A vegetarian diet is much healthier; it’s rich in fiber, vitamins, lean protein and complex carbohydrates. Surely, if we’re not distracted by meat dishes, we’ll be more likely to eat fresh fruits and veggies, right?

This is logical- but ‘logical’ doesn’t always mean ‘true’. Take my diet yesterday, for example:

BREAKFAST: Cookie Crisp cereal and soy milk
SNACK: 3 Quorn cocktail sausages
LUNCH: Cheese sandwich made with white bread (no salad), 3 more Quorn cocktail sausages (I swear they’ve got cocaine or something in them, they’re so addictive), 2 plain crackers
DINNER: 2 Quorn sausages (full size ones this time), 2 frozen potato waffles, small can of baked beans
LATE EVENING: Half a large bag of cheese puffs, half a bottle of vegetarian white wine and more milk chocolate than I want to admit to

Pretty terrible, huh? Everything I ate was vegetarian – but was there any fresh produce in there? No. Fiber? Not as much as there could have been.

According to Fitday, a website with a huge database of nutritional information for all kinds of foods, white bread contains 0.58g of fiber per ounce, compared with 2.2g per ounce in wholewheat bread.

Quorn is lean protein, as are beans, but cheese certainly isn’t. And white bread and potatoes just don’t do that lovely slow-release thing that whole grains do. And their vitamin content is inferior.

On top of that, I consumed more alcohol than the recommended daily amount for a woman, a load of saturated fat and sugar from the evening junk food binge, and I only had one snack (the late evening intake hardly qualifies as a snack!).

The wisdom of eating three snacks a day was given to me by a hospital dietitian and I know I function better when I follow this advice. So why do I, from time to time, have ‘bad nutrition days’ when even the thought of peeling a banana seems like too much effort?

For the same reasons as many meat-eaters: Tiredness, laziness, the inner rebel coming out to play, lack of time, a bad day at work…and the fact that processed, refined foods and alcohol taste good and can give us a short-term boost in mood.

Just because we’re veggies doesn’t mean we’re immune from making bad food choices – and just because it says ‘suitable for vegetarians’ on the label doesn’t mean it’s a healthy food.

This morning I find myself looking back at yesterday through the haze of my hangover and wondering if I’ve blown it.

Will that 7lb I lost since going vegetarian pile back on? Will any future fresh produce simply pass straight through me and leave behind no benefits at all in its rush to exit my cholesterol-clogged obese body?

Or was yesterday just one day – an anomaly that will be corrected through continued good nutrition for at least the majority of the time? For the sake of my own peace of mind, I’m going to assume that the answer is ‘yes’. Many nutritionists and health fanatics might disagree with me.

They might point out that one should NEVER eat chocolate or drink wine, and that a pure and perfect diet is the only way to achieve that nebulous goal of ‘good health’.

I say that ideally people would never put these things into their bodies, but humans aren’t just machines using food for fuel. We are sensuous, hedonistic, unpredictable, whimsy-driven souls, free-thinking and strong-willed beings. On being told that we ‘must’ do this or that, we encounter a sometimes irresistible urge to do the exact opposite.

In my case, there are no pre-existing health conditions that could be aggravated by certain foods , and I don’t eat like this most of the time (this was one day in maybe 20 for me).

Why not just accept that rules are being relaxed for a time, enjoy the food and drink, chalk it up to experience and then get back on course as soon as possible?

Why would we NOT want to look after ourselves by choosing to eat healthy? It’s simply not sensible. And yet, I’m nowhere near accepting it without question.

Correct thinking, like correct nutrition and good health, is a journey rather than a destination. For those of you on the same path, I hope that my experience will encourage you to take heart, and continue on your vegetarian journey without feeling guilty about occasional lapses.

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Author Vicki (Vix) Chamberlain lives in the vegetarian mecca of Brighton, England, with her husband and two home schooled children. She studies English at the Open University and works part-time.  Vix has been both meat free and dairy free – but never at the same time! Her most recent post is Pro-Choice Vegetarian: I Don’t Care What’s On Your Plate

Vicki has just self-published her first novel for Amazon Kindle -  a confessional-style novel about a young woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

1) What is a Savvy Vegetarian?

Well informed about vegetarian diet & nutrition, persistent and patient in transitioning to a vegetarian diet, balanced between the real and the ideal, practical, able to laugh about it all – especially at your self! The idea behind Savvy Veg is we provide support so that anybody can easily become a savvy vegetarian, and not have to suffer for the cause.

2) What inspired you to launch the Savvy Vegetarian website?

I had a tough time getting started as a vegetarian, in the late sixties. I had serious malnutrition, and my cooking was a disaster. I persevered because I was too stubborn to do anything else! I gradually figured things out. After a few years we moved to a place where there were many vegetarians, and lots of support. I got used to an easy veggie life, and took it for granted.

In the mid-nineties, we moved to a meat-and-potato town for 6 years. What a shock! It was back to the dark ages! In a city of 100,000 people, the nearest natural food store was 10 miles away. There wasn’t a single vegetarian restaurant. Most people thought that being a vegetarian was strange and unnatural.

But once in a while, someone would hear that I was vegetarian, and ask me to help them go veg. They were desperate! Here were people who really wanted to be vegetarian, living in such a hard core meat eating town, not knowing where to start. I figured there must be a lot more people like that out there.

I was just getting familiar with the web, and I thought I should start a website so I could help people go vegetarian – even though I didn’t have a clue how to go about it. That was in 2001. By 2003 my husband and I had launched the Savvy Vegetarian website. It was a mess – but it evolved.

3) Your website states: Savvy Vegetarian is for everyone, from life-long vegan to just thinking about vegetarian diet. What are a few tips for people just starting to add more vegetarian meals into their diets?

I always say over & over like a broken record – go veg gradually. Same with going a little bit veg. Take it easy.

To start with, stay in your comfort zone. Eat fake meat in your sandwich, have a veggie burger instead of a hamburger. Add tofu, seitan or chickpeas to your stir fry instead of chicken. Have one meatless meal a week, and build up to more. it’ll give you a chance to get acquainted with different foods, and learn how to cook them.

After you get used to all that, start eating more healthy food like fresh veggies and whole grains every day, no matter what else you’re eating. Eat more salads, more fresh fruit. Soon you’ll start liking it, then it’ll get to be a habit, and edge out the not-so-healthy foods.

When you’re ready, start pushing your boundaries. Try new foods, buy cookbooks, experiment. Have fun! There’s so much variety, so many tasty things to eat – vegetarian food is a big adventure!

4) Please share a quick and savvy holiday recipe with us today! (preferably under 7 ingredients)

Here’s a great dairy free whipped cream, Cashew Cream – with 5 ingredients. It was adapted from a recipe on the UK animal protection site Uncaged. It’s rich and delicious – everybody loves it! And easy:

1. Take 1 cup of raw cashews, simmer in 2 cups unsweetened apple or pear juice for 5 – 10 minutes, until soft. Then cool for a couple of hours, or overnight in the fridge./li>
2. Use a blender to blend the cashews and juice./li>
3. Add 2 Tbsp melted coconut oil or sunflower seed oil and 1 tsp vanilla extract and blend until the mixture is smooth and thick./li>
4. Gradually add powdered sugar 1 Tbsp at a time until the cashew cream is sweet enough to your taste. Personally I didn’t think it needed any sugar/li>
5. Use a rubber spatula to scrape the cashew cream into a plastic or glass container with a tight lid./li>
6. Seal and store in the fridge – it’ll keep for up to a week.

Listen to the interview with the Jazzy Vegetarian on Blog Talk Radio

Dear Savvy Vegetarian,

My 8 year old daughter became a vegetarian two months ago. My husband and I who are not vegetarian are trying our best to support her choice.

She is also an avid dancer training two to three hours a day. This is HER choice, we are NOT pushing this on her. (I have 4 daughters and K. truly is her own unique little person) ;-)

We also homeschool so before she started she had to do her own research and decide what level she would be – lacto-ovo vegetarian.

I am concerned about her not getting enough calories. She has lost a few pounds and doesn’t have them to lose. How can I make sure that she is getting enough calories with her growth and her intense dance schedule? She will be training even more next year.

I’m sure we are going to be regular visitors to your site. We had the quinoa black bean salad for lunch today. Yummy!!!

Thank you for your help. Smiles, J. H.

Savvy Vegetarian Advice:

Hi J.H.,

It’s not easy to keep active, growing vegetarian children from being skinny. They’ll plump out, then shoot up and get skinny again and so on. At least that was my experience. But losing weight isn’t so great!

My advice is to go heavy on the carbs and fats – no more than 50% whole grains, oatmeal and rice are good – lots of nuts and seeds, dried fruit, beans in whatever form she likes them. She should be eating a kid vegetarian diet, not a grown-up vegetarian diet.

Kid friendly recipes my kids loved to eat (over & over): refried beans & hummus in burritos, quesadillas, wraps, sandwiches or as dips, vegetarian chili, pasta tofu & veggies, tofu burgers, pizza bagels, mac’n'cheese, endless bowls of cereal, scrambled eggs, toast & nut butter, blanched almonds, tons of fresh fruit, juice, yogurt, pancakes, muffins, chips, cookies (I made healthy ones, preferably with oatmeal – the only way I could get them to eat it without a fight. That and granola. Moms have to be pro-active!).

They ate veggies of course. Potatoes were always good, carrot salad, broccoli & carrots, peas, corn, green beans, baked yams & winter squash, raw veggies & dip often. They weren’t fond of leafy greens, but I could sneak them into soups, quiche, stir fries.

A childrens multivitamin is a good idea, imo. Rainbow Light Vitamins is a good one – Vita Cost has the best prices.

Here are links to a few articles and advice letters which might be helpful:

9 yr old goes veg, Mom worried

Veg Protein Sample Menus

A Week of Menus for Vegetarian Kid-Friendly Meals

I highly recommend the book “Becoming Vegetarian” as a 1st class vegetarian nutrition guide. It has an excellent chapter on child veg nutrition.

All the best, Judith Kingsbury

Medical Disclaimer: Any changes that you make to your diet, and the results of those changes, are your decision and responsibility. Savvy Vegetarian and its employees do not claim to be health care professionals, dietitians, or nutritionists. We do not treat, or recommend treatment, for any illness or health condition.

How can a person become vegetarian and stop their meat eating ways when it’s so hard to get over meat cravings caused by simply loving the taste of meat?

Dear Judith, I discovered your website quite a while ago, and have recently stumbled across it again. I love the recipes, and this advice blog is great. I’ve become vegetarian at least twice before, and always fell back into the meat eating pattern. I now have cut meat eating out of my lifestyle a lot, but occasionally do have meat cravings and eat chicken, and rarely, beef.  I almost never eat pork unless there are really no other options.

I love the vegetarian options out there, and now that I’m done with university, I have more time to cook healthy and interesting meals. There is a big part of me that wants to become vegetarian – I have vegetarian and vegan friends who have very convincing arguments and points to make. I have watched movies like Food, Inc. and read Fast Food Nation (the latter was my motivation to become vegetarian the second time), and I have seen videos of slaughterhouses and heard horror stories from my father who was a medic at a slaughterhouse for a while and saw what the workers – and the animals – experienced. There are SO many good reasons to become vegetarian, and I think I want to give it another stab.

Like I said, cutting out beef, pork, and chicken has not been too hard. My biggest meat cravings challenge now is seafood. I love seafood. I know that the oceans are overfished. I know there are, again, so many reasons to not eat it.  But I LOVE the taste. I don’t know what to do to overcome this. I tried being a “pescetarian” in the past, but eventually just eating fish and no other meat got the better of me, and I decided to just go back to  meat eating. And there are other things I love – now that summers have rolled around again, I’m excited about hamburgers and chicken grilled at barbecues.

I guess my question is – how do you get over liking the taste of meat and having meat cravings just because you like the taste?

I tried to post this on another discussion board for vegetarians once and was literally harassed and told I was a horrible person who should stop being ruled by their taste buds, basically, and that I should get some  conviction. I feel like your website is a safe and respectful place to voice my question. I really look forward to hearing from you. Thank you! – V. R.

Savvy Vegetarian Advice:

Thank you, V.R.!

Going vegetarian can take a little or a long time, depending on many factors, like age, health, body-type, socio-economics – it’s a very individual & personal thing. In Western society, the cultural pressures NOT to be vegetarian are strong, and it’s not surprising that many people have trouble swimming against the stream, even if their desire to become vegetarian is strong. It’s excellent that you’re moving in the “right” direction!

Your commitment level will catch up with your intellectual understanding over time. Vegetarian or vegan diets are very life-supporting, and the more that you eat a high quality vegetarian diet, the more that your body will come to prefer it. One day you might wake up and have an “ah-ha!” experience, or just gradually realize that you can never again eat anything with a face.

But since you’re not there yet, instead of focusing on your vegetarian shortcomings, and having guilt attacks, accept that you aren’t quite ready to go all the way vegetarian. I think your best approach would be to eat the most TASTY, healthy, organic, vegetable-rich, whole grain kind-to-animals diet that you can manage, and not worry about the times when you can’t.

One reason why new veggies crave meat is that the veg food they’re getting isn’t satisfying. If your vegetarian food is tasty and nutritious, then you’ll be less likely to crave meat. Be sure that when you do eat veg, you’re getting the nutrients you need to replace those that you get from meat.  Take a multivitamin, plus separate B12 and Omega 3 supplements. It could be helpful to read the veggie nutrition bible, “Becoming Vegetarian”,  by Melina & Davis. And try tofu burgers on the grill, they hold up quite well, and are VERY tasty & nutritious :-)

All the best, Judith Kingsbury, Savvy Vegetarian

Dr. Gabe Mirkin, M.D., Report on Gall Stones

We’ve all heard (or experienced first hand) that gall stones aren’t fun.

But you know, I’ve been a veganish vegetarian for a long time, I’m 61, and I’ve never had a gall bladder attack – touch wood. Which makes me wonder.

Dr. Mirkin‘s report on gall stones gives me the distinct impression that a healthy vegetarian diet is a great way to prevent them. Not that he comes right out and recommends going vegetarian.

But Dr. Mirkin does say that the best way to treat gall stones is to prevent them, and the best diet for that is a low fat plant based diet.

And other interesting things, such as that being overweight or losing weight rapidly are the main culprits, and why. And that having your gall bladder removed isn’t always a good idea…

Read the whole report!

As I keep saying, the world is going vegetarian!

“My husband and I are friends with a couple who had fun playing “taunt the vegetarian”, an irritating game where the non-veg places emphasis on meat, rude elaborate descriptions of it, and tells you for the millionth time that they ‘couldn’t live without steak’…etc. Other than that, they’ve been great friends.”

“One day, they woke up and decided to get healthy – did a bunch of research and found out a bunch of awful things about meat heavy diets, not to mention factory farms. They almost totally cut meat out of their diet, and now are as likely to bring a vegetarian dish to a potluck as I am.”

“I haven’t heard one rude veggie comment since. Last time they had a do at their place, they made a meat soup, and a veg version for me. I gotta say I’m enjoying the change of tune. The funny thing is, their change came entirely from them. I didn’t preach, and they didn’t ask.” – Z. K.