The thing with a vegan (especially raw) diet is...

Not only do your poops happen like they were engineered by a Japanese car company, they smell... vaguely plant-like.

@rl_dane

That sounds like a raw thing; the process of cooking improves your body's ability extract nutrients from food, so it follows naturally that when your body is extracting less value, it produces more waste.

I, at least, when eating vegan (non-raw) have not had this issue.

@amin @rl_dane Although, raw food tends to have more vitamins and stuff. There's no free lunch

@OpenComputeDesign @rl_dane

Most vitamins and minerals don't seem to be significantly affected, but I guess if you have a deficiency of folic acid? https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/80400525/Data/retn/retn06.pdf

Just judging that from a brief look over the data; I'd have to do more in-depth analysis to be sure.

@amin @rl_dane I'm not an expert personally, I just know my mom and brother have mentioned eating raw rubarb, and iirc carrots and tomatoes? give you more vitimins than eating cooked

@OpenComputeDesign @rl_dane

Sure, very likely. RL's currently eating only raw food, though.

Reality Check: 5 Risks of a Raw Vegan Diet

Misconceptions of the philosophy of the raw vegan diet include the claim that raw foods are detoxifying and contain more "life energy"

Scientific American

@amin @OpenComputeDesign

That's a good read. I already had a sneaking suspicion that a lot of the raw food hype was deeply pseudoscientific.

I think I will probably start introducing more cooked foods gradually, but honestly, I'm at a place where I could eat nothing for a month or three and barely have any long-term ill effects.

So, raw food, in one particularly slanted sense, is a kind of dietary fasting to me.

@rl_dane @OpenComputeDesign

Sounds like a plan! Once you're wanting to start a transition to cooked vegan ask @daniel and myself and I'm sure we can help you get some stuff figured out for both nutrition and tastiness. ;)

@amin @OpenComputeDesign @daniel

NOICE!!

Anything off the top of your head for a "start adding this first when you're ready to start cooking" suggestion?

I will say that the place I was going to wasn't necessarily recommending #RawVegan long-term, but for a period of time, as a kind of "detox" (again, I know that's a pseudoscientific gray area that gets insanely overblown)

@rl_dane @OpenComputeDesign @daniel

I mean, my personal favorite is legumes. Chickpeas and lentils mainly, but just beans in general… they can be so good and so healthy! :D

Learning to cook beans and then prepare meals with them was a key skill for me. I mean, you can use cans, but I feel so much happier when cooking from dried, I dunno. Either way will keep forever in the pantry, so there's little reason not to stock up on legumes.

Rice is another big one; I eat rice with most of my meals, though admittedly that may be the Asian side of me. Might just be a good time to get into the vegetables you can't really eat raw; potatoes, for example, I enjoy cooking with potatoes.

This whole conversation has actually been getting me considering making potato and bean korma tomorrow… (the recipe I have is from one of our Afghan neighbors, but, uh, with way less oil.) I've only made it with my mom, never alone.

@amin @rl_dane @OpenComputeDesign I've been summoned. Your local vegan is here!!

Emmmm... I'll be honest. I hardly know what I cook anymore. I pretty consistently make meals that make me go "yum", but it's usually a stare at my pantry of stuff and come up with a vague end goal

I know a decent few cooking techniques and can imagine flavours pretty well... But if you want specifics, say!

My most recent meal: spicy soy protein tomatoy vegetabley stir fry thing with rice that was really tasty

@daniel @amin @OpenComputeDesign

Yaay! We have summoned a wild vegan! ;)

I think I might just start off with some daal. I probably want to avoid rice, because of the calories. I'll stick to some kind of roughage as my side. I still really like zoodles surprisingly much. XD

@rl_dane @daniel @OpenComputeDesign

…if you're not using rice, what will you eat the dal with? It's a little… soupy… on its own…

@amin @rl_dane @daniel @OpenComputeDesign What's wrong with soup?

@thedoctor @rl_dane @daniel @OpenComputeDesign

Nothing. Dal just isn't soup, imo. 🤷

@amin @thedoctor @daniel @OpenComputeDesign

Funny how a soup can be eaten on its own, but a stew kinda can't? ;)

@thedoctor @amin @daniel @OpenComputeDesign

I dunno, because it's kinda chunky and begs a counterpoint of at least a slice of bread or something?