Diet Improvements

[Cirion Spellbinder]

Greetings. I am currently looking for help on improving the healthfulness of my diet. I will also provide the activity I engage in on a standard week. Please provide input where improvement or complete redoing is necessary. Thank you.

Standard Diet
Breakfast
- Cereal (generally Special K) with soy milk (generally unsweetened)
- When I have time, an additional sweet fruit, almonds / dried edamame, and hazelnut coffee with soy milk
Lunch
- Sandwhich (Peanut Butter and Jelly [Jif Peanut Butter, boysenberry jam, whole wheat bread] or Tofurkey Sandwhich [whole wheat bread, tofurkey, mustard, romaine lettuce or spinach if available])
- Varied vegetables (snap peas, bell peppers, carrots, celery)
- A sweet fruit (apple, plum, apricot, tangerine, peach)
- Water or a Caprisun juice
- Varied nuts and seeds (almonds, peanuts, edamame, pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, sunflowers seeds)
- Chips sometimes
Dinner
- More varied primary dish: Mock meat (4/7 chance), pasta (2/7), burritos, tofu, or other (1/7).
- generally vegetables (broccoli, brusel sprouts, snap peas, carrots)
- salad (spinach, bell peppers, chick peas, dressing whose name I cannot remember[asian dressing?])
- desert sometimes (fruit frozen bar, soy/almond ice cream, vegan cookie)
- soy milk
Snack
- 2-5 glasses of water
- rarely chips

[brimstoneSalad]

Don't drink Juice. If you want a sweet drink, choose an artificially sweetened tea or something (fake fruit flavored if you like that).

- A sweet fruit (apple, plum, apricot, tangerine, peach)

Choose berries instead. These fruit are not very nutritionally useful.

You probably already know the dessert isn't great; better to eat more berries and nuts. It's OK to have a treat now and then, but maybe limit it to once a week?

Salads are fine if you like them, but are not substantial. When flavoring them with dressings, choose vinegar based dressings when you can. Avoid added sugar or oil.
Or just skip the salad and eat more cooked greens.

Most of the rest of this is fine, but you probably need to be eating more greens Can you give me a sense of portion size?

I usually like to eat about a pound of greens a day. Depending on the type of greens, you may need about a kilogram (around two pounds). Choose dark leafy greens. Spinach is kind of mediocre due to oxalate content. Opt for collards or mustard greens instead when available -- these are some of the best greens.

[miniboes]

I am personally going to try some of the meals in these meal plans, they seem pretty easy to make and healthy too:
http://veganhealth.org/articles/meals

I will substitute the sweet fruits with berries/tomatoes though, and i'll take peanut butter over margarine.
I like the idea of mixing flax/chia/hemp seeds into soy yoghurt, although I am a bit concerned about the sugar.

A side question - how dangerous is manganese? according to cron-o-meter I'm getting over 400% of the recommended amount.

[Cirion Spellbinder]

Choose berries instead. These fruit are not very nutritionally useful.

Sounds good I'll try to implement this.

You probably already know the dessert isn't great; better to eat more berries and nuts. It's OK to have a treat now and then, but maybe limit it to once a week?

I'll start with twice a week and gradually decrease it to twice. This way I can have desert on the weekends for some time.

Salads are fine if you like them, but are not substantial. When flavoring them with dressings, choose vinegar based dressings when you can. Avoid added sugar or oil.

I presume Sesame Dressing falls under the umbrella of dressings I do not want? I'll make sure to purchase vinegar based dressings soon.

Can you give me a sense of portion size?

Probably 3-4.5 cups per meal where I eat them or 0.709765-1.06465 liters for those of you who were blessed with the gift of the metric system from birth.

Choose dark leafy greens. Spinach is kind of mediocre due to oxalate content. Opt for collards or mustard greens instead when available -- these are some of the best greens.

Sounds good. I'll implement this.

[Cirion Spellbinder]

I am personally going to try some of the meals in these meal plans, they seem pretty easy to make and healthy too:
http://veganhealth.org/articles/meals

These certainly look interesting. I'm very interested in the "Vegan Yogurt" because I've always hated normal yogurt, so I wonder if they taste similar!

flax/chia/hemp seeds

Should I implement these into my own diet? I currently only consume on occasion by accident.

[miniboes]

Should I implement these into my own diet? I currently only consume on occasion by accident.

Yeah, you should probably eat at least one of these daily to get enough omega 3. I'm not sure exactly how much one should be consuming.

[garrethdsouza]

Have you used cronometer.com or something similar to check out whether you're meeting your RDAs for all nutrients? I'd suggest you do so and in case you're routinely not meeting it for certain nutrients, you can try working on improving those by adding foods rich in that specific nutrients in your diet. You can go to nutritiondata.self.com which can give you the richest vegan sources of those foods.

Sunflower seeds are excellent for vitamin e and for so many b vitamins so that's good if had regularly IMO. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunflower_seed

For omega3, you can add flaxseeds which are the richest source of the omega3 - ala. (You dont need to buy flaxseed oil, thats just a waste of money in terms of concentration/price amd stability. There are certain health issues with excess omega3 and especially ala so read up on what Norris has to say about it (about eyes). He recommends a tsp per day if I'm right.
Also consider a dha/epa omega3 algal based supplement http://www.veganhealth.org/articles/omega3
You can also add a small amount of walnuts for ala in addition, since its the best nut. http://nutritionfacts.org/video/which-n ... er-better/
But avoid going overboard with omega3 foods because of the possibility of health issues like bleeding problems.

You can check out Dr greggers videos for the best fruits, vegetables , antioxidants, spices etc for additional resources and there's a bang for your buck video as well (eg purple cabbage). Spinach despite being not the greatest calcium source because of oxalates is in fact a pretty great green based on one of his videos. And blueberries are also great for the immune system (nk cells I think). Idont know whether you're getting much antioxidants. http://nutritionfacts.org/video/better- ... i-berries/ you could occasionally try amla if its available where you live.

You could also try more beans/lentils and whole grains and have less processed food like mock meats.

[Cirion Spellbinder]

Have you used cronometer.com or something similar to check out whether you're meeting your RDAs for all nutrients? I'd suggest you do so and in case you're routinely not meeting it for certain nutrients, you can try working on improving those by adding foods rich in that specific nutrients in your diet. You can go to nutritiondata.self.com which can give you the richest vegan sources of those foods.

No, I have not. I'll check them out, thanks!

I'll also be adding the flax seeds and sunflower seeds to my standard nut and seed mixes!

You can check out Dr greggers videos for the best fruits, vegetables , antioxidants, spices etc for additional resources and there's a bang for your buck video as well (eg purple cabbage). Spinach despite being not the greatest calcium source because of oxalates is in fact a pretty great green based on one of his videos. And blueberries are also great for the immune system (nk cells I think). Idont know whether you're getting much antioxidants. http://nutritionfacts.org/video/better- ... i-berries/ you could occasionally try amla if its available where you live.

Alright, sounds good,

You could also try more beans/lentils and whole grains and have less processed food like mock meats.

Maybe I'll cut down on the mock meat then. I'll make sure to buy more beans then. Are canned beans ok or should I purchase the dry ones?

[miniboes]

Are canned beans ok or should I purchase the dry ones?

Dry beans are probably slightly healthier. However, they are also much less convenient. I choose canned beans, I don't think it doesn't matters much. Dry beans also happen to be more expensive here, but that's probably not the case for you.

Lentils are amazing by the way. They are one of the best nutrient wise (second only to black beans, I believe) and are both delicious and subtle.

[brimstoneSalad]

Flax/chia/hemp/walnuts are great.

Spinach is not bad (I wasn't trying to say that), but it's inferior. Why eat an inferior green when there are better and probably comparably priced options?
I try to choose brassica over spinach, and eat spinach as more of a last resort, or if a recipe won't taste good with collards/mustards/kale.
No need to avoid it, but just remember it doesn't count for as much nutritionally.

I presume Sesame Dressing falls under the umbrella of dressings I do not want? I'll make sure to purchase vinegar based dressings soon.

Very probably so, yes. Sesame is delicious, but it's one of the few vegan foods to avoid. I just ate a delicious sandwich with a tahini-miso sauce/dressing/spread which was great, but it's not something I would want to include a lot of in my regular diet. Every now and then and in moderation for flavor it's not too bad. But if you're trying to adjust your diet for health outcomes, you should consider giving it the boot.

Sesame is both primarily Omega 6, and contains a high concentration of methionine ("bad" protein [if in excess] -- unusually high concentration for plant foods).
Sesame is high in calcium, but I don't think that makes up for the cons.

Probably 3-4.5 cups per meal where I eat them or 0.709765-1.06465 liters for those of you who were blessed with the gift of the metric system from birth.

Cups aren't useful, since the density of greens varies greatly. Liters of greens shrink when cooked to a small handful.

Can you figure out how many grams? Or at what point are you measuring volume? Fresh, fluffy, packed, cooked, pureed?

Maybe I'll cut down on the mock meat then. I'll make sure to buy more beans then. Are canned beans ok or should I purchase the dry ones?

Dry will be cheaper and more evironmentally friendly.

Dry beans also happen to be more expensive here, but that's probably not the case for you.

Miniboes: Are you sure? I've really never seen that to be the case. Can you show the packaging/labeling? Have you checked multiple stores?
Are you sure you're not mistakenly comparing weight of product?
Canned beans are heavier, due to water content, but don't usually contain many actual beans.

Sorry to be skeptical, but I've lives in many places around the world and have never seen that to be the case.