Dietician

[danaeonyx]

I've read that it's good to get a dietician (espec if vegan) to make sure I get the nutrients I need in my diet. I'm also trying to lost weight.

Does anyone know if you can get dietician advice on the NHS? Or if not how much are they? :S I'm poor

[Korn]

(espec if vegan)

Look here: Nutrient deficiencies more common in meat eaters than in vegans



Anyway: it totally makes sense to make sure you get the nutrients you need - vegan or not....

[danaeonyx]

Hehe I always say that to people. Like the unhealthy looking staff in my college cafe who say they're worried for my health and want to know if I'm getting all my nutrients.

Unfortunately my diet is pretty poor so I might be missing some vitamins

[Quantum Mechanic]

Actually, while it's not because of a vegan diet being inherently a poorer source of nutrients, because we grow up being told "get your calcium from dairy, protein and iron from meat", that while there are perfectly good vegan sources of these (and vegans aren't at risk of protein or iron deficiency compared to meat-eaters), that even though most of us do a lot of research, even when one does care and pay a lot of attention it can be difficult to synthesize all that and incorporate that into the diet, especially if you don't have a great plethora of nutritious vegan prepared meals available to you (like I do, but many people, especially students and other young people who may not be adept at or have access to cooking much, don't).

And that study, while showing that vegans tend to be deficient in fewer nutrients than omnis (no doubt owing in part to the increased consumption of fruits and veggies of the aggregate), there are other nutrients we should certainly pay attention to (as anyone should, but I think it may be particularly important, given that few of us are raised on well-balanced vegan diets, then go to school and learn a vegan (or even vegan-friendly) food pyramid to help plan meals to get good nutrition.

No matter how abundant vegan sources of all these nutrients we need are, if a certain threshold level of vegans are either not educated enough about planning a well-balanced diet that incorporates them, or are educated but don't put it into practice often enough, then that can be a problem. Again, that doesn't mean it's a problem with a vegan diet, but with the surrounding societal factors that might make implementing a (well-balanced) vegan diet difficult. Omnis have pressures to eat junk too (but then again, even if you're vegan and not eating junk but eating mostly whole foods, doesn't guarantee you're getting all your nutritional needs met, just like that same guarantee doesn't exist for an omni attempting the same).

Sorry if it seems a little ranty, but it's just that sometimes when people write things, and then I read them, it can be a little bit unclear: when someone writes that vegans don't need to see nutritionists any more than omnis, by looking at deficiency rates, this may be true. But when you're transitioning to a diet (even if that transition took place awhile ago), you really have to look at things from a completely different starting point, and this can mean doing a lot of mental gymnastics that you're not even aware of, because you've already gone 2 steps mentally, so you don't see that there's a third step. It doesn't feel complicated at all until you step back and look at all the things you've been researching, to undo the mess that you were taught back in elementary school (such as my dad's recollection of elementary school nutrition lesson, about how "beans and nuts have protein, but it's sort of hush-hushed about, like it's an inferior sort of protein").

Anywho, all I know is that for me, if I hadn't been on medical leave and already not able to do much else other than lie down and read on the Internet with the breaks for meals and exercise, I don't know how I would've helped my diet better. See, I guess I thought that having a few slices of apples or canned peaches qualified as enough fruit for the day, and I certainly didn't get out to buy them. I didn't understand how important it would be to have a good source of vitamin C with my meals (actually, I understood perfectly well, and also understood the inhibiting effects of phytic acid such as found in legumes and spinach as well as oxalates or large doses of calcium, but I didn't have the space to manage it), and often didn't. It wasn't until I was diagnosed with iron deficiency anemia and did some research, and somehow managed to buy oranges that now I cut them up and juice them to drink with meals. Fortunately, one medium to large size orange has about 100% daily vitamin C, and fortunately an orange (even an organic one!) is half the price of the equivalent amount of vitamin C in a blue machine naked juice (we have an expensive student store). An apple only has about 10% daily vitamin C, whereas onions, potatoes, and tomatoes are pretty good sources particularly as they are likely to be eaten with beans, green leafy veg, tofu, etc.

But, growing up in a non-vegan world, you may not develop the habit of combining onions, tomato and beans in a dish, say, and topping it off with freshly blended orange juice! Or having a nice lunch with kale and steamed broccoli playing a prominent role, maybe with tofu and noodles topped with almond slices. So for people who either have difficulty coming up with these plans, or have trouble identifying what needs to change, or they could theoretically do all this undoing-omni-meal-planning but it would take them more time than they reasonably could take (some people can do this quite quick; others take longer; some people -omni, veggi, vegan - say "the heck with meal planning, I'm just taking a multi vitamin and being done with it").

So yeah, just wanted to share some of my thoughts about how nutrition relates to vegans and getting an idea for an awesome calcium-filled lunch.

[cedarblue]

if you are concerned can you get blood tests done at your g.p.'s? depending on the results, and if you are deemed overweight by the doc, you may qualify for some help from a dietician on the nhs.

however, sometimes it's very difficult to get help even when diagnosed, i was unable to get counselling help on the nhs because i wasn't 'serious' enough.

[danaeonyx]

Thank you Quantum Mechanic, that's what i meant. I'm a mature student and get dinner's free, but the selection is awful. I have a microwave (which pretty much kills nutrients) in the kitchen and that is all! The only saving grace is that I'm at my boyfriend's at the weekend so have more control. But I'm poor so have to make do. I'm also not good at cooking

I'll ask my doctor about blood tests I was slightly anaemic a couple years ago.

[Biz_Girl]

I think it's good that you're thinking about nutrition and trying to make sure you're getting all the right stuff!

For ages my GP pestered me about my diet, saying she was sure I was iron deficient, calcium deficient, low on vitamin B, etc. So I got irritated one day and said 'fine test by blood!'. Big surprise, everything was in normal ranges which was what I had tried telling her! Furthermore, my cholesterol was normal (not bad for being mid-thirties and a family history of high cholesterol)!

I'm not much of a cook either, so I try to keep lots of fresh fruits and veggies on hand - apples, bananas, baby carrots, cucumber, etc. If you don't wanna cut things just buy the pre-cut bags Makes for an easy (and cheap!) meal - add some guac, salsa, hummus, bean dip or whatnot. I also keep nuts around to snack on. I'm partial to raw cashews, if you eat them with dried cherries it kinda tastes like cherry pie :-P It's a quick and easy source of protein.

So keep trying different things to see what works and good luck!!!

[Spud Addict]

I really wanted to get the tests that were done in the beginning on Morgan Spurlock in Super Size Me. Don't know if you can get tests like that in this country? I've seen some kind of health check on BUPA but it costs hundreds of pounds!
Maybe your doctor can suggest something?

[Quantum Mechanic]

I don't have any way to cook things in my room either which is why I'm fortunate that they (usually) cook nutritious vegan food at the cafeteria, though due to my odd sleeping cycle I don't always get there to it. I keep peanut butter, bread, and other nuts and things around, as well as a good supply of fruit and some veggies (I don't usually stock many veggies aside from lettuce because I have access to this awesome salad bar at the cafeteria in addition to their cooked foods, so I focus more on getting fruits, like oranges and apples and strawberry and banana and kiwi fruits and limes and tomatoes and avocados - I actually haven't stocked lettuce in awhile because last time I did I didn't realize it was going bad and I'm sure it got me sick because it was slimy, so I try to eat my greens at the cafeteria).

Fortunately, since I don't have a microwave (but I do have access to one in a student center 10 minutes walking), that any time I want to eat microwaved food I have to walk 20 minutes! Another detractor is that it often smells of melted or burnt cheese, which increasingly turns my appetite down much like buttered popcorn (both artificially and real) did when I was a teenager. Fast food fries also give me headaches. I don't know why. Maybe it has something to do with my migraines/seizures or it's just a food peculiarity, a growing aversion to dairy and fat? Anyway, today when I did make a microwaved lunch (it was 1 serving of gardenburger bbq riblet), I made sure to add some nice fruit and some yummy, nutritious flax bread with it, too, making a sandwich with an orange on the side. And hey, microwaves may not be the best, but I don't think they kill protein and fiber! (Great way to use up a tomato and avocado that are starting to turn, too.)

[Gorilla]

Does anyone know if you can get dietician advice on the NHS? Or if not how much are they? :S I'm poor

have a look at this:

British Dietetic Association

it tells you how to get referred or find one yourself.

i don't know how tolerant of veganism dietitians are on the whole, you might end up with one who thinks it's too extreme and insists you eat a little of everything

[treaclemine]

The BDA Manual of Dietetics has a whole chapter on veg*n diets, so any real registered dietitian in the UK should be able to give good advice to vegans.

[Korn]

Doesn't that depend on what's actually written there . is it good, well-written information, or presented in the old fashioned, prejudice-flavored, pro-standard-diet way of putting things? ;-)

Here's an excerpt of what they write: "Nutritional deficiencies can occur with such a restricted diets" etc etc etc". Good advice would have been different: it would have been a neutral statement about what nutrients you'll be more/less likely to get on a non-vegan diet, and what nutrients you'll be more/less likely to get on a vegan diet.

The vegan diet isn't more restricted than a non-vegan diet, the 'restrictions' are only different. A vegan diet excludes certain types of products others don't exclude, but a combined (animal products + plants) diet excludes the amount of fiber, phytosterols/flavonoids/antioxidants and often B9) etc that vegans normally have healthy amounts of.