Call Any Vegetable... Call It By Name

[dreamshark]

Another song I need to add to my new food-themed playlist.

Yes, I have a new food obsession: vegetables. 'Cause I have a juicer now, so I need lots and lots of veggies. If anybody has quantities of garden bounty they want to get rid of, or an apple tree that is dropping unwanted fruit all over your yard, please let me know and I'll take it off your hands.

I am so into veggies right now that I have gone temporarily vegan, just to see what happens. This is my 4th day of eating only plant-based food and I'm surviving. Vegetable juice is so filling that I'm not even especially hungry. People keep telling me that avoiding meat and dairy has some sort of anti-inflammatory effect on the body, and that my health and well-being will improve drastically if I do this.

I'm hoping it isn't true, because I really really don't want to be vegan.

Comments

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

In my case, at least, avoiding any animal products except some seafood does have an anti-inflammatory effect. Whether this makes you feel better or not probably depends on whether you have some kind of inflammation problems--for me, it is/was monthly pain while menstruating (which totally goes away) and osteo-arthritis (which may be a bit better, but it fluctuates so that it's hard to tell). Possibly everyone can do better because inflammation effects everyone's heart and vascular system; that's still being proven, as far s I can tell. Pisco-vegan is a lot easier, I think, than just vegan.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was thinking about your posts, among other sources, so I was hoping you would chime in. :)

I have more or less chronic muscle/soft tissue pain that seems out of proportion to the amount of exercise required to trigger it. I don't know if the problem is actually inflammation, but ibuprofen helps noticeably, so maybe so.

It occurred to me after I started this plan that there is no reason to cut out fish for health reasons. In fact, I think fish oil supplements are sometimes recommended for their anti-inflammatory effect. I just decided to stay with plant-based foods for a few days to focus my mind on vegetables. My primary goal with the juicer is to increase the amount of raw vegetables in my diet, not to do away with meat for good. It certainly has done that. It is astounding how many vegetables it takes to to produce one glass of juice! With my normal (relatively healthful) diet it's a struggle to get 5 fruit/veggie servings per day. Since I started juicing I've been consuming 10-12 servings/day (about half of them in juice).

Have you noticed any specific issues with eggs? I suppose if animal fat is the culprit, whole eggs might cause symptoms in susceptible people, but eggs seem like such a perfect food to me that I have a hard time imagining they could be bad for you.

[daedala.livejournal.com]

Do zucchini work? We didn't always manage to pick the blossoms, and J will not eat squash, so we have some giant ones.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Giant zucchini are perfect for this sort of thing. Are you sufficiently eager to get rid of them that you would drop them off on my porch? If not, when would be a good time to come get them (and let me know where you live, which I don't think I know).

Thanks.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

As I've mentioned before, I'm cooking (!) on a low salt, low fat diet. This does include Other Stuff at parties and restaurants, and isn't NO salt NO fat (despite the title of the soup above). While I most often use seafood, I make omelets so can't be considered remotely vegan.

Still, while I haven't lost any weight in a year, I'm down something like five belt notches. I can't say if I'm healthier, but I feel okay.

Still, I would recommend more of a balance than straight vegan. That is, have some animal/fish proteins, just not very much of it. And tofu tastes like what you cook it in. It wouldn't surprise me to find that tofu makes a good (or at least an interesting) filler in your juices.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Down 5 belt notches without losing weight is an impressive weight shift of some kind. Either you've traded in a lot of flab for muscle, or your old diet was having some kind of bloating effect that your new diet is not, or ...?? Ideas?

"Still, I would recommend more of a balance than straight vegan."
Straight vegan is emphatically not my intention. I'm just experimenting.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

The major shifts in diet: Considerably less eating out. Low-salt cooking.

While my protein tends to be seafood (and lately tofu), plus taking the skin off rotisserie chickens, I'm probably eating more eggs. Basically, I think it was the salt. A little more exercise, but not as much as I really need.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I have noticed that as I've gotten older I've gotten a lot more sensitive to salt, in the sense of retaining water when I eat a lot of salt. I notice it as sudden shifts in weight by as much as 3 pounds in one day, but it can affect your waistline too.

I've also gotten more sensitive to the taste of salt. Foods that I used to love (like Pronto Pups) now taste almost unbearably salty to me. I haven't been making a huge effort to eat a low-salt diet, simply trying to avoid eating foods that now taste too salty. Unfortunately, more and more restaurant food is falling into this category now. Well, probably fortunately where health is concerned, but unfortunate if you enjoy eating out as much as Richard and I do.

Good on ya' for improving your diet. You probably know this, but be sure to look at the sodium content on any processed meats, seasonings, canned foods or sauces that you cook with. Most of the salt in home-cooked food does not come out of the salt-shaker, but from things like that bouillon you put in your "no-salt" soup.