I found this article on a vegan forum I frequent today. There is a whole breed of people who occupy themselves by going onto forums to get everyone rilled up. You know who I am talking about. Those that go on vegan forums to say that they had the most delicious pigeon steak today! You know…Jerks.

Anyways, someone posted this link as a reason not to be vegan: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article4087977.ece 

The story is about a 12 year old vegan girl who has the spine of an elderly woman because of a lack of Vitamin D through her childhood diet. The parents will likely be brought to social services for neglecting the needs of their child. Included in the article was also a story about a 10 month old girl who died because her parents were feeding her nothing but breast milk, raw fruit, juice and nuts. They are awaiting a sentence for her murder and are facing jail time.

The forum was a flurry of outrage. Some of the responders complained about how the media is constantly victimizing vegans and how the media never misses an opportunity to bash vegans yet they never talk about obesity and other carnivorous problems.

Well, none of that is true. The truth is there are bucket loads of news stories about those very things. It is true that the media will always be biased towards the dairy industries (who are strong lobbyist and valuable advertisers with lots of government support), but there is no real persecution there. Many associations (like the Heart and Stroke Foundation and the diabetes one) have supported vegetarian diets as a way of reducing these diseases and maintaining a healthier weight.

The article was quite harsh about vegan diets but  I think it did more good than harm. The families described in these incidents are “hardliners.” Probably leaning towards the raw food movement. This is ABSOLUTELY inappropriate for infants and children. Children need a diet higher in fat than adults do and they need decent sources of protein (not derived from walnuts). It’s great to have ethics, but at what cost?

In the article is this quote: “A spokesman [of a vegan association] said: “I would suggest that it is not the vegan diet itself \ but the parents.” “

I agree with this.

I think that a vegan diet can be healthy for children but it requires planning. In this pregnancy I had started drinking milk but couldn’t bring myself to keep it up after I started thinking about what was in the milk. I read that vegan moms have a higher risk of having a baby with hypospadias (a minor penis deformity) as a result of the phytoestrogens in soy products. So I am cutting way back on soy. I am trying to make sure that we aren’t getting more than one serving of a soy product per day.

My kids are on an all natural multi-vitamins and I also use a vegan friendly Essential Fatty Acid supplement (Udo’s Oil 3.6.9) in their diet. I try to make sure that they are getting the best go at life without compromising my ethics too much. My boys are, afterall, my number one priority. 

And it seems to be working. They are bright and alert. They are as big and active as their peers and they have strong immune systems.

I see this article as an education for myself as a parent. To continue to evaluate their diet. Or rather, a confirmation that I am on the right track.

To see a more balanced look there is also this news clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYX18NGTwls This is a CNN news clip that does a good job of showing how a vegan diet reduces your carbon foot print and lowers you overall caloric intake without reducing the tastiness of your meals.

Anyways, here is to moderation and vegan chocolate cake!

OK, so these don’t really go together but I was reading a new book today and found some interesting factoids that I just had to share with you all.

I had a visit with my midwife yesterday and borrowed some books from her lending library. I felt like I had already read everything there but a couple of titles caught my eye. Your Vegetarian Pregnancy is written by an OB (obstetrician) who has been vegetarian since the age of 13. I guess she has attended over 5,000 births in over 25 years and is writing this book from those many years of experience. 

She goes through the diet of vegetarians and reassures that a well-planned vegetarian diet can be more nutritious than a non-vegetarian diet. Duh! 

But the what caught my eye was the part on genital birth defects for boys. It states that there is one birth defect that is five times more common in vegetarians than meat eaters and that is Hypospadias (relating to an English study done on 7,000 infant boys). It’s a defect where the urethra is positioned differently on the penis than where it should be. It’s not a major defect because the child can still urinate and won’t have his future sexual performance hampered by this but still. Don’t we all want our babies to come out perfect?

The cause of this phytoestrogens. If you remember one of my previous posts where I debated the pros and cons of soy milk, I talked about this. We already eat very little tofu/soy products because they are processed and we stopped drinking soy milk (which I only drank a small amount of daily) once we became pregnant. This shouldn’t increase our risk at all!

However, there was another group of women who experienced an equal increase in risk! Meat-eating, iron supplementing women! It turns out that taking iron supplements can increase your child’s risk of Hypospadias. Someone I know told me that her son was born this way and I know that she was taking iron supplements.

I really think that whole foods diets, which are well-planned to include a variety of healthy foods, is the best policy. I take a multi-vitamin but I don’t use any other supplements. But if I feel that I may be lacking in some area, like in iron, I adjust my diet to include more foods rich in iron (like broccoli or molasses).

And it is working well for me. This is my third pregnancy in four years (which could indicate depletion of key minerals) and yet ALL the results of my blood work keep coming back A-OK!

The last topic I wanted to breech today was pesticides. In the book mentioned above there is a section where someone asked whether vegetarians, because of their high intake of veggies and fruits, have a higher accumulation of pesticides in their bodies. The answer is actually NO!

When you wash your fruits and veggies you wipe off the bulk of these pesticides but meat-eaters, who characteristically eat less veggies and fruit, still have a higher concentration in their bodies. When pesticides are used, states Your Vegetarian Pregnancy author Dr. Holly Roberts, the soil in the fields remain contaminated for years. Animals ingest these pesticides in higher quantities (since they cannot wash their food prior to ingestion) and their flesh contains concentrations of pesticides which meat-eaters then ingest and accumulate. Dr. Roberts emphasizes this by saying that people who eat diets high in animals with fatty flesh (like Eskimos who eat lots of fish) have a pesticide concentration higher than any other group of people. Where the fish get all these pesticides I am not so sure but still…interesting right?

Anyways, I urge everyone to consider eating less meat. Vegetarians tend to live longer, have better hearts, weights and a multitude of other benefits. And if that isn’t enough to encourage you to cut back on animal flesh than think about what it will do for your sex life! Eating meat has been associated with erectile dysfunction disorders. Another reason why vegetarian guys are hotter!

I haven’t posted recipes in a month or so. Here are some of my faves.

Breakfast:

I have altered my smoothie recipe these days. It’s nice to shake things up. I use a banana, a bit of water, some psyllium husks, hemp protein, Udo’s Oil (Omega 3*6*9 oil) and then I add peaches and strawberries or pineapple and an orange depending on the mood. I love the berry shake but I hate picking raspberry seeds out of my teeth for the next hour.

I have also been enjoying the PC Organic cereals these days. I like the raisin bran one. And another great breakfast is peach and brown sugar oatmeal. Yummm.

Snack:

Nuts, cheese etc.

Lunch:

Bean soup. -Navy beans or lentils or whatever with mixed veggies in a tomato base. I like to add a side salad to that. My pregnancy has changed my appetite a lot and that I am just not craving beans at all. That is making me more and more dependant on cheese which I am not really craving either. This protein thing is becoming a real hassle.

Supper:

To be honest these days all I want for supper is poutine. I can’t have that everyday of course so I have been making veggie pizzas, mushroom raviolis (I buy these) and butternut squash lasagnas. I love pasta.

I will throw in a recipe though. Homemade veggie burgers and homemade buns.

The buns are made in the bread machine. I let them rise there then I take the dough out, reshape in a pan and let rise another 30-60 mins. Then I bake in the oven at 325* for about 40 mins.

The ingredients go in the machine in this order: 1 1/2 cups of water, 2 tbsp of oil, 2 tsp of salt, 1 cup of whole wheat bread flour, 2 1/2 cups of whole wheat flour, 1 cup of whole grains (I buy these bulk at Planet Organic), 1/3 cup of brown sugar and 2 tsp of fast rise yeast.

The ingredients for the patties are: 1 cup of mushrooms (chopped), 1/4 cup peanuts, 1 carrot chopped, 1/2 onion chopped, 1/2 zucchini chopped.

I cook that in a pan with some oil to get a soft flavour then you throw it all in a food processor, add 2 cups of bread crumbs, 1 tbsp of parsley and a tsp of yeast extract (I used nutritional yeast) and 1 tbsp flour. I added half a can of kidney beans for protein to the processor. Shape into patties and then cook in a pan until browned. You can BBQ too. I love these! They are much more flavourful than black bean burgers. They stay real soft too.

Then top with whatever you like!

Hmmm…milk. I have been rethinking this one. As you know, I have replaced my soy milk with cows milk thinking that on a hormonal level it will be better for baby. I am starting to rethink that decision. Here’s why:

I was reading in my cookbooks yesterday and I have one called Skinny Bitch in the Kitch. It’s a vegan coobook written from a very biased perspective. I find that I don’t carry things like soy cheese, soy bacon etc. (ew and very processed) so there are many recipes that I can’t make but there are a few gooders too. They have an amazing spaghetti squash recipe that the whole family loves.

Anyways, in the intro they (the two female authors) say that “Researchers at Harvard, Yale, Penn State and the National Institutes of Health have studied the effects of of dairy intake on bones. Not one of these studies found dairy to be a deterrent to osteoporosis. On the contrary, a study funded by the National Dairy Council itself revealed that the high protein content of milk actually leaches calcium from the body.” They go on to say that milk has been associated with other things like obesity, anemia, allergies etc.

This has been echoed in other publications all over the place. Despite their billions of dollars in advertising the real truth about meat and dairy is coming through!

I have also read that when children drink more than two cups of milk a day they are at an increased risk for childhood stroke! This came from the Healthy Kids book (by the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada).

And the last bit comes from a book called On Food and Cooking. It states that the human enzyme Lactase (which digests the Lactose in milk) starts to decline as we age beyond two to five. That is why there is such an incidence of Lactose Intolerance among adults. It states that Lactose Intolerance is “the rule rather than the exception” and that 98% of Scandanavians, 90% of French and Germans, 40% of Southern Europeans and South Africans, and 30% of African Americans are Lactose Intolerant.

It also makes an effort to mention that humans are the only species that drink milk after infancy and the only species to drink the milk of another species.

It’s becoming quite clear that milk is not that beneficial and not that natural for us to be drinking. For example, knowing that honey is made from bee spit and that without this important source of food the bees cannot make it through the winter takes the appeal of eating honey away.

You know those dumb Kraft Cheese Slices or Mac ‘n’ Cheese commercials talking about how their processed cheese slices are good for bones and teeth. Well apparently they are good for neither so if you factor that out you are left with processed cheese garbage! Yumm!

So here is my dilemma. Do I go back to soy milk (which doesn’t give me tummy aches)? Or do I stick to the cows milk despite the fact that it is not necessarily all that beneficial to me or maybe even the baby?

I haven’t decided yet but I am pretty sure I will be doing half and half for a while. I don’t really eat other soy products (since we avoid processed food) and so the amount of phytoestrogens I would be taking in are very low. Maybe I can drink soy milk and still have a slice of regular cheese for my afternoon snack (for the extra protein).

Another weird thing, I have been craving animal products pretty bad. I crave chicken occasionally and I was really craving a hard boiled egg yesterday.

I won’t buy these things but I can’t stop the craving. I assume these are associated with nausea and that I just need a high protein snack. I have been having a lot of bean burritoes this last couple of weeks but I can’t live off of burritoes for the next eight months.

Blah! I hope with more sleep my cravings/nausea will regulate itself and that I can go back to feeling normal: grossed out about eating animal carcass and feeling guilty about the suffering that comes from eggs and dairy.

What a pain!

I am supposed to up my protein intake to 70g from 50g and I thought, sure no problem but I just don’t really crave protein rich foods! Blech!

I get three sources of protein in and I am inclined to think that maybe that is enough. I have bought cheese for snacks but I am in the middle of my usual week of morning sickness and am not at all interested in cheese or anything heavy right now. Thank goodness for chocolate milk. I have switched to regular milk instead of soy milk (I think I said that in the last post) because I worry about the effect of phytoestrogen and it has taken some adjustment taste wise. My problem is that I am lactose intolerant so the milk often gives me stomach aches. What is a girl to do?

In my last posts I have complained about not sleeping well. I don’t know why but I just can’t get comfortable. Anyways, the fatigue coupled with the morning sickness has made me unable to exercise. I had mentioned in an earlier post how my exercise was helping with my chronic back pain. Well, no exercise means back pain and headaches. Sigh.

I did go to AquaFit on Saturday and it was great even if I couldn’t keep up to the old ladies. I am not dumb enough to blame the pregnancy but rather blame the lack of sleep.

I am not too annoyed with the pregnancy. I just want sleep. Who knows why I can’t sleep and who knows if it will remedy itself but I have taken to sleeping on the couch (because I seem to fall asleep there for some reason) and that bugs me. I’d rather sleep in my bed with my husband! I used to sleep on the couch all the time in my last month or so of pregnancy, because that is the only place that would support my chronically bad back and ever expanding stomach, but I surely don’t want to start that now. LOL.

Sorry about the whining today folks. Here’s hoping for a good nights sleep and the end of my morning sickness week to end early.

Now I get to find a Doctor. I really don’t want one but I guess I should have one. Plus, I should be able to hear the baby’s heart beat soon and I would really like to hear that. I really want a midwife but I need to know where I am living before I waste $2,500 on a provider I can’t use.

I finally caved and got the pregnancy test. Yup, two lines means pregnant. I am quite excited. I keep thinking this one will be my girl. After having a definitive answer I decided to evaluate my meal planning and found that I am a little low on the protein side of things for a pregnancy. I am sure I am getting more protein than I think because there is protein in whole grain bread and some veggies and other unexpected places. These aren’t considered good sources of protein but they contribute to the overall tally.

I have still been exercising but I am knocking it down a notch and I am splitting my usual workout into two days instead of cramming so much into one day. So I do weights one day, cardio the other and I swim once a week!

We told Kevin’s family today and they seem excited. After having had two babies I kind of thought people wouldn’t care too much but I was wrong. I mean, I didn’t get (or want) a parade but people smiling and saying, “take it easy” is nice. Even the boys are excited. It was my two and a half year old that spilled the beans today. He went and told his Peepa (Grandpa) that he was going to have a baby sister. He has been very excited about babies lately and I can’t wait to see the excitement mount when he can actually feel the baby’s movements.

My sister is due in two weeks or so and Trey keeps talking about Aunty Sandra’s baby. He can’t wait to see it.

I haven’t been sleeping well for a week and I don’t know if that is pregnancy related. Yesterday I forced myself to workout despite being terribly fatigued and the result was the best night of sleep I had all week. It was far from a great night of sleep but it was better.

So besides eating more protein I am not really changing my eating habits. I may drink the very occasional glass of cow’s milk (just so I don’t eat too much of the controversial phyto-estrogens found in soy) but I still refuse to eat eggs. Poor chickens. Poor cows and calves too actually.

Well I am still months away from an ultrasound. We always like to find out what it is. If it’s a girl it will likely be an Anna. A boy? We don’t know. We will start ploughing through those baby books if that event presents itself. Kev wants Anna Lexis but I dunno about that. Anna I am cool with but not so much Lexis. We’ll talk about that one some more.

For now I am having  a glass of chocolate soy milk and getting ready for bed!

Well, my weight has been acting funny. Despite exercise I have bloated a bit. I think it’s hormonal because I haven’t done anything to cause a small jolt in my weight up instead of down. Plus I think there is a chance I could be pregnant. I was wondering if that would have done it.

Kevin decided he had to have a little girl. We always wanted one and had talked about trying later (because I wanted to run my marathon) but he was at work and a co-worker’s wife dropped by with their little infant girl and he has been buggin’ me since. So I guess we are trying now.

I am so excited and I really hope it will be a girl because after having two boys I will cry if it’s not a girl.  This makes me a little sad because I wanted to get fit before I tried again. I will keep exercising even throughout this pregnancy but weight loss is not advised which means that I will likely end up with an extra 20 lbs on top of what I am already trying to lose! Man!

I am excited too because that will be my first vegetarian pregnancy. I am looking forward to taking care of my body and doing good meal planning and seeing the results of my healthy veggie baby!

I would love to have a home-birth again but things are really up in the air right now and we aren’t sure yet where God is leading us. When we get there we will have to figure out arrangements. If I can’t get a midwife I will definitely birth with a doula. I’d like to have the same one as last time but I haven’t been able to get a hold of her. I would also like to birth in a hospital without an anesthesian. That way there will be no temptation for drugs. When I had my home-birth I didn’t think about having drugs because they weren’t available. The thought never occurred to me during that time. At one point I wanted to pause the contractions and go have a nap but that’s about it. In my hospital birth the nurse used to come in and offer me an epidural every time she came in the room, even after we said we didn’t want drugs!

This will be my third time so I think I should be able to get some respect in a hospital birth room this time. Sigh, my home-birth was so great. I wish I could do that again. But even in Edmonton there isn’t really a certified midwife that I’d really want. I guess Barbara Scriver would be the best bet but she is soooooo busy that I would have to know what is going on with living arrangements for that. Although I have heard of people letting you use their homes as birth homes in the city. I am sure I could find one friend/acquaintance to let me use their home to birth if I wanted it bad enough.

I am about a week late but I haven’t taken a pregnancy test yet. If I am pregnant I guess I will have to put off my weight loss for a while. Oh well, it’s always worth it in the end.

I am very much wanting to post some articles about natural pregnancies and childbirth but until I get the time to do that you can check out some of my articles here:

http://www.squidoo.com/pregnancytest

 http://www.squidoo.com/positionsforbirth

http://www.squidoo.com/birthrisks

http://www.squidoo.com/birthprocedures

http://www.squidoo.com/firstweek