I agree. When we first switched to vegan, I was looking for substitutes because it was such a big change in our diet and how to prepare food. As I’ve learned more, I’m definitely much more of a ‘whole food-ist’. I wasn’t happy simply trading all my meat and cheese for highly processed soy products, especially since I also have kidney stones (run in the family) and highly processed soy is high in oxalates. We have very little of the processed products left in our diet.

But, as in most of our food choices, we don’t stress about the small stuff. We shoot for 90-95% whole food vegetable based diet and don’t worry about the occasional condiment or snack. I also don’t worry about what we eat socially and let the kids have whatever they want at parties and other people’s houses. I don’t want our diet to make them feel ostracized, and at some point they’ll be making their own diet choices anyway, so this gives them a chance to choose for themselves.

I haven’t tried miso, though, so thanks for the suggestion. I’ll have to look up what to do with it.

Misty

Dairy and meat “substitutes” are processed foods just like sugar cereal is. If mother nature didn’t create it, your body won’t recognize it as food.

Processed soy especially has been linked to health problems (soy milk, soy cheese, soy meats, soy formula, soy products in junk food). And I’ve found more than a couple cream cheese substitutes that had partially hydrogenated oils in them!

Regular soy cooked well (tofu, tempeh) or fermented soy (miso) seem to be much better or even beneficial. Especially miso!

Thanks for the nice comment!

I admit we all miss cheese sometimes, but there are great substitutes for many other dairy items. We use avocado on Mexican food instead of cheese. You can crumble some potato chips on top of casseroles. There is a brand called “Better than Sour Cream” and “Better than Cream Cheese” that we get at Kroger or Trader Joe. They are veggie oil based. You can use some ground almond meal mixed with spices and/or some nutritional yeast as a parmesan sprinkle. There are decent soy yougurts, and the big container of Silk Soy yogurt is $3 at Meijer. But, we haven’t really found a decent substitute for cheese and we still have a pizza now and then.

For meat we just leave it out and add a can of beans, sauted mushrooms, soy crumbles, or more veggies to the dish. An all-veggie chili is a good place to start – you can put lots of different kinds of beans, onions, pepper varieties, corn, tomato, and spices. Mexican food is also easy to convert. Take a tortilla add some rice, beans, salsa, avocado, black olives, shredded lettuce, and some chopped tomato, and you really don’t notice that the meat and cheese are missing.

Good luck and enjoy!

Check this blog out…
http://veganmothering.blogspot.com/

And did you see there is a movie about it coming out?
http://forksoverknives.com/