Calling All Vegitarians And/or Vegans

You should take a multivitamin anyway. I've been on and off the vegetarian wagon for years, and really what it all boiled down to for me is that it's not about not eating meat or badly farmed or exploited animals, but it's a bigger issue. Eating locally produced food, including meats, cheeses, milks, honeys, vegetables, fruits... is more responsible. If you live in an area with great farms, farmers markets, and good whole groceries, eating locally produced organic foods is the best thing you can do. It's not necessarily more expensive either. We participate with a CSA (community supported agriculture) where we pay up front to get locally farmed goods. Ours only offers veggies and fruits, but have started offering yogurt, eggs, herbs, and flowers too. We only get veggies (a huge box that has 6 items a week for about $325 for the season, seems like thats about $8 a week), but we can get local eggs from a lot of places, and we buy a lot of local goods from the farmer's market on the weekend.

Some CSA's (not all are organic, so check) offer everything, meats, grains, butters, milks, fruits, veggies, maple syrup, I mean everything, but could cost $1000-$2000 per year (I still think that's worth it), and people can supplement what they can't get by buying domestically sourced organic items from their favorite grocery.

Factory farms are awful, and vegetarian and vegan issues are very political. The facts would outrage anyone. But the truth is, not all vegetarians are skinny (its all the cheese and salt everyone adds!) and not all vegans are healthy. Too much soy can make you sick. I, and many female (and male) friends, know from personal experience. You CAN eat too much of it.

The mainstream movement these days is towards buying and eating local goods, eating LOCAL organic. We need to be saving ourselves, saving fuel, and stimulating the local economy the right way. Not eating organic raspberries from Chile and broccoli from Venezuela and tomatoes from Mexico just because it happens to be cheaper. We have organic farmers in our own backyards who are growing wonderful foods and raising responsible farms with fairly treated animals right here within miles of where we live in many cases.

See what you can find out about eating local and organic. Maybe you can add some of that to your paper as an argument on more sustainable options than just going vegetarian or vegan.

The movie Food, Inc. was pretty eye opening, we got that on netflix.

Meat isn't the only hot political issue. The way veggies are grown on big farms can shock you too. Try "The Future of Food" and "King Corn". That all leads to genetically engineered stuff, bred for toughness in shipping, speed of growth, and resistance to herbicides.

You might also enjoy "Food Fight" which is a documentary about Alice Waters efforts to promote local, organic and sustainable agriculture, and "No Impact Man: The Documentary" (This is from a very popular book).

If you go onto www.vegetariantimes.com and click on the "vegetarian starter kit" link, you will pull up a free pamplet that you can print out with tips on how to eat healthfully on a vegetarian diet (as opposed to being a junk food vegetarian) and a number of awesome recipes.

I think VegNews is a great resource, too. They have fun articles, great recipes and a really good website. I've been vegetarian for 20 years, vegan for almost 8, and have been so much healthier. I had a really great vegan pregnancy, so I can tell you that you can definitely get everything you need if you eat a varied, plant-based diet!

First of all, congrats on going Veg!
Check out the link that Laurie D mentioned below. You can get lots of great info there.
I take a multivitamin, but i did that before when I ate meat too :)
Despite what people will tell you, you CAN get all your protein, vitamins and iron from a vegetarian diet. Make sure you eat healthy, lots of real foods, beans, tofu, etc. and you will not have anything to worry about!

I know I am totally late coming into this conversation, but i saw that you are in Utah, like me, and wanted to suggest Bountiful Baskets. They are a volunteer-run organization; they purchase produce and other items like bread, tortillas etc. at deep discounts. Items are then distributed evenly among participants.They get a variety of high-quality seasonal produce. They balance variety with seasonality in order to get the most appealing and cost-effective basket possible. They also choose to use local produce first when available, then regional produce (California, Utah, Colorado, Northern Mexico).
A basket of produce is only $15.00. You never know what will be in your basket, but it is usually 5-6 types fruit and 5-6 types vegetables. This week we received: 8 apples, 10 clementines, bunch of bananas, 1 cantaloupe, 2 bunches celery, 1 head broccoli, 1 head cauliflower, 1 bunch swiss chard, 1 bunch asparagus, 3 large mangoes. You can buy bread as well- they have several varieties such as honey whole wheat, 9 grain, Italian. The breads have no preservatives. They will also offer cases of produce, raw honey, etc at great prices.
The produce has always been really good quality and lasts longer than what I buy at the grocery store because we get it right off the truck. To participate, go onto their website www.bountifulbaskets.org on Mondays at noon (hurry, because the baskets have been selling out fast lately!), place your order, then show up at the pickup site on Saturday to get your food. There are several sites in and near Orem. Also they offer organic baskets for $25.00. I just get the regular baskets because they are bigger and the ladies who do the purchasing do work really hard with the farmers to encourage safe farming methods used. In fact a lot of the items in the regular baskets will be labeled as organic.
I just wanted to suggest this since produce is getting to be so expensive. I am also in a similar position as you right now- I just have been getting the heebie jeebies about meat pumped full of preservatives and junk, and it is expensive anyway and I would love to just cut it out of my family's diet, but my husband is a die-hard meat-n-potatoes man and thinks I am crazy. In fact, we talked about all this yesterday and he said "you are on the internet too much!" I am already making the family eat all sorts of new things like quinoa and only whole grains, trying to do mostly whole foods. I know I am not going to "win" an argument about this with him either, but in the meantime I am cutting down how many meals per week will have meat and I am doing a lot of meals where I can leave meat out of mine but hubby can have his, like stir fry, fajitas, taco salad. I also went on an elimination diet in January where I cut out all meat, refined sugar, flour, soy, dairy, and eggs for 1 month and I actually felt better than I have in years. I ate vegetables, fruits, brown rice, sunflower seeds and used agave nectar as sweetener every once in a while. I slipped up for a while and have been feeling really junky with all the sugar and flour I have been eating so I am starting again. I find that when I cut out meat, I start craving protein like crazy so I put sunflower seeds on everything and that really helps. I put them in oatmeal, on salads, or I will put agave nectar, cinnamon and sunflower seeds on a baked sweet potato, or peanut butter and sunflower seeds on a banana. Adding lots of beans, lentils and peanut butter helps too!

Sign up for Meatout Monday's emails. Just do a google and it will take you to the proper site. Every week you'll get a new email with a vegetarian or vegan recipe. This can be an entree, dessert, beverage, side, appetizer etc. I never know what I'll get and it's usually pretty tasty. Basically, this is for people just starting vegetarianism and either don't want to go whole hog or just don't know where to start. I've been getting these emails for a couple of years now and have a good database going. Each email also contains other info such as on products, books. etc.

My family is not vegetarian although we're pretty darn close. We maybe eat meat/fish three nights a week and it's all local so I know they were treated well, fed well and humanely slaughtered. When we took this route I went to the library and got all the books I could about it. Not just cookbooks but nutrition books as well. You can't form a balanced meal if you don't understand the extra stuff you need to do on this type of diet. Go to your local thrift stores too. That's where I've found several of my vegetarian cookbooks. Or see if your community has a local free exchange / freecycle and ask if anyone has some to pass on to a newby. You never know what you'll get. Here is a list of some of the books I use often:

Vegan Nutrition Plain & Simple by Michael Klaper, M.D.
From A Monastery Kitchen by Elise Boulding
Party Food for Vegetairans by Linda Majzlik
The Festive Vegetarian by Rose Elliot
Classic Indian Vegetarian and Grain Cooking by Julie Sahni (this is East Indian)
Japanese Vegetarian Cooking by Lesley Downer

These aren't all of the books I have, just the ones on my counter that I keep out because I use them so often. Vegetarian food isn't the bland blah stuff that it used to be. There is a lot of variety out there now. Oh, and it's just a good rule of thumb to take a multivitamin no matter what diet regime you're on.

Also, try to get your protein from more than just tofu `sources. Our society does TOO much soy and it's really not good for us. Even with my family having meat/fish only 3 nights a week, we still only have tofu maybe twice a month if that. It's very easy to make complete meals without it. And I usually use miso instead of tofu just because the fermentation changes things and it's easier handled. If you use too much soy, it can mess with you endocrine system, etc.

Oh, and one thing you can look into are some diabetes cookbooks. They have a lot of interesting recipes in there that work for vegetarians as well. I recently found a recipe for almond "cheese" that my kids actually like. My sons naturopath put him on a low glycemic diet so that's why I've been looking at diabetes cookbooks. And some diabetes cookbooks advocate vegetarianism anyway.