes that claim to be high in protein, low in carbs + sugars (excess carbs and sugars really do not like me), but every one of them has quickly spiked my blood sugar and then sent it plummeting back down just as fast... then i feel awful. animal products have always been very good because i can pair them with whole grains, fruits, and veggies and it helps to counter the carbs/sugars and worked perfectly for me as it helped everything digest slower. i really don't want to have to live the rest of my life on protein powder just to be vegan, and at the same time i am so grossed out, i can never eat animal products again. what do i do now? where do i start? what are some vegan protein foods that will keep me in check? how to i pass this crossroads? HELP!