Soy products and health foods
 

I'd say since about two years ago, I've been consuming soy products to substitute for my lack of meat intake. I eat a lot of salmon and other kinds of fish and seafood. I like soy burgers (on ocassion), vanilla soy milk, and soy yogurt.

Seeing as I can't be eating the same kinds of health foods all the time, what other kinds of soy products and/or health foods do you recommend?

Those eeves(sp?) soy "lunch meats" were tolerable and if you are starving can actually be pretty good. As for soy burgers. Im not sure where you live but the best ones I've had are by a company called Licks.

::goes off and eats a chunk of bloody grade f beef::

I'm a big meat fan but, man, soy breakfast sausages are so good. They're better than the real ones, in my opinion. I don't really have a brand to recommend, but take a guess and maybe you'll get lucky.

I'm not sure if you're asian but if not, you should try baked tofu. It comes in red packages (forgot the brand) at most major Asian stores, they're basically flat slabs of tofu that are brown all over and just an incredibly dense version of normal tofu (without as much water). They make excellent stir fries dishes with vegetables and you can even make fried rice with them.

Tofu dogs are good, until you've eaten a real hot dog.

kat, no, I'm not Asian (it's my username, isn't it?). I'd love to try some of this baked tofu. It sounds pretty good! The last time I had tofu was when I was eating miso soup at this Chinese/Japanese restaurant. Miso soup is quite tasty!

I can't recommend any specific types of food (I don't eat the stuff), but check to see if you have a Whole Foods Market near you. I've been there with my mom a couple of times, and they have a soy version of just about any type of food you could want there. The prices are tad bit high, but they probably have the best selection of soy and healthy food products anywhere (they're bigger than most grocery stores I've ever been to, and they have a grocery section, a cafe, and a bakery, among other things).

This may sound disgusting, but tofu dessert (soy dessert?) is heavenly. It's like pudding; sweet, light, and with a nice, smooth texture. If you've had Asian sweetened soy milk, it tastes nearly exactly like that. And I think it's healthy?

It's probably an Asian-only thing. When I tell people about it they say it's gross even thinking about it.

What is even the advantage of eating soy dairy products. Someone explain this soy subculture to me.

I used to hate at Starbucks when people would ask for soy cappucinos because SOY MILK DOESN'T FOAM.

I love miso soup (it's made from soy bean). I can have it everyday, breakfast, lunch and dinner. It's very easy and convenient to make from the miso paste. Add some cubed silken tofu just before turning off the gas. Perfect.

I also love salmon. I can eat it everyday, breakfast, lunch and dinner. I eat it raw, grilled, broil, braised, fried, in fried rice, in omelet, in casserole. I eat it as snack, smoked salmon on crackers. I can even spread some miso paste on the salmon and grill it. I don't eat much other meat though. Maybe when I am invited by my Australian friends to their BBQ party, they are very into steaks and sausages.

I like green tea too. When I was young, my mum seldom had water at home, only green tea. She would prepare grean tea 3 times a day, very light ones for the young ones and normal strength for the adults. Now I also drink green tea much more often than water.

My family don't really eat much sweet food, so cereal/bread with jam/soft drink/most desserts and cakes are not really in our menu. I think it's good, none of my family members have any tooth decay problem.

I haven't heard of tofu dessert yet. I might hunt that out because I hardly eat anything sweet these days. I was actually thinking more along the lines of soy ice cream. I haven't had ice cream in like seven years. I miss it. :(

Well, the only reason why I use soy diary products is because I'm very lactose intolerant to milk. I can't take the severe pain that comes with drinking milk (even though I still like it). After getting used to soy milk about three years ago, I just went ahead and started eating healthier foods, a lot which have soy in them.

Green tea is heavenly! Every time we went to a Chinese food restaurant, I ended up drinking more tea than actual eating. Now I buy the stuff as much as I can because it's delicious!

I also love green tea :). However, I don't really like anything soy. Soy has compounds that mimic estrogen, it's just something I don't need in my body.

I'm very fond of soy yogurt and soy yogurt smoothies. At the grocery chain Trader Joe's they used to have their own brand of Strawberry soy smoothies that were to die for! Unfortunately I think they only make the Peach flavor, but I'm sure if you like Peach they would be good.

For a more mainstream brand, I think Silk is now making soy smoothies as well. I haven't tried them, but the soy usually gives the smoothie a different dimension of flavor from the ones made with regular yogurt.

Ah, I looooove soy yogurt, especially the strawberry kind! I've never tried soy yogurt smoothies, but they sound good! I like peaches, but it's not high on my list as something to actually drink. I'll give it a try, though.

Silk is making smoothies??? Omg, I love their milk, the Very Vanilla one. I only really drink two kinds of soy milk, Silk (for straight drinking) and Continental 8 (for cereal). I'm going to have to hunt this out. Is it at Trader Joe's too?

Yeah...Silk is my favorite brand of Soy milk. I'm very fond of the unsweetened, unflavored kind, but I think I'm in the minority there. It's just that I think the unsweetened tastes closer to 'real' milk.

I haven't been to a TJs in about 6 or 7 months (there aren't any in TX), but considering my school campus has the Silk smoothies, I bet you could find them at a grocery store that sells Silk soy milk -- or maybe a Whole Foods, if there's one in your area.

Something else that's quite good is Green Tea-flavored Soymilk, but I think the brand that put that out quit making that a while back. It was really good, though.

I like the unsweetened, unflavored kind as well, but ever since I got a taste of the Very Vanilla kind, I've been stuck on it ever since. Is there another company that makes the green tea-flavored soymilk? I really want to try it.

Well, I found out Kikkoman makes some. I didn't even know they made anything besides soy sauce, but whatever.

But the brand I originally tried was Vitasoy. Maybe they still make it, but I haven't seen it anywhere in my area since the local 'grocery outlet' place sold their 500-case backstock.

Okay, the tofu I can handle. At least, in most instances anyways, tofu doesn't try to be something that it's not unless you MAKE it into a tofu burger. It's something that is versatile in cooking. You can jazz it up a bunch of ways.

But the soy milk people? How do you even manage to choke that stuff down? I've tried regular and chocolate, and I can't even stomach it. There are very few things that make me gag, but this is up there on the list.

Thank god I'm a meat-eater, because if I weren't I'd be screwed with this whole milk thing.

Again, I drink soy milk because I can't drink real milk anymore (lactose intolerant). I have had soy milk that tasted just like chalk and had the consistency of Milk of Mylanta. That's why I stick with Silk and Continent 8.

My best friend Sarah was a Vegan for years. (Tiny little thing she is.) She recently stopped being Vegan just so she could eat muffins, but I had to deal with the lifestyle throughout her Veganism.

She'd bring me to a place called The Living Earth in Worcester where they served all sorts of crazy tofu soy crap. I could not stomach it. I tried coffee with soy milk, and salads with tofu in lieu of cheese and all that. It literally made me nauseous - the texture and the taste wasn't that great. I guess I just like normal, healthy meat and cheese.

I did, however, have ostrich and bison burgers there. Those were pretty kickass.

Eating healthy is not complicated. Just avoid processed foods, eat a variety of fruits and vegetables (preferably organic), eat more fish and less red meat and eat less sugar and dairy. If you're not going to avoid processed foods, at least try to stay away from foods containing high fructose corn syrup and pratially hydrogenated oils (trans fats).

Do you know how expensive this lifestyle can get.

Organic foods are outrageously expensive (though for a reason). Most fruits and vegetables fresh sold locally are not cheap.

The majority of people can not afford this kind of lifestyle. Let's see if this spins off into a poor vs. rich, fat vs. skinny topic. ^_^

Well, pasta is not expensive, nor is rice, nor is cereal. You can get fruits and vegetables for cheap (conventional stuff isn't gonna kill you). Skim milk is also just as cheap as whole milk. Beans are VERY cheap, and things like nuts and eggs aren't exactly pricey. And canned tuna? Sometimes that stuff is cheaper than cat food. I think I've covered all the food groups, no? This is more or less how I eat, anyway. I think it would actually be more expensive for me to eat unhealthy food, if less time-consuming.

If you shop at places like Whole Foods and the 'specialty/organic' section of your run-of-the-mill grocer all the time, then yeah...eating 'right' will get pretty damn expensive. But doodle is right: a lot of the simple foods are actually pretty cheap, if you know what to do with them. My cousin doesn't like sweets because his mother can't really afford to buy lots of candy and stuff, so she just buys fruit. And the kid eats mostly fruit. He's an 11-year old boy, for crying out loud! And he turns down dessert! It mostly comes down to the time-saving factor.

That and, if you're going to be extreme and go Vegan, then you're going to be living an expensive lifestyle: fake cheese, sour cream and countless meat replacements are high-cost no matter what you do.

You don't have to buy all your food organic. Just fresh foods. It's really not that much expensive. Some fruits and vegetables are the exact same price at the health store as they are at the supermarket.

Even still, most people can't be exepcted to cut anything out of their diet or eat better quality food, so really the practical approach to better health for the typical American is probably to just begin including some necessary foods in the diet. We could all stand to eat more non-meat/dairy foods. We should all be eating about 8-10 servings of fruits and vegetables a day.

I'm a big fan of soy products. My Dad's been using soy ever since I was a kid, so I'm fully aware of the bean's nutritous value. He usually uses soy milk, oats, and various fruit to make a blend which he can drink throughout the morning.

It's very helpful for me since I'm allergic to citric acid and can't eat fruit. Having soy replenishes my system with a lot of stuff I normally don't get! For the past year or so I've been drinking a soy shake every morning, which gives me a curbed hunger and lasting energy on a daily basis. Good stuff!