{"id":1058,"date":"2007-10-25T11:42:08","date_gmt":"2007-10-25T16:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=1058"},"modified":"2007-11-20T19:50:27","modified_gmt":"2007-11-21T00:50:27","slug":"advice-to-new-vegetarians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=1058","title":{"rendered":"Advice to new vegetarians"},"content":{"rendered":"

After the vigil in support of victims and survivors of domestic violence was over last night, I wound up talking to a twenty-something woman who had been a vegetarian for two weeks. She was having difficulty adjusting to her new way of eating, and when she found out I had been a vegetarian for years, she wanted some advice.<\/p>\n

My advice for her wasn’t all that good. While for the most part I still am a vegetarian, now my priority is eating organic and\/or locally-grown food, and I realized that I’ve lost touch with the reasons for and mechanics of vegetarianism. So I recommended that she read Diet for a Small Planet<\/em>, but then I realized that book was written before she was born, and is probably horribly dated. She said she had been reading a book called Skinny Bitch<\/em>, but she wondered if there were other, easy-to-read, books on vegetarianism.<\/p>\n

I was able to give her one piece of advicae based on my own experience as a vegetarian: be sure to take vitamin B-12 supplements (not the mega-doses — it’s a fat-soluble vitamin, and too much of it won’t do you any good). I also told her to be sure to get complete protein, and asked if she was a vegan or a vegetarian who would eat eggs and cheese. She hadn’t thought that through, and I couldn’t think of a good resource to help her figure out what kind of vegetarian she was.<\/p>\n

In short, I realized that I’m out of touch with the world of vegetarianism and veganism. But I know that many of my readers are sure to be vegans and vegetarians, and you will be able to give me some good advice. Here are my questions for you:<\/p>\n