Anyone here have any experience trying to do plant based, or low sodium diet?
I'm trying to learn more about it.
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ANSWERS: 3
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I've been vegetarian for about 20 years. I do take a B vitamin supplement, though. I eat chickpeas and lentils as staple proteins, but also got to have other beans to mix it up often. You can get textured vegetable protein from Bob's Red Mill or other mills, but it's not as healthy as whole legumes. It's easy to go overboard on carbohydrates, but if you stick to whole grains, you can vary things a lot and still keep a balance of your intake. Try steamed wheat (unless if you are allergic) like kamut, try teff (it's a very fine grain and can be made into bread or porridge), brown rice, barley, etc. I like to add nuts (walnuts, cashews, almonds, etc.) whenever a dish needs a little crunch, and I love mushrooms. Obviously, you still need to eat green vegetables just as before. There's a lot of different combinations you can do with those ingredients.
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Linda Joy lol I skipped right over the , and was wondering how mushrooms added crunch. lol I tried making black bean burgers. They weren't bad, but not good either. I'll look up a recipe next time. So I guess the difference between soy flour and tvp is the texture? Do you eat dairy? I'm trying to cut back there, too because of the breast cancer. Do you know any good recipes for a cheese substitute? Are you opposed to gelatin as well? I've tried wheat berries before but didn't like them much. Maybe if they were mixed with other stuff I'd like them better. Have you ever used nutritional yeast? I saw it in a couple of recipes. What is it? -
Linda Joy Do you know anything about nutritional yeast? Have you used it?
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bostjan the adequate 🥉 Sorry I didn't respond right away... I just now got to your comment. TVP is kind of a sticky soya product, more like the texture of hamburger, if it were fluffier. It works as a decent substitute for ground meat, if you are going for texture, but it doesn't really have any flavour. I do eat dairy, but I've tried a couple times to stop eating it. It's tough. Cheese is yummy and there is no sort of fake cheese that really tricks your mouth into thinking "cheese." Every substitute I've tried made me think the dish would have been better without even attempting any cheesiness. I've used agar instead of gelatin - it works if it's used for supporting texture, but I haven't tried it on its own. I would mix the wheat berries with other grains for sure - same goes for pretty much any grain with a stronger flavor or texture. Nutritional yeast is just a kind of yeast grown in a laboratory. It is used to add to things to give them more flavour. The flavour it adds is kind of like the flavour note that makes parmasean cheese taste different from regular cheese, if that makes sense. It's what people call "umami" flavour. I like it, but you have to keep it mixed with other flavours that go with it. I don't think very many people would like it where it stands out on its own, but everyone has their own personal likes.
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I can't avoid salt because I take a medication called Lithium but I try to avoid fast food and other process food that are high in sodium
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Linda Joy
I guess you can't have much caffeine or alcohol, either then. Do you have a daily range of sodium you can have? -
Linda Joy
I found a 'lower sodium' soy sauce. It has 500mg sodium in a serving. The regular soy sauce had 900!!! But I also found a 'lightly salted' tortilla chip at Walmart with only 55 mg sodium per serving. I haven't tried it though.
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Avoiding salt is one of the worst things you can do. Salt is vital for proper cell function, muscle function, and many other functions in the body. It is also important for keeping water in the body - and without adequate water, the above-mentioned functions don't function properly. Salt is part of the hydrolysis process which creates the electrical energy needed to burn calories and allow muscles to expand/contract. Contrary to the claims, insufficient salt will do more to promote high blood pressure than a low-salt diet.
Shaky_1991 
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