With this being new baby week here at Staying Vegan, we’re buying ourselves a little time by posting a few revised versions of some past newsletters that we think could use a fresh look (or a first look if you haven’t seen it before, since we don’t have a list of archives available.)  The Staying Vegan Newsletter goes out every Monday afternoon with original content, click here to sign up for your free subscription!

This newsletter originally went out on Dec 28, 2009, as a followup to this one:

Last time, we started on the series “the two worst things you can think” when talking with a meat eater. Part one talked about “you’re wrong,” and how it closes so many mental doors before you even get to the root of the issues that separate you from the person you’re (supposed to be) interacting with.

Before I get into the second “worst thing to think” I want to send a quick thank you to everyone who emailed me with their thoughts – there were a lot of you, but I think I’ve caught up on all the replies! In particular, I want to send a shout out to Sarah, who came scarily close to writing part two for when she wrote this:

“Our choice in diet is so personal that the moment it comes up in conversation people are bound to put themselves on the defense.  I think that’s something of which we, as vegans, need to mindful.  We expect other people to listen to us and consider the reasons behind our lifestyle, yet most of us are hesitant to truly take in what our omnivore friends have to say in response.  Personally, I have to make an effort to keep from jumping to the ‘I’ve heard this all before’ conclusion.  Yes, I have heard many of the same arguments from meat eaters multiple times, but I try to remind myself that I have not had this particular conversation with this particular person before – maybe their main argument is the same as someone else’s, but their specific reasoning is probably a little different.”

Thanks Sarah! “I’ve heard this all before” wasn’t quite where I was going to go with part two, but you’ve raised a lot of interesting ideas that I had to share with everyone else (this is why I love email, I learn so much from all of you!)

We’ll call that “part one and a half,” because I promised part two this time and if we went with part three it’d be out of order and confusing

For me, the second WORST thing you can think actually extends beyond conversations with meat eaters and goes into talks with other vegans or just about any other interaction you can have. In this case, it hurts you more than it hurts anyone else:

“I already knew that.”

As soon as you think that, you dismiss any possible value that you could ever get from the discussion, reading, viewing, or whatever other form of interaction you might be having. You’ve decided you mastered this topic a long time ago, and your brain has already moved on.

I framed this as the second worst thing you can think in a discussion with a meat eater partly because then I had two parts, but obviously this applies to non-meat based talks as well. I think it’s important in a meat-to-vegan discussion context though, because we tend to hear “health lectures” from people who profess to not knowing anything about nutrition unless it’s your diet

Just to make sure we’re covered, let’s discuss the meat eater discussion context first and then the broader “anytime you might learn something” area which happens more often.

When a meat eater tells you something that you’ll want to file in the “I already knew that” bin, it’s usually either an excuse as to why they eat meat, or it’s a lecture on a nutrition topic like B12 or iron. You’ve heard all of these before (though sometimes some epic disinformation kicks in like “we have the same blood type as a venus fly trap and need a 13 hour ketosis cycle to maintain our primal zone” or something.)

In both of these cases, you can get into it right then and there, but consider using these as bridges to future discussion if there’s a chance you’ll connect again in the future. Be thankful for the information you’ve received (assuming it’s accurate,) and try to follow up later either by email or when you see the person again with some further facts that boost your position while also informing (hopefully, informing the both of you.) Boom, you’ve just moved from chance discussion to an ongoing dialogue.

In the general case, try not to discount information just because you think you’ve already heard it before. Personally, I try to attend seminars and talks that I’ve already heard a version of just so I can put my mind in a state where I can ask “where else can I take this?” and the inspirations I receive are sometimes really amazing.

So, was any of this new to you? Have you thought of a new direction we can take this concept? I’d love to know what you think, so let us know in the comments!

Related:

• The two WORST things you can think, part one
• Newsletter signup

With this being new baby week here at Staying Vegan, we’re buying ourselves a little time by posting a few revised versions of some past newsletters that we think could use a fresh look (or a first look if you haven’t seen it before, since we don’t have a list of archives available.)  The Staying Vegan Newsletter goes out every Monday afternoon with original content, click here to sign up for your free subscription!

This newsletter originally went out on Dec 21, 2009:

Since there tend to be a lot of get togethers this time of year, and with that a lot of “opportunities” to interact with omnivores over food, I thought it’d be a good time to share some advice I got from some marketing folks some time back (Jeff Walker and Eben Pagan I think – it’s been a while, but this approach hasn’t left my brain!)

When you’re interacting with someone who eats meat and veganism comes up, there are two things you’re probably going to think, almost instinctively, and today I’m going to tell you not to do that.

The first thing that’s going to come into your mind is “you’re wrong.” This is totally natural – if you’re talking with someone who eats in a way you’ve sworn off because of issues like health, animal compassion, the environment, or other reasons, and they’re trying to defend their position, a position that you’ve clearly rejected already, then yeah, they can’t possibly be right, right?

No, this isn’t the part where I’m going to say that there’s an element of truth in their words – you’re right, and good for you!

That said, when you say or think “you’re wrong” you shut off a TON of your brain, whether you know it or not.

So what’s the big deal, right? After all, they’re wrong, and if your brain isn’t listening to wrong stuff, how can that be bad? I’ll tell you why by telling what I think you should be thinking instead of “you’re wrong”:

Ask “why?” instead.

There’s a reason someone says the things he or she does. Sure, it could be that there’s just a lot of idiots in the world (or maybe just at your parties – what’s up with that? I kid!), but if someone has different beliefs than you do, there’s probably a reason. You might not be able to figure that reason out in every case, but if you approach enough people with “why” instead of “you’re wrong,” I think you’ll find some patterns.

Once you know some of the reasons, you’re going to be less frustrated in these encounters. You’re going to have some counter-arguments ready that go to the core of the beliefs of the person you’re talking with. You might not convert anyone to veganism with this approach, but you’ll have a better chance, and like I said, by learning more about the people around you you’re going to be less annoyed, frustrated, and irritated about being the vegan in a meat-eating world and you’ll instead start being – I’m sorry in advance of how corny this sounds – the lever of change.

Next time, I’ll go into the other thing you can’t think – I’d put them together, but people tend to skim these newsletters and I want to make sure some of the ideas get through!

In the meantime, what do you think? Am I wrong? Let me know in the comments!

Related:

• The other WORST thing you can think!
• Newsletter signup

Updates last week were a little sparse, but trust me, a fair bit happened – it just wasn’t online.

For starters, we managed to bring the vegan population up by one:

I’ve got more info coming up in Monday’s newsletter (along with some stuff that’s actually related to veganism,) but I just wanted to give a heads up since some of you were checking in to make sure we were OK.  And oh yeah, we’re way more than OK…

We’ve got some stuff planned for this week that’s more appropriate to the topic of Staying Vegan, but I figure I’m allowed one post as a proud papa  Sorry for the absence, but I hope you’ll understand, and there’ll be more vegan tips and tricks here very soon – somehow, it seems a lot more important than ever before…

For years, I’ve been referring to “us” as vegans and everyone else as omnivores, because carnivore wasn’t accurate (most people eat at least some non-meat items,) but it’s always bugged me. After all, technically we’re all omnivores biologically, but some of us have chosen to focus on different parts of the spectrum, is all.

Finally, I have a new word for meat eaters, which I’m going to try using for the next little while: carnists.

A brief explanation:

At Tom’s recommendation from an earlier comment, I checked out Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism, which is pretty much what the title suggests: an explanation of society’s eating habits, from a social psychologist’s perspective. I enjoyed it, and I’ll talk more about it in a second, but first let’s talk about the carnist thing, which came from the book.

Author Melanie Joy makes the case that the lack of a name for people who choose to eat meat up until now is part of why people don’t realize that they’re even making a choice. Eating meat is a choice, and choices come from beliefs, and the choice to eat meat is an ideology that’s so entrenched, it’s essentially invisible.

Without naming this ideology, it’s just not there. It’s what people do, like breathing air, and if something’s unnamed, it becomes more than just unspoken – it becomes unspeakable.

And so, Melanie Joy has come up with carnism, “the belief system in which eating certain aniams is considered ethical and appropriate,” and a carnist is a follower of carnism.

I like the word, and like I said, I’m going to try to use it for the next little while to see how it fits. I’ll try to link back to this post when I use the word, so if you have any ideas on the topic to share with other readers, be sure to leave them in the comments.

Now, since we’re here, let’s talk about the rest of the book. I liked it, but I think that it’s a kind of game changer which won’t be effective all by itself, but rather, it’ll influence and inspire a lot of books in the years to come.

As a standalone volume, it’s still pretty good, but it bounces between the psychology stuff that I think is really interesting new ground and the usual “here’s how animals are treated” content, which don’t get me wrong, needs to get out there more, but personally I would have preferred more of the psychology aspects, since that’s the title, but maybe I’m not the target market. And that’s my biggest problem with the book, in that I’m not sure exactly who to recommend it to as a “this is the book that’ll solve your problem” kind of thing.

It reads a little scholarly, but somehow overcomes that with smaller page sizes and decent line spacing. That might sound incredibly uneducated on my part, but if this book was three times as long, I probably wouldn’t have read it. As it was, it’s only around 150 pages of actual content (there are resources, footnotes and bibliography sections in the back,) so it reads pretty quickly, but here’s the kicker – I actually wanted this book to be longer. There are individual pages that I think would have made for fascinating chapters all on their own.

And that’s the challenge for upcoming vegan authors. Take this book’s ideas and run with them, please! There are countless doors contained inside, all waiting to be opened, but in the meantime, I think we can all learn a lot through the cracks that the author’s exposed for us.

(Staying Vegan will earn a commission for any purchases made through the links in this post, like this one. I truly believe everything that’s written here, but if you’d rather not help fund our work and still want to read the book, you can use this link, which pays us no commission for purchases.)

Is it just me, or does that dropper look humungous?

As followup to our parenting columns on Vitamin D (see Vitamin D for Vegan-Raised Infants and Vegan Infant Formula: Nonexistant?) we finally got around to getting some liquid form vitamin D2 in the house (remember kids, D2 is vegan because R2D2 is cool, and ergocalciferol is the good one because I’m vegan, ergo I know more about weird vitamins than anyone on the street!)

Rather than figure out international shipping (as many of you know, we’re in Canada,) we decided to let the professionals figure it out and headed to the pharmacy to order some of the Drisdol drops that Jodie pointed out in a comment on a previous post.)  We basically just printed out the PDF, brought it to the store (in our case, Shopper’s Drug Mart,) and said “get this for us, mmmK?”

And there were no hassles.  I’ll be honest, I felt a little weird custom ordering something from a pharmacy, but apparently it’s something they do all the time, and no prescription is needed.  We got the drops the next afternoon.

Just in case the PDF goes offline, it’s made by Sanofi-Aventis, and the DIN is 02017598. Ours was made in Canada for an American company, so hopefully it’s widely available.

So what’s it cost?

Jodie said it was $68 for her, but we got it for a little under $50 (Canadian.)  That might seem like a lot, but it’s actually pretty competitive with other forms of D2: the cheapest we’ve been able to find Now brand D2 pills (1000 IU strength) is $8 for 120 vcaps, which is 6.7 cents per 1000 IU.  The Drisdol drops come in a 60 mL bottle and each mL has 8,288 IU (there’s a handy dropper that’ll dose out about 207 IU at a time,) so that’s about 10 cents per 1000.  Sure, it adds up, but maybe there’s a difference between liquids and pills.  Who knows.

The Drisdol is almost a third of the price of the D2 spray we mentioned in a previous post (at the price we were charged,) so at this point it’s the cheapest D2 liquid we’ve been able to find, and liquids are pretty much the only way a newborn’s going to take it in, so we’re calling it a win.

Interestingly, if we were to dose the stuff out at 400 IU a day (that’s Health Canada’s recommendation,) we’d have  about a three and a half year supply from this bottle.  Unfortunately, it expires at the end of next year, so I guess Angela and I will start taking drops too to make sure we use it all up in time.

Speaking of which…

So how does it taste?

With such a small range of options available, there’s not a lot you can do if the drops taste like, say, raw sewage, but that’d kinda suck when you’re trying to convince a small child to take them.  Fortunately, we didn’t feel an urge to scrub our tongues with a steel-bristle brush after our taste test.

Angela and I both tried a drop directly on our tongue (the box says to add it to milk, by which I’m sure they mean soy milk, but we wanted to taste it fully.)  It wasn’t bad, but the closest flavour we could compare it to was burning.  It’s definitely something you’ll want to mix into another liquid; probably a sweet liquid at that.

For us, the D2 problem is fully solved.  If you’ve found another solution, or managed to order Drisdol from another country, let us know in the comments!

(As always, there’s a warning that you should consult with your health care provider before using the product, and we did, so nyah nyah nyah.)

I’ve been noticing an interesting trend over the past few weeks surrounding what people really think about veganism.

I think non-vegans are jealous.

Hear me out: this is a very Canada-centric market survey, since that’s where I live, but the BlackBerry was invented up here, so I’m going to assume that we live in a staging ground for all other new things.

Lately, I’ve seen not one, but two powdered meal replacement products in store windows that specifically branded themselves as vegan, right in the name of the product. Contrast that against Vega, which I’ll submit as the best-known vegan entrant in this category, which only mentions veganism once, and that’s in the fine print.

But those are still niche products compared to the one I want to talk about today.

In Canada, we’ve got a margarine caled Becel. In the US it’s sold under the name of “Promise Buttery Spread,” which is kind of weird, and it’s only got 3 varieties available, but here in Canada there are something like eight styles to choose from.

It’s quite possible that these varieties will spread (sorry) to the United States and elsewhere. This would be kind of cool, because one of them is called Becel Vegan.

We usually buy Earth Balance, which is sold in a different section of the grocery store for some reason, so the only reason I know about Becel Vegan is because I saw an ad for it on TV. That’s right, I saw them say “vegan” in a TV commercial like it was a good thing.

(By the way, this isn’t an ad for Becel. It’s made by Unilever, a company which has generated many criticisms, including animal testing, and part of me suspects they’re just doing this launch to win shelf space back from Earth Balance, but that’s just my business paranoia talking. Today we’re all about the rebranding of the word vegan, is all.)

So here’s what’s interesting about this new crop of vegan products: most of them come from fairly big companies, which means that they have at least one staffer on board who passed grade 4 math. Vegans are something like 1% of the population of the USA and Canada. Let’s look at just the USA for a second: 307 million people, times 1%, is a little over 3 million vegans. It’s not a small number, but then again, there are more members in the National Rifle Association (4 million.) Sure, there are probably some vegans in the NRA, and I can’t picture a margarine company making a product variant geared for gun lovers (actually, I can, but that’s another story,) but my point is that there are a lot of markets that are a lot larger if you’re looking to diversify.

I’ve said for a while that most “vegan” products aren’t really targeting the vegan market anyway (there’s no way we’re drinking all the soy milk, for example,) and this is just another example of this, but it’s also a sign of awesomeness to come.

Want more proof? Here’s a banner ad I found for Becel Vegan:

Notice that it didn’t look like this:

No, it used words like “simple goodness,” and I think that this is the start of a new positioning. I can’t emphasize enough how important the public shift to words like “green,” “simple,” and “good” are when it comes to veganism, and yes, some of that might be marketing hype, but marketers tell people what they want to hear, and I believe that it all leads to this New Truth:

People are jealous of vegans.

In the past, and yes, still today, veganism was considered an extreme option. People are much less likely to do things that they think are extreme, or maybe more importantly, that their peers think are extreme.

So what’s extreme? Something’s extreme if it’s hard to do. It still might be good for you, but if it’s extreme, it’s simply not seen as attainable for the majority of people. Once it becomes easy, it’s no longer extreme, and then it’s attainable.

Technology (and yes, capitalism) is making veganism easier every day. Go talk to someone who was vegan in the 70’s, when you needed to buy The Book of Tofu, not because of the recipes, but because it told you how to make the stuff in case there wasn’t a specialty shop in your area. There are a lot of us who, if we’re honest, might never have even considered veganism under those circumstances – knowing what we’d know then, not what we know now.

When veganism gets easier for Bob from Accounting, veganism gets easier for all of us – both as consumers and as members of society.

It’s going to take some time, but I think we’re reaching a sweet spot where veganism, or at least aspects of it, are going to be sought out by more and more people, because they can. It’s a “want this? Do this” kind of transaction, with hardly any friction – it’s simply a matter of picking a different, yet almost identical product from the store shelf.

Yes, there are some pitfalls yet to face, including a growing number of “sometime vegans” who’ll eat their veggie burgers with bacon, and it’ll continue to be a battle to get people switched off of some products.

In the meantime, we’ve graduated from “hardcore granola eating hippies” to “clean, simple, good.” There nothing wrong with granola, of course, but let’s take a moment to enjoy the shift.

We’ve spoken before, both here and in the newsletter, about how many of you don’t have a lot of vegan support beyond the internet, because you simply don’t know any other vegans.

And don’t get me wrong, the internet’s awesome and growing like crazy every day, and I’m not suggesting you go out and make friends with any vegan you can find in real life, no matter how crazy, but here’s the thing:

The internet in general, and text-based blogs in particular, fall short in a lot of ways.

Here’s a brief summary of a lot of the posts we’ve run this year on Staying Vegan:

“Dealing with X can be a problem for a lot of vegans, but you have to remember that Y and Z, and to help with that, here 5 key points to keep in mind.”

There’s nothing wrong with it, and I’m happy with how things are going (and from comments and emails, a lot of you are as well,) but if I was being really, really honest, here’s how a post would really look:

“OMG, X sucks rocks.

Like, the biggest rocks you can find, that’s how much X sucks.

Why don’t omnivores realize Y and Z and

make this go away?

It’s not like it’s not staring everyone in the face ALL THE TIME.

But noooooo…

Instead we have to cope with things like these 5 ideas.

You know, instead of the world getting together and fixing that X thing once and for all.

Animals are frigging dying left and right,

and what, we’re supposed to talk about coping strategies?

Did I mention how much X sucks?”

(OK, I’m back.  That was cathartic.  Thanks.)

Here’s the thing: I don’t write like that because omnivores visit this site a bunch, and I don’t want to look like a crazy person, and I don’t want to encourage you to do that either.  Because every interaction with meat eaters, which, statistically, is like 95% of your average day, because I’m not just talking about discussions about food here, every one of these interactions is a representation of veganism, and it’s not going to win us any points if we all said what we really feel.

Wanna know why?

Because the omnivore you’re talking to, or the one that’s reading things, is trying really hard not to respond like this:

OMG I really like bacon

I’m not trivializing their views any more than ours today.  The point of all this is that our food choices, all of our food choices, are very much emotional decisions, and it’s very easy to come across as logical rather than emotional in our communications.

The written word and social conversation can’t convey that level of emotion well without breaking society’s standards for conformity, which I assume exist for a reason, but dammit, do they ever get in the way sometime, eh?

We as a community (and make no mistake, we are a community) can read between the lines, I think, but there’s a gaping chasm between our world and the other 95%.  I’m not sure how to deal with that, but I wanted to take a moment to recognize that just about everything we say, write, and do absolutely pales in comparison with everything we feel.

And it’s way more than OK to feel these things – just throwing that out there for the weekend in case you or your subconscious were starting to wonder why everyone on the internet was so calm and collected and logical about this stuff.  We’re really, really not, but a lot of the time, it’s the only way to cope with the world we’ve woken up to find ourselves in.

Is that bleak?  No, not really.  I think knowing we’re all in this together is pretty bright, really.

Thoughts?

Are vegan parents doomed to a small selection of jars? No way, says our Council!

This week’s parenting column takes a look at baby foods, specifically some of the very first solids your baby might eat, since it’s something that a lot of parents-to-be have written in about, and hey, even though they’re just doing what you tell them to, this is the point where you really start making a new vegan, really.

Do you need to rely on prepared jars of baby food? Are there things to watch out for? Does ingredient scanning for vegans start pretty much from day one?

As it turns out, a vegan-raised baby’s first foods are actually a little easier on a vegan diet, since many of the common allergens like eggs, dairy, and fish are out of the picture. The rest of the tips we got drive home the point that, like so many other things, feeding a baby isn’t a problem for vegans, or more specifically, it isn’t really a vegan problem.

Before we get to what the Council of Vegan Parents had to say, here’s a bit of stuff from Doctor Science and her band of Facts: the World Health Organization has recommended that babies be exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life and then continue with breastfeeding while mixing in some foods for up to two years or more (we’ve got some stories from the Council here if you’re interested in learning more about breastfeeding.) The American Academy of Pediatrics also has some recommendations for getting started with solids that might be worth a quick glance.

So what solids work well with vegan babies? Here’s what some of the Council had to say:

Don’t stress over it

Stephanie gave this introductory advice which is really worth noting: “don’t stress. Particularly with a first child, it’s too easy to worry that you’re missing something, not giving baby the best they need, not creating enough variety or whatever. Stress is time-consuming and doesn’t serve anyone at all, so trick number one: keep it simple and low maintenance. Don’t assume a baby cares what they’re eating; it’s all new and they’re going to ooze it out their mouth in the first few instances anyway. Feeding an infant is giving them an experience, and a largely tactile-over-taste one at that.”

Rice (cereal) is nice

It seems to be a doctor-type recommendation, and lots of Council members had success with it as a first food, so here you go: baby rice cereal is an easy simple way to get started without any pesky chopping. Quinoa flakes were cited as a good second step. And can I just point out once again that this is one of those things that works for vegans and omnivores alike?

Purée, hooray

Mashed bananas, avocados, applesauce, pears, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, zucchini, lentils, rice and couscous all made our Council’s list – this is one part of life where overcooking is actually a good thing since it makes things mushy, so steam away (no, don’t cook the avocados or bananas, unless your child is into it I guess…) What else? A few parents mentioned adding silken tofu to some of the purées, soups were also a hit in some households, and hummous time is, apparently, any time

If you’re looking for recipes, Sarah had these suggestions: “the biggest hit was lentil stew (mashed lentils, cauliflower, and spinach tossed in a food processor). We would steam carrots and process them with peeled tomatoes, a granny smith apple and some silken tofu, and flavour it with a little ginger. Peas and spinach in the blender was also a good one.”

By the way, as an extension to our time management for parents article, Sarah also outlined her baby food preparation technique for us:

“We set aside half an hour each Sunday for food making. What we would do is cook up a bunch of lentils, rice, fruits, and vegetables, and then puree/mush them in different combinations. We would then put them in ice cube trays, label them, and freeze them. We would take out a few cubes at a time and put them in the refrigerator to thaw. We got 2 dozen clean, empty baby food jars off of Craigslist for $3 and found that to be more than enough storage for her food.”

Ice cube trays were mentioned by a few parents (both for this and in the time savers article,) so I’m starting to think of them as some kind of secret weapon…

Milk-a-mole

I’ve seen a few references to adding breast milk to some of baby’s first solids (oh yeah, one of them was in this here article,) but Amy had a fun story around the theme:

“We started out with avocados, just smooshed up, and thinned with a little breast milk, we call it milk-a-mole, rhymes with guacamole. My mom did take a taste of the milk-a-mole, then was upset she had some breast milk.”

Weird how breast milk can upset people, but cow milk is “just what’s done” for the majority of society, isn’t it? Man, don’t get me started about eggs…

Jars are cool too

Don’t get the idea from any of this that everyone’s anti-prepared foods! While the above ideas can all be made from scratch, you shouldn’t feel guilty if you keep some (preferably organic) baby food jars in the cupboard – just like convenience foods for yourself, it’s a form of contingency planning and as Stephanie put it, “bottom line is, how much is your time and sanity worth? Having jars in the cupboard is smart and can be the difference between peace and not.”

Baby-led weaning

A few Council members were either practicing or expressed an interest in baby-led weaning, so it’s worth a mention here as well. In this case, rather than smearing purées acros your baby’s face (and the walls, I’ve heard,) you let the child experiment with food using his or her own hands. Everything you’re about to read is based on Council input, which may or may not be interpretive; if you’d like to learn from the source, there’s a site for that.

Here’s a summary from Julie:

“The first thing to realize there is that “weaning” means something different in other parts of the world than it does here. In the U.S., at least, “weaning” refers to removing breast milk/formula from a baby child’s diet. In the U.K., at least, it refers to adding solid foods into the diet. So “baby-led weaning” is about the process of introducing solids, not the process of taking away the milk.

“It’s actually a pretty cool concept. The idea is that the different parts of a baby’s body develop in unison to some extent; by the time their digestive system is ready to handle solid foods, they should also have the manual dexterity to pick food up and move it into their mouth, and the oral development to not push it back out (“tongue thrust”) Practically speaking, it means that starting at 6 months, we just stuck “chip-sized” (British-ese for “steak fry-sized) chunks of whatever we were eating on M’s tray. He mostly played with it at first, but that’s ok – when they’re that little, solid foods are really more about exploring tastes and textures than about actual nutrition, anyway, and most of what he did eat ended up in his diaper more or less unchanged. Creepy, maybe, but when you see solid chunks of carrot in the diaper, you know that not much is being absorbed, nutritionally-speaking.

“Lightly steamed carrot sticks, broccoli, avocado, etc. were big hits. As he got a little bigger and better with his fingers, he liked black beans, bits of cereal, etc. Soups were ok as long as he had some bread or something to dip in them. He made a huge mess, to be sure, but we only fed him solids once a day, at dinner, and dumped him straight in the bath afterward, so it worked out. I think it did a good job of getting us in the habit early on of only making one meal for the family, and it got him exposed to a wide range of tastes and textures, which I thin can only have helped him to be open to trying and enjoying a wide variety of foods now.

“We were fairly careful to keep things like peanuts out of his food for a while, and I saved the salt for our individual plates, but otherwise there weren’t many things that were off-limits to him. Big pieces are better than small pieces because they’re easier for little fists to pick up and gnaw on, and little pieces aren’t likely to get broken off and swallowed until they’re ready. In fact, one of the BLW things I remember reading suggested that spoon-feeding a baby anything remotely chunky was far more likely to lead to choking, since you were putting things into the baby’s mouth for them and they could then inhale things that they didn’t have the developmental ability to get into their own mouths yet.”

Once again: not a vegan problem

This was a real eye-opening topic for me personally, and I almost feel like I’m gloating when I say that from the looks of things, feeding a baby his or her first solid foods might actually be easier for vegans than omnivores, thanks to a reduced number of allergens to watch for and an overall familiarity with the source ingredients from our own cooking.

What about you? Any favourite first foods from your family? We’ve focused on really early foods here, but feel free to share some later-stage recipes (we’ve gotten a number of risotto mentions, for example) in the comments!

Thanks to Amy, Julie, Elaine, Lisa, Sarah, Stephanie and Jo for their help on this one!

Today I want to give some helpful information about tofu, but I think it’s important to explain why first.

Picture this: you’re a new vegan, and you don’t know a lot about it yet, but you know two things: vegans eat tofu, and vegans eat “vegan food.” So you go to the mall and buy some tofu and a vegan cookbook. (I know, I know, veganism is about more than tofu and there are great recipes in a lot of non-vegan books, but this is Week One of veganism for someone, give them a couple more days, OK?)

There are a ton of amazing vegan cookbooks out there, and the variety seems to be increasing almost every day, but I keep seeing the same oversight in just about all of them: they screw up the tofu recipes almost every time.

The Three Types of Tofu

There are more, but for the purposes of cooking, there are three main types of tofu you can buy, and they’re interchangeable to some extent, but your meal is going to come out differently depending on which one you use.

Sadly, most recipes I look at only say “tofu” without explaining which one to get, so I want to do two things today: explain the three types, and put out an open call to cookbook authors, vegan and non, to please explain this in their books!

Seriously, I think it’s a danger to outreach when people go to the grocery store to get tofu for this recipe that’s going to kick-start their vegan life, and then they see a whole bunch of different types and have no idea which one to get. Some people will, quite honestly, give up right there, and others will buy the wrong one, try a meal, think it sucks, and give up as well. Others will stick to their newfound moral resolve and suffer through less-than-optimal meals day after day, and they should be commended for that, but they also need to know that veganism doesn’t need to be that hard.

Basically, there are three main types of tofu you’ll be dealing with: tub, brick, and silken.

Silken tofu is almost always called for specifically in a recipe, so I won’t talk about it much here, but basically it’s smoother, often used in desserts or spreads, and usually comes in a tetra pack, which makes it a handy type to bring camping or to use for stocking your bomb shelter.

Tub tofu is probably the most common kind you’ll find in the supermarket. It comes in a tub that usually has a bunch of water in it too. Adding to the complexity, it often comes in different densities or firmness levels; typically soft, medium, and extra firm. Even when it’s marked as firm, it’s still pretty soft.

Brick tofu looks like a brick, and instead of being packed in water, it’ll usually be wrapped in plastic and look almost vaccuum packed. This tofu is super-mega-firm, and it’s still easy to break up, but it’s also the easiest to slice or cube without everything falling apart.

So which one do you use in a recipe? Good question! If the recipe says “medium tofu” I’ll usually use tub tofu, but the rest is an educated guess – if it’s something where I think I’ll want chunks, I’ll tend towards the brick, but if it’s going to be blended up or I suspect soft is better, I’ll try the tub. The key is to write down what you tried and how it worked next to the recipe so you don’t have to guess every time you make it!

If you want to know more about tofu, we shot a video last year that explains this with examples and some tips for how to work with the stuff. This was (and still is) part of a 7 day course we made to promote some cooking DVDs, but as I said in this week’s newsletter (it’s not too late to sign up!), we haven’t been promoting it recently because I want to rework the format of the course. You can take the full course if you want, but I just want to be clear that my intent today is just to teach you about tofu and not to sell you stuff, so enjoy the tofu video and let us know in the comments if you have any questions or more tips to share.

This scientitian can answer all your problems!

Virginia Messina put out a post last week (or so) about getting reliable nutrition information about veganism that I think you need to take a look at.

You may have noticed that I tend towards disclaimers whenever I go near nutritional information here, and as I think I’ve noted in some of them, it’s not because I’m scared of lawsuit threats; it’s more that I don’t think some things should be learned by Some Guy On The Internet (using the gender neutral form of “guy” here, of course.)

Virginia is an accredited dietitian, which means she gets to put the initials R.D. at the end of her name, as do the people she refers to in her post for further information. Me? I get to put J.A.G. at the end of my name, which is short for Just A Guy. There are a lot of JAGs out there, and their information is certainly useful, but I’d caution against using it as your sole source of guidance and instead use it as a basis for your own education.

But enough about certifications and disclaimers – what I want to talk about today is why the JAG continues to dominate the discussion. Sure, many of them make money by putting forth health advice (which may of course be perfectly valid,) but I think there’s an even more dangerous JAG out there.

As Pogo put it, we have met the enemy, and he is us.

There’s a longer topic I want to get into someday about the 5 stages of veganism, but for now let’s focus on one of the early phases (which doesn’t always go away) – the “I never met a pro-veg factoid I didn’t like” phase, which I’m going to call Scientific Cheerleading.

When you first go vegan, it’s totally natural to want to believe that it’s the best thing for you, and to be clear, I think it’s the best thing for me too, but one of the ways we tend to validate our beliefs is to look for information (mostly online, these days) that says we’re right, to the exclusion of all other evidence.

If a stat says as vegans, we tend to live, say, 7 years longer (and I’ve seen reports of as long as 14, but I’ve no idea if they’re valid,) then that’s what we as Scientific Cheerleaders trumpet to the world. What’s this? A vegan diet might reduce the chance of cancer? Dude, I want to get cancer just so I can beat it with my vegan diet! And so on.

And within reason, as long as nothing harmful is being prescribed, these beliefs are generally safe, at least at first. But there are two issues I want to discuss today that I think are big red flags that you need to know about, because in the long term, Scientific Cheerleading can be a real problem.

A danger to yourselves

OK, first off, there are definitely some beliefs out there that need to be challenged, like the idea that you can absolutely get enough nutrition from your food, regardless of your circumstances (personally, I think it’s possible, but not necessarily true for the average vegan, which is one reason I take vitamin supplements.) And yet, if we Google around enough, our brains, which want to be right, will find something, somewhere that validates our plan.

These beliefs can lead to physical harm, but I’m more concerned about damage to your resolve to stay vegan for the long haul.

What happens if you start to gain weight on a vegan diet? Wasn’t that supposed to be impossible? What if, and I obviously hope this doesn’t happen, but what if you get diagnosed with high blood pressure, heart disease or cancer while on a vegan diet? Those studies you heard about pretty much said that you had a vegan force field, didn’t they?

And what about meat eaters who seem totally healthy at the age of 95? Weren’t they supposed to have a million health problems by now? Why did they get a “free ride”?

These observations are going to come to you eventually, and when they do, you’re going to be put in a spot where you might question what you’re doing, at least on the health side of things. By this time, many of you have picked up a lot of compassion for animals and couldn’t imagine killing one, but it’s a stress point that, if it doesn’t stop you from being vegan, might make you think veganism sucks a little bit. And that makes things harder than they have to be.

One of the problems here is a misconception I’ve seen while talking with all kinds of people about what a “reduced chance” means. Well, it means the chances are reduced. For many diseases and ailments, the chances are pretty low already, from a big picture perspective, but even with the potential benefits of a vegan diet, they’re still far above the odds of you getting struck by lightning or winning the lottery (and no, I’m not aware of any studies linking diet to these two events in any form.)

I can’t prove that you’ll live longer, avoid all disease, or never stub your toes while on a vegan diet, but I honestly believe that, for me, my quality of life will be better because of how I choose to eat and live. I don’t need a study for that; I just know I feel amazing, and I think that should be enough. If you don’t feel amazing right now, find out why as soon as possible!

A danger to others

Information spreads like a virus. Bad information, somehow, seems to spread much, much faster, especially when it’s about nutrition, which I believe is outside of the realm of average people – that’s why R.D.s go to school for so long to figure it out and then spend the rest of their lives keeping up on the research.

When someone, vegan or not, asks you why you’re vegan, of course you want to share. When someone asks you about a specific nutrient, you don’t want to look dumb, so you’re going to say something, and so nutrition myths tend to spread. I think this propagation of bad information is harmful, for both of the reasons we’ve gone over today.

So what’s to be done?

First of all, I’m not in any way saying to stop reading about nutrition, either online or in books or videos. We all need to take care of ourselves, and proper diet is a big part of that. Simply be aware of our natural tendencies to seek out only validation, and as part of your research, try to find some counterpoints that oppose the theories you’re looking for. They’re not hard to find, which is part of why this is so tricky, but getting tested by your doctor from time to time can be a great way to check on how you’re doing and whether everything’s working out like you thought.

For dealing with others, I still think we need to put forth the health arguments for veganism, because it’s one of the Big Three with animal care and the environment, and it’s one of the easiest to talk about (for example, for guys it’s the one where manliness isn’t threatened.) That said, unless you’ve got the R.D. initials, I’d recommend talking in terms of your own experiences. Talk about what you’re doing, how it’s working, and how you’re feeling.  This might even be the best strategy anyway: in this era of instant gratification, how we feel today might be better at convincing someone than talking about making Big Life Changes to prepare for an event that might not even happen 40 years from now.

Pick your myth

What about you? Is there a vegan myth that you keep hearing that drives you crazy? Is there something you try not to tell people about, or are there arguments that you feel totally safe in mentioning? Let us know in the comments!