your views on Processed Foods

[Bloom]

I was wondering what your views are on processed foods are, for eg vegan friendly vegetarian sausages. I personally don’t like these types of foods, as they taste so artificial. At the moment I can only eat fruit/vegetables and rice, anything pre packaged gives me stomachaches and makes me bloated. I also find it disturbing when I read the back of the labels and see so many scary looking ingredients (most represented my numbers). There is one type of vegan friendly sausages that I like, they are more on the gourmet side and have actual pieces of vegetables in them but they are rather expensive. It would be interesting to see what the rest of the world offers to it’s vegans, but here in Australia we don’t seem to have a great deal.

[CollegeB]

i like the gimme lean sausages.

[Kathryn]

I have gotten more and more away from processed foods. Even though they may have some healthful ingredients, most are so full of artificial stuff (especially many meat analogs) they are pretty much non-foods, IMO, and I really wonder if the body recognizes them as foods (and anything that has a long expiration date--unless it's a dried food---is very suspicious to me: if airborne bacteria don't find it edible, what will the bacteria in my body do with it?.)

 

One brand of meat analogs I do eat is Tofurky. Unlike others that contain soy isolate or concentrate, they have tofu in.

 

Nevertheless, I don't make them a large part of my diet.

[SeaSiren]

I try to steer away from processed foods and since the advent of me giving up soy it's been pretty easy. I think it was a necessary evil during my transition into veganism, but since my end goal is to be healthy it made sense to eliminate them.

[Odidnetne]

I just got back from vacation and had soy ice cream and stuff, but normally the most I'll have is a little soymilk, other than that I don't eat much processed food.

[VeganGirl2006]

You just have to find what works for you. Some people do well with the processed foods. Others do not. But experiment and find out what works for your body and then stick with that.

[Guest]

I refuse to buy processed food other than pasta, tofu, seitan, tempeh, and maybe a few sauces...lately I've been avoiding all of these but for no real reason other than going mostly raw. I never had a problem when I ate a bunch of the other processed foods but I did feel better when I stopped...now I'll eat/try and processed vegan food if I'm going out or cooking for others

[Evan]

I think it's fair to say that the fewer processed foods the better. I would not consider it a healthy vegan diet if all your meals came from a box ready to eat but a few of those things probably won't kill you either. I like the raw food idea. I have a raw food cook book but I don't own a dehydrator which most of the recipes call for. Anytime you eat your foods raw and whole, you are doing your body good but there are always times when this is difficult to nearly impossible. Most people wouldn't do well eating raw potato for instance and please don't attempt to eat the shell of a nut..

[Tigress]

I've always found ready meal type meals in a box to be disappointing and that is from someone who has never tasted meat, so for those who have something to compare them with, they must be yuk !

 

If I want a burger I would rather make a yummy mushroom one than eat something that tastes like cardboard. I know lots of people like pre prepared food though so there is a market for it.

[Guest]

Burgers loaded with veggies are far better than protein packed vegan patty thingies...