Living Vegan For Dummies - Alexandra Jamieson [23]
Get adventurous with your meals. Even if you’re preparing a simple salad for yourself, you can incorporate homegrown herbs and tomatoes that connect you to the season. When thinking of your family’s upcoming reunion feast, ask the local farmers at your farmer’s market what will be in peak season that week. By bringing luscious, fresh produce, you can share the story of your trip to the market, explain what you chose, and reveal how you prepared it. Not only will this show your own dedication to good food, it also may encourage those around you to try new, more sustainable fare.
Part II
Building a Healthy Vegan Diet
In this part . . .
A well-rounded vegan diet provides everything a human body needs for healthy growth and development and maintenance of proper body functions. Yet living in this meat- and dairy-loving culture can confuse even the most well-read herbivore. Vegans constantly are questioned about their nutritional wellness and the validity of their food choices.
That’s why this part is so important! These chapters not only lay the foundation for vegan nutritional wellness, they also detail how to make the most health-supportive choices when it comes to cooking, shopping for food, and ordering meals.
Chapter 4
Essential Nutrients for Healthy Success
In This Chapter
Getting to know the B vitamins
Discovering the truth about calcium
Uncovering the solid facts about iron
Finding out about vitamin D and zinc
Maintaining good health with vegan supplements
The human body requires special nutrients to ensure healthy growth and good energy. Vitamins and minerals are like the nuts and bolts that keep the human machine held together and running properly.
In this chapter, I discuss where to get the vitamins and minerals that may be lacking in plant foods. B12 and B2, as well as vitamin D, are found readily in animal foods, so you may be concerned about getting enough in a vegan diet. Iron, calcium and zinc are minerals that may, at first glance, be harder to get from vegan foods. There are excellent plant sources of these natural minerals, and even some ways to help your body utilize them better. The final section in this chapter also addresses whether vegans need to use supplements and if so, what types to try.
The bottom line for proper nutrition is that natural food is your best bet for all-around health. Separating nutrients and vitamins into stand-alone sources of nutrition can lead to overdose or an inadvertent depletion of another necessary vitamin or mineral.
“B”-ing Healthy with B12 and B2
B vitamins often are referred to as a complex — this doesn’t mean that they’re difficult to understand and have a lot of emotional issues; it just means that they all need to be present in order for the body to use them properly. While most of the B vitamins can be found easily in plant foods, vegans need to be aware that two very important B vitamins — B12 and B2 — are a little harder to find in plant foods. So be sure to include in your diet foods that have been fortified.
B12 is the most important of all the B vitamins when you’re a vegan. Necessary for building blood and cell division, B12 isn’t made by any plants or animals — it’s actually made by bacteria. Humans used to get their B12 by eating foods contaminated with bacteria that had produced the B12. However, because our food is so clean and sterilized these days, we don’t get a reliable source of B12 from bacteria. The other main source of bacteria-produced B12 is animal flesh. Food animals still eat bacteria, which accumulates the B12 in their flesh and muscles. Research also shows that the bacteria in the human body make small amounts of B12. But, because the body may not absorb and use it, you’re still better off using fortified foods or B complexes.
B12 deficiency