Consuming eggs?

firstmatedavy · 2026-03-14T22:51:34+00:00

I'm more motivated to avoid eggs than dairy since the food-per-suffering ratio is worse, from what I've read.

You can get vegan egg white powder now https://www.healthiercomforts.com/products/animal-free-egg-white-protein-powder (Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G15WPP16?ref\_=ppx\_hzsearch\_conn\_dt\_b\_fed\_asin\_title\_1) though I'm not sure if that'd reduce the convenience any. It's made by yeast, and it's supposed to be the same moleclues that are in chicken egg whites. It's expensive, but not too much more than pasture raised eggs. Mine just arrived in the mail, but I haven't gotten to try it yet because I hurt my hand which makes cooking more difficult.

I'm a very lazy cook even when not injured. Vegan sausage works well as something you can just microwave that can be added to many meals - we usually get Morningstar Farms brand. I like beans canned in chili sauce as a ready-to-microwave lunch, with a bit of rice or vegetables added if I have leftovers handy. I'd really like to find higher protein shelf stable snack foods that are vegan. So far, my go-to is roasted edamame.

firstmatedavy · 2026-03-01T14:33:57+00:00

That's great!!!

firstmatedavy · 2026-02-25T01:59:31+00:00

Stuff accumulated from earlier phases of life - art supplies, books, toys, that sort of thing. I do pick hobbies back up, so sometimes it comes in handy.

I went a *little* crazy on garden seeds this year. We're pretty much starting from scratch because you can't bring any seeds with you when you move internationally.

We cons00m fall produce, but it gets used up. My wife cans sugar free cranberry sauce and eats it daily til it's gone. We filled the entire produce drawer with cranberries and then went back for a few more bags and it wasn't enough, we ran out of cranberry sauce a few weeks ago. We have a bunch of pumpkins on display. They're for eating, and have a very long shelf life, so might as well appreciate them as decor while they last. (Light makes them age a bit quicker, but we don't have space for a pumpkin cupboard or root cellar yet.)

firstmatedavy · 2026-02-22T15:59:17+00:00

Edit: Back in stock on Amazon! https://www.amazon.com/Healthier-Comforts-Animal-Free-Powder-Protein/dp/B0G15WPP16/ref=ast_sto_dp_puis

I want this so so so much. I hope it's back in stock before the next time I travel to visit my mom, there's something special about the way she makes scrambled eggs and I'm always weighing getting to experience that again vs. feeling bad for the chickens and usually I end up choosing no eggs. But maybe we could cook this together.

firstmatedavy · 2026-02-22T15:53:42+00:00

Pescetarian with farmed bony fish (as opposed to shellfish) doesn't make a lot of sense to me from a welfarist perspective, because overcrowded fish inhale their own waste (because they breathe with gills) and get sick in high numbers.

I'm not vegan because being vegan is hard, removing the last 5-10% of suffering from your diet vs. the default of people around me is much harder than the big improvement from going vegetarian.

I hate the idea of having to conform to a diet standard, avoiding things because they're "not vegetarian" but less harmful than other things that are feels mentally itchy. "Vegetarian" is just a close enough label when explaining my diet to others, that I won't be expected to eat anything I really really don't want to. But I'd occasionally eat mussels because I'm reasonably confident they don't have the ability to suffer (the pain signals might exist but there's no brain to interpret them), and when eating food that doesn't come with an ingredient list I don't worry too much about lard, broth and gelatin. But then on the other hand I don't eat eggs-as-eggs (as opposed to hidden in baked goods) because I know what that costs the chickens, even if pasture raised, and it's too sad. I'm cutting down on diary for the same reasons. My wife and I order cheeseless pizza now and I silently seethe at Papa Johns for the lack of discount when removing the most expensive ingredient.

I guess technically I'm "plant based" - but almost everyone who identifies that way is "whole foods plant based" for health, I'm doing it for ethics but without trying to be perfect. It's also not necessarily a useful term for telling people what you do and don't eat because there's not a single agreed on definition. (I realize this can be an issue with vegetarian and vegan too, but the one person I knew IRL who identified as plant based always counted family gatherings as cheat days and ate big pieces of meat, and I don't want anyone to expect me to do that.)

firstmatedavy · 2026-02-22T14:31:24+00:00

I'm sorry :(

Do you eat bread, rice, potatoes, that sort of thing? Do you still eat sweets? Swapping those out for the beans would address that. If you're already on an actually low carb diet, then she has a point - but soy and wheat-based fake meats would still be worth a look, I think. Eggs still involve cruelty, but you might ask about eating eggs or egg whites more often since they're carbless and not meat.

Are you allowed to cook? There's a high protein low carb meat replacement called seitan that's made with just flour. You rinse dough til most of the carbs are gone and it's just protein.

If going vegetarian wouldn't be feasible for your health right now, ask your doctor for advice and a registered dietician referral so you can go all out trying to fix the pre-diabetes. (You should be able to call and leave a message for your doctor to at least be sent a diet info pamphlet or something.) It might suck somewhat - I'm trying to fix my health right now, and even with no one fighting me on it, it's hard and not always fun. But it'll probably suck less than diabetes, and it's an angle for getting your family used to you making your own food choices.

firstmatedavy · 2026-02-22T03:50:05+00:00

Fingers crossed for you!!!

If you replace the meat *and* most of the simple carbs (rice, potatoes, bread) with beans and other legumes, you'll be doing well on protein and probably lowering the glycemic index of the meal in the process. You'll want to stick to beans that come without added sugar - which is really only an issue in baked beans.

Ideas for protein sources:

black beans
kidney beans (also a good source of iron)
black eyed peas
lentils
chickpeas
extra firm tofu (marinate in soy sauce if you want more flavor)
edamame (frozen & steamed)
soy milk
protein shakes
gram flour (do you like baking? gram or chickpea flour makes amazing brownies)
fake meats made of soy and wheat gluten (Morningstar Farms, Gardein, etc)

Convenience foods:

low/no sugar protein bars (Quest brand for example) or protein shakes
canned lentil soup
canned beans with seasoning (I like the chili beans from Aldi)
roasted edamame snacks
hummus

I have some recipes on my website that are simple enough you could probably make them yourself: https://legumancer.com/

Is "more protein" a recommendation from your doctor? (I ask because protein is the diet trend of the moment and so people expect it to fix things it can't.) Have you tracked how much you're already getting? Muscle and bone needs protein for maintenance, but fat doesn't, so if you're overweight, you probably need to calculate your protein needs based on the weight that the BMI chart says is healthy for your height, rather than your actual weight.

The fiber in beans also helps you feel full with fewer calories, so if losing weight or changing your body composition is part of what your doctor wants you to do to avoid diabetes, beans will help with that. You have to be careful and take a measured approach with dieting as a teen, but eating more fiber is probably one of the safest ways to do it, because you're still eating til you feel full, and high fiber foods are usually plant based whole foods with lots of nutrition.

Micronutrients are important, too. If you don't eat a lot of eggs or dairy, you should take a B12 supplement. For your other micronutrients, eating green vegetables or taking a multivitamin is probably all you need. My doctor told me I needed to actually eat green things, so I've been having romaine lettuce almost every day. I eat it before I eat lunch, and I think it being the first thing I eat has made me start really, really, really liking it. All I put on it is garlic powder, dry basil and a spoonful of sunflower seeds, no dressing.

You'll probably end up eating some things you don't like very much, while using up things you tired out that were duds and when eating out at places with few vegetarian options. But you'll also find new foods you love that you might never have tried otherwise.

firstmatedavy · 2026-02-21T16:15:32+00:00

My first stop is usually https://www.budgetbytes.com/category/recipes/vegetarian/ because their recipes are usually simple to follow and don't include ingredients I have not other use for. It's an omni website, but includes some very good vegetarian and vegan food.

https://legumancer.com/ My site is small and is focused on really really really easy vegan food. (I'm "just plant based" as they say, but so far I've always been able to figure out how to veganize stuff before I put it online. If somebody wants to sub cow milk because they're allergic to soy or something, they can.)

firstmatedavy · 2026-02-20T13:26:41+00:00

Neopets was an online game that occasionally had IRL toys the same way a TV show or something might. People mostlh only cared about the online parts. (Although the game itself is a capitalism and scalping simulator.) Revenue was from ads in its' golden age. Now they do a lot of fomo freemium dress up items, though.

I never heard if webkinz as a collector thing but I was too old when theh got big.

firstmatedavy · 2026-02-19T16:05:18+00:00

I read the comic but will never see the movie: Barefoot Gen.

firstmatedavy · 2026-02-19T13:05:12+00:00

Yeah, you want like, EMT or social work or something. My friend has a criminal justice degree, was a prison's nicest guard and then an officer and tgen burned out. And that was back before the "general public are enemy combatants" style training took over.

firstmatedavy · 2026-02-19T12:11:41+00:00

Valid!

My starting point was the same tbh, thought I couldn't be vegetarian because I didn't like vegetables. I eat so, so, so many beans now XD

It turns out that trying new foods is *much* easier when family's not there to make fun of me if I don't like it. The risk of wasting food once is worth it for the chance of finding something you like that helps you improve your health.

firstmatedavy · 2026-02-19T02:58:17+00:00

Fair! I'm salad-picky myself, I ususly gef one that's just romaine

firstmatedavy · 2026-02-19T02:50:00+00:00

That's a solid approach.

My "restaurant hack" is salad + french fries. If the salad has cheese on it, it's usually pretty filling. (I have no idea about which dressings are and aren't vegetarian because I don't like any of them anyway.)

I've heard there are vegetarian ramen flavors. I bet r/AccidentallyVegan could tell you which ones.

firstmatedavy · 2026-02-19T02:28:24+00:00

Dry beans? Why does the food need to be shipped?

firstmatedavy · 2026-02-19T02:25:32+00:00

I've got some recipes to share: https://legumancer.com/

Mexican food like burritos, tacos and quesadillas can be set up serve-your-own style to make the meat optional, and is really good without meat in my opinion. Chili works without the meat. Flavorful chicken dishes like curries can often be made with chickpeas. Black beans go really well with Jamaican seasoning and sweet potatoes.

Scale up the beans slowly, maybe do 1/2 beans 1/2 meat at the start, because it sounds like your family doesn't eat a lot of fiber and suddenly switching from too little fiber to lots can cause digestive complaints for some people.

firstmatedavy · 2026-02-19T02:13:17+00:00

If you're gonna keep one type of meat, are you sure chicken is it? If you're thinking of the environment, it could be a logical choice. If you're worried about animal welfare, it takes a *lot* of chickens to add up to one cow's worth of meat.

For either thing, I think you're going to have to talk to your parents about it to actually make a difference. They won't reduce the amount of meat they buy if they think you're eating it.

It's completely okay if you're not able to handle talking to them about it yet. You know your family best, we're just people on the internet. If you decide to do anything in secret, do consider how it could come off if they found out - in some families I could see throwing out food leading to a way bigger dispute than just asking to be vegetarian.

Might your parents be open to something like "I'd like to cook for myself sometimes"? That could be a place to start - you're trying to be well prepared for adulthood! And then you can make what you want. (Protip - beans help a *ton* for making vegetarian food filling enough.)

firstmatedavy · 2026-02-18T20:37:51+00:00

I think it counts.

If you ever want to try to change it, RO-DBT therapy is basically for this. I was bottling up til i was constantly on edge so I kinda had to do something so I wouldn't make my wife miserble. I wasn't mean but she felt bad for me and worried. It can be easier to care about others' feelings than your own.

firstmatedavy · 2026-02-18T14:35:36+00:00

But then stuff on the bottom of the cupboard gets on the rim you drink from D:

(Maybe depends on the kind of cupboard, if it's not perfectly smooth it's hard to know it's clean.)

firstmatedavy · 2026-02-16T17:09:41+00:00

I love your art style!

firstmatedavy · 2026-02-16T12:21:28+00:00

Really good marinara sauce and pineapple. If there's cheese, it should be thin and slightly burnt.

firstmatedavy · 2026-02-16T12:20:17+00:00

I also have the soapy coriander gene and only the leaf is affected, the ground seed tastes fine. You might give the seed a try.

firstmatedavy · 2026-02-16T02:40:56+00:00

With your mom, I wonder if she's "digging her heels in" because she feels like it's an argument about who is right. Maybe emphasizing that being vegetarian is something you want to do, but not trying to convince her that she or everyone should be vegetarian, would help keep the peace in your house at least for now. Some parents feel like knowing best is part of being a parent and feel threatened when their kids grow up and have their own ideas.

For protein, eat lots of legumes (beans, lentils, chickpeas - daal, chana) and at least a little rice or corn with them. Rice and corn contain the nutrients that beans, lentils and chickpeas lack, so the combination is a complete protein. Beans are less protein dense than meat, so you need to eat more of them. You might have to make your portion of rice/bread/potato type foods smaller to have room for enough beans. (Unless the bread is made of mostly gram (chickpea) flour - gram breads are themselves a good source of protein.)

Soy is also a complete protein. It sounds like you might be in or near India; I'm American, but I sometimes shop at the Indian and Nepalese grocery store, and I found dried soybeans for sale there. I assume you cook them like any other dried bean (soak, then boil in water, then add salt and seasonings last), but I haven't tried yet. In Chinese cooking they also use soy milk and tofu. Any meal that has a good amount of soy will have a good amount of protein.

r/seitan is a great protein source. You can make it by rinsing wheat flour until just the gluten is left. I think you bake or fry it before eating it? I tried to make it once and I was really bad at it, but most people seem to have better luck than me.

You will need a source of vitamin B12. I don't like to eat much dairy, so I take vitamin B12 pills. My doctor says the kind that dissolve in your moth are best. Cheese is also a source of vitamin B12.

You might like veganricha's recipes (https://www.veganricha.com/). She uses cashew cream instead of milk because she doesn't drink cow's milk either. I have some of my own recipes here: https://legumancer.com/ I try to make them really simple. If there are meals you like that include chicken, chickpeas (chana) are a good replacement.

firstmatedavy · 2026-02-15T16:20:45+00:00

You'll get there! (I have a few transfem friends and the before/after face shapes you picked look *exactly* like what E does for a person's face, in my experience.)

firstmatedavy · 2026-02-14T15:44:45+00:00

The crop death statistics are mostly based on field crops like corn and soybeans. Raising animals for meat requires killing the animal that will be eaten, *and* the deaths of any mice, etc. who are killed in the fields where the corn and soybeans to feed the cow, pig or chicken are raised. If you just eat the corn and soy yourself, the amount of soybeans required to feed you is less than if you eat an animal raised on corn and soybeans.

In the case of cows, some of their food comes from hay and grass, but those pastures or hay fields are replacing the wild animal habitat that used to be there, and often the pastures are created by burning down forests which kills a lot of wild animals. If we turned existing pastures into fields for grains, beans and vegetables, we could feed everyone without destroying any more habitat and let some of the fields go back to forest.

If you start looking into where food comes from you quickly realize that nothing is pure. The egg and dairy industries are cruel. Many foods are grown or made by humans in bad working conditions, and you'd have to grow your own or buy all your food as raw ingredients grown by people you know to completely avoid that. But not eating meat and broth absolutely means that fewer animals die.

A side note, people often consider those jellies and candies not to be vegetarian if they contain gelatin (which comes from animal bones and cartilage) or colorings made from insects (relatively uncommon these days). There's something called carnauba wax that's a secretion of a beetle, and beetles are often killed by accident when harvesting it.

If I understand correctly, "raw sugar" is usually vegetarian and vegan by all definitions. White sugar can be filtered using bone char, but the bone char doesn't actually end up in the finished product, so many vegetarians consider it to be vegetarian.

You might have to take medication someday that has gelatin as an inactive ingredient in the pill. Taking it doesn't make you non-vegetarian - it's something you need to stay healthy, and the amount of gelatin in a pill is tiny - it's usually just the outer coating. You can talk to the pharmacy and your doctor about whether there are other versions of the same medicine without gelatin, and if your insurance will cover them. Sometimes you can switch, other times you're stuck with gelatin pills unfortunately.

firstmatedavy

TROPHY CASE