Vegans, vegetarians how can you handle being a vegan/vegetarian?

Question

I'm a near vegan and have been for almost two years, I don't eat eggs, meat, fish etc but I do eat cheeses. And in these past weeks its been harder for me to stay this way.

Mainly because of eggs. Everything I mean EVERYTHING has eggs in them. I recently found out that my favorite chocolate bar (snickers) contains eggs and that my favorite type of food (italian) contains eggs aswell and i've been eating them for quite a while.

and I keep finding out almost everything contains animal in it. and its starting to annoy the hell out of me.

I hate salad and I can't eat the samething everyday.

What do you vegans normally eat? Have any tips on what I should/can buy?

I'm a teenager so I don't like cooking, but if I have to then I guess I will. I honestly haven't cooked an actual meal in over a year too.

Answer 1

I was raised vegan, so it's second nature to me to READ THE LABEL before buying or eating anything, because, like you said, most everything contains animal products. Not to be rude, but didn't you know there was probably MILK in the Snickers before you found that there were eggs in it? I mean.. it's CHOCOLATE, right?

I think I've had maybe 3 salads in my whole life. I can't stand them. My boyfriend and I make vegetable soup, burritos (tortillas, rice, beans, guacamole, salsa, habaneros) rice stir fry, cheeseless pizza, breadsticks. I eat chips, french fries, etc.

If there's a Whole Foods near you, they have lots of vegan options. But ALL the groceries we know of carry soy milk, and many carry soy ice cream, as well.

My boyfriend and I go out to eat all the time, and we really don't understand why people are on here asking for "vegetarian" restuarants in this or that city, when we find several VEGAN meals in almost any restaurant. It's seriously not hard to say "beans instead of meat" or "hold the cheese".

Good luck!

Answer 2

The first thing I learned as a vegan was to scan ingredient lists and spot the faulty ingredients. I think this is important to everyone, just so they know what they're eating and don't have to be surprised if someone tells them!
Snickers?! "Milk Chocolate"?? Definitely not vegan!

I am vegan and I have yet to eat a salad. I usually eat fresh organic fruit or Back to Nature's granola for lunch, an organic nut butter and jelly sandwich on flaxseed bread for lunch. I let dinner be my heaviest meal, with whole grain pasta or rice, a bowl of pinto beans, mashed potatoes (with Earth Balance butter!). I always steam vegetables with whatever I'm having for dinner.

I don't cook very often. It is essential to learn how to make rice, pasta, steam veggies if you have a vegetable steamer, if not, it's a great investment! If you have a few hours to waste, boil some beans. I usually fix beans on Sunday because they make an excellent quick supper when I get off work. Learning to fix pasta, rice, and potatoes is a good start.

If you really can't cook and no one will do it for you, Yves has a few different kinds of packaged dishes. I sometimes use these if I'm on the go. Back to Nature and Newman's Own have cookies/crackers (even fake oreos!) that are all worth a try. Check the ingredients on them for milk or eggs.

As a 17 year old vegan, I have to do my own grocery shopping and it still takes a long time. My strategy is to look for a few familiar vegan brands and stay away from big names you see on commercials and the like.
Good luck!

Answer 3

I'm not a vegan, but try to eat as vegan as possible. i watch out for gelatin, dairy, and eggs, but still eat them. I have absolutely no meat. I am also a teenager. but the one thing that helps is to look at the ingredients of food before i even put it in the grocery cart. you can also buy fake cheeses at some stores (same with egg replacers), and use them sometimes. i suggest you take a trip to a natural foods store, then go and buy a few vegan things (look at the ingredients). Remember what they are and make the ingredient skimming a habit. Also try to make your food as natural as possible. it only makes it more complicated when your food has ingredients that you can't even pronounce that you don't know if they are an animal product or not (you'd be surprised how many animal products there are). Search online what some good easy vegan foods would be.

Answer 4

Go to a local library and check out some vegan cookbooks. I'm a fourteen year old vegetarian and I cook myself food quite often, it's really not that hard, you're going to have to learn how some time or another anyway. If you decide to try out cooking, here is a really simple and really good muffin recipe, it tastes good with cranberries in it.

Vegan wheat bran muffins:

Dry ingredients:
1 1/2 cups Wheat bran
1 cup flour (make sure it's vegan)
2 tbsp. whole ground flax seed meal
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt

Wet ingredients:
1 cup soy milk (doesn't really matter which flavour)
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
1 mashed banana

Recommended: Add an extra ingredient of your choice, I think cranberries are really good, try other things too, if you want.

1.)Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Celsius.

2.) Get out a muffin pan and spray with canola or vegetable oil.

3.)In a bowl, thoroughly mix together the dry ingredients.

4.)In a second bowl, mix together all the wet ingredients.

5.) Now mix the wet and dry ingredients together and add the cranberries (or ingredient of choice).

6.) Pour the dough into the muffin pan, filling each mold about 3/4 of the way, all the dough should be used to make twelve muffins.

Answer 5

Get the book "skinny B i t c h" - that is the actual title of the book, I'm not being rude.

It explains why meat and dairy are a bad idea. That will help with the days when it is hard. It also has a great list in the back of vegan approved foods as well as SUPER SIMPLE meal plans that will last for a month. You don't have to follow it at all, but it will make your life a little easier though.

My favorite food is bean burritos with vegan sour cream (in the heath food section of almost any store). You can make it in the microwave, you get your protein, and if you feel really crazy you can thrown in some salsa to get a little fruit/vegie action.

There are lots of instant soups and caned things as well! Good Luck!

Answer 6

Yes, you have to cook it yourself.
See, animal by-products are basically cheap cheap cheap, so they chuck it in everything. All that stuff they used to throw in the garbage, they now put in our processed foods. If you are going to eat other people's foods, especially crap like Snickers [not a chocolate bar -- it's candy], then that's what you will get, crap. Go to those big health food markets... they've got tonnes of stuff you want. You need to at least buy form companies that care about their customers and have some sort of ethical basis for their products. Do you think that companies such as Mars that makes Snickers gives a rats *** about you? No. All they are about are profits. Make it cheap cheap cheap and reap reap reap.

> my favorite type of food (italian) contains eggs as well
I don't know what you are eating, but I put Italian at the top of my list (ties with Chinese) and I don't have a prob. with eggs. Are you talking about eggs in the pasta? Real pasta contains no eggs -- egg is superfluous. They stick it in cake, pasta, pancakes, cookies,... everything... but it's not needed. Why do they do it? Have no idea. Probably because it's easier to make pasta with cheap low quality flour if you add egg or something like that. Maybe it's because if they add some egg they can sell it more a lot more because people say, "Oh, look, egg is in there... high quality." I know a guy who has an italian pasta restaurant -- no eggs in the pasta. He says it's stupid and unneeded. He also uses organic flour at no extra cost to his customers because he says that organic flour is cheap. Anyway, start a garden, start cooking your own food, etc.

Answer 7

well im a vegetarian and I usually have some sort of soup cuz A) I can't cook for crap B) ever since I got high off a stove by ACCIDENT I SWEAR when I was 11, I'm sorta timid with the stove and C) it stays warm in the thermos. Basically I read everything that I'm not completely sure is ok to eat, its a pain in th a** but i amde that choice when I became a vegetarian. And as for eggs I hate eggs (long story short I threw them up and eggs make me gag now). btw, when i FIRST became a vegetarian I hated almost everything in salad, but I learned to shovel it down, quickly without tasting it. eventually i got used to it and began to like it.

Answer 8

Well, you just have to know where to look. I've never heard of candy bars having eggs, but I have seen too many dark chocolate bars with fershtinkiner dairy in it.

If you go to your local natural foods store, however, much of the dark chocolate should be vegan. Green & Blacks, Endangered Species, Tropical Source, and Chocolove all make vegan chocolate bars.

Most dried pastas (except egg noodles) are vegan.

Amy's is a lacto-vegetarian company with many vegan options.

Turtle Island makes many vegan items, including vegan ice cream.

And you are going to have to learn to cook, even if it's just frying up tofu or tempeh in a pan and sticking frozen veggies (or a potato) in a microwave.

Check out www.vegweb.com for more resources.

Answer 9

Well Snickers also have milk in them, so if you were vegan you shouldn't be eating that in the first place. Mostly you sound like a vegetarian. It is very easy to not eat salads as a vegan. Although I think it is essential to cook for yourself. If you don't know what you like or don't like when you make it how do you expect other people to be able to make it for you? If you are eating out the key is tot ask lots and lots of questions. Does this have eggs in it? Does this have milk in it? Can you make it without the meat? etc.

I'm vegan and I mostly eat what I cook for myself...soo learn how to cook and quick.

Answer 10

There are plenty of egg free pastas. I have had to take on a vegetarian diet due to health and do I feel about a thousand times better. I will swear that I think dairy products are addictive, getting off of meat was easy, giving up milk and butter and especially cheese was hell! I have been using vegetarian cook books and experimenting with just leaving meats out of dishes. My love of pizza is too strong and so I do have cheese on Pizza, but it was really hard at first, keep at it and you will have to start shopping in stores that cater to your dietary needs and you will most likely have to start cooking so you can control what you are eating...good luck!