I was driving to work the other morning, listening to sports talk radio, and I heard the hosts talking about, of all things, nutrition. They were talking about 8 things that you should eat every day to be healthy. Sounds good. And, as I've mentioned before, I'm like a household pet.... I'm OK eating the same thing every day.
When I got home I googled "8 things to eat everyday" and found a number of interesting links. You can search yourself if you want to do further research. But this is the list below:
- Spinach
- Yogurt
- Tomatoes
- Carrots
- Blueberries
- Black Beans
- Walnuts
- Oats
As for the yogurt, soy yogurt is listed as an acceptable alternative. So, I'm looking at this list and thinking, hmmm, I could do this every day. Sort of. Maybe not every day, but most days.
But what I found most interesting is this little blurb I found on spinach:
"Protein makes up 30% of the calories from spinach and it's high in methionine, an essential amino acid that is somewhat lacking in many plant foods. Spinach is a good addition to your diet if you should not eat a lot of soy product."
One side note on the spinach... buy organic. The pesticide levels on spinach appear to be pretty high, at least from the reading that I've done online.
Happy eating.
Related Information:
- New Things
- The Vegan 100 – 100 Things You Should Try
- 8 Things You Can Do To Cut Your Risk Of Cancer
- Shake Things Up
- Vegan Easy Dinner
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Those all sound like things that could easily be incorporated into every day meals. I also like the one about eating every color of the rainbow every day!
Hi Chelsea,
Yes, we’ve found them quite easy to incorporate… And they do cover quite a bit of the rainbow!
I liked the link to the Nogurt, since I went no soy mostly because of it’s being GM these days (I wonder what’s in it), there looks like hope for the future yet
I’m using Quinoa these days for the complete protein rather than soy based foods.
Hi Dan,
Re the nogurt… You can find the ingredients by clicking on their flavors, each flavor has an ingredient list. It appears to be mostly banana puree. Personally, I think it is much better than the soy yogurt. So Delicious also has a new yogurt out there that is based on coconut milk. It’s really good, and available at Whole Foods.
They probably recommend yogurt for the probiotics. You can get probiotics in raw sauerkraut, too.
Vegan is always best!
Lane,
The So Delicious yogurt is so good, but it’s almost two dollars for a little six ounce serving.
Has anyone read about avoiding spinach while pregnant? Susun Weed’s Childbearing Year book advises to stay away from spinach because it compromises calcium absorption. I didn’t eat spinach that much, during my pregnancy, because of what I had read.
Breezie
I just do not think that eating those food will be enough for vegans to be healthy. Various supplement, vitamins and minerals are necessary.
@Cndy: I don’t think the idea was that this comprises a complete vegan diet, just that they are items that should be considered staples.
I could probably manage to get most of these in a day, but man, I really don’t like tomatoes! I know, craziness. But I like tomato products (salsa, juice, soup, ketchup w/o HFCS) so I could probably get an equivalent serving.
A couple of these things could easily be blended into a daily smoothie – yogurt, blueberries, spinach, maybe some carrot juice (plus other yummy fruits, vegs and juice to get more flavor) and then top that with some oats and granola and crushed walnuts (or grind the oats and walnuts into a powder beforehand and blend that in!) It’s so fun to experiment with smoothie blends – I’ve thrown some weird combinations into the blender and generally have success. The worst thing that ever happens is the overall taste is muddled, but still satisfactory and packed full of vitamins. It just takes experimentation with portions and different fruits and veggies to get a taste you really like.
I just discovered this blog – great info! I’ll be back, for sure.