legumes

Your Vegan New Year’s Diet: Don’t Forget the Protein

It’s hard to resist the call of the New Year’s diet. There is something about the promise of new beginnings, especially after the season of indulgence.

If your goals for 2016 include weight loss, please make sure your vegan diet includes enough protein-rich foods. I’m not suggesting that you need to eat a high-protein diet. Nor am I saying that eating lots of carbs is bad. My concern is that some vegan weight loss plans are woefully short on legumes. A menu that consists of oatmeal and fruit for breakfast, vegetable soup […]

By Ginny Messina|2016-01-02T13:04:55-05:00January 2nd, 2016|Tags: Beans, dieting, legumes, Protein, weight loss|12 Comments

Potassium in Vegan Diets: Less Kale, More Beans?

It’s not surprising that vegetarians and vegans tend to have higher intakes of potassium compared to omnivores. One simple dietary change—replacing the meat in a recipe with any type of beans—can give potassium intake a healthy boost.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that we vegans always get enough, though. In fact, while it’s far easier to meet needs on a plant-based diet, it’s really a challenge to consume the recommended 4700 milligrams of potassium on any kind of diet. In the Adventist Health-2 study, there was […]

By Ginny Messina|2014-02-19T09:35:50-05:00February 19th, 2014|Tags: Beans, kale, legumes, potassium|27 Comments

Ten Tips for Staying Happy and Healthy on a Vegan Diet

There is a long list of reasons why people fail on a vegan diet and return to the world of cheese sandwiches and fish fillets. They might have developed overt deficiencies or vague symptoms of poor health. Some ex-vegans say that they experienced depression or foggy thinking or fatigue without animal foods. Others struggled with challenging social situations or with cravings for animal foods.

The following ideas for staying happy and healthy on a vegan diet are all things I’ve written about before, but I wanted to condense them into a sort […]