I have just decided on a whim that I no longer want to support the dairy industry and cut it out of my diet cold turkey. I've already trialed a run and I felt great but it was so difficult. Never realized how much dairy was in my diet in basically everything I ate and it wasn't long before I ran out of things to eat that didn't contain it. Even subjected myself to eating cereal with water which was extremely unpleasant. It's been hard but I know you're the community to ask for help because you've probably went through this sort of thing before.
I'm not vegan I just came here out of solidarity. Though if I could go fully plant based, I 100% would. Meat's fucking expensive and gross.
Plant milk.
There are a lot of different kinds. Soy milk, oat milk, almond milk, coconut milk to name a few. Oat milk is my personal favorite but you should try different kinds to see what you like (though be aware that almond milk production takes a lot of water).
I'll give oat milk a shot, because I need wheat protein anyway. Thanks!
Oat milk is pretty great if you're going with just 1 plant-based milk, since it foams for lattes and with some additions, you can get it to whip for meringue or whipped cream and stuff
Then it's settled, I'll pick up a jug of the stuff next time I go shopping.
I agree with BeamBrain. Do you cook much now? Cutting dairy is a lot easier if you're preparing at least some of your food. They really do put it in everything
I cook a lot more now than I used to because processed food is expensive and nothing really compared to freshly baked bread.
just my personal opinion i love soymilk in cereal/coffee/tea that sort of stuff, some brands are also fortified with more vitamins including b12 (though most cereal ive seen also has b12). i can only do the unsweetend kind though, stuff like "regular" is too sweet 4 me
There's a ton of vegan alternatives to milk products! If you can, give a few a shot at a time. Soy, oat, almond milk.
Vegan butter can be very convincing or just taste like margarine, which is also fine.
Vegan cheese is generally unconvincing, so prepare yourself for that. If someone says they eat a lot of dairy, I assume it's mostly cheese. I would recommend instead finding vegan foods that hit a similar spot. Hummus is nutty, salty, tangy - get or make some good hummus.
Some brands of vegan cream cheese are very good and go great on a bagel. Some are just okay but taste great when you add some other things like fresh-cracked pepper and a thin-sliced veggie.
This also might be a good time to find some new staples! A nice tangy bean salad is very nutritious, easy to make, and will last several days. Tabouleh is healthy and delicious. Basically, some people risk having bad nutrition when they go vegan because they simply drop meat and dairy without compensating, so you want to avoid that.
I managed to
stealobtain a bag of the stuff, now to find some recipes to use it with.Holy shit it's almost uncanny how much this stuff tastes like cheese.
Nutritional yeast and popcorn is superior to butter and popcorn. Also, cauliflower "steak" (cauliflower cut into "steaks") with olive oil, salt, pepper, and copious amounts of nutritional yeast is excellent.
Thanks for the tip and that username is phenomenal. Do you get along with Libs Eat Poop?
Can you get almond milk? For the closest to milk experience I recommend Unflavored unsweetened
Trader joes actually has a lot of vegan stuff - they have vegan mozzarella which is good. They also have many completely vegan frozen meals. Finally, they also have nutritional yeast which is essentially parmeasean replacement.
Refried beans are a surprisingly good substitution for cheese in a lot of things. A quesadilla with beans instead of cheese, for example, is amazing. Or microwave some refried beans, stir in some salsa, eat with chips. Super tasty, super cheap, super filling, super easy. Refried beans are just the best! We always have at least 3 cans sitting around.
:bean: :cool-bean:
Edit: Also, it's badass that you're going to stop eating dairy. Amazing choice!
I asked my vegan friends and they recommend full fat oat milk, use decent margarine (like the "baking" margarine) instead of butter. They say most vegan cheeses are expensive and don't taste too good, the only good ones they've tried are the ones they made themselves, with psyllium husk and various nuts. This is one of the recipes they recommended
Is Margarine actually non-dairy? I always thought it was just a chemically synthesized alternative of the same molecule. Psyllium husk... huh never heard of that one before. I should look into it.
margarine can have dairy, but at its base it's just vegetable oil with a stabiliser to make it harden
Pretty much all margarine sold where I live is made of vegetable oil so.
Just make sure it doesn't have any added cream or anything.
apparently where I live it's illegal to sell marge that contains dairy. That's good to know and makes my life so much easier.
Even subjected myself to eating cereal with water which was extremely unpleasant
That's gross, just have
eggon toast (Or stick a quarter avacado on the toast, then slice thin, then add yuccateca sauce and adobo seasoning)I did by with what I had on me. But now's my chance to go shopping for actually good food.
There's some recipes for "cheesy" vegan sauces using yeast flakes, should be easy to find on the webs. Not the same, but worth trying if it works for you. Also someone posted a vegan queso recipe here at some point, that was really good.
My diet consists of cheese pizzas, chicken and chips, cereal (my favorite is generic-brand Puffed Wheat and Malt-O-Meal Cinnamon Toast Cannibals), and the occasional PB bread.
If I could sub out the cereal milk, the pizza, and the chicken, I could very easily go full vegan. Right now my priority is the dairy because it's the most 'unnatural' part of my diet.
No offense, but it kind of sounds like you want to change your diet without changing your diet.
Like if you really want to stop eating dairy why not just eat different things? There's a ton of cheap and delicious foods from cultures all across the world that either don't use dairy or can be very trivially augmented with non-dairy ingredients. Why not start eating different foods instead of trying to replicate those exact foods with non-dairy versions?
Recently I was talking to a friend about all the amazing (and still unknown) connections between gut bacteria and our nervous system/brains. It occurred to us that since the bacteria in a person's stomach is going to be adapted to what they eat, especially something with unique addictive chemicals like cheese (the casomorphin), that the connection between the bacteria and your nervous system is probably contributing to people's struggles giving up stuff like cheese, and feeling like they need a different but identical diet. Knowing this doesn't make switching directly easier, but if its true, then understanding underlying mechanisms like this could be helpful. It also explains why after being on a new diet and getting used to new staple foods, a person will develop cravings for those instead. That's what happened to me when I went vegan, now I just crave tofu or lentils for protein, probably because my bacteria does haha.
When I say substitutions I'm referring to the nutrients, convenience, and cost. There's no point in subbing something out if it's going to take 2 hours to prepare, cost 10x as much to make, or is as nutritious as cardboard. Believe me when I say I have run into all three, especially when it comes to 'health' foods which are essentially overpriced candy designed for false consciousness.
The Gardein breaded Chik'n tenders are fucking delicious fried in some oil imo. As far as taste almond milk is the most agreeable to me. Cheese is the hardest / most expensive to get respectable substitutes for. Brands like Miyokos Kitchen have good vegan cheeses but they're like $10 for an 8oz pack.
Get oatmilk and get used to reading the ingredient list on everything you buy. Chip brands use dairy to bind flavor to the chip so you can’t have most barbecue chip brands now. Luckily you picked something that’s a common enough allergen that in the US they have to list it in bold at the very bottom of the ingredient list so you can check it quicker. At this point in time being lactose intolerant has been in the mainstream long enough that there’s a ton of dairy free alternatives. Once you get used to it you won’t even notice anymore, the only pain is having to ask if dishes in restaurants are prepared with butter because like 90% of the time they are but it’s an easy sub so just get in the habit of asking
For cereal, you can also use smoothies. Some people use juice, but i find the thicker texture of smoothies to work better on cereal. Yes, that's a lot of sugar right there, but so is cereal in itself, i view that more as a treat than a staple food.
I broke out of the "sugar is the devil" propaganda a long time ago. Sugar's fine, and healthy. It's overconsumption that's making people sick.
Always go for the "why are apples healthy when they're basically pure sugar" and the answer's always "Urh umh it has fiber and nutrients, um you know I don't actually know"
Health science is corrupted by capitalist interests so bad that it's a complete joke and borderline unusable at times.
Urh umh it has fiber and nutrients
the sugar is tied into a more complex structure and gets into your system slower. this is important for insulin stuff
also, fruits have lots of water and absolutely contain less sugar than pastries and candies and such. 2 or three apples to a single twinkie
Apple juice and Cheerios my guy. Maybe abit sweet, but better than water.
I didn't have any juice on me, all I could do was mix sugar in with water.
You're gonna have to content to mostly making your own snacks I find. Popcorn kernels can be cheap and all you need to cook them is oil and salt/spices. As others mention there is plant based milk to try big fan of :soy-cutie:. Sussing out milk can be easy since it's a allergy it's often listed in bold at the bottom of the ingredients.
