vegimator

I have pectus excavatum worse than that and am not planning to have surgery for it. But if you can't get past it after several years, I'd go with the chest scar option. If you're worried about the scar, I would try to work with it by cultivating a tougher look including getting some bad ass chest and arm tattoos.

Welcome back!

Really? You're thinking of giving up veganism because our pre-packaged protein powderss are too low calorie? Add flax or coconut oil to any vegan pre-flavored shake. Done.

Is it possible to just bring a shaker bottle and some flavored protein like sunwarrior and add water?

For vitamin D, you can get it from UV treated mushrooms like these:

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/gEkShog5FDI/0.jpg

Not sure if you can find stuff like this in Ireland though. You'd have to be pretty serious about eating these things regularly to keep your levels up anyway and if you are currently or ever become deficient, no food product is going to easily correct that.

You can also find vitamin d fortified plant milks and other products.

I take the vitashine d3 capsules which are made from lichen. They're high dose and fairly cheap.

For calcium and omega 3s, I'd look at chia seeds. They're a pretty good source of both. Google chia pudding recipes. They look weird but they can be delicious. The one downside- chia seeds aren't cheap.

Savi seeds seem to be the hot new omega 3 trend. Vega's marketing them now. I just received some that I ordered and they taste great. They have an omega 3:6 ratio similar to chia seeds but they look and taste like a nut. They're good for protein too, but they too are stupid expensive.

Sesame and especially poppy seeds are also really great sources of calcium (look them up on nutritiondata.com), but they're full of omega 6s so maybe not your best bet as a reliable calcium source.

There's always tofu made with calcium chloride, almonds, fortified plant milks, and of course greens.

If you have a cheap source of pretty much any kind of green and a hell of a lot of time and ingenuity, you might be interested in leaf curd. It's incredibly rich in protein, calcium, iron, vitamin A and other nutrients.

http://eattheweeds.com/forum/index.php?topic=656.0

Leaf concentrate (l/c) is a nutritious food made by mechanically separating indigestible fiber and soluble anti-nutrients from the protein, vitamins, and minerals in fresh green leaves...The nutritional breakdown from the original work was that 20 grams of powder would provide 12 grams of protein. The amounts of vitamins and minerals (such as 440 mgs of calcium and 49 mg of iron) are impressive.

It takes a lot of greens and a fair bit of time to make it though.

You should definitely take a supplement (or eat supplemented food like nutritional yeast, soymilk, etc) for b12. You don't want nerve damage. There are studies showing that there may be enough b12 in a few vegan foods (eg laver, chlorella) to stave off a deficiency at least for a while but the evidence is dicey and it's just not worth any risk. I eat a lot of nutritional yeast and take a megadose supplement every few days.

http://nutritionfacts.org/videos/blue-green-algae-spirulina/

http://nutritionfacts.org/videos/update-on-spirulina/

http://nutritionfacts.org/videos/update-on-spirulina-2/

also not even vegan

Much like yourself. Why are you even here?

Xanthan gum is a powerful binder and it is very often necessary in gf vegan baking.

There are anti-realist vegan philosophers. Like this guy - http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/confessions-of-an-ex-moralist/

Fish? Seems like non-vegans outnumber vegans on here these days.

Oh, and for what it's worth, he died of a heart attack at 78.

Eh... Weston A Price was a holistic dentist most active in the late 1800s and early 1900s (when virtually no one was practicing veganism and he most certainly was not a vegetarian). He's right that sugar, flour and many vegetable oils are bad for you, but I think that's all that you need to learn from the guy. Can you be healthy following the kind of diet his foundation proposes? Probably. But his supporters overlook the fact there are plenty of cultures (primitive or otherwise) who thrive(d) on high starch, relatively low meat diets like the Kombai in New Guinea and the traditional Okinawa diet. Nutrition is complex and the human body is very adaptable. It's a bad idea to get obsessed with any diet guru. Do some reading and draw your own conclusions.

Start here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston_Price

I want everyone to go vegan. It would definitely be a good idea for you to go vegan for a lot of reasons. I'm just saying, you're planning on going raw and not just vegan. I don't advocate a raw diet because it's very difficult to obtain enough of several nutrients and is needlessly constraining and hard to stick with. Of course, most people would say the same thing about a normal vegan diet. Read Becoming Raw by Brenda Davis to find out more. I'd suggest going vegan and using "Vegan for Life" by Jack Norris and Ginny Messina as your guide. They lay out all the nutrition information clearly.

The point I was trying to make though was that fat is necessary for hormone production among other things so a high fruit raw diet may be a bad idea for controlling hormones. But if you're prediabetic as you say now, it's possible that the hormone issue is a symptom of metabolic syndrome and not an isolated problem.

Since you're prediabetic, you might be interested in books by John McDougall, Neil Barnes, and others about losing weight and controlling diabetes through a whole foods vegan diet. Some of them advocate extreme low fat approaches though (ie few if any nuts, seeds, olives or avocados) which seems like a bad idea to me.

I would keep in mind that fat is necessary for hormone production, including testosterone. If you choose a raw vegan diet which I wouldn't advocate, make sure you get adequate fat and protein.

It's very low in lysine, so pretty useless as a protein supplement.

Its gluten free. Most soy sauce isn't. The sodium content is pretty low.

The sodium content is actually higher than most brands of soy sauce. They just use a way smaller serving size. 1 teaspoon versus 2 tablespoons I think.

There's not a single sentence in that rant that's free of bullshit.

Things like vegan margarine or other products using emulsifiers tend to use soy lecithin. That's an easy way to get a big portion of choline.

I think it's a stretch to call tempeh processed. I guess it's processed in the same sense that yogurt is but some processing can make certain foods healthier. Like cooking beans or fermenting beans, grains, etc.

There's a new coconut greek yogurt. Here's someone's review - http://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/2011/03/12/vegan-greek-yogurt-in-stores/

If you want a low fat, relatively low carb, whole foods protein source, start sprouting beans and lentils. Sprouting reduces carbs somewhat as the energy is used converting the starch into simple sugars and breaking some of the protein down into free amino acids (this is a good thing- they're more easily absorbed). Check out sproutpeople for more info.

Yep. Chris is right. 70% pea/30 rice is is the way to go. I'd post the link but I'm too lazy right now. It's one of the stickied threads in a nutrition section though.

I watched these videos recently by the vegan doc Michael Greger -

http://nutritionfacts.org/topics/artificial-sweeteners/

It looks like erythriol, stevia and xylitol (though xylitol will have a laxative effect if you use a lot of it) are the best options. I just made ice cream with a blend of all three! Stevia's best in moderation apparently but I think that's only if you use a sweetener derived from the steviol glycosides. Newer stevia extracts use rebaudioside A which all studies so far have shown to be harmless.

It happened before and applehead's right, the vast weight of the evidence says that cutting out meat reduces colon cancer.

Wow, you're getting really cut and still have all the mass!