The Casual Vegan

As some of you may know, I have Cerebral Palsy. You wouldn’t know it to look at me, and I certainly don’t advertise it in job interviews, but I was born premature, and physical activities like running were difficult for me. I have an extremely mild case of CP, I’m very lucky. The fact that people don’t often notice my limp makes me lucky in many ways. Over the years I’ve really gotten into running. A comment from a reader named Molly asked me if I had any advice about running with Cerebral Palsy, and honestly it’s hard for me to answer. I don’t want to give advice that simply isn’t true for everyone. I know from personal experience that it’s very hard not being able to do “normal” activities. Sometimes no matter how hard you try, you’re foot just won’t move, or worse, it won’t stop moving. It’s like the wire connecting your foot to your brain got jiggled loose.

I am not a doctor or a trained physical therapist. I respect doctors very much, I’ve just learned when it comes to limits and treatments, they are often wrong. So, here is a short list of things to improve running and your CP, that a doctor never told me:

1. Take up weight lifting. Not just therapy, but actual weight lifting. If you can’t lift weights safely, please talk with your physical therapist. Demand actual weights that will tire your arms in less than 20 repetitions.
2. Read books about running, Chi Running is my favorite.
3. Expect to get injured. Plan to take it slow. As a disabled athlete, you’re going to face all the challenges everyone else does and more.
4. Do a little bit every day, with lots of rest days in between. If you don’t practice often, you won’t get better.

Weight lifting changed my life. It improved my balance and coordination. As a child I fell down every single day. As I grew up, it got better, but I still fell often. It wasn’t until I became a serious weight lifter that I stopped falling down. I know very few people with CP will be as lucky as I am, but if I can go from falling down daily to never falling, I know it can help many of us. The act of training your muscles to lift heavier weights makes your brain smarter.

If You Can Lift Weights, Do!

When I started running with Cerebral Palsy, I was very young. It was difficult for me. But, at such a young age, I didn’t even know I had a disability, let alone one that could stop me. My childhood running made it much easier for me to pick up running as an adult. If you can lift weights do! If you can run short distances, do it often. If you can’t run, is spin class possible for you? If you’re not sure what your capable of, work with your PT and find out. But please, don’t take my advice as medical advice. I’m just a guy with CP who runs.

In a previous post I answered the question, Is shrimp healthy for you? News from China has me even more concerned about shrimp and crayfish than ever before. If you eat shrimp, you should be aware of this.

It is the crayfish season again; the delicious crayfish because popular in China’s hot mid summer nights ever since the late 1990s. However this year over dozens of people in Nanjing were hospitalized with strange symptoms of unbearable muscle pains after eating crayfish since July. The doctor’s diagnosis was rhabdomyolysis (the destruction or degeneration of muscle tissue) serious cases even cause kidney damage. The speculation was that the “shrimp washing powder” (洗虾粉) which was popularly used by the sellers to make the crayfish look spanky fresh and clean could be the root cause. Actually the public has already been suspicious about the powder for causing health issues. There has already been reports as early as July, that “shrimp washing powder” is killing the crayfish season and citizens cry for a public “safe list” so they know where to go to enjoy them safely.

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But, my major reasons for choosing not to use animal products are much more common-sense: once I started learning where our food comes from, I felt I could no longer eat meat with a clear conscience.

If she had a like button I’d push it. Since she doesn’t, I had to reblog about Alanna’s, “How I became a vegan post.”

You should read her blog, even if she needs to update more often: Vegan Dietitian.

Her post about agave nectar was great fun to read. We all know it’s worthless, yet we are happy to be eating something other than sugar, and we will pay almost anything to do it. The joke is on us.

The Chicago Tribute recently published a story, completely lacking sources, about wheat bread sales out-pacing white bread sales. They spent several paragraphs writing about “whole grains.” However, they consistently refer to “wheat bread” as brown bread and fall into the false logic that brown bread is whole wheat. It’s extremely unlikely that whole grain bread is selling well because almost all the bread sold at my local, hippy, vegan-friendly, communistic co-op grocery is white bread. Sure, it’s brownish, and it has oats on the top, but it’s white, refined grain bread! All bread is made from wheat. The only difference between breads is how refined the grains are, and whether anything of nutrient value such as seeds, nuts, and fruit has been added to the bread.

Bread is Not a Nutrient Dense Food

On ingredient labels, supposed brown healthy “wheat breads” are listed as “unbleached wheat flour.” A synonym for garbage you shouldn’t eat. Regardless of what the package says about whole grains, fiber, or heart healthy, you should only buy breads that only have “whole wheat flour” as the only wheat ingredient. These wheat foods, even whole wheat, are very low in nutrients compared to fresh, dark green vegetables and should not make up they base of your diet.

Wheat is Not Whole Wheat

Anyone armed with the labeling facts who has gone to the store to purchase whole wheat bread quickly realizes 90% of the bread choices are refined grains. In many stores only 1 or 2 options are actually whole wheat while the rest are garbage breads. Artisan breads are almost always refined “dessert” breads devoid of nutritional value.  It’s very difficult to find whole-grain products that don’t cost 2-3 times as much as refined products.  So I find it very, very difficult to believe that whole-wheat sales are so high. I have never seen it at any store I’ve ever been to. I’m always the crazy one who refuses refined “wheat.”

The consumerist covered the story as “wheat vs white”, but the story is a marketing deception. Really, the story is that consumers are being fooled and taken advantage of by food companies using deceptive food labels. People go to the store intending to make honest, whole-grain bread choices and end up being sold an “unbleached wheat” con. It’s time consumers start demanding honest bread labels. Wheat bread labels should be required to say, “This product is made with refined grains.” on both the front and the back of the bag.

An update:

We’re spending some time petting the indelibly soft skin of baby Dax Gregory, appreciating all of his squeaky noises, his wiggles and flails from the unconscious realm of newborn sleep, his ridiculously cute feet, his razor sharp fingernails…

And we’re recovering too, from all the unknown trials of having a first child, learning as we go along, crying when we need to, resting when we can.

We achieved our natural drug-free birth in the hospital, and yes it hurt, but it was also amazing and the craziest thing I have ever done in my life, but somehow also the most sane.

In relation to food and this blog — our hospital actually had good mostly-vegan options for meals! I ate three very tasty veggie burgers on whole wheat buns during our stay, with fruits and veggies on the side. They had tofu scramble and vegan soups and soy milk, and it was nice!

First tomato growing well, and the first time trying out the new clothesline… which, you know, is pretty low tech, so of course works really well! It was very easy to install, since it requires only a few screws, no poles in the ground or anything. Makes washing small stuff like kitchen towels and underwear (granny pants for the win) and soon, baby stuff really easy and appealing at home without a machine.

Several weeks ago, after getting tired of coming home loaded with those thin, transparent plastic bags or small paper sacks that we were getting from the store to transport and store our bulk foods, I ordered some burlap sacks from the internet, hoping that we could replace the plastic and paper. Well, the burlap came and to our dismay, we found the the sacks too messy to use realistically. Fibers came off everywhere, and rather than spend the rest of my life picking out burlap from my dried beans, or risk another type of burlap sack from the internet, I decided to look into cotton bags instead. Greg found a coffee retailer that sells inexpensive cotton bags, and they just arrived yesterday.

Stores that sell in bulk allow you to bring your own containers to the store to stock up on bulk goods. They simply need to know how much your container weighs prior to you filling it, so take your jars and reusable bags to the register first and they will weigh it for you.

Greg and I went to the store last night with our new cotton bags and tested them out. They fit perfectly around the nozzle of the upright bulk bins, and are a good size to bring home reasonable batches of food without overstocking the shelves. Greg recycled the receipt at the store, so I can’t check, but I’m fairly certain that there’s at least 2 lbs of rice in this bag.

Couple these bags with larger reusable bags for the rest of your groceries and you walk away feeling really good. I don’t think we are alone in feeling like we are living well when we come home from the store with little to no garbage or even recyclables — so many years of bringing home unnecessary packaging and garbage! We recycle and reuse our glass and plastic containers and bags, but saying no to them altogether is a more attractive alternative.

the facts about the trash

• According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. goes through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually.
• An estimated 12 million barrels of oil is required to make that many plastic bags. Boycott BP by leaving the plastic bags at the store.
• An estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide. That comes out to over one million per minute. Billions end up as litter each year.
• According to the American Forest and Paper Association, in 1999 the U.S. alone used 10 billion paper grocery bags, requiring 14 million trees to be cut down.

There is definitely a small trend going on right now to conserve on plastic and paper at the end of the grocery check-out line, but what about the plastic and paper that goes inside your reusable bags? It all adds up!

Greg’s birthday present to me. Thanks, Greg!

Every so often someone writes truth in such a powerfully compelling way that it’s a pleasure to support them. A friend of Kristen’s, who is not only a very talented photographer, but also into eating plants recently wrote a smashing post about veganism, raising your children vegan, and the myths perpetrated against us by big food corporations. Not only are we convinced that a vegan diet is right for us, we are excited to start our son’s life off on a healthful, nutritious and sustainable diet, and this post does a great job outlining the issues regarding feeding your kids (and yourself!).

I spent 30 years of my life making myself sick with food that I didn’t even enjoy most the time. I forced myself to consume eggs even when they repulsed me. I systematically convinced myself that ground beef was health food. And, I excluded any dairy product from my “junk food” list. All it got me was excess weight and habitual stomach pains. If you’ve ever doubted that eating plants is the way to go for you or your children, you should read this post on Tutti Animali.

It’s hard to believe that I am now “term” with Dax. We will get to meet him whenever he’s ready to meet us — which could be in a few days or several weeks from now. I’ll let him decide what’s best!
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Um, admittedly, I need more practice making pancakes in our cast iron pans, but over the course of the week, I’ve at least made them edible! My first recipe included banana, and while that has promise, it’s kind of out of my league right now and the pancakes end up too gooey. So here’s a ridiculously simple pancake recipe, cooking instructions not included.

Whole Wheat Blueberry Pancake Batter

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups soy milk
2 tablespoons ground flax
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon vinegar
Blueberries to personal taste

Top with Agave Nectar, a nice plant-based alternative to honey, or Maple Syrup, cinnamon, and whatever fruit is on hand! Thank goodness that the store was out of my favorite soy ice cream last night, because these raspberries that I got instead that I never usually buy because they seem too expensive? DIVINE.

• I once lived off free bagels, water, and a free lunch. I couldn’t eat bagels for years.
• I haven’t been to the doctor in 8 years, because health insurance is broken.
• I let Chicago tow my car, and keep it. Best choice ever. We bicycle everywhere!
• I’ve stopped shaving to protest the culture of shaving and save money.
• I don’t wash my hair, and it’s clean and soft without shampoo.
• I’ve stopped paying the gym… training with my own body instead.
• I’m dying to cancel our cell phone. We never use the thing. Contracts are evil.
• We make my student loan payments even though they are 1/4th of my income. Student loans are bad debt. Don’t let your children get stuck with 25 years of debt.

More Important than How to Save Money?

How we spend money! We get most of our vegetables from a our local CSA. What we don’t get from the CSA, we select organic and try to aim local. Although I did buy my genmaicha (brown rice tea) from a Japanese tea farm. We’ve got a nice yard with room for our garden. We’ve got nice locks for our bikes, good helmets, and nice bike light sets. Money well spent. Thank God Kristen and our son have free health care, or we’d have to choose between paying the doctor and food.

For a long time, we bought soy milk in what is known as aseptic packaging, those boxes that you find unrefrigerated on the shelves. We bought these because we are pretty picky about what’s in our soy milk: Most of the brands that you find in the refrigerated aisle are completely loaded with thickeners and sugar and oil and yuck. I’m not terribly keen on the idea of enriching the soy milk with vitamins either, because if I’m going to take a vitamin as a pill, fine, but otherwise, I prefer vitamins from their original source, which is to say, the food from which they originate.

So in the unrefrigerated aisle full of soy milk, there are more options to be found. When we were near Trader Joe’s, I chose their brand of organic soy milk which just had two ingredients: filtered water and organic soy beans. Likewise, when we moved away from Trader Joe’s, I chose Westsoy’s unsweetened organic soy milk. Same deal.

unrecyclable

But something really started to bother me about buying these soy milks — the packages were ending up in our garbage after consuming them. Our recycling center does not accept aseptic packaging.

I went back to the natural food store and investigated some more… and I found the most beautiful thing:

A locally-manufactured soy milk with two ingredients, water and soybeans, that is organic, similarly-priced, and totally recyclable! In fact, all of The Tofu Shop’s local products come in recyclable containers. While The Tofu Shop doesn’t buy local soy beans, their beans are GMO-free and organic, and they produce all their products locally, so the transportation of items needing refrigeration turns out to be a short ride. It’s neat to poke around the photographs on their website to see how soy milk and tofu are made.

fresh flavor

I need to say too that I really enjoy the fresh flavor of locally-made soy milk. Even the simplicity of Trader Joe’s and Westsoy products don’t compare — their soy milk lacks the flavor of soy!! This might be a turn-on for some people, wishing only to escape the harmful nature of cow’s milk and to find a bland replacement, but I really enjoy the true flavor of soy beans and The Tofu Shop delivers.

if you are stuck with aseptic packaging

Some areas do recycle aseptic packaging, so if you don’t have any awesome companies like The Tofu Shop supplying your area, maybe you have a super awesome recycling center! Check out your local recycling center’s guidelines for what they do and do not accept. A recycling center in Colorado that does recycle aseptic containers describes the layers of the package:

Many non-refrigerated juice and beverage cartons have a foil lining on the inside, a plastic polymer lining on the outside, and paper on the inside. These layers are challenging to separate for recycling but we are accepting them.

Then they bring up an interesting point regarding the ecological advantage to aseptic packaging:

These aseptic cartons are designed such that the products do not have to be refrigerated until the container is opened, which saves energy by avoiding refrigerated transportation and makes these products an environmental plus.

So it’s not that these containers are inherently evil or anything, just that they require a bit of thought.