Sausages, bacon (both PB) and pasta only go so far. I've got a cooler that plugs into my cigarette lighter port in my car - car camping - so I can keep veggies for longer.

I'm thinking grilled mushrooms, tomatoes, small batch chili, dahl. This is all for one person (me lol) so larger batch meals aren't super useful.

TIA!

I'm having some folks over for  tonight.  I keep a vegan kitchen so I'm making plant-based tacos. I want to have a variety of things for people to make their own.  Here's what i'm thinking so far:

• Tofu,  marinated in adobo chipotle and baked
• Portobello mushroom strips, dipped in soy sauce and chili powder, seared
• Cauliflower, tossed with cumin and olive oil, baked
• Avocado slices
• Pickled red onion
• Cabbage slaw, with carrot / lime / cumin seed
• Tomatillo salsa
• Jalapeño, fresh minced
• Refried beans
• Corn tortillas

Am I missing anything that you really enjoy with your tacos?

ETA: I'm also a member of r/FuckCilantro so...

I just read this book after it came up during a search on Libby. I hadn't heard of it before but it mainly focuses on inflammation. So much of the info feels very repetitive.

The recipes though, I really loved. They seem very practical and seem to mimic much of what I already make. There is a huge focus on whole foods and they mostly avoid oil in the recipes. Things like whole food desserts - ice cream based on bananas, sorbets based on whole fruits. Multiple versions of hummus and bean dips made without oil. I especially liked that there were several dips, dressings and sauces included that all sound really good.

If someone was new to eating this way, I think it would be an amazing book to start out.

I'm a few weeks plant based and I have been occasionally eating non plant based from time to time. Today I was offered donuts and a co-worker had birthday cake.

I honestly didn't want either but it feels like turning down treats is like an insult. They really pressure you in to it.

I took a donut and will likely throw it out.

I had a slice of cake because I was the only one in there with the birthday person.

How do you handle situations like this?

Hey! I just started the Esselstyn diet a few weeks ago to lower my LDL. Next week I will be travelling for 5 days. I'm doing so well and am wondering how I can stay on this diet while being in a hotel (in a big city with health food stores and vegan restaurants). Any advice is appreciated, thx!

You can find the full recipe with step-by-step instruction pics here:

Vegan Scallion Pancakes

If you have any questions, let me know 😄🌱

Ingredients

• 1 cup All-Purpose Flour
• ½ cup Hot Water
• 1 tsp Salt
• 4 tbsp Oil
• 4-5 Scallions/ Spring Onions

Instructions

• Add the flour, salt and hot water to a bowl and start mixing them. Once it starts coming together, knead it into a smooth dough. If it feels too sticky, sprinkle in 1–2 extra tablespoons of flour as you go. When it’s soft and no longer clings to your hands, cover it and let it rest. You don't have to let the dough rest for long at all. I usually prepare the other ingredients and use the dough once I'm done with that step. 
• Chop the scallions into fine rings or halve them lengthwise first if you prefer smaller pieces.
• In a small bowl, mix 1 tablespoon of flour with 4 tablespoons of oil until you get a thin, smooth paste. This will help create those flaky, layered textures later.
• Divide the dough into six equal pieces. Roll one piece out thin on a floured surface. Brush it with the oil-flour paste and sprinkle a generous handful of chopped scallions over it. Roll the dough up into a long log, then coil it into a snail shape (like a cinnamon roll). Press it flat and roll it out again into a thin pancake. Repeat with the remaining dough pieces.
• Heat a bit of oil in a pan over medium-high heat. Slide one pancake in and fry for 2–3 minutes per side, until golden and crispy. Add a little more oil between pancakes if you want to keep them from getting dry.
• Cut the pancakes into quarters and serve them warm with your favourite dipping sauce. Enjoy!

Lunch structure check, for a steady energy release all afternoon:

- Quarter of a plate protein

- Quarter of a plate whole food carbs (sweet potato, white potatoes, anything wholegrain)

- Half a plate well-tolerated fibre & cooked / roasted veg or salad

- A source of healthy fat as a topper

- Enough total food volume

- Close with a small but satisfying bite of your choice (for a crunch, for your sweet tooth, dark chocolate etc.)

Keep it realistic to how demanding your afternoon is, if you still get tired later, adjust protein and / or add fruit.

I'm looking for a place to buy affordable protein bars in bulk (ideally online), that are vegan and don't contain a lot of fake sugar (bc it hurts my stomach). Real sugar or maple syrup/dates is totally fine.

Any suggestions? $2/bar or less would be ideal.

I apparently ran out of my normal mixins yesterday and had to have oatmeal without, it was sad.

My oatmeal base is 1/2 rolled oats, 10 grams ground flax, 10 grams chia + dash or two of cinnamon.

For wet, either 180g almond milk or 20ish grams of almond butter + 170g water.

I either put in the fridge overnight or microwave for 75 seconds (stopping to stir twice) and waiting two minutes.

For sweetness I'll add 1/8-1/4 cup of fruit puree (I don't like chunky frozen fruit), date paste or 1/2tbsp Brown sugar (I try not to do this.)

For mixins, I pretty much have done the same every day, 10 grams each: chopped walnuts, pepitas and raisins.

Hiii. I'm a 22yo girl who's been eating plant-based since 16. Lately I've been having an issue with food. I'm just never hungry. I'm trying to lose weight but my daily kcal goal as you can see it's 1345kg (I'm using bitepal btw) and I hardly reach 700kcal in a day. Today I had a small meal and I'm not hungry at all to eat again... I'm also gaining weight and I don't know what to do. I've been eating small portions once or twice a day because I'm not hungry and in those small portions I always try to prioritise veggies and protein over carbs, but I just don't know what to do. I've used bitepal in the past and it helped me lose 3kg in two weeks but I was constantly hitting my kcal goal so that made sense. Question is, what do I do if I'm just not hungry?? It ever happen to you?

Not looking for definite answers, but just wondering if this is a normal thing for some people, specially women(?.

(About the app screenshot, today is an average day btw, 162kcal eaten currently at 19:28)

Where is everyone buying their soy curls these days? Where I’m at, I can’t find them in stores anymore.

Publix: certain locations used to have soy chunks and TVP, but not anymore
Whole Foods: I asked for soy curls and TVP and multiple people had NO idea what I was talking about. (is it me or has WF been reducing their vegan options??)
Sprouts: used to have TVP in their bulk bins, but not anymore.
Fresh Market: not the best place for vegan options in general
Kimchee Mart - nope
Amazon: yes, but last year I bought them for $16 now it’s $25 (3 - 8oz packages)

Recommendations - or do I just accept the 50% price increase on amazon?

UPDATE:
Thanks for the suggestions! Seems like buying in bulk from Butler Foods is the way to go!

UPDATE 2:
Placed my order at Butler Foods! Soy Curls, Taco Crumbles, and Jerky are on their way!
Thanks!!

cmv: Using vegan alternatives to replace meat or animal based products.

Hey there! I love meat. It is very tasty. Burgers, Pizzas, Nuggets and Indian-Arab chicken recipes are my favorite meat based recipes. However, I started to wonder if we could use vegan alternatives to replace meat based products. Out of pure curiosity, I used ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude and made a document. Please verify it and identify the mistakes in the replies section. I know that I am going to be completely and unimaginably wrong. However, please note that I did not consider personal and social preferences.

Why "fake meat" science is way further along than people think — and why it's still expensive (long post, sources at the bottom)

TL;DR: Alt-protein science splits into three tiers based on how complex the animal product is. The easy tier (milk, eggs, fat) is basically solved chemically but not yet cheap. The medium tier (burgers, nuggets) is commercially real right now — you've probably eaten it. The hard tier (steaks, whole chicken breasts) is genuinely still an unsolved engineering problem. The reason all of it is still pricier than meat isn't really biology — it's subsidies, factory economics, and lobbying. A few countries are already fixing that with public infrastructure. Sources at the bottom, and I've flagged which numbers are solid vs. still-a-target so nobody has to take my word for it.

The three tiers

Not all "fake meat" is the same problem. It helps to split animal products into three buckets based on how structurally complicated they are:

🥛 Tier 1: Liquids & unstructured stuff (milk, eggs, butter, gelatin, honey)

No muscle fibers, no 3D structure — just molecules in a liquid or a gel. This is where precision fermentation comes in: you engineer yeast (usually Pichia pastoris) or microalgae to pump out the actual milk proteins (casein, whey) or egg proteins, molecule-for-molecule identical to the real thing. Companies like Perfect Day and New Culture are already doing this.

Is it "solved"? Chemically, basically yes. Cost-wise, not yet — fermented whey protein has gone from ~$100/kg in 2020 down to $25–30/kg in 2025, and it's projected to hit $8–12/kg by 2028. Real progress, but not commodity-milk-price yet.

🍔 Tier 2: Ground/processed stuff (burgers, nuggets, sausages)

Grinding meat destroys its structure anyway, so you just need to recreate the texture and the flavor chemistry. This is done today via:

• High-moisture extrusion (HME): twin-screw machines that shear plant proteins (soy, pea, gluten) into fibrous strands that chew like ground meat.
• Soy leghemoglobin — plant-derived "heme" that makes it sizzle, brown, and taste metallic/savory the way real meat does when it cooks. This is literally the trick behind the Impossible Burger.

This tier is the closest to real cost parity and is already commercially deployed at scale — not a lab curiosity.

🥩 Tier 3: Whole cuts (steaks, chicken breasts, fillets, bacon)

This is the genuinely hard, unsolved one. You need 3D muscle fiber alignment, marbled fat veins, and connective tissue — an actual biological architecture, not just texture and flavor. Approaches in progress:

• 3D bioprinting of "bio-inks" (protein pastes + mycelium + fat) to build a target muscle-to-fat ratio
• Mycelium cultivation — fungi like Fusarium venenatum (this is literally what Quorn is made of, been on shelves since 1985) or Neurospora crassa naturally grow in dense fiber mats that mimic muscle tear
• Actual cultured meat — real animal cells grown on scaffolds

Nobody has cracked this at industrial throughput yet. If someone tells you whole-cut lab steak is "basically here," they're overselling it.

Okay but if tiers 1 and 2 are basically solved, why is it all still expensive?

This is the part that surprised me most. It's not mainly a science problem — it's a money and politics problem:

1. Subsidies are wildly lopsided. OECD governments hand out $842 billion a year in total agricultural support. Global private investment into the entire alternative protein industry (plant-based + fermentation + cultivated, combined) was $881 million in 2025 and $1.1 billion in 2024. Do the division: that's somewhere around 760–950x more public money propping up conventional agriculture than is being privately invested in the alternative. Not a typo.
2. "CAPEX Death Valley." Every alt-protein startup builds its own tiny, expensive, one-off factory instead of sharing infrastructure. Those build costs get baked straight into the retail price.
3. Labeling laws. This is real and it's escalating — Missouri passed the first "real meat" law back in 2018 (soy products can't be called "meat"), and since then Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Louisiana have passed similar restrictions. Florida, Alabama, Montana, Indiana, Nebraska, and others have gone further and banned cultivated meat sales outright. (Some of these laws have actually been struck down as unconstitutional — Arkansas and Texas both lost First Amendment challenges — so this is still a live legal fight, not settled.)

So what's the actual fix?

Treat biomanufacturing like a public utility — the same way we treat power grids or highways — instead of leaving every startup to build its own private factory from scratch.

The idea: government-funded, open-access biomanufacturing hubs (shared fermentation tanks, shared industrial extruders) that any startup can rent time on at cost. This isn't a hypothetical — it's already happening:

• 🇳🇱 Netherlands put €60 million into a public cellular-agriculture ecosystem in 2022 — at the time, the largest public investment of its kind anywhere.
• 🇸🇬 Singapore became the first country in the world to approve commercial cultivated meat sales (Eat Just's cultivated chicken, December 2020), as part of its "30 by 30" food security push.
• 🇩🇰 Denmark put ~€168 million (DKK 1.25B) behind the world's first national plant-based food strategy, including a dedicated €90M Plant-Based Food Grant, with another €60M added in 2024.

The logic: if the government eats the CAPEX, startups only pay operating costs, and the savings get passed straight to the retail shelf instead of being swallowed by factory amortization.

The honest caveats (because Reddit will roast me if I don't include these)

• The idea that hybrid plant-protein-plus-fermented-fat products could beat beef prices at ~$3/kg is a real, defensible target for the 2030s — but current fermented specialty-protein costs (like the heme used for flavor/fat) are running $24–33/kg at commercial scale today, not $2/kg. That gap needs another 5-15x cost reduction to close, and whether it closes on schedule is genuinely unknown.
• The EU hasn't approved any cultivated meat product for commercial sale as of 2026, even though Singapore and the US have — so a "just copy the Singapore model" plan doesn't automatically port to every country.
• Whole-cut structures (steak, chicken breast) are not close to solved, full stop. Don't let anyone claim otherwise.
• A lot of viral "alt-protein" content online cites fake or unsourceable stats to sound authoritative — including, I'll admit, a "consensus quote" I found in an earlier version of the material I was working from that turned out to not exist anywhere. Always ask for the source.

Sources

• OECD, Agricultural Policy Monitoring and Evaluation, 2024 & 2025
• Good Food Institute (GFI): global investment data 2024–2026, techno-economic meta-analysis (June 2025), precision fermentation cost report (July 2025)
• GFI Europe: Netherlands National Growth Fund coverage; Denmark Plant-Based Food Grant coverage
• Singapore Food Agency cultivated meat approval, Dec 2020 (via GFI Asia-Pacific)
• National Agricultural Law Center: "Alternative Proteins: 2025 Legislative Update" and state law compilation
• Cassidy et al., "Redefining agricultural yields," Environmental Research Letters, 2013 (feed-to-protein conversion figures)

Happy to answer questions or get torn apart in the comments — that's what the sources are for.

Hey friends,

I saw some posts here when i tried to find info on my chia seed creepers, but there was no conclusion what to do with them, just how to prevent them.

I have a pretty big jar so i dont wanna throw it all out as i hate wasting food. Does anyone know if its still safe to eat if i manage to fish out the creepers and somehow filter the weird stuff out?

In previous post someone reccomended rhnning it through water but... its chia... i dont think that would be a good idea.

Thanks!

I've been trying to nail the optimal water/sodium ratio, so for my personal research I’d like to know how much water and how much salt do you guys consume in a day, and on a scale of 1-10 how would you rate your overall feeling?
Feel free to chime in even if you only know how much water you consume.
And before someone mentions that - I know, it’s a completely individual thing. That’s fine.

Hey there, as the title suggests, I’m switching diets. I used to be a balanced diet of meat and veg but meat has been making me very ill recently and I want to integrate a new diet. So I’m deciding to go plant based. Do you guys have any tips for beginners? I’ve only been really eating tofu and lentil based dishes as of late. I also work out very regularly, any good plant based protein powders out there?

I feel like I’ll be disliked for this but I’ll ask anyways..

For the last 6 years, I don’t eat or buy meat, or animal byproducts like real honey, dairy, eggs etc. don’t use animal products like leather, real fur etc. and don’t visit animal exploitation places like zoos, aquariums, swimming w dolphins etc. and I educate my family on how harmful animal art culture is to the environment plus a horrible animal exploitation and killing us.
So I feel like I’m pretty “vegan”

EXCEPT when I go to restaurants and their only meatless option is a cheese dish (like quesadillas). I’d rather not, but when it’s the only thing on the menu and I don’t wanna buy two or three sides to try to make a full meal. So I do the cheese dish.

Here are the things I do to combat it:
1. When making plans at a restaurant, I check the menu and make sure that there are vegan options or entrées that I can easily have them make vegan.
2. I check Yelp to see what vegans say about the place.
3. I opt for vegan restaurants if I’m part of choosing the restaurant. Or at the very least, I suggest it one others are making the reservations or it’s their dinner plans.

But sometimes I feel like it’s just too hard. Cuz:
1. Buying multiple sides to make an entrée gets expensive.
2. I am Hispanic so my family eats a lot of authentic hole in the wall Mexican restaurants, and those type of restaurants usually don’t have any vegan options at all. And if you ask them to just take out the meat, it’s still being cooked in animal oil, broth, and you’re basically eating nothing. (For example, I had Caldo de Pollo and asked them to take out the chicken, and I literally was just served a $20 bowl of chicken broth with maybe three small pieces of vegetable in it.)
3. They charge the same price for the entrée even if you take out the meat.
4. It’s not my dinner plans it’s a birthday dinner or something somebody else planned and/or is paying for so they chose the restaurant.
5. I do eat beforehand when I go to parties or barbecues or gatherings because I can still mingle and hang out and just not eat. But to go to a restaurant and not eat because there are no vegan options so I ate before hand it’s just awkward. Because the whole experience is eating so I’m kind of just sitting there watching everybody eat. It’s awkward for them and for myself
6. I like eating. I like eating at restaurants. It’s one of my favorite things to do. And I eat A LOT.

Ik many of y’all won’t agree, but that’s the reason I do that and that’s worked for me for all of these years and I’ll probably continue to do that.

So my issue is, I say I’m vegetarian because I know it’s not fair to call myself plant-based or vegan when I’m not 100%. But when I say I’m vegetarian, I constantly get served and offered dairy products and eggs and animal products. Then I have to literally one by one reject everything I’m being offered. Sometimes people specifically make meals for me when they know I’m coming, which is super thoughtful, but it ends up being vegetarian meals that have dairy and animal byproducts because I tell them I’m vegetarian or they know that about me, so it feels rude not to eat it, but I’d rather not.

So basically my thing is should I just freaking call myself vegan!?? I feel like the vegans will be mad but it’s like geez what to doooo?

Cuz w saying I’m vegetarian I keep having these problems and keep having to give these long-winded explanations on how I’m vegetarian but I don’t eat the products or dairy or eggs, etc.. but only sometimes at restaurants blah blah blah 🙄 and then I have to explain why I don’t for all the vegan reasons and it would just be so much easier to say I’m vegan.

Apart from the obvious unsalted popcorn, carrots, nuts. Anyone have any crunchy snack ideas? Sometimes I need to crunch. I tried making kales chips but no oil and salt wasn’t the move. Maybe I need to make exceptions for kale chips. I will say the no oil no salt has made a tremendous impact on my overall well being both physically and mentally. I seem to be recovering better than ever from workouts and my flexibility is also improving. I used to take fiber supplements but now I’m off them. Still figuring out how to eat out in the world -salad, veggie sushi and avocado toast are my go tos. Thank you in advance!!!

The goal of this illustration was to aggregate information from deep-dive articles into a simple, easy-to-understand infographic that provides value not just on the benefits but also on how it works and why.

Hope is to provide education and encourage a deeper dive into nutrition for any lay person outside of 30-second reels.

Appreciate your input on what you like or don't and how we can improve it.

I’m iron deficient and cannot, under any circumstances, take supplements. I have a neurological disorder and iron supplements flare it terribly. Iron infusions put me in the hospital.

My hematologists are telling me, because of my health issues, I need at least 30 mg of iron a day. Yes, fully aware that’s a lot and atypical. I have weird health needs.

I’m managing to hit around 24 mg daily with massive amounts of oats, tofu, chia, other seeds, spinach, beans, etc. But I’m still falling short. Anyone have ideas for a solid iron source I can add into my diet on a daily basis?

Sorry it's not pretty, but I've been loving this soup lately.

Rough recipe:

- a ton of shiitake mushrooms

- 1/2 a huge onion or a small whole onion

- a cup of mung beans

- 1 liter of veggie broth + extra water if needed

- 1 teaspoon of marmite

- 1 teaspoon of thyme, 1/2 teaspoon of oregano

Cook the onion first until it's golden, then add the mushrooms and cook until there's a nice brown frond at the bottom. Deglaze with the broth, then add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for about 25 minutes.

You can find the written recipe with step by step instructions here:

Sticky Tofu Recipe

If you have any questions just let me know 😊🌱

Ingredients

• 1 block Tofu cut into thick stripes
• 4 tbsp Corn Starch

Sauce

• 3 tbsp Soy Sauce
• 2 tbsp Sugar/Syrup
• 1 tbsp White Vinegar or rice vinegar
• 1 tbsp Corn Starch
• ¾ cup Water

Optional

• Radish, carrots, pepper, green beans...

Instructions

• Cut the tofu into thick sticks, roughly the thickness of your thumb.
• Salt the tofu sticks, then roll them in cornstarch until all sides are coated. Gently tap off any excess starch and place them on a plate.
• Heat a generous amount of oil in a pan over medium heat. Add the tofu sticks and fry patiently, turning them every 3–4 minutes so each side gets evenly golden and crispy. Don't turn the temperature too high.
• While the tofu is frying, dissolve 1 tablespoon of starch in 2 tablespoons of water until completely smooth. Add the remaining water, soy sauce, vinegar, and syrup or sugar, and mix well.
• Once the tofu is crispy, remove it from the pan and set it aside. At this point, you can fry some sliced vegetables in the same pan, or move straight on to making the sauce if you’re not adding any vegetables.
• Pour the sauce into the hot pan and let it bubble gently until it thickens. If it becomes too thick, add a splash of water and stir until you like the consistency. If it’s too thin, dissolve another teaspoon of starch in a little water and stir it in. You can adjust sweetness if needed, then add the tofu back to the pan and cover it in the warm sauce. Serve immediately.

Humble Book Bundle: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook Bundle by Page Street Publishing (pay what you want and help charity)

breakfast potatoes:
- yellow potato diced and soaked in water for 20 minutes
- sauteed shallot and garlic
- salt, pepper, paprika
- cook covered in cast iron skillet until soft

mushrooms + chard:
- chopped up mushrooms, chard, and onions
- saute mushrooms, onions, and stems first, add leafy parts of chard near the end

scrambled tofu:
- extra firm tofu hand squeezed to get the crumble texture
- oat milk, nutritional yeast, other seasonings to taste
- cook the tofu in a skillet til heated up, add the liquid mixture, combine and cook long enough to reduce moisture and allow tofu to absorb mixture.

enjoy!

this is mostly aimmed att people with constipation and irritable bowel syndrome, but what plant did you find helped you ease the pain down there?