Freshly Vegetarian: Ashley See on Transitioning to A Vegetarian Diet, Including Tips, Health Benefits & Recipes

There's no surprise that many New Year's resolutions include becoming healthier. Gyms are more packed than any other time of the year; spinning classes are filled with new faces, and treadmills are lined from wall-to-wall with folks sweating away those holiday pounds.

As we've heard time and time again though, becoming healthy isn't just about exercise, it's also about what we eat. Given the abundance of fabulous articles about how eliminating meat (see Mark Bittman's "No Meat, No Dairy, No Problem"), even on a part-time basis, does the body good, it's no wonder that many health resolvers are testing the waters of vegetarianism to purify their bodies.

I'm all for helping people eat vegetarian, whether it's part-time or full-time, which is why a recent email from a friend has inspired me to share my main tips about transitioning to a vegetarian diet over the next few weeks. 

Today, I want to share my top three vegetarian recipes that are absolute crowd pleasers, and can also be made with any budget:

1. Shurbat Addes (Syrian Red Lentil Soup): this is a soup that will convince anyone you're a culinary whiz even though it's jaw-droppingly easy. Seriously! It's rare to find a recipe that's this easy and this tasty, and considering it only requires five ingredients, you have no excuse to not go invade your pantry right now and eat it within the hour.

Serve it with a green salad and you've got yourself a balance meal. The recipe requires a mortar and pestle to grind the spices, but if you don't already have one, then one can easily be found secondhand, or at Ikea for under $10. I got mine at Sur La Table for $15. Bonus points: this soup is easy to make and ready to eat in 40 minutes.

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For my 25th birthday, I bought myself two cookbooks: Madhur Jaffrey's World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking and Heidi Swanson's newly released Super Natural Every Day.

I don't think I could have made two better purchases. Both cookbooks are fabulous, but Heidi's book is the one I've found myself cooking out of more thus far. In case you're unfamiliar, Heidi is the master behind 101 Cookbooks, and has previously published two cookbooks (Super Natural Cooking and Cook 1.0: A Fresh Approach to the Vegetarian Kitchen). She has an excellent flare for creating healthy vegetarian recipes that are delicious, satisfying and nutritious. Heidi's recipes routinely hit the spot, and for this very reason she has readily become one of my favorite, and most trusted, cooks.

When it comes to vegetarian food, Heidi knows what she's doing.

I discovered Heidi and her blog a year or two ago, but began to visit it religiously since vowing to cut down on my sugar intake and cook more whole, natural foods. Most of my previously favored food blogs showcase scrumptious food, but their recipes are far too rich, and far too sweet for me to cook from anymore (Deb from Smitten Kitchen, I love you dearly, but am talking to you). Sure, recipes can be adjusted, and from time to time I'm happy to make healthy tweaks, but it's also nice to cook a recipe from top to bottom knowing it came out exactly as it was intended.

I'm a recipe girl. Many cooks are brilliant at making up recipes from scratch, or improvising here and there because they have good instincts on what goes well with what. I'm not one of those cooks.

Given my desire to stop tweaking previously loved recipes into somewhat healthy ones, I have found Heidi's third cookbook, Super Natural Every Day -- or "SNED" so I endearingly refer to it -- to routinely please my palate and my waistline. At this point I've cooked 2/3 of the recipes in SNED, a rarity for me since most cookbooks I cook from are rented from the library, so I usually only cook 2-5 recipes from them at the very most.

While it was hard to choose, here are my top five favorite recipes from SNED:

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I appreciate a recent post that Megan Rascal wrote for vegansaurus! discussing easy answers to commonly asked questions about veganism. While there are a few questions specific to veganism, most of Megan's questions are also asked of vegetarians.

While I've seen these types of posts before, there's something about that vegansaurus! sass that made me want to share these with you.

Here are a few of Megan's responses that I particularly liked:

2. But cheese is gooooooood.

I didn’t give up cheese because I don’t like the taste (and the addictive casein high!), I gave it up because I morally object to the way it’s made. Did you know that male calves are taken away from their moms the day they’re born so they can be sold for veal? You know, because their mom’s milk is for humans, not for their baby. I like cheese but I don’t think it’s worth it.

REMEMBER: It’s not about the taste. (Ashley: this also works for meat and eggs)
 

3. Animals eat each other, why shouldn’t we?

Animals do a lot of stuff we don’t do—my neighbor’s dog eats its own shit. Humans are thoughtful, reflective beings and we can make choices in a way most animals can’t. Except lots of animals, including gorillas, who are badass natural vegans and way better than us.

REMEMBER: Humans have choices.
 

7. I tried to be vegan and I got really sick.

That’s weird because usually a vegan diet is healthier than a non-vegan diet. If nutrition was a problem, you could always read more about how to become a healthy vegan and try again! I could help! If you want to talk to someone more professional than me (please note: I wear flip flops in winter and usually have food on my hair, face, and shirt), find a vegan-friendly nutritionist or dietitian!

REMEMBER: Any diet can be unhealthy.

If you want to read Megan's full list then go to vegansaurus! for the rundown.

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One of the most often repeated reasons people tell me they could never go vegetarian is because they love the taste of meat too much.

After growing up on the Oregon coast - consuming seafood like it was growing out of style - and eating venison year round, I salute this argument, but no longer find it valid. Once you stop eating meat, you stop craving it and instead start craving vegetarian food.

There's something about red meat that raises hair on the back of our necks. It could be because every other minute the argument changes on whether or not it's good for us (pro and con); it could be the frequent E. coli outbreaks that would sooner have me craving starvation than ground beef. Some resources go as far as stating those who eat red meat are likely to have other unhealthy habits. Whether you choose to eliminate red meat entirely, or to simply scale back, it's important to recap why.

Health

In Jane Brody's New York Times article, "Paying a Price for Loving Red Meat," she discusses an extensive decade-long study by the National Cancer Institute, which reported the following health risks come into play for those who eat red meat:

• Increased mortality risk

The increase in mortality risk tied to the higher levels of meat consumption was described as “modest,” ranging from about 20 percent to nearly 40 percent. But the number of excess deaths that could be attributed to high meat consumption is quite large given the size of the American population.

...the deaths of one million men and perhaps half a million women could be prevented just by eating less red and processed meats, according to estimates prepared by Dr. Barry Popkin, who wrote an editorial accompanying the report.

• Cholesterol / High Blood Pressure / Heart Disease

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Four hundred days and forty pounds ago, I became a vegetarian.

After a full year of not eating animal meat, I must say that I've never felt better. I recently got a full check-up, including extensive blood tests and learned that I was in top shape. My protein, iron, b-vitamins and the rest were all happily in check. Well, everything minus a vitamin-d deficiency, that's only natural when you live in a place like Seattle.

Thinking back, becoming a vegetarian wasn't as hard as I originally thought it would be. I would go through phases where I would try out vegetarianism, but it never stuck longer than a week or so because I had no clue on how to sustain a healthy vegetarian diet and couldn't imagine a life without unagi sushi rolls or hot dogs at a baseball game. Then one Sunday afternoon, after lamenting to a vegetarian friend about feeling unhealthy, he suggested I consider vegetarianism. My roommate at the time had Peter Singer's The Ethics of What We Eat in his bookshelf, which complimented this suggestion, so I picked it up and read it cover-to-cover that same afternoon. That was one of many books/videos I devoured in a few weeks time--ranging in topic from Indian cookbooks to basic nutrients that every diet needs.

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According to Frankie Avalon Wolfe, of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Being Vegetarian, here is a mock-up of the lacto ovo vegetarian (a vegetarian that consumes dairy and eggs) food pyramid, which follows the ADA guidelines:

Now that you’ve seen a visual for lacto ovo vegetarians, let’s talk about the necessary servings needed per day for a healthy and balanced diet:

• Oils, sweets, alcohol: use very sparingly
• Eggs: up to 3-4 per week
  • Example serving: 1 egg or 2 egg whites
• Dairy: up to 3 servings
  • Example serving: I cup milk; 1 cup yogurt; 1 ½ oz cheese (Wolfe suggests using skim or low-fat dairy, I opt for full fat)
• Legumes, nuts, seeds, meat alternatives (like tofu): 2 – 3 servings
  • Example serving: 4 oz tofu or tempeh; ½ cup cooked beans; 8 oz soy milk; 2 tbsp nut butter
• Vegetables: 4+ servings
  • Example serving: 1 cup raw or ½ cup cooked vegetables
• Fruits: 3+ servings
  • Example serving: 1 piece fresh fruit; ¾ cup fruit juice
• Whole grains & pasta: 6+ servings
  • Example serving: 1 oz ready-to-eat cereal; 1 cup dry cereal; 1 slice of bread; ½ bagel, bun or muffin; ½ cup cooked pasta or grain

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Before becoming vegetarian, I remember feeling overwhelmed by the large amount of research and consideration I had to do before switching to vegetarianism.

Truth is, the first few times I wanted to become vegetarian, I gave it a very temporary shot, but was discouraged by how daunting the transition felt. In fear I wouldn't know how to get enough protein (and other essential nutrients), give up some of my favorite foods and how to stand up to friends and family, I readily buckled under pressure and returned to my meat eating ways.
 

Now that I have been vegetarian for roughly six months, I feel like I have gotten a solid handle on some of the do's and don'ts of transitioning to vegetarianism. If you ask me, the secret sauce to successfully becoming vegetarian was to stop thinking about the switch as a huge, intimidating transition into a positive thing broken into baby steps.

Over at MyRecipes.com, Anne Cain wrote a lovely list for new vegetarians on, 6 First Steps to Going Meatless. While I dug the list as a whole, not all steps were applicable to me as I quit eating meat cold turkey instead of transitioning into it.

After the jump, see my modified list of Cain's.

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