One Week Into The Transition

It has already been a week since I started my transition. And I must say I'm feeling good, no real detox syndromes what so ever! So what have I been up to during this first week?

First of all I discovered – to my great satisfaction – that there is a gym-person hidden deep down inside me, which is pretty amusing. Yes, I went to the gym, did some dancing and even went to my first-ever meditational yoga class. I really need to start working on that one and hopefully I'll be able to concentrate a lot better in no time.

I won't hide that there were also some difficult moments throughout the week. For example ignoring the bad old habit of eating bread when I'm at work. It's not easy just because it's right there under my nose and I always used to nibble on it a bit. Freshly baked baguette still smells good and tempting, plus my hand is so used to reaching out for it. So I thought about the fact that all the ingredients in that bread are quite useless to my body anyway and had some nuts and fruit in stead. Plus I read an interesting article on how we tend to crave more of the aliments that are already fermenting in our system. For example the yeast that we consume from bread needs to feed off yeast and quick sugars in order to sustain itself inside our body. That is why the more you eat it the more you "need" it. Have you ever noticed that you can not stop after just a tiny bit of bread, that you want one more slice and then one more? So we are no longer in charge of our needs, it's the yeast inside us. Same thing for coffee and many other things. (source) Sounds a good enough reason for me to stop craving!

The second difficulty sometimes comes up in the evenings when I find myself all alone and deprived of communication. I do have many internet sites to read from and many podcasts to listen to on the raw subjects, as well as countless recipes to try out... But no (vegan) friends who could even remotely relate to the subject and with whom I could share my little joys and rants. In stead I feel that I'll have to justify my choices or that I'll annoy my omnivorous friends with my incomprehensible raw stories. I now realize how important it really is to have a community of raw people for support.

This lonely feeling obviously makes me grab for food and crave for something sweet. So one evening I improvised this really quick and easy desert by taking some ground almonds and a bit of walnuts and mixing them with about the same volume of soaked soft dates (the recipes usually advise using date paste, but I added a couple of prunes in stead), then rolling the dough-like mixture in almond powder in order to avoid stickiness. That makes a pretty nice sugar- and fat-free desert.

During this week I've seen, heard and read a lot of new and interesting things. For example I watched the documentary "Crazy Sexy Cancer" where the young and beautiful Kris Carr fights cancer with raw food.

I also heard a very interesting interview with Philip Mcluskey on the We Like it Raw podcast about how he lost over 60kg, avoiding a gastric bypass surgery, by switching to a raw food diet. Check out the before and after photos on his website, he's rather a hotty.

Right now I'm reading a book called "The Raw Foods Bible" by Dr Craig B Sommers and it is fascinating – filled with interesting and useful material that I would like to share on this blog. So coming up soon...

Raw Vegan 3-Week Transition

It has been nine months since I decided to go vegan. And already then I got a bit familiar with the idea of raw foodism and was persuaded that this was the way to go - the very best way of eating and living. But at that time it had still seemed a faraway goal, quite complicated and frightening. Which is all very normal since the first steps of going vegan also seemed a bit intimidating and very exciting. It was a lot to handle for a beginner, especially being the only vegan I know in this town (and in this country actually), I simply wasn't ready to take on the raw adventure.

By now the whole vegan thing has become just so natural that I'm only rarely reminded of it, for example when friends ask me to go eat French food in a restaurant with them (which basically means that the only vegan option on the menu will be the wine and even that is doubtful). Or when I see people eating their jambon-fromage sandwiches and wearing fur and leather coats in the streets... Most of the time I completely forget about it so that it starts seeming unnatural to me that I can not get non-dairy latté or milkshakes or vegan pizza when I'm out on town. How is it possible, I catch myself thinking, that no-one provides it when it is all so easy to make and all the substitutes are completely available?!

So lately I've been listening to a lot of podcasts and reading things on the internet that have made me think about raw foodism again. But let me explain a bit about what raw foodism is:

Vegan raw foodism is a lifestyle promoting the consumption of un-cooked, un-processed, and often organic foods as a large percentage of the diet (I'd say at least 75%). Typical foods include fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds and sprouted grains and legumes that have not been heated over 40°C. Heating food destroys the enzymes, which assist in the digestion of foods and are known to be the "life force" of food. Researches prove that cooking not only destroys nutrition and enzymes, but chemically changes foods from the substances needed for health into free-radicals and poisons that render food unrecognisable to the organism and therefore toxic. Living and raw foods have enormously higher nutrient values than the foods that have been cooked. There are several different subcategories of raw foodists like fruitarians, sproutarians,  juicearians, but I prefer regarding the subject in a general manner for now.
As raw foodists claim all over the web, after an initial detox where the body ejects all the toxins that had been stored during all the years of eating cooked, follow the great benefits like weight loss, higher energy levels, clearer skin, overall improved health and many more. Soon the body will require much less food than before because everything it gets is alive and thus much fuller of energy. Eventually the organism starts regulating its needs a lot more efficiently by craving only the foods that contain the nutrients it is running low on.

All this sounds super great to me, although this is only the very surface of raw foodism. It is far from being just a diet; it is a whole lifestyle and a way of thinking. For example, as I see it, it also includes a more conscious and spiritual way of regarding life, the universe and everything: being more aware of myself and my surroundings, living in greater harmony with nature...

I will be posting updates and thoughts as I go through my transition, as well as links and further information on raw food during the next three weeks. Hoping that the detox period will pass quickly and that my addiction to cooked foods (it might sound like I'm over-dramatizing it but believe me, we really are addicted to cooked food just as we can be to nicotine, alcohol, sugar, cheese etc.) will pass without huge withdrawal cravings.

I've survived the fist two days pretty well, making myself a yummy eggplant lasagne, listening to Raw Vegan Radio podcasts (if you are interested in this subject I really advise you to listen to this episode) and being encouraged by Jenna Norwood's experience (hey, if she did it, why can't I)...

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Raw Vegan Eggplant Lasagne

• 1 medium to large eggplant (aubergine)
  
• 2 cups of water
  
• 1/4 cup nama shoyu, or tamari sauce
  
• 1 tsp. sea salt

Peel the eggplant and cut it thinly lengthwise. Marinate in water, nama shoyu, or tamari sauce and sea salt for at least 3 hours, and up to 12 hours - the longer the better. Dry the eggplant slices with a paper towel. 

Tomato sauce:

• 1 cup (cherry) tomatoes
• 1/2 cup sun dried tomatoes (soaked for 1-2 hrs)
• 1 tsp. tomato concentrate
• 2 dates (soaked for 2 hrs), or some agave syrup
• 3 tbs. olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic
• 3 tbs. fresh parsley, 1 pinch fresh oregano,
1 handful fresh basil,
1 tsp. Italian seasoning
• 1 tsp. sea salt 
  

Blend everything together, add the soaking water from tomatoes for better consistancy if necessary.

Cheese sauce:

• 1/3 cup tahini (sesame purée), or chickpea purée
  
• 1/3 cup olive oil (I used half of it and half of water)
  
• 2 Tbs. nama shoyu, or tamari sauce (unless the tahini is already well salted)
  
• a pinch of tumeric powder (curcuma) or light curry powder for the extra zing

Mix together in a bowl until smooth.

You'll also need about 2 cups of shredded zucchini (courgette). Create different layers, alternating: tomato sauce, eggplant, cheese sauce, shredded zucchini, tomato sauce, etc. Finish with shredded zucchini, and decorate with a few thin slices of red onion. (source)

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For more information check out also:

Steve Pavlina's 30-day raw food diet trial

The Living and Raw Foods F.A.Q.s

Raw foods educator Angela Stokes talks about how to survive food cravings

Channa Masala and Veganniversary Despite Everything

Today is a special day. Today I feel good even though I watched "We Feed The World" yesterday and it made me feel desperately small, hopeless and helpless. Even though I listened to another ranty Angry Hippie's podcast, which was about "Bullshitatarians" whom I've myself had to encounter on several occasions lately and who have only had a rather frustrating effect on my optimism. Even though some of my closest friends refuse to even try to understands my reasons for leading a vegan lifestyle, let alone support it. Even though reading the new post on the Peaceful Prairie Blog made me cry again (tears of delight, of hope, of being moved to the bottom of my heart by the simple beauty of life that is of such strong will, but so neglected by us). Even though I am still forced to share my dinner table with sausage-munching and dead-chicken-limb gnawing individuals. Even though my own mother still probably thinks I'm going through somekind of a phase or that I am part of some sinister sect. Even though my temporary flat mates had already cooked something by the time I got home ignoring the fact that I was supposed to make a special meal for them tonight. Even though they first invited me to eat with them and then discovered there was nothing vegan on their menu, so I could not join them unless I wanted to end up chewing on bread and watching them devour dead bodies...

Despite all that I am feeling good today because it is my 6-month veganniversary. A tiny mile-marker in view of many more to come and that I wish to celebrate serenely.

For this occasion I am making the wonderful Channa Masala (a huge shout-out and thank you to Dino here!) even though I'll end up eating it alone (that leaves more for me!). And to all the countless people who have asked me in the past six months and who are yet to ask me in the years to come this perpetual question: "what DO you eat??": this recipe is for you. Trust me, it is easy to make. Try it while listening to the last episode (n° 101) of Vegan Freak Radio or the episode n° 6 of Satisfy The Mind and I assure you that many more of your potential questions shall be answered.

CHANNA MASALA (Annu's style)

Take a large skillet or a saucepan, put it on heat and pour in cooking oil (sunflower, canola, peanut oil or whatever you have lying around. And don't be stingy!) Let it get very hot, then throw in about a teaspoon-full of cumin seeds, let them start popping and then add about as much crushed coriander seeds. As the popping gets crazier, throw in one chopped onion and a head of crushed garlic (or more if you love them as much as I do), add some grated ginger and let them get soft in the oil.

As soon as they're nice and soft, add about 1/2-1 ts of tumeric (curcuma) powder. Then throw in almost-cooked-through potatoes cut into cubes and the pre-cooked chickpeas (in about the same proportions). You can use canned chickpeas or cook them yourself in salty water for about 1,5h after having soaked them overnight. Shortly after that add some finely chopped tomatoes as well as about 2-3 tbs of tomato paste/concentrate (after heating it for a minute or two on a separate little pan). You might also want to keep the tasty liquid of your cooked chickpeas and add it to make everything juicier. Or add some tomato sauce or vegetable broth. Let it simmer on medium to small heat until it looks something like a slightly thick stew. When it's almost done cooking, add the very last bit of taste with garam masala spice-mix. No worries in case you don't have it - you can very well replace it by mixing together a little of cinnamon, clove and ground nutmeg (muscade). Add salt and pepper (or even something hotter!) according to your taste and serve with rice or pita bread or whatever else you want. And don't forget: don't be afraid to improvise!

Bon appetit and happy vegalienation and veganniversation and de-channamasalation!

Some More Products of Animal Slavery (Vol. 1)

First of all let me start by reviewing the basics. In 1944, Donald Watson created the term "vegan" and gave it the following definition:

Veganism is a way of living which excludes all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, the animal kingdom, and includes a reverence for life. It applies to the practice of living on the products of the plant kingdom to the exclusion of flesh, fish, fowl, eggs, honey, animal milk and its derivatives, and encourages the use of alternatives for all commodities derived wholly or in part from animals.

Bearing this in mind, I’d like to go through all the products that, as soon as I mention my not consuming them, make even the most vegan-tolerant people mostly go "Huuuh? But whyyyyy!?" and roll their eyes behind my back…

 

HONEY

It is not a question of whether bees are intelligent or not. They are obviously amazing creatures in many different ways: able to communicate on several different levels (odor, sound, movement, etc.), they have an incredible skill of orientation, covering over 100 km² per colony and always finding the straightest way back to the hive; they are the hardest workers and their society is extremely well organized. (Watch this for example).

It is not a question of whether they can or can not feel pain. Although I’d like to remind you that bees, as all living creatures, have a complex nervous system as well as the ability to move in order to avoid harm (which you must have noticed if you have ever come across one of them and tried to slap them away). It is not only an evidence of common sense and logic but has also been researched in scientific studies.

 

The real ethical problem is in the simple fact that humans have enslaved bees, using them uniquely for our own benefit. Now, there are many misleading general perceptions on the way beekeeping is organized. Firstly – most honey is not produced at sweet little flowery farms, but in huge industrialized factory farms. Secondly – people do kill bees and not only by getting stung. In fact, beekeepers kill their queens and replace them by new ones coming from commercial suppliers every one or two years in order to maintain control over the hive and to keep honey production at maximum. Even worse – some bee farmers kill off their hives before every winter because it is more profitable for their income.

Contrarily to what we might expect, bees are not domesticated and if given the opportunity they could abscond (the entire colony leaves) or swarm (they raise a new queen and divide the hive in half to leave and form a new colony somewhere else). But bees cannot leave even if they wanted to because beekeepers control their queens and capture the swarming colonies to bring them back. Even during fall and winter a mouse guard is placed in front of the hive entrance.

”Beekeepers are continuing an ancient tradition," one might say in their defense. Think again: the hives used in bee farming today were invented only 150 years ago and are specially designed for large-scale honey extraction. These methods are therefore radically different from those created thousands of years ago and have nothing in common with beekeeping methods that emphasize humility, respect and being part of nature as opposed to managing nature for human gain as our capitalist order dictates.

"They only take the excess honey that bees produce," some claim. Actually, all beekeepers take nearly every last bit of spring-season honey. And according to James E. Tew, an Extension Specialist in Apiculture: "Commercial beekeepers frequently extract [read: steal] all fall-season honey and then feed colonies either sugar syrup or corn syrup in quantities great enough to provide all the winter food the bees would need." But anyone in their right mind can guess that honey is not just some random sweet sticky stuff that bees like to eat – it is their natural food that contains just the right amount of fats, proteins, vitamins and minerals that their bodies need to function and that they will not get from plain sugar water. Just like infants need their mother's milk and not the milk produced by a mom of another species... 

Bees are also used for other byproducts such as beeswax for cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, polishes, and candles; royal jelly (that some people believe has youth-preserving qualities) and venom, sought for medicinal purposes. All this does not mean that vegans are left without any thick sweet and sticky yummy stuff to spread over our vegan pancakes or to add into our vegan cookies. There are numerous plant-based honey alternatives out there including Agave nectar, Maple syrup, Barley Malt syrup and many more. You can find plenty of information on honey alternatives and vegan honey recipes here.

And if you are sick and tired of all these "vegangelical" and hard to digest facts about bees, I encourage you to go and see the "Bee Movie" which is light and funny and sweetly sincere regarding many points of the bee-being.

More About the Fish

To all you fish-eating "vegetarians" out there:

Step Five (Death in Dairy)

The ethical problems behind dairy are probably of the least obvious ones in the consideration of an average omnivorous or vegetarian consumer. Especially for those who - like me - were used to seeing cows happily munching away the grass and lying in the sun on the green pastures when they were kids. Drinking milk and consuming milk products is encrusted in our cultural mind as something so very natural that we don't give it any thought at all, nor do we question the ways that this stuff gets onto our table. But is it not a least bit troubling that humans are the only animals who drink the milk of another species and do so far beyond infancy..?
That being said, it is even more troubling to realize how little we actually know or care about milk production (and I'm speaking from my personal experience here).

The fact is that cows (or goats, sheep or any other animal we use for their milk) do not naturally produce milk non-stop throughout their whole life just because their stomachs turns grass into the white liquid and because people "help and alleviate the burden" by milking them.* Milk is not nature's or animals' gift to humans. (Is anything?)

As all the other mammals on earth (including us), they naturally produce milk for a period of time after giving birth in order to feed their young. Thus, to maximize milk production and the farm’s profits, cows are artificially re-inseminated shortly after giving birth over and over again. Dairy cows are deliberately bred to produce ten times more milk than a calf would naturally drink. This and the continuous pregnancies put an enormous strain on the young cows’ bodies, often resulting in udder tumors, infections and breakdown. As soon as their milk production declines – at about 4-5 years of age – dairy cows are sent to slaughter, even though they would normally live for over 20 years. Their bodies are so bruised and exhausted by the time they arrive to slaughter that the meat can only be ground up for use in burgers.

Most cows never get to nurse their little ones – calves are separated from their mothers at only few days of age. Female calves are added to the dairy herd or slaughtered for the rennet in their stomachs that is used to make cheese. Male calves are either slaughtered at birth, raised for beef or sold to veal farms, where they will spend the remaining few months of their fleetingly brief lives in confinement (in tiny individual cradles where they can never turn around nor lie down) and darkness, fed an iron-deficient diet in order to keep their flesh pale. That is why, even after refusing to eat any meat, but by continuing to consume dairy, we are directly supporting the cruelty of the meat industry.

The processes are roughly the same whether it is an industrial farm or an organic (bio) farm. I deeply encourage you to read this beautiful letter posted by the Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary to take a little glimpse at the faces of organic and free-range farming.

*This may sound exaggeratingly stupid to many, but it was more or less the image I had before I started digging into those questions.

Step Four (What's Wrong With Eggs?)

Besides the obvious fact that eggs are chicken-embryos? Well, let's see...

Battery eggs:

A huge majority of eggs come from factory farms. Egg laying hens are packed by 5 to 11 into small battery cages of about 40cm (the wing range of an adult chicken is twice this size). Their wings and legs atrophy from disuse, and their legs and feet become deformed from standing on wire cage bottoms. The tip of their beak, full of sensitive nerve endings, is seared off in order to prevent them from injuring each other and thereby obliterating the farmer's financial investment.

When their egg production drops, hens are deprived of water and food for up to 14 days at a time in order to shock their bodies into a period of increased laying. This extremely cruel practice, called “forced molting,” causes birds to lose their feathers and a significant percentage of their body weight, many birds die from hunger and dehydration.

After a year or two of being treated as egg producing machines, their output decreases and hens are sent for slaughter. They are so battered and emaciated by then that their meat can only be used in companion-animal food, instant soups or pasties and pies where the pathetic condition of their bodies will not put consumers off their meal.

Male chicks are worthless to the egg industry - they do not lay eggs nor grow fast enough to be raised profitably for flesh. Thus the egg industry kills millions of newborn male chicks every year by suffocating them to death in trash bags or by dropping them alive into high-speed grinders and then feeding them to the chicken.

Now you might say "yeah well that's just in the US, but the situation is much better in Europe!". Think again. Eggs = food = profit anywhere in the world. It is true that the European Union is planning to ban all the battery cages by 2012, but we are not there just yet. The Estonian company TallEgg has "battery eggs" written all over it. Indeed - the problem is not abstractly "elsewhere", it is right here inside our omlets and our mousse au chocolat.

Free-range eggs:

Free-range is not a legal industry term; therefore it basically means nothing. It is used by farmers to imply a more humane way of production, but in reality there is no regulation regarding how the word is interpreted. Thus, to most producers this merely means a bigger cage.

Free-range farming is still about business where profit surpasses concern for the animals' welfare and comfort. And even if free-range hens were treated with kindness and given all the grass and sun and space, they will still be killed for meat as soon as their egg production drops, even though a hen could live about fifteen years in a natural environment. And like all the other animals raised for food - they will be subjected to the horrors and abuses of transportation, handling and slaughter.

Besides, the appellation bio- (or organic) and free-range is becoming more and more profitable because more people are starting to become "aware" consumers. Bob and Jenna Torres make very interesting points on this phenomenon in their podcast.

Alternatives:
And last but not least: we don't really need eggs - unless you crave for a dose of cholesterol and salmonella. In fact, they are quite simple to replace in all your cooking:

2 tbs of corn starch or 2 tbs of potato starch = 1 egg

1 tbs of soy flour + 2 tbs of water = 1 egg

1 tbs of soy milk powder + 1 tbs of corn starch + 2 tbs of water = 1 egg

2 ts of corn flour + 2 ts of water = 1 egg

For cakes you can also use some ripe mashed banana or apple sauce. Tapioca powder works well as a binding agent. Obviously there are numerous other alternatives out there like the Ener-G egg replacer for baking or silken tofu for that "scrambled eggs" effect, or even eggless mayonnaise... In the end it's not so much a question of need nor even comfort, as about making concious and responsible choices.

"No matter what words or systems are used to candy-coat animal production, when we treat sentient beings as commodities, we invariably invite abuse." (Joanne Stepaniak)

Why I'm Not Vegan

(in response to Hanna's last post)

I've also been thinking on this subject for quite a long time. But first of all, soy milk is not exactly healthier (concerning calcium and protein). Secondly, the soy products are so damn expensive, as are all the bio and fair trade products, which means that a poor student is in the obligation of eating junk filled with genes and hormones and pesticides. Besides, start to think of it - there is milk inside chocolate and inside ice cream, sauces and many bakery products, inside body cream and shampoo etc etc etc. And it's even worse with the eggs - almost anything we eat containts "traces of egg" (that's what they write on the packages). So putting in a lot of money and effort it is possible to exchange our usual milk products with the soy products. There is even vegan ice cream and vegan shampoo out there. It's obviously not in our normal supermarket just around the corner, but still possible to find. But how to replace, or even just avoid the eggs? That one I haven't figured out yet...

It is a different problem with meat: in general it's too expensive to buy, so that solves the problem. But if I'm eating out it is absolutely impossible to find something that wouldn't contain meat or at least chicken or fish. And if I decide to be the false-vegetarian/vegan who's afraid of missing on some vital substances and therefore continues eating fish.. well, it's impossible to find a tuna sanwich without mayonnaise and/or eggs...

Being vegetarian (and I'm not even mentioning vegan) is quite harmful for your social life as well. Because it rules out eating out with friends ("hey, want to grab a kebab?" - "um, no") or at a friend's place - unless the inviting person is vegetarian, they will not even once consider asking about special diets of people (once again, poor students who do what they can)... And if you are strong enough to pass the evening watching others eat (and without grabbing any of those aperitif chips - they too contain traces of egg!) then good for you, but it is extremely antisocial and makes you feel weird or bad, as well as your friends.

These are more or less the problems and the questions that arise when I consider becoming vegan or even just part-time vegetarian. If someone can share their experience on the subject, I would be more than happy to hear about it. And I hope that one day I will be able to stick the black & green star full-time to my front and vote against the massive and torturing production of meat, eggs and milk by not eating them...