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I’m actually obsessed with something else… Hail Seitan! ⛧
It’s so much work though?? Do you boil it or what? Maybe I just haven’t got my technique down…
Seitan definitely has a learning curve. Different ways of making/cooking it produce different results.
My laziest way of making seitan is vital wheat gluten mixed with broth (add a little flour of some sort if you want a softer texture), rip it into bite sized chunks, pan fry it in a little oil, and then toss in some sauce. Great in a stir fry!
My favorite way of making it is the wash the flour method, then put it in a pre-heated crock pot full of broth and let it simmer in there. It’s a lot more effort that way though and I only do it a handful of times a year.
I’ve been vegan for over 25 years, and a trip to India was instrumental to beginning that process. I only had a vague, cultural sense of vegetarian food as being bland and joyless. Wow does Indian food prove that wrong!
Don’t sleep on Ethiopian food, the veggie dishes are delicious. The injera bread is my favorite part
Agreed 100%, I need to learn how to make that, next!
I don’t think Ethiopian food gets the respect it deserves. There’s a place I’ve been going to for years, pretty much always get lebleb tibs and that injera bread is so good. It’s spongy and has a slight sour taste to it that’s so good with the rest of the food.
Its insane how many cultures are just not appreciated at all, I personally love Dominican food (I may be biased since I live in NYC) but also Albanian and Bosnian food. Hell most Americans dont even know what those countries are and almost certainly cant point them out on a map.
Since you live in NYC and can get any food there, may I suggest to look for a good Indonesian place and go there? Especially if it’s padang food I’d definitely give it a try. Outside of Indonesia and surroundings and the Netherlands it’s quite unknown but also really delicious.
I love Indonesian food :3
Ethiopian lol, where I live kebabs are exotic
It’s certainly acquired IMO. I love Ethiopian and Eritrean food but I just can’t get into injera for the life of me
Injera is the only reason I don’t make Ethiopian more often. Teff Love is the recipe book I used and the misir wot is easy and great, but the injera recipe calls for planning ahead three days.
where do you buy teff?
And destroying even more toilets!!
Sounds like you need more fiber in your diet.
Whenever an adult says they’re destroying the toilet because off spicy food I think of a four year old’s dietary preferences / tolerance.
Not that anyone has to like spicy food but if you can’t tolerate it then that’s on you. The vast majority of cuisines globally incorporate it.
I also like to attach this article since it may enlighten some as to their culturally driven dietary preferences:
He could be like me and have IBS with zero tolerance for Chillis and Curries.
I have to avoid it like people with peanut allergies avoid tree nuts.
Dude probably thinks onions are too spicy.
Sounds like ya’ll need to lighten up and take a joke. I love me Indian food, except the next day when it feel like someone took a shotgun to your colon from all the heat
That’s probably because you eat restaurant Indian food in which they puts tons of cream and spices. Homemade Indian food is a lot healthier. We use very little oil, lots of lentils/sprouts, dahi, hand-rolled roti made of whole wheat flour (not the mahida that’s used in naan), etc.
AssUMe more m8, I never eat out. Shits expensive. I was making a joke. Yeesh y’all can be intolerable. Indian food is delicious and can be made as spicy as you like it. It’s just commonly thought to be spicy, butter chicken is the furthest from
Not all Indian food is spicy. If spicy food gives you such issue, add more spice into your diet, or remove it totally, and add more fiber.
In Japan, Indian restaurants are a godsend
I have went through these sorta prepper type diets. Like trying to determine the minimal number of foods to meet requirements. Now there are certain things that without you are in trouble in weeks or months but when you start looking at things that mess you up over years its complex but eggs and milk easily cover that kind of stuff. since indian vegetairans are fine with dairy this makes it much easier.
Indian vegetarians don’t eat eggs. And in middle income to lower income families 500ml milk between 4-5 ppl.
I meant milk or eggs as a supplement in general when looking at diet. Both together will be stronger but they have a lot of overlap. Its not strictly necessary but when looking for fewest items they ended up covering a lot of bases. It is why I specified dairy with indian vegetarians in the last sentence because I thought someone might mistake I was mentioning eggs in relation to indians. It really does not require much because again these are things that take years to really cause any issue. Another that is almost better is fatty fish, especially if you eat the bone or use it in broth. I hate fish though which kinda stinks. Well that and the way we poisoned the oceans so much you actually have caution about eating to much of some kinds of fish.
Yes eggs are considered non-veg in India. But many Indians in America don’t have a problem eating eggs if they’re in cakes, breads, muffin, etc. It’s mostly eatings eggs by itself or scrambled eggs.
Dal be like
Tofu Masala Tofu Palak/Saag Tofu Sabzi
Textured soy replaces tofu/paneer in most recipes just fine.
None of these are traditional Indian dishes, tofu was only introduced to India a few centuries ago. But vegetarianism (more commonly ovo-lacto) as well as veganism (e.g., a lot of Jain food) has been very common for thousands of years.
As the other poster said, if you don’t do paneer there’s a ton of protein to be found in dal (lentil) and chana (chickpea) dishes. And if you don’t do cream or ghee most any dish can be made with coconut milk and boiled ground cashews.
Yes I know, but they are common in restaurants or when doing at home.
Lentils are good, but have a lot of carbs. Only using those might be enough, but is not enough for bodybuilding. It is easier to get your 80+g of protein per day when using more isolated sources AND pure legumes.
Coconut doesnt have significant protein. Cashews can work, but they are sweeter than milk afaik.
Lentils are good, but have a lot of carbs. Only using those might be enough, but is not enough for bodybuilding.
Most bodybuilding relies heavily on processed foods and isolated protein sources, regardless of whether it’s meat-based, vegetarian, or vegan. For someone trying to eat 2500 calories per day with 150 grams of protein, they’re looking for a ratio of 6 grams of protein per 100 calories.
Lentils are about 8g of protein per 100 calories.
Chickpeas are about 5g of protein per 100 calories.
Rice is about 2.5g of protein per 100 calories.
Wheat products (breads, pasta) hover around 3-4g of protein per 100 calories.
Broccoli is about 7g of protein per 100 calories. Green beans have about 5g. Peas have about 6g.
Moving onto processed foods can give a lot more protein per calorie: tofu is around 12g per 100 calories, and seitan is about 18g.
Basically many vegetables, legumes, and grains will hover near the right ratios, but it requires much more precise planning if you have a really limited calorie budget and refuse to rely on isolated protein from processed foods, but if you’re doing the normal bodybuilding thing of 2g of protein per kg of lean mass, you won’t have any trouble while bulking and will only have to do a bit more planning while cutting, compared to the typical meat eater who might have a ton of yogurt and whey protein in the mix.
Plus the sheer amount of dal and other legume dishes
Gotta try those more
That’s not too surprising, that study explains that 85% of Indians think protein makes you gain weight, 90% don’t know how much you’re supposed to eat in a day, and 73% have low levels, with an average consumption of 75% the minimal bound for the RDA. I’d quote, but I’m on mobile and that website is hostile to copying text.
Chickpeas and lentils are incredibly protein dense if India has a protein deficiency issue it is likely due to poverty
What makes you think protein-rich plant food is somehow unbalanced with any of the other plant foods due to economics?
It’s not like legumes in India are ten times the price of anything else. Lentils and peas are an agricultural backbone and everywhere.
I didn’t mean to imply that dense plant based proteins were less available. I was suggesting that millions of people struggle with food insecurity in general and therefore have a protein deficiency. To put it better, it is likely they cannot even afford enough chickpeas and lentils to maintain healthy protein levels.
Legumes and lentils are the costliest part of the daily rations of most poor Indian households. They’re easily thrice the price per kilogram of rice/wheat/potatoes.
Most poor households will only have a thin soup of lentils, barely 10-15 grams of dry weight, with a couple hundred grams of cheap carbs.
Even if they can now afford to, they don’t consume them on nearly the same scale due to habit.
As a non-veggie (no mammalian meats though), Indian food is absolutely the best introduction to vegetarian food you can find.
Almost as though they’ve been refining their craft for 3000 years.
Half the Indian population suffers from anemia…
Half the US population suffers from qualitative malnutrition and obesity.
A great cuisine will not fix poverty or hostile social engineering.
That’s a fun one. Malnutrition with caloric excess.
Truly capitalism incarnate.
It was so weird being raised in the US where India was/is exoticized as some far off unique flavor of humanity that is just one country among a far east of peculiar deviations from mainstream (read: european) history.
In reality Indian history is a good chunk of human history… The current population is what 1/7th of earth?.. and India’s history stretches back very deep into human history.
I wish Indian stuff was portrayed in US culture more along the lines of “look at this other thing one of humanities oldest and largest cultures figured out before the rest of us did!”. Not in a way that fetishes it, rather the opposite, introduce the basic logical point that India can’t be ignored as a part of human history, too much of our story as humans has happened there and is happening there.
Same thing with China, though I feel like China’s immensity of population is more often portrayed negatively in the US and thus this is less of a subversive point. However when it comes to history there is the same exact weird denial of Chinese history as there is Indian history in the US, whatever you think of the present day places they are major parts of the story of the human race. US culture focuses on Western European history like it is the main course and by the numbers it just isn’t.
I dunno, I guess I say that all to make that point that I love Indian food, especially how good vegetarian and vegan Indian food often is, and I would argue that actually Indian food being awesome makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Indians have been perfecting the art of cooking for a long time with a massive diversity of styles.
This is by design. Throughout civilizational history, one’s in-group was made up of the civilized and any outgroup were “barbarians”. During the colonial era, as power and wealth shifted westward, the first global narrative of this kind was proselytized where one side of the world was civilized and the other was not.
During this period a lot of the history of the Eastern world was distorted and warped to accurately fit that narrative. This was to promote the idea of a “civilizing mission”, one where the exploitation of this era could be overlooked since the “lesser” who were victimized by it were “benefitted” by proximity to those more civilized than them.
A global race based caste system is what came out of this era. Anyone with their eyes open can see it everywhere around them, regardless of which hemisphere you’re in. Now, as power in the world rebalances, perhaps closer to a more natural state, the seams of that construct are slowly coming undone and the hegemon that had once defined the global narrative will no longer be able to silence the voices it once deemed as “lesser”.
I for one am excited for a future where people get to tell their own story and explore their own history. No, I don’t think about the Roman empire very often but I do look at the Mauryan empire, Chanakya and his treatise on statecraft (the Arthashahtra), and the university of ancient Taxila with a deep fascination - and there’s nothing wrong with that.
I also enjoy reading verses from the Kamasutra which was remarkably forward thinking (though not perfect) for its time with regard to promoting financial independence for women, autonomy, mutual enthusiastic consent, respect towards sex workers and the importance of balance during courtship - all of which was cast aside as paganism when it was made known in this part of the world, in favor of the glossary on sex positions. It also discusses homosexuality and transsexuality inclusively, concluding:
"In all things pertaining to love, who can say what is right and what is wrong? Let each person follow their own nature." — Book 2, Chapter 9
Words to live by.
Agree, Indian food isn’t as well known in US. It’s more than just Butter Chicken, Naan, and biryani. It’s a whole diverse cuisine. I’ve noticed South Indian restaurants are less common in US compared to North Indian and South Indian food has so much good variety. Dosa, Vada, Idli, Utthapam, Sambal, etc.
I’m Marathi myself and I only know 1-2 Marathi restaurants in my city. It’s hard to find things like Pav Bhaji, Kande Poha, Mugachi Usal, etc. in restaurants. So most of the time we end up cooking at home since we don’t get this food outside.
Aaaaand now I’m leaving to go to our local dosa place. Dosa masala rava, baby!
No surprise that torture and murder are almost inescapable inside the imperial bubble.
Meat is the food of privilege, fascism, etc.
Meat is the food of privilege, fascism, etc.
It’s the food of agricultural surplus relative to total population. Hunting and gathering cultures had plenty of meat, while beans had to be cultivated as part of the agricultural lifestyle to meet the demands of highly dense populations.
Modern vegetarianism is built on the backs of millennia of selective breading, agricultural engineering, and industrialization. There’s no shortage of privilege and fascism involved in that process in the aggregate. But it is a transitional process that yields a more utopian end point than the tribal libertarianism of primitive cultures.
Hunter-gatherers had 80% of their calories coming from plants. It’s far easier to catch plants, on account of them not running away.
Hunter-gatherers had 80% of their calories coming from plants.
Heavily dependent on the community and the season. Even then, “80%” isn’t vegan by any stretch.
It’s far easier to catch plants, on account of them not running away.
Domestication made “catching” animals much easier (and catching diseases easier, too). But you had whole tribal communities following herd migration patterns. The hunting aspect of hunter-gatherer was pivotal to their cultural practices, living arrangements, and the subsequent conflicts between tribes that would begin to define early nation-states.
Despite making up 80% of eaten calories gathering only contributes to 20% of burnt calories. Curious.
Brought to by turning point Mesolithic
Have y’all ever been to India? It’s the hardest country in the world to be vegan.
Sure, pure veg is easy. And cheap restaurants will use oil instead of ghee (though they may lie and say its ghee).
You can try to avoid paneer too.
But you’re gonna eat milk and curd. No matter how many times you say not to put curd, they’ll sprinkle a little on top.
Depends. In the northern regions? Ghee, paneer, curd everywhere. But elsewhere? Heck, most of the south is lactose intolerant.
I had curd put on curry when I said not to in Karnataka
That’s just Karnataka being weird. Along with putting sugar in sambar.
Jesus they put sugar in sambar?
I believe that. We get our yoghurt from Indian food stores. $6 for 2.5 kilos. It’s nuts!
Why are you in /c/vegan if you support raping and torturing cows?
That’s fair. I should be more aware of the community. My apologies.
Those saying that the Indian population is protein deficient, stunted, and anemic: You’re correct. Only a fraction has a balanced, protein-rich vegetarian diet as the norm.
But you don’t have to make that mistake. There are thousands upon thousands of perfectly healthy vegan recipes in our repository. Use them.
There is a ton of debate on this and in some cases if you standardize for affluence / income level the differences disappear.
There’s a lot of questions about cutoffs used for certain conditions and whether they can be used universally.
BMI is the most obvious example of a measure that should have for different cutoffs for different populations.
The WHO cutoffs for anemia were established over 50 years ago based on predominantly European and North American populations.
Sachdev et al., 2021 identified a subset of “healthy” Indian children from the CNNS data who had no iron, B12, or folate deficiencies and no inflammation.
In this perfectly “healthy” group, the 5th percentile of hemoglobin—the statistical cutoff for anemia—was 1.0 to 2.1 g/dL lower than the WHO standards across all age groups.
The researchers argued that if the population is “healthy” at lower Hb levels, using the higher WHO cutoff misclassifies millions of healthy people as anemic, creating a “false epidemic.”
Research published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2023) examined at what point adding more iron stops increasing a person’s hemoglobin.
For Indian women, the “steady state” was reached at a hemoglobin level of roughly 10.8 g/dL.
The WHO cutoff for non-pregnant women is 12.0 g/dL. This suggests that even when an Indian woman has optimal iron stores, her body may naturally maintain a hemoglobin level lower than the Western-derived standard
Most large-scale surveys in India use a finger-prick (capillary) test. Studies have shown that capillary blood often yields lower hemoglobin readings than venous blood (drawn from a vein) because of “interstitial fluid” dilution during the prick.
When the CNNS used venous blood, the anemia prevalence among adolescents was found to be significantly lower than what previous capillary-based surveys had suggested.
Just providing some context. There are many that advocate for universal cutoffs for a variety of reasons. But it should be understood that the interpretation of the data may not represent a meaningfully “deficient” state here. There are several examples of how using “normal ranges” that were based on a subset of the global population may lead us to dubious conclusions.
Hi it’s me. Someone who is vegetsrianish (moving towards cooking no meat at home (save for occasional fish and eating it on vacation or special occasions - kids 4th of July bbq party). I’m actually trying to get deep into Indian cuisine where I can find a balance of flavor and meeting all the nutritional needs while not porking out on carbs.
This is a very good starting point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46wFhxCbI6w
The vast majority of our protein comes from lentils, pulses, and beans. But not all of it is just stew.
A very tasty treat that actually tastes better than meat and would do well at a 4th of July cookout or bbq is something called ‘soya chaap’. Not exactly healthy, but high in protein. Myriads of recipes on youtube.
vegetsrianish
I wondered for a bit too long, if that’s an Indian term. 😅
Only a fraction has a balanced, protein-rich vegetarian diet as the norm.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s not because of bad dietary choices, but because of poverty? I mean, the problem isn’t the vegetarian diet, but that people can’t afford enough food in general?
At this point, few are poor enough to not afford the cheapest protein available.
Info: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/25631871
For example, I hail from the north-western region of India. We eat a lot of lentils, beans, and pulses. Once, I sat down for dinner with three of my coworkers who hailed from the eastern regions, near the Gangetic delta. That is a historically impoverished region, with rice making up the vast majority of their calories.
I, alone, ate as much lentil stew as the other three combined. I am not particularly gluttonous. They just aren’t used to eating lentils as anything other than flavoring for their mountain of rice, whereas for me rice is just the means of transport of lentils down my gullet.
It is very hard for an Indian to not afford enough lentils, pulses, or beans. The government gives them away for free as part of rations for those too poor to afford them.
The rice just tastes so good huh?
You don’t say. I woke up once to see my eastern roommate going to town on a plate of plain, white rice. No spices, no sides. Just rice. It was a real “WTF?!” moment for me.
