Some Essential Products

• Miso: at first it looks expensive and just tastes salty with no pros... But, it is only around 5-6$ for 250gr (22,50$/kg) and this little 250gr can last you for a while, because miso tastes VERY salty, so you rarely need to use a lot. Got all amino acids, besides, its got many health benefits. and prevents infection, diseases, etc. You can put it in anything: stews, soups, etc.
• Other fermented soy products like Tempeh: much better for health than tofu! more expensive, though.
• Bragg's Liquid Amino Acid soy sauce: made of soy amino acids, 0 calories, low sodium: much better than regular soy sauce or Tamari sauce! More complex taste also, doesn't taste just salty.
• Hemp seeds: another complete protein. High in protein, not a common allergen, excellent in salads, cereals, soups... everything!
• Vegan protein powders: hemp protein powder chocolate flavour, delicious with a banana in smoothie. Pumpkin seed protein powder: almost tasteless: replace some of the flour with this in muffins, cake recipes to add more proteins!
• Rice paper: there are different size. The larger ones are perfect for sandwich rolls. It is raw and is good replacement to bread!
• ALL fruits and vegetables ! cucumbers, grapes, cherries, romaine lettuce, oranges...
• sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, etc: to replace meat, etc. Buy it raw, you can let them soak overnight. Grounded sesame seeds are ideal to thicken sauces.
• dates: the soft ones like Medjool or others, not the hard, dried ones. Tastes so good, so sweet, perfect snack when you crave for sugar!
• avocados: complete protein, higher amino acid profile than beef or eggs! Perfect in sandwich, vegan sushi, salads, raw guacamole, etc!
• kale chips: the best brand and less expensive: solar raw. There are 2 delicious vegan flavours: super cheesy and ranch sour cream with hemp.
• Ruth's Chia Goodness: perfect for raw breakfast morning cereals. Around 8$ most places but sometimes 5$ at rare places. Can be eaten cold or warm or added to recipes like stews, soups or cookies!
• Lentills: soak overnight, and then its cooked in only 20 minutes! Healthy, delicious in many recipes!
• vegan burgers: you can make them out of lentills, hemps seeds, beans, grounded seeds and nuts, add spices, herbs, salt: eat in sandwich, salads, etc.
• vegan raw lemon bars: I make them out of chia, raw peanuts, raw cashews and sunflowers, fresh lemon juice and zest, add stevia, agave nectar, raisins, raw cocoa, everything you want! Healthy fast food!

Good deals in Montreal for Food

Raw nuts can be pretty expensive but at Tau on St-Denis corner Rachel you can buy raw cashews for 10,29$ per kilo. They're broken in half or smaller pieces so they're not whole cashews but it tastes the same anyway.

Fresh dates are expensive at most places. I remember just 1 or 2 years ago I could find 550 grams boxes for 2,50$ but now they're around 5,50$ everywhere. Some places its 4,50$, which is not to bad... But the other day I found out at La Vieille Europe on the Main (3855 St-Laurent) it is 4$ for 550 grams and they are mellow, tender, sweet frash dates.

Not far away from there, some more raw nuts: raw peanuts 90 cents per 100 grams, at Frenco (3895 St-Laurent)é

Also, Ruth's Chia Goodness, usually over 7$ everywhere is 5$ at Tutti Frutti, on Maisonneuve east, close to metro Beaudry.

milk and osteoporosis

http://healthandfitness.sympatico.msn.ca/Home/ContentPosting_50Plus?newsitemid=084c9522-a7fb-4c5e-bd43-d9c030cd11e6&feedname=50_PLUS&show=False&number=0&showbyline=True&subtitle=&detect=&abc=abc&date=False

This is sad: another article on osteoporosis, but they are not saying anything new. They write: osteoporosis does not have to be 'an inevitable part of aging'. Well, with the advices they give, it will continue to be inevitable, because what they are telling to do (taking calcium supplements, drink milk, eat dairy products, fish, and other sources of calcium) is what people already do, but they are still getting osteoporosis - millions of people... they are all eating cheese, fish, etc. And no matter how much they will increase their calcium intake, it wont change anything for this disease. You know the milk advertisement and the question all nutritionists ask 'are you getting enough?' (milk, dairies)... well, eventhough people eat more and more of this, they are still saying its not enough, because diseases related to teeths and bones are still high and getting higher; so they say: drink even more milk. Thing is: too much is like not enough. What they nned to say is: eat less proteins, eat more fruits and vegetables. These foods give plenty of calcium, without excess of proteins. No matter how much calcium you get, if you eat too much proteins, your body will acidify itself and it will leak calcium out of your teeths and bones for alkaline minerals (calcium). As soon as you get too much proteins (and we dont need a lot... only about 10% of your total calories intake, while people get 20-25%... so eat about 30-40 grams of proteins a dayrather than 70-80+)... so as soon as you get too much proteins, you have a negative calcium balance, and taking a ton of calcium supplements wont change anything.

Milk, dairy products, fish, etc are killing people.

Check out those videos from a new documentary on the truth about milk !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFweMS-Mj7o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQsVlA4sqtM

sugar

ok I just have to rant about madness of society in little things, details that nobody would notice but its there: increddible amount of sugar -- when it is not necessary! -- I got this green tea bottle by Nestea -- they make adds saying its healthy and stuff, loaded with 'natural tea polyphenols' crap, but all there is in that is water and sugar - sugar/glucose-fructose syrup; 42g of sugar per bottle. If its for donuts and stuff, I understand it would taste crappy without sugar... but green tea tastes good naturally without any sweetening or just a little sweezed lemon or fruit juice. I regret I bought this but at least it wont happen again soon: I got at home some green tea leaves, ginkgo biloba, hawtorne, and I can even infuse them under the sun instead of putting boiling water on it. Then just some juice from a fresh grapefruit... got a nice, refreshing beverage perfect at anytime during the day.

Monsters

I love all animals, even insects, but I don't like at all those that could eat me, and all those that suck my blood or attack me for other reasons then just for their defense. I understand a rhino that charge on me if I'm on his territory; he's afraid, he thinks I might attack him, if I show him I dont want to hurt him and I leave, perhaps he wont harm me. I don't like those carnivorous animals that will bite me just because they're fucked up in the head, just because they're natural born killers. I love plants but I wouldn't like if a fucking carnivorous plant eats me alive (I know its not really possible). Meateaters and other sickos eating corpses of dead animals in the form of a Big Mac... I hate those fucking vampires: bedbugs, ticks, catfleas that jump on you to suck your blood, red ants that eat you alive, fucking leeches, bats - all those blood suckers are ugly animals or is it just coincidence? - moose flies, black flies, mosquitos and other bugs that spread diseases, Aids and other viruses... intestinal worms, carnivores, killers and other predators,parasites and other calamities of this world that nobody likes. I mean I like cats, they're cute, and nice - when domesticated - but I dont like them when I see them having fun torturing a poor innocent mouse, totally terrified, pretrified with fear, her tiny heart beats so fast that it could explode, and those cats like that, they're not even killing the mouse, just hitting it with their paws and claws and teeths, playing for half an hour. What if I did the same thing to them, I'm sure they wouldn't like it, and I wouldn't like it either. For a few weeks I was being really stressed out because of work, and because of my cat itself always making noise because she was herself stressed of her first pregnancy, then she was stressed and acting insane with her new born kittens so sometimes I would throw my cat 5 meters away, I would just grab her suddenly and throw her, so she became afraid of me, and each time I was doing this I felt so bad for her and guilty, and she was getting even more stressed and unhappy, and me too, which is a sign that violence and brutality are bad. Good and Bad DO exist, no matter if there's a God or not, or justice, law, police, whatever: we feel fear, remorse, joy, these feelings represent abstract, yet real, values: good and bad. Yes death is natural. Yes a tiger killing an antilope is natural, but not necessarily good just because it is natural... Bad is natural too. But just because its natural doesn't mean we must do it. We can do the Good, natural way too.
I'd like a world without those parasites. If we cant make them disapear, at least let's change, us, humans that eat flesh like vulgar ogres.. come on, wake up ! are you so decadent that you eat some dead chickens with dead skin, dead muscles, with blood, nerves, and you always ask for more...

WHAT SHOULD WE EAT ? may be biaised).
But my conclusion is that fruits are the only ideal food for humans.
Fruits ? Vegetables ? Animal products?
This post is mostly about wether or not we should eat vegetables. I'll let you judge by the links provided (but search for other sources too, for those here

http://www.13.waisays.com/plants.htm
http://www.fibermenace.com/
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/vegetables.shtml

So these are 3 links provided by someone who eats only raw meat and raw animal products (raw eggs, milk, butter...) telling me that plants are toxic because 1) fibers are not edible 2) most of vegetables contain built-in pesticides/insecticides to naturally fight against predators/to prevent from being eaten.

From the 1st link :

We are not pigeons.

We are not cows.

Therefore we don't have a crop to digest cereals, nor 4 stomachs to gradually digest grasses or leaves.

Right... and are we tigers ? Are we lions or hyennas? No, therefore we don't have the special enzymes and short digestive tract to degrade animal proteins.
We are primates, and like the anthropoid apes we are designed to eat fruits. Most apes eat a diet composed of 99% plant-based food, (most calories come from fruits, the rest from greens) and 1% animal food (the insects on the greens they eat).

My opinion about fibers: I don't think they are harmful to health in adequate amounts. Just because they are not edible doesn't mean they are harmful. They are not useful to digestion itself (unlike many ignorants and dieteticians tend to say or think) - in fact, they slow down digestion and make it harder - but they are good for afterwards : to help get rid of the other wastes (cuz fibers are wastes).

My opinion about the self-defense elements found in plants to protect themselves against species who wish to eat them... Ok, so cows and other herbivores have the digestive system to deal easily with those subtances but we don't ? Why not? 4 stomachs ain't necessary. We have 2 stomachs (1 stomach in two parts) unlike carnivores, who have only one simple stomach. I think we can digest grains and vegetables quite efficiently, but not necessarily optimally (worse with meat and animal products. But we digest fruits optimally).

We have the pro-meat/anti-vegans people who say those molecules are harmful to humans. On the other hand, I've heard from vegetarian dieteticians that those defenses of the plants against insects, microbes and viruses and beneficial to us when we eat them; when we eat those plants those same molecules are then protecting us from viruses, etc, rather than harming us.

Some people say also that plants contain too much insecticides/pesticides sprayed by humans. Not if you buy organic products. If you eat animal products, what you eat is even more toxic because it stored much more insecticides in the animal flesh, after years of intensive feeding.

Those phytochemicals are used both as ingredients for insecticides as well as making supplements supposedly scientifically proven to be effective for their potential health-promoting properties on humans.

Whatever if vegetables are good or bad for us, I don't think some greens everyday can harm us, especially if you choose the ones with no 'harmful' molecules, but I think the optimal diet for humans is fruitarianism.
For those wondering if only fruits can provide enough proteins, you can visit this website for infos. http://www.thefruitpages.com/sugar.shtml We can also add a few nuts and seeds to add some proteins.

I think that the ideal, and natural diet for humans is a low-fat raw vegan diet, has presented in the book 'The 80/10/10 Diet' by Dr.Douglas Graham. It consists of mostly fruits, and raw vegetables, with small amounts of seeds, nuts and avocados.

What's funny is that the diet suggested on the 1st link provided by the anti-vegan guy, is a mostly fruit diet. All meals are fruits, and some raw nuts. The only thing which is not fruits is 1 or 2 raw eggs per day.
http://www.waisays.com/suggestions.htm

go vegan

oh my god... there's really people eating this.

Should we supplement or not ?

About 100 million Americans use vitamin pills because they are sure it helps them to be healthy and they spend 25 billion US $. But nothing proves that supplements help to live longer or healthier.

Here's an article that shows how "scientific" studies are ineffective at proving some stuff. It can't say clearly if vitamin pills are effective or not to protect from illness/reduce risks of disease. Some studies say vitamin pills don't really have any positive or negative effect - but they're not sure... A few studies show that certain supplements could reduce the risks of certain health issues... but they're not absolutly sure. And some other studies say supplements could even be counterproductive and cause premature deaths - but they're not sure...
Some scientists are so incompetent that in one study they consider the vitamins from fruits and veggies to be the samething as vitamins from supplements !

Some studies have even shown a negative supplement effect. Analysis of data collected from some 70,000 postmenopausal nurses showed that over an 18-year period, those who consumed the most vitamin A from food or from supplements had the greatest risk of bone fractures.

I've read today that a 40 years-old man got seriously illed because of a Vitamin D overdose due to supplements. He had been taking those pills for like 2 years and then had to go to the hospital and it took 30 months for the vitamin D blood level to go back to normal. I've read this in a magazine, but here's some quotes from the article on Canadianliving.com which summarize vaguely a bunch of studies. And here's the link to the article.
Do Multivitamins Work ?

A typical survey-type, or "observational," study involved over 83,000 healthy American physicians who filled out questionnaires about supplement intake and dietary habits. Roughly 30 percent of the doctors regularly took vitamin supplements. After about six years, 1,000 or so had died of some form of cardiovascular disease. Were the deceased more or less likely to have been taking antioxidant supplements? As it turned out, there was no relationship between supplement intake and cardiovascular death. Of course, it is possible that physicians are more health conscious that others and pay more attention to their diet, so that they already had a sufficient intake of antioxidants.

low vitamin E intake during pregnancy has shown to increase the risk of childhood asthma, and women who take vitamin supplements during pregnancy appear to have a reduced risk of having infants who develop brain tumours.

Vitamin C
How about studies of blood levels of vitamins? English researchers in one case found that among 20,000 people, those who had the highest level of vitamin C in the blood lived the longest. But was this because of the vitamin C, or was the vitamin C just acting as a marker for increased fruit and vegetable intake? Low levels of folic acid have been linked with breast cancer, heart disease and, most significantly, with giving birth to babies with neural tube defects. Still, such studies do not show cause and effect. You can never be certain that the observations are not due to some other dietary factor that happens to parallel folic acid in its presence. That's why intervention studies are the most meaningful. And in the case of folic acid in pregnant women, they certainly back up the observational studies. Supplementing the diet with 400 micrograms of folic acid daily significantly reduces the risk of neural tube defect.

Antioxydants
Researchers in Oxford, England, enrolled over 20,000 adults with heart disease risk factors such as diabetes, high blood pressure or high blood cholesterol in a major study. Half received a daily supplement of 600 IU vitamin E, 250 milligrams vitamin C and 20 milligrams beta-carotene, while the others got a placebo. The supplements were certainly effective in increasing blood levels of vitamins, as tests clearly showed. But after five years there was absolutely no difference in any form of disease or in death rates between the groups. Maybe, though, these subjects already had the beginnings of cardiovascular disease that could not be reversed with the supplements and perhaps in a healthy group, supplements can prevent disease. Maybe …

To supplement or not?
As is evident, it is possible to support either side of the "to supplement or not" debate by looking at the scientific literature selectively. But what happens when scientists put all the data together in a meta-analysis? Sometimes they just add to the confusion! That's what Goran Bjelakovic and his colleagues at the University of Nis in Serbia and Montenegro apparently did when they examined the relationship between dietary antioxidants and the risk of gastrointestinal cancers. Free radicals can form in the gut and have been implicated in cancer, and fruits and vegetables have been shown to be protective, presumably because of the antioxidant content. So it certainly seemed reasonable to expect that antioxidant supplements should be beneficial in preventing cancer. Bjelakovic scoured the scientific literature and identified 14 rigorous placebo-controlled trials involving over 170,000 subjects. All the trials used oral supplements, although amounts varied, as did combinations. Vitamin C ranged from 120 to 2,000 milligrams a day, vitamin A from 1.5 to 15 milligrams, beta-carotene from 15 to 50 milligrams, selenium from 50 to 228 micrograms and vitamin E from 30 to 600 IU. The supplements were taken for years, either daily or every other day. Such doses are typical of what average consumers might take.

Shocking results
The results of the meta-analysis were unexpected. No protection against esophageal, gastric, colorectal, pancreatic or liver cancer was found. Selenium supplementation in a few of the trials did show some optimistic results. Now for the real shocker: in seven trials, all of high quality, involving over 130,000 subjects, the supplement takers had a higher rate of premature death! The researchers actually calculated that one premature death would be expected for every 100 people taking supplements. Little wonder that this work prompted sensational headlines like "Vitamins Only Take You Closer To Death." How do we interpret this surprising finding? The study was well executed and has statistical weight, but is it not possible that people who are ill are more likely to take supplements and that this explains the increased mortality? Or that supplements are most effective when taken for longer periods? And maybe they don't protect against cancer but have other benefits.

Supplements proved not helpful
Dr. Bjelakovic decided to look into this possibility by mounting a second meta-analysis. His team tracked hundreds of published trials on the health effects of beta-carotene, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E and selenium supplements, and whittled these down to 68 that met the criteria for proper blinded, randomized, placebo-controlled trials. Some studies used low doses of supplements, some high; some lasted months, other many years. Some used single antioxidants, others used various combinations. But the strength of a anti-meta-analysis lies in pooling results from many studies, evening out variables and allowing an overall conclusion to emerge. As in his previous study, Bjelakovic found no benefit from the supplements, and as before, he noted an increase in mortality among supplement takers. The data appear to be robust. More than 230,000 participants were involved in the 68 trials, 21 of which focused on healthy subjects who were taking antioxidants to prevent disease.

Better to get our vitamins from food than from pills
While I do not think that vitamin supplements are killing us, there is mounting evidence that it is better to get our vitamins from food than from pills. It seems that there is an almost magical blend of antioxidants, minerals and probably unrecognized other ingredients in fruits, vegetables and whole grains that cannot be replicated in supplements. A 13-member expert panel of the National Institutes of Health in the United States concluded that there is insufficient evidence for or against recommending vitamin supplements except in three cases. Supplementation with B vitamins in women of child-bearing age is beneficial, as is supplementation with calcium and vitamin D in postmenopausal women to prevent bone fractures. And the progression of macular degeneration can be reduced with a mix of beta-carotene, zinc, vitamin C and vitamin E.

What were ancient people eating?

People nowadays think that we always have been eating meat... Why would we have been eating meat? There were no ridiculous dietiticians saying : You need to eat meat. A vegan diet is deficient".  People were rarely eating meat. It wasn't convenient at all to hunt and try to store meat, there were no fridge and freezer. On the other hand, preparing and eating sprouted/cooked cereals, grains, etc was easy and practical. The coutune to make bread is thousands of years old, and it was the base of the diet of many nations. For others it was rice.  

Video about the ancient vegetarian diet: "Famous Vegetarians: from Buddha to the Beatles" - Rynn Berry"

It also talks about Hitler, his falonny vegetarianism. Hitler: nor vegetarian nor animal lover. His favorite dish was a carnivorous dish consisting of pigeon, with the tongue and everything, stuffed with eggs and dairies !



http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Gladiators-Actually-Fat-Vegetarians/Article/200404113050005?lpos=Home_Article_Related_Content_Region_4&lid=ARTICLE_13050005_Gladiators_Actually_Fat_Vegetarians


Gladiators Actually Fat Vegetarians

"Tests performed on bits of bone taken from the skeletons of some 70 gladiators buried at Ephesus seem to prove that they ate mainly barley, beans and dried fruit," said Karl Grosschmidt, a forensic doctor who took part in the study by Austria's institute of archeology.
"This diet, which has been mentioned in the oral history, is rather sad but it gave the gladiators a lot of strength even if it made them fat," he said.

He (Kanz) believes that because some gladiators fought with little more than their bare hands, they could have "cultivated layers of fat to protect their vital organs from the cutting blows of their opponents."

=====================


It has also been demonstrated, by analizing the DNA of proteins found in fossilised excrements of different prehistoric ages, that our ancestors, of different eras and places, were eating mostly plant-based foods. In fact, most proteins found are from crushed nuts, seeds, shoots, roots, grains and vegetables, with very little or usually no traces of animal proteins. This discovery changed completely the way scientists and anthropologists see our ancestors, and therefore us.

Toxicity

Industries drop mercury in water and this mercury becomes hightly toxic once absorbed by the simple organisms in water: methyl mercury. It is consumend and accumulated during the food chain, so that we found out that the fish who are predators (salmons, tuna, etc) have in their tissues a concentration 10 millions more powerful than what is found in the water where they live.

Concerning all the toxic products we encounter in our food, water, air, cosmetics, household products, even our clothes, and that enter our bodies by nose, mouth and even by our skin, the researchers made some shocking discoveries: sometimes tiny doses (like 1 ppm or even 1 ppb) can be more dangerous than higher dose. The reason is that when the quantity of a toxic product is so tiny, our body don't even notice it, and all this accumulates everyday, until you developp a tumor at the age of 40.But when our body encounters bigger quantities of toxic products, the immune system is activated and tries to block or reject it.
Another important new discovery: the combinations of different chemicals together can produce even more dangerous products. PCB is just a molecular variation of the chlorine atom, yet it's the most toxic product made by man. When companies test their substancies, they do this on the substance alone, not associated with other chemicals. So governement authorize chemicals since more than 50 years that way. But a product is inoffensive alone may not be when combined with one or two other products, or more; there's now hundreds of different chemicals in our food, water, sprayed on plants, etc...

Researchers were wondering why the population of belugas in the St-Laurent river in Quebec, Canada, was decreasing and why many of them are so sick. We find corpses of them on the shore. Anylisis show that their flesh contains an astonishing cocktail of chemicals, and that may be the cause of many of their cancers. 

A researcher discovered that too much residues of products of chlorine in tap water was responsable for anormally high level of misscarriage in a certain area. Her studies forced the governement to lower the maximum acceptable amount of chlorine in tap water. 

The same researcher analyzed the sperm of 4 great cities like New York, Los Angeles, etc... and a rural area of Missouri. She tought the sperm would be better in the rural zone, away from the pollution of cities... No. She found out that the sperm quality of inhabitants of Missouri was incredibly poor. She went there and tried to find out what is different there and which is not present in urban areas... Agriculture: huge fields of wheat, corn, etc... and huge amounts of chemicals sprayed on these, going in the rivers, then ending up in tap water. 

Half a century ago, before the crazy megalomaniac agriculture we have now, called agrobusiness, the fields were smaller, with no chemicals employed, and there were trees and ponds that were blocking, absorbing the chemicals if there was any, before they reach the rivers and ocean. Now it's different. Farmers cut down all trees until they meet the shore so they have more space to grow their stuff, and therefore more cash in their pockets. So their chemicals, sprayed before seeding, are not supposed to go in foods (eventhough there's some) and it goes straight in our water. 

Now guess what, a mad scientist is creating plants that will be specifically designed to absorb huge quantities of nitrogen, or mercury, etc... to put them along the shores so they will pump all the chemicals before it reach the water. He's working on about 20 genes, for 20 genetically modified plants. Talking about trying to cure instead of removing the problem. It's like legalizing and encouraging pollution.

vbb forum - Nutrition

Some stuff I posted on the vbb forum, w/ some editing

My Training Log
My Food Log


FASTING
Fasting can be a good thing. Prehistoric men were fasting for few days each time they didn't find food, it's good to regenerate the body. It cleans the organism, but it's especially the fact that you're burning fat, including toxic products stored in it. Some toxins are eliminated everyday, some are stored in internal organs. So after fasting/cleansing, when you start eating again it stores new, cleaner fat, more or less depending how much food you eat and how healthy are these foods. It's better to regenarate some of that fat every month, than to do a cleansing every 20 years or never. Never is too late...
Dr. Shelton said water fasting is the best cure against any disease or infection, because the body must concentrate on fighting the virus, not waisting energy on digesting food. The body still need energy, but takes it directly from fat storage.
Our bodyfat is pure energy, fat being more energetic than carbs and proteins. The usual people have more than 100 000 calories in fat waiting to be used.

Vegan since beginning of 2008. My nutrition is always evolving.

DIET
PROTEINS
With at least 30 grams of complete protein per day you don't lose lean mass, that's a minimum standard for relatively sedentary people, with a normal amount of calories
You should eat more proteins (let's say 1g-2g/kg bw) if :
you train a lot, especially with weights
you reduce a lot your total calories intake
you have a huge lean mass
you have a serious injurie, requiring building new tissue
you are a pregnant woman or breastfeeding a child

FOOD and POISONS
They (so-called nutritionists) say that poisons are good. There was a time they were even saying that tobacco was good, also some were claiming that dirty water had miraculous healing powers, most modern medecine are made with poisonous plants.

Nothing ever proved those things work or are true. Of course, some substances have some effects on the body, that inhibits other poisons. But what's the point to counter a poison with another poison if it's only to end up with another poison in the body? But that's the kind of medecine the doctors have chosen to promote. None of these products are necessary good for health. Some say that all alcohols are good in small quantity, some other say it's only the red wine because of the antioxydants. Fermentation is poisonous and can't be compared to fresh grapes.
For something to be called a food, it needs to be beneficial for human health. Only good, not in part poisonous. Something cannot be a food and a poison at the same time, it's either one or the other. A food can't be beneficial below 2 cups per day and become a poison for more than 2 cups. But that's what they say about alcohol. They say it is good for the heart. Even if this is true, what's the use of drinking something that is good for the heart and poisonous for the rest of the body. Our body is not many organs working independently from each others. Everything work together, everything is linked. Something that is not good for the body is not good for the heart neither.

A poison in high dose is still a poison in small dose

Today, we see all poisons as good substances good for health : coffee, tea, chocolate, salt, sugar, wine, medecine. All medecine are made in laboratories out of poisonous plants. Scientists search the Amazonia rainforests for the most dangerous rare plants to make poisons to fight other poisons and this is modern medecine.
If some nutritionnists say that coffee and tea helps to fight cancers and stuff because of the antioxydants, I really doubt that many vitamins survive in a cup of boiling water, even your own hand will almost die. Cells affected by drugs can become tumors.

vegan cheese, sauce, pastas

vegan mac & cheese photo organicbluespiral.

I experimented to make a cheesy sauce with that :

(fat-free) soy milk (or other non-dairy alternative), nutritional yeast, cornstarch or potato starch, lemon juice, garlic, onion powder, mustard, paprika, turmeric, pepper, miso, tahini… Add oil, Veganaise, Earth Balance butter or margarine if you want fats.



Nachos Cheese sauce
0. ½ c nutritional yeast
0. 3 T flour
0. 4 t corn starch or arrowroot powder
0. ½ t salt
0. 1 c water
0. 1 T olive oil
2 t Dijon mustard

Heat while stirring.



Tahini Rich Spaghetti

This is so good. Just add a spoon or more of tahini to your spaghetti sauce, or sunflower seeds butter if you don't have sesame. I like to add some curry spices too, chopped onions and yeast extract.


Why not adding some MEATBALLS on top of that:

different ingredients for vegan meatballs : bread crumbs, 1 Tbsp. olive oil
1/2 small onion, diced
1 green bell pepper, diced
1-2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 lbs, Yves Ground-Beef style
3 Tbsp. ketchup
3 Tbsp. spicy mustard
3-6 Tbsp. Texas Pete brand hot sauce 
1/4 cup wheat germ
1/4 cup vegan parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper, to taste

some biscuits I've tried out

photo par organicbluespiral.

I changed this recipe a lot, added more chocolate chips, less pure fat, etc.

Chocolate chip cookies
(from vegcooking)

2 3/4 cup flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 cup margarine
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
Egg Replacer equivalent of 2 eggs (Ener-G Egg Replacer works best, but you can also mix together 2 tsp. cornstarch and 1/4 cup water)
12 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips
• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
• In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, salt, and baking soda.
• In a large bowl, cream together the margarine, brown sugar, sugar, vanilla, and egg replacer mixture. Stir in the flour mixture and mix well. Add the chocolate chips and mix.
• Drop the dough by spoonfuls onto a lightly oiled cookie sheet and bake for 8 to 10 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

veggie burgers

photo: organicbluespiral.

Some that I ate recently

There's all kinds of burgers you can make, you don't need to put a corpse between the bread, but use something more edible.
There's veggie burger, lentill burger, tofu burger, seitan burger, probably more that I never heard of. There's far more varieties of vegan burgers than traditionnal ones (choice of different meat, poultry or fish).

Sesame Burger



Cheese burger (with vegan cheese of course)



Use onions, spices, tofu, or grains or seeds or nuts or a legume of your choice, mix. make patties and heat ! No salmonella or E. colli risks if you don't cook it enough ; )

This simple recipe is pretty good:

TOFU BURGERS
1 tub extra firm tofu, mashed
1 cup oats
1/2 cup cashews, ground
4 tbsp soy sauch
Pinch garlic powder
Pinch salt
2 tbsp chopped onion

Mix all ingredients, form into patties, and pan fry.

You don't even have to stick to this recipe. I used macadamia nuts instead of cashews, and I've tried also without any nuts, all were good.

Cookies and other desserts

photo: organicbluespiral.

Those were really decadent. You could add also some vegan caramel inside. 

Recipe for Vegan Chocolate Peanut Butter Shells






Recipe for vegan snowballs, aka Russian tea cakes.


I found that these were too heavy and dense. I prefer the cakey ones, without all these nuts.

Oatmeal banana- chocolate cookies




I made some with extra chocolate, that was divine:



Maple walnut cookies





I don't even remember where I got the recipe, perhaps it was this one. Anyway, these surely look good ;)

I found it tasted too much walnut. Use less walnuts for the dry mix. And on the top, put just a small piece of walnut, not half of it.
Put some raisins. It wasn't sweet enough. Add stevia, agave nectar, etc.
I don't use pure fat when I do recipes, so usually I substitute the margarine for tofu in salted recipes or with a banana in sweet recipes. A banana instead of all the fats is perfect and just common sense.


The dry mix. I added some maple flakes. 



I tried those carob- chocolate cookies



The carob chips burnt while the chocolate melts.



Chocolate Peanut Butter Rice Krispies Squares



The wet mix : melting peanut butter, maple syrup and chocolate.



The Recipe here.

The Poutine Experiment

photo : organicbluespiral.

What is poutine ? Just some French fries in brown gravy with cheddar curds. I loved to eat poutine once in a while before I went vegan. And it has been the hardest meal for me to quit. Like a drug. Strangelly I wasn't eating this that often.

Anyway, as a vegan I can eat some vegan poutine so I don't see why it was such a big deal.
On the picture above I used avocado (use a very riped one, and let it soften a bit in the gravy), because I had no vegan cheese. They pretty expensive. But once I bought some and made a vegan poutine that really looked and tasted like the real traditionnal one.

pancakes, French toasts and more

photo: organicbluespiral.

Some ideas for vegan breakfasts

 

Fruit salad: Blueberry with bananas, or nectarine with banana slices. 



Crunchy eanut butter and raspberry jam. 





Banana slices, dark chocolate in peanut butter, blackberry jam, agave nectar...





Pillsburry turnovers (the ones that are vegan are the apple one and the cherry one I think. Anyway it's disgusting, I had to add many things to make them edible.



FRENCH TOASTS

Now this is super easy, quick, and delicious.

Just take the amount of bread (thick sliced is better) that you desire to eat. Soak them 5-20 minutes in soy milk (like one cup for 4-5 french toasts) with a pinch of nutmeg and cinnamon. You can add a bit of soymilk powder too to make it more heavy, less liquid toasts inside. You can use other milk alternatives than soy.



Spray a pan or use a few drops of veg oil. Then heat 2-3 minutes on each side, using a bit of vegan margarine. Cook until golden and crispy on the outside but mellow in the inside.
Pour agave nectar, or maple syrup, strawberry jam, etc...
I loved French toasts before I went vegan, especially when I was really young. But sometimes it tasted eggs. Who honnestly like how eggs tastes !? everybody put a mountain of salt on their eggs or eat them with something else. 
One thing is sure, those vegan French toasts are the best ones I ever had in my entire life. It's not perfect every shot, sometimes it depends of the day, your mood, little details in how you prepare them that makes all the differences. But it's better than with fucking eggs that come from concentration camps or from sick cows.

Enjoy




PANCAKES AND CRÈPES



Buckwheat pancakes and Breton crèpes recipe here
Just substitute tje eggs for an egg replacer.



With molasses




Good morning !

vegan chocolate cake

photo organicbluespiral.

This is a pretty easy "recipe", and pretty good ;) it was made with the Duncan Haynes cake mix, which is supposed to be vegan. I don't even remember if you're suppose to add eggs to the mix, if yes theu use eggs replacer or baking powder. 

Chocolate Frosting

You can use silken tofu (or margarine if you like more fat) whipped with chocolate or carob chips or powder, melt these at low heat while stirring, add vanilla extract, and sugar until creamy.

Lunch at Chuch

Imperial rollsphoto Guillaume Désilets.

When I went to Montreal several weeks ago.

Chuch is a vegan restaurant on St-Denis street, right next to ChuChai, a less cheap version of it.
I found the service was bad and the fod too expensive, probably microwaved. I don't know if it is the cashier (which was also the maid) who prepared the plate too, if so I hope she washed her hands...

Basics for Recipes

I began to cook a few weeks ago. It takes me at least 3 times longer to make the recipe that what is supposed to and it's always a mess at the end. A mess to clean, but the results of my attempts are often pretty good, while not perfect of course. Anyway, I only do some pretty easy recipes.

I find though that there's always huge quantities of fat and sugar ! Like a full bag of chocolate chips, 2 cups of sugar and 1 cup of oil...

That's why I like the Fatfree Vegan Kitchen.
I haven't tried many recipes yet, but I like the fact that we can simply substitute fats like oil or margarine with tofu (firm or silken), or some mashed banana, stuff like that, or no need to subsitute with anything at all.
Also for the sugars, I often replace half of it with some stevia or fruits like dates.

I replace wheat flour with other flours (buckwheat, oat, rice, corn, quinoa, whatever).
I don't like the flavour of flax seeds so when it asks for it in a recipe I just use hemp instead.
I also like to substitute some of the cacao chips or powder for carob. Sometimes I use half chocolate chips and half carob chips which is great because chocolate melts while the carob chips stay as they are.
Replacing soymilk for other alternatives like almond or rice milk.