Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness

I just finished this excellent book

Vegan For Life



This is a great book for anyone interested in eating a vegan diet. Beginners will find everything they need to know boiled down into a single page, on page 88, called "The Vegan Food Guide". People who have been eating vegan diets for a while will find updated nutrition information(the book was just published in 2011), including entire chapters debunking much misinformation and urban folklore about vegan diets. I found the chapters on soy food consumption and the real health benefits of vegan diets particularly interesting.

Instead of being a comprehensive ( and much longer ) book on nutrition, this book focuses on nutrition issues that people eating vegan diets should be aware of. This makes for a shorter, fact based book that is a bit more practical for people who aren't nutrition buffs.

The book has a strong focus on practicality, actually making a vegan diet work in day to day life. In chapter 8 the authors have some really good food preparation suggestions that can be used over and over for many types of food when people are rushed and not into making a recipe. There is also a section in the back of the book on page 243 describing basic cooking instructions for dietary staple foods. All phases of life, and even nutrition for athletic training are covered.

Jack Norris and Virginia Messina are Registered Dietitians who stay regularly abreast of current nutrition research and who are scrupulously honest about reporting the complete story in regards to nutrition...even if it isn't always what people want to hear ( they both regularly maintain blogs dedicated to vegan nutrition information ). In other words, you can depend on them to give you complete, up to date and truthful information.

That is what you will get in this book, in plain, easy to read language.

I read that last year. I love it. I refer to it all of the time and when new vegans ask me for book recommendations I always tell them that they should really get it. Such a valuable resource.

I really like both of their blogs too. They do not cherry pick information to make vegan diets look more flattering. If there is a problem or an issue they will tell you about it. You can can trust their information and you can trust them to tell you the whole story. You need that kind of information to stay healthy.

I just mentioned on the ppk that I like Ginny because if she isn't sure about something, she will say so instead of making her own assumptions.

I let my father-in-law borrow it because he was looking into losing weight and was confused about all of the info against soy, so I marked that chapter from him. And when I pointed out that it was written by R.D.'s he said, "Yeah, I noticed that a lot of the articles online are really biased, like there was an anti-soy study I found that was funded by a dairy council!"

Many of the worst anti-vegan, ant-soy rants I see on the web are published by "food writers"....translation, people without any relevant education or degrees. Any time I see any article on the web published about nutrition I check the date, the name of the author, the credentials of the author and how they earn their money.

Unfortunately there is no easy way to judge an article as being "safe", in regards to facts. Yes, if someone has NO credentials, like the "food writers" you can dismiss it as bullshit. However, most MDs don't have any nutrition education. It isn't much better with RDs or other degreed nutritionists either. Unless an individual RD has a strong interest in veg*n nutrition.....or.....even staying up on the latest research, they are going to speaking from the default view of nutrition they got during their undergraduate education: very conservative, very out of date and very animal product centered.

If I wasn't familiar with Norris' and Messina's writing.....or vegan nutrition I would be suspicious of what they write as they are animal advocates and have a vested interest that way. However, since they also bring up potentially unflattering points, I see that they are trying to be fair and balanced.....no matter where the facts fall.