Food Q&A
When someone finds out that I’m vegan, I’m often met with a slew of questions on a variety of topics. Here are some questions I’ve heard over the years and my answers regarding vegan cooking & nutrition. (For more information on vegan nutrition, I highly recommend The China Study, Becoming Vegan and Eat to Live.)
Cooking
How can you bake without eggs?
There is nothing magical about chicken’s egg that makes baking without one impossible, and yet because these are our habits, sometimes people might feel that way. In reality, eggs are used in baking for binding, leavening, and adding moisture. Many times in a recipe, eggs can be omitted altogether. Other times, they can easily be replaced.
In muffins or breads, try ground flaxseed and water. For the equivalent of one egg, mix a tablespoon of ground flaxseeds and three tablespoons of water. Mix in a food processor until the mixture is thick and gelatinous. Flaxseeds have a nutty taste, and so you’ll want to put them in foods that will taste pleasant with additional nutty flavor. Half of a banana counts for the equivalent of an egg in recipes. This is nice in recipes where the banana flavor gives extra sweetness and body, like pancakes, muffins, and some sweet breads. ¼ cup of applesauce can be used to replace an egg, and its mild flavor is almost undetectable in baked goods. This works particularly well for cakes.
What’s the difference between tofu and tempeh?
Tofu is similar in concept to soymilk cheese. It’s made by taking soy beans and boiling them. Now you have soy milk. Add in a coagulant, and it becomes a block. Depending on the coagulant, the tofu will be harder or softer. It’s funny that people can be distrustful of tofu because it seems unfamiliar. Some even act like tofu is gross; however, I think that’s only because we didn’t necessarily grow up eating it. Those same people don’t have qualms with cheese made from cow’s milk, but that product is made by letting milk get old and spoiled and then an enzyme from a calf’s stomach is used as a coagulant. Some might argue that sounds less appetizing than tofu…
Tofu can be used in a variety of ways. If it comes packed in water, we can dump the water out that it’s soaked in, wrap it in towels, and press it under something heavy like a book stacked with a can of beans. Press it for thirty minutes to an hour and then put it in your favorite marinade. Tofu acts like a sponge, and it will soak up the delicious marinade. Then the tofu can be taken out of the marinade and baked or fried. For a chewier texture, freeze the tofu first, leaving it inside of its water-filled package. Then let it thaw. Open the package, take out the tofu, and squeeze the tofu. The water comes out as if you were squeezing a sponge. After that, continue as before by putting it in your favorite marinade.
Tempeh is similar to tofu, except it uses the whole soybean. Soybeans are put together with a grain, often rice, and then fermented. When you find tempeh in stores, it sometimes have marks of fermentation on it that are a purple hue. Don’t worry about those. That’s a normal part of the fermentation process. I recommend steaming tempeh before using it, so that it loses any bitter quality. Tempeh has a delicious nutty flavor and has been eaten in Indonesia for centuries. It’s great marinated, used in tacos as a filling, or fried with tamari and maple syrup and made into tempeh bacon.
I have difficulty digesting beans. What can I do?
The good thing about eating beans is that the more we eat them, the easier they are to digest. As we eat beans, we develop an enzyme in our stomachs that breaks down the sugars in beans. So my first bit of advice would be to eat more of them. The second thing I’d do is encourage you to eat canned beans and give them a thorough rinse before using. People have an easier time digesting canned beans than beans they’ve made from scratch. If you are making beans from scratch, soak them overnight, and then discard the water they’ve been soaking in. Start with new water for the cooking. Try including a piece of kombu, which is a type of seaweed, into your cooking pot. Kombu has been shown to help with breaking down those stubborn sugars. You can find it in the grocery store with other seaweed. Kombu is also great because it adds trace minerals to your food.
If all else fails, there’s also a vegetarian version of Beano called Bean-zyme that you can take before eating beans.
Do you have any ideas for replacing cheese?
Whenever we talk about cravings, I think it’s good to identify the impulse behind that craving. When we crave cheese, we’re craving fat and salt. We can satisfy that craving in a myriad of ways.
With chili, sandwiches, or tacos, top them with slices of avocado or guacamole. As a pasta topping, toast pine nuts and add a bit of salt or grind walnuts in a food processor. For a cheesy flavor, add nutritional yeast flakes. You can find them in bulk bins of natural food stores.
For a texture that’s similar to ricotta, blend a handful or two of raw cashews in a blender with lemon juice, a garlic clove, and just enough water for it to blend. It makes a really delicious and creamy topping for pasta, stuffed inside of shells, or spread over vegetable sandwiches. Mix up the flavor by adding oregano, basil, or dill. With the addition of caramelized onions, it makes a tasty bagel spread or dip for potato slices.
In terms of packaged nondairy cheeses, my favorite brand is Daiya. It comes in mozzarella and cheddar flavors. It melts well. It’s soy-free and nut-free, and it’s made of cassava, which is a root vegetable. That’s available here in Southern California in small tubs at Whole Foods. Depending on the store it’s available in the dairy cheese section or the vegan refrigerated section.
What are some vegan breakfast ideas?
For breakfast consider oatmeal topped with fruit and nuts, peanut butter toast, cereal topped with nondairy milk, or a delicious green smoothie. For a bigger breakfast, a tofu scramble with lots of vegetables and topped with avocado and salsa is very filling and satisfying. For a breakfast on the go, a breakfast burrito with potatoes, beans, and salsa is quite delicious.
Nutrition
Where do you get your protein?
It’s ironic the fixation we have with protein in our culture. I say ironic because we actually have an excess in our standard diets. The diseases we suffer from are diseases of excess. While all of us know people who struggle with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, how many of us know anyone with Kwashiorkor? Kwashiorkor is the name for true protein deficiency, and we see it in people who are starving and malnourished with distended bellies and yellowish skin. In First World countries, we see it in people with eating disorders. As long as we are eating enough calories and a varied diet, we don’t have to worry about getting enough protein.
What we should be worrying about is eating enough fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Studies have shown again and again that most Americans aren’t getting anywhere near the daily recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables.
That being said, all foods have at least some protein in them, and some foods have more than others. Foods with high amounts of protein include tempeh, tofu, quinoa, beans, nuts, and seeds.
Where do vegans and vegetarians get their iron?
All of us should make sure we get enough iron in our diets. This isn’t something that is only a concern for vegetarians and vegans. It’s something that all of us should be aware of, especially women of child-bearing age, because we lose blood every month. That being said, studies have shown that anemia, which is caused by lack of iron, is slightly less common in vegetarians than in non-vegetarians. The reason for that is that vegetarians eat more vitamin C on average than non-vegetarians, and vitamin C helps aid the absorption of iron. Vegans have an even better situation than vegetarians, because dairy blocks the absorption of iron.
Iron rich foods include lentils, leafy greens, beans, quinoa, tofu, and tempeh. Eat them with vitamin C rich foods like a squeeze of lemon, oranges, or red bell peppers. Another option is cooking in cast iron, because some of the iron leaches into the food.
If a vegetarian or vegan is diagnosed with iron deficiency, they should do what people who eat meat would do, which is talk to their doctors about taking an iron supplement.
If I don’t drink cows’ milk, how will I get enough calcium?
It’s ironic that when most of us think “calcium,” we think milk, particularly cows’ milk. Why is that? Because from a young age, we’ve been told that milk makes strong bones. “It does a body good.” This is ironic, because researchers have found that the countries with the highest rates of osteoporosis—including the US and Scandinavian countries—are also the places where people consume the most cows’ milk.
So what’s the take away? Consider where grown cows get their calcium. We don’t see them nursing on their mothers once they’re past the age of weaning. Once they are old enough for solid food, they go to the place where minerals are, the earth. They eat grass. We can go to the earth for our calcium too in the form of plant foods like collard greens, kale, Swiss chard, beans, rhubarb, okra, broccoli, peas, Brussels sprouts, seeds, and almonds.
What’s even more ironic after all of these years of being told that cows’ milk is a miracle food in terms of calcium, most dairy cows these days are not grazing on green grass. They’re in feed lots. (When we see cows in grassy fields nowadays, they’re generally “beef cattle.”) Since they’re not in the fields eating calcium-rich grass, their feed is now supplemented with calcium instead. So let’s think about those resources. We’re impregnating a cow, taking her child, feeding her and supplementing her diet, so that she can produce calcium-rich milk when instead we could just supplement our diets ourselves with the aforementioned plant foods and cut out the middle-cow.
I’ve heard so many good things about eating fish. Are there any plant-based sources of Omega 3′s?
Some fish do have omega 3 fatty acids in their bodies. Do you know why? It’s because those fish eat omega 3-rich algae and phytoplankton, which is then stored in their flesh. (Ironically, now that so many fish are being farmed, they aren’t getting algae and phytoplankton into their diets, and so they don’t have the omega 3’s in their flesh.)
What does this mean for us? We can instead go to plants for our heart-healthy omega 3’s. To ensure you’re getting your omega 3’s, grind a tablespoon of flaxseeds in your coffee grinder and add them to your smoothies or on top of your morning oatmeal. Flax oil can be used in salad dressings and walnuts can be eaten as a snack. Since a vegan diet is already so protective in terms of heart health, adding these omega 3 rich foods is another great step. Plus, it means we don’t have to worry about how much mercury is “safe” in our diets. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather keep my count at zero.
I tried to be vegetarian once, but I was hungry all the time. Is there a way to be vegan and feel satiated?
A good thing to remember is that whole foods like fruits and vegetables are usually less calorie dense than foods that are high in fat. Remember, there are four calories in a gram of protein, four calories in a gram of carbohydrates, and nine calories in a gram of fat. So if we’re primarily eating plant foods that generally have very little fat, we’re also eating foods that have less calories on average. That means you may burn through those calories more quickly. So if you find that you’re hungry, eat! It may mean eating more often, and it may mean including some plant foods that are higher in fat like avocados, nuts, and seeds.
Doesn’t it prove that eating meat is the healthiest way to go since vegans have to supplement with B-12?
B-12 is found on bacteria. In the days of yore, before we washed our produce very well, we would also be eating small amounts of dirt on our food, and we’d get B-12 that way. (With the chemicals and pesticides in our dirt these days, I’m not advocating we all go out and start eating it, of course.) Because bacteria is attracted to flesh and because animals who graze are picking up B-12 from the earth, it’s on and in meat.
B-12 can be taken in a daily vitamin or as a separate supplement. It’s also added to fortified products, and can be found in varying amounts in tempeh and nutritional yeast flakes.
I’ve heard that soy is dangerous. What do you think?
The short answer is that I don’t believe soy is a miracle food or that it is a bad food. At its most basic, soy is a bean. It’s not magic. It’s a bean.
The issue with soy is that we are people with a lot of ingenuity. When we hear good things about a product, well, we want to make the most out of it. In the seventies, soy was marketed as a miracle food. So scientists decided to look into what made it most healthful, and they started breaking down whole soy foods and putting it into everything from cereals to breakfast bars to snack foods. Soy is a major crop, it’s highly subsidized, and that makes it cheap. Putting soy protein isolate into foods is a cheap way to get some protein into a variety of products. However, while people have been eating whole soy foods for centuries, we don’t know the long-term effects of these new Franken-foods, like soy protein isolates. That’s why when I reach for soy, I go for whole soy products, like edamame, tofu, and tempeh.
As to soy being dangerous, by and large the studies are showing that in terms of health and cancer fighting properties, soy is a healthful and helpful food to eat. For more information on the health benefits of soy, read this article by Neal Barnard.
Can you be unhealthy or overweight as a vegan?
Of course. By and large, plant foods are less calorie dense than animal products. When whole plant foods are the base of a person’s diet, in general they have an easier time maintaining their weight, and many people lose weight on a vegan diet. That being said, there are plenty of junk foods that happen to be vegan. French fries, sodas, cookies, candy, cupcakes, and fried foods are all ways to add junk to the vegan’s trunk. Being vegan is not a panacea. If it’s a vegan doughnut, it’s still a doughnut. It’s not a health food.
