Cooking for a vegan diet
Following a vegan diet doesn’t mean having to give up foods with a broad range of flavors.
But cooking or eating foods prepared without meat or animal products, including milk and eggs, means making sure a diet includes enough calcium, protein and vitamins, dietitians say.
Dee Di Memmo started a mostly vegan and vegetarian lifestyle when she and her husband adopted a 3-year-old boy who was raised as a vegan.
“He refused to eat anything that once had a face, as he put it,” she said. “We tried food therapy to expand his palate, but he came to me in first grade and said, ‘Mommy, I just want to be a vegetarian.’ I said, ‘That’s fine.’”
Di Memmo, 41, of Sioux Falls learned to cook vegan dishes, even though she’s not a strict vegan or vegetarian herself. She’ll show other people how to cook vegan during a free demonstration at 2 p.m. Dec. 4 at the Museum of Visual Materials.
She has a hamburger now and then, describing herself as “90 percent vegetarian.” Being lactose-intolerant helps Di Memmo embrace a mostly vegan diet, but she says her husband, Rob, is a “carnivore, big time,” so she ends up being a short-order cook of sorts at home.
People who are on a strictly vegan regime can be quite healthy if they supplement their diets, says Kristin Sousek, a registered dietitian in Sioux Falls.
“A true vegan is not getting any vitamin D from fortified dairy products, or B-12 that basically comes from animal sources,” Sousek said. “They need to check their calcium, too. You can get some calcium from green leaves and some fortified pastas. Still, I would suggest that they be on a strong multivitamin, with D and B-12 at the forefront.”
Regular checkups with the family doctor should include a full screening for deficiencies, she said. “And you can get proteins from soy, beans, nuts and TVP, textured vegetable protein.”
Being a vegan can be a cultural or a religious choice for some, while others make the choice after learning about all the foods that pose a risk of long-term health problems, Sousek said. Other vegans are simply avoiding meats that sometimes come from animals that may have been heavily treated with hormones and antibiotics.
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