Vegetarian Sources of Nutrients Usually Found in Animal Products
I eat a semi-vegetarian diet and I am always on the lookout for vegetarian sources of nutrients typically gotten from animal products. So whether you have a lot of dietary restrictions due to health issues, like I have, or just wish to eat vegetarian or vegan and actually remain healthy, here are a few quick and dirty tips that will require more research as these are kind of initial findings:
Some weeks back, someone on Hacker News said "Eat your greens" if you want Omega 3 fats. This was news to me. I had previously only heard that walnuts and flax seed are good vegetarian sources of Omega 3 and flax seed may not be bioavailable, so walnuts are my go-to for it since I rarely eat seafood.
A quick search suggests that, yes, greens like spinach, broccoli and cabbage contain small amounts of Omega 3. I have yet to get around to calculating how much but I do eat all three of those semi-regularly.
Seaweed has b vitamins and may also provide some of the micronutrients found in high quality sea salt that helps with brain issues, gut issues and lung issues. I'm assuming it keeps without refrigeration.
Nuts are a good source of fats and minerals and I eat them sometimes as an alternative to the meats I more typically get my essential fatty acids from, like bacon. My medical condition involves misprocessing fats and bacon is a fat I tolerate well and I sometimes eat it pretty regularly.
However, they aren't necessarily any better for the environment than meat. California produces 80 percent of the global supply of almonds and almond production uses up to 13 percent of the total water supply for California, a state which imports a lot of water and whose use of water is a hot button topic.
Nuts are also not cheap. I read the book Diet for a Small Planet a lot of years ago and it is half political tome, advocating for vegetarianism as an antidote to war and famine well before veganism was a word I ever heard and one of its selling points was that a traditional "local" vegetarian diet helped stopped famine because local poor people could afford a vegetarian diet.
I've been poor for a lot of years and nuts are something I sometimes do not buy because of the cost.
Having said that, I'm all for the world doing a better job of figuring out what nutrients humans actually need and how we can get them sustainably. I'm fine with being someone who helps provide some of the information that can reshape this conversation and help skew humans towards eating less meat overall and eating more sustainably regardless of what kind of diet they pursue as individuals.
There is a Reddit sub called r/exvegans and the posts I typically read there are about people quitting veganism due to health issues developed while vegan. If you want to go vegan, COOL, but educate yourself. Just cutting out animal products and not educating yourself about nutrition seems to go bad places for quite a few people.
I recently learned that mushrooms also contain B vitamins, so belong on this list. (12/21/2023)
Some weeks back, someone on Hacker News said "Eat your greens" if you want Omega 3 fats. This was news to me. I had previously only heard that walnuts and flax seed are good vegetarian sources of Omega 3 and flax seed may not be bioavailable, so walnuts are my go-to for it since I rarely eat seafood.
A quick search suggests that, yes, greens like spinach, broccoli and cabbage contain small amounts of Omega 3. I have yet to get around to calculating how much but I do eat all three of those semi-regularly.
Seaweed has b vitamins and may also provide some of the micronutrients found in high quality sea salt that helps with brain issues, gut issues and lung issues. I'm assuming it keeps without refrigeration.
Nuts are a good source of fats and minerals and I eat them sometimes as an alternative to the meats I more typically get my essential fatty acids from, like bacon. My medical condition involves misprocessing fats and bacon is a fat I tolerate well and I sometimes eat it pretty regularly.
However, they aren't necessarily any better for the environment than meat. California produces 80 percent of the global supply of almonds and almond production uses up to 13 percent of the total water supply for California, a state which imports a lot of water and whose use of water is a hot button topic.
Nuts are also not cheap. I read the book Diet for a Small Planet a lot of years ago and it is half political tome, advocating for vegetarianism as an antidote to war and famine well before veganism was a word I ever heard and one of its selling points was that a traditional "local" vegetarian diet helped stopped famine because local poor people could afford a vegetarian diet.
I've been poor for a lot of years and nuts are something I sometimes do not buy because of the cost.
Having said that, I'm all for the world doing a better job of figuring out what nutrients humans actually need and how we can get them sustainably. I'm fine with being someone who helps provide some of the information that can reshape this conversation and help skew humans towards eating less meat overall and eating more sustainably regardless of what kind of diet they pursue as individuals.
Footnote
As noted previously on this site, I have my reservations about veganism. It's politically hostile to Native tribes who wish to eat their traditional diets and where those diets are meat-centered it's typically because they can't get enough food via a vegetarian diet. It also is prone to certain nutritional deficiencies of things typically gotten primarily from animal products, especially B vitamins.There is a Reddit sub called r/exvegans and the posts I typically read there are about people quitting veganism due to health issues developed while vegan. If you want to go vegan, COOL, but educate yourself. Just cutting out animal products and not educating yourself about nutrition seems to go bad places for quite a few people.
I recently learned that mushrooms also contain B vitamins, so belong on this list. (12/21/2023)
