Vegan Forum

Hi. I'm new here. I've had trouble with the chat room forums and my account for the past month and hope to contribute more. I'm working on an article on vegetarianism nutrition for a magazine or two or three, etc. I'm just wondering if anyone here is a vegetarian, who was originally a meat-eater, and what health benefits did it help you.

I was a meat-eater then I became vegetarian and I felt great since then.
But being vegan is even better.
The food is much easier to digest...

Hi kris,
Just posted a reply to this on the 'Why I became vegan' thread! Oh well

I was wondering if there were any athletes, particularly marshall artists on this site, who could give me some nutritional ideas?

I'm a kickboxer, and I'm starting to get to a level where I need to do some serious training to get to the higher gradings and start competing. However, I'm finding it tough and am getting really run down. A lot of nutitional advice for kickboxers assumes you eat meat, and I'm not too happy about wolfing down chicken, fish oil and whey-powder for obvious reasons. A lot of vegan nutrition advice on the web seems to be for either body builders or endurance sports like cycling and running.

At the moment I eat a pretty standard diet: porridge or bread for breakfast, sandwiches or pasta for lunch, chilli/curry/veggisausage and mash/etc. for dinner. Plus a multivitamin and a carb drink to take training.

Assuming I need the protein (how much do you need?) I don't particularly like the idea of eating soy isolate or huge amounts of tofu, since I have a vague idea there's health / hormone problems associated with some soy? Is there anything else I need to be paying attention to that vegans don't get a lot of? Does anyone else take supplements or isolates and how do you get on with them? Has anyone tried, for example, hemp protein?

Being a big girl already, I don't want to bulk up too much...

Thanks!
Beck

Main sources of proteins in vegan diet are cereals, legumes, nuts and seeds.
Make sure you eat enough of those - and you will be ok.
But your diet should contain all sources of proteins not only one. Eating only cereals or only legumes is NOT a good idea.

Based on interviews of vegan MA fighters I'll suggest you eat rice protein, which contains all of the amino acids necessary for recovery, brown rice, vegetables, oatmeal and tofu.

Thanks, Sergio,
Planning to conduct some experimentation on my good self with regards to the food - looks like it would be easy to get some rice into my evening meals, and build in a little variety. Will post how I get on.
Beck