In addition to using the chart below, here are some guidelines when making substitutions:

• Keep the ingredients in the same ethnic category.  For example, if you are making a Mexican dish without meat, substitute with black beans, pinto beans or hominy instead of mung beans or lentils.
• Substituting starches and proteins makes less of a difference in taste than spices and flavorings.
• Place complementary herbs, spices and flavorings together in your pantry.  For example, keep basil, parsley and oregano together to use when making an Italian dish.
• Keep staples such as flour, oils, beans and grains on hand.

View the whole article on Vegetarian Times

Lemons are both purifying and nourishing, and they stimulate digestion.  I like to start my day with a glass of room temperature water and the juice of a lemon to reduce toxins.

Almonds are nourishing and life-supporting.  A handful of raw almonds daily can increase strength and energy.

Mung Beans are among the best legumes for their digestibility and health-giving qualities.  One of my favorite traditional Filipino dishes is a combination of mung beans, spinach, onions and tomatoes served with rice.

Ginger is often referred to as”the universal medicine” and promotes good digestion.  Dried ground ginger is more concentrated in its flavor and effects.

Juicy, Seasonal Fruits are both nutritive and purifying.  Choose ripe fruits in a variety of colors for maximum healing value.

Green, Leafy Vegetables are also both nutritive and purifying.  Their bitter flavor stimulates the liver, helps balance blood sugar and aids skin conditions.

Water is universally beneficial for everyone, promotes digestion and assists in virtually all healing.

Click here to see Full Yoga Journal Article

According to photographer Peter Menzel and his wife Faith D’Aluisio, their new book, What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets, is a display of daily diets that has gotten people thinking.

Their goal is to get readers to compare and contrast — to situate one’s personal diet.  How does your diet compare to the butter-rich 4,900 calorie diet of a Tibetan monk — or the scant 800 of a Maasai herder in Kenya?  One soda-guzzling subject decided to cut back after seeing the sheer quantity put before him. And “The Snacker Mom,” as Jill McTighe of Great Britain is called in the book, has been making a concerted effort to trim her binge diet of 12,300 calories.

I am always open to gaining a broader perspective on the seemingly complex subject of what we eat.  From a unique cultural context, Menzel and D’Aluisio expand on the idea that we are all unique in our biological needs, daily routines and cultural practices.  Therefore, our diets vary as much as people and cultures do.  It’s all about understanding our own needs and making better decisions for ourselves.

Listen to the story on All Things Considered

Food, Inc.

The book explores challenges raised by the movie in 13 essays by experts featured in the film including…

Eric Schlosser on the industrialization of our food supply.  Michael Pollan on the benefits of locally-sourced, organic eating.  Marion Nestle on sorting out food facts from fictions.  Anna Lappe on how the U.s. food system promotes global warming.  Muhammad Yunus on the global impact of food industrialization.

Are you hungry for change?

10 Simple things you can do to change our food system:

1. Stop drinking sodas and other sweetened beverages.
2. Eat at home instead of eating out.
3. Support the passage of laws requiring chain restaurants to post calorie information on menus.
4. Tell school to stop selling sodas, junk food and sports drinks.
5. Meatless Mondays – go without meat one day a week.
6. Buy organic or sustainable food with little or no pesticides.
7. Protect family farms, visit your local farmer’s market.
8. Make a point to know where your food comes from – READ LABELS.
9. Tell Congress that food safety is important to you.
10. Demand job protections for farm workers and food processors, ensuring fair wages and other protections.

For more information Food, Inc.

Nutritionist say that it’s not hard to get all of your daily nutritional needs from nonmeat sources, but it takes planning.  The first step is to educate yourself on healthful alternatives to animal products. Some of my favorites include hummus, lentils, tempeh, tofu and quinoa.  If you are a parent of a vegetarian teen, it is important that your child is educated on these alternatives and helps prepare vegetarian meals at home.  As a vegetarian teen growing up in a meat eating family, I made the common mistake of skipping the main course and eating the starchy sides such as rice, pasta and bread.  I wasn’t aware of the nutrients I needed and where I could find them.  The key nutrients to focus on, according to the American Dietetic Association, are protein, omega-3 fatty acids, iron, zinc, iodine, calcium and vitamins D and B-12.  Each meal doesn’t have to contain all of those nutrients, but they should add up over the course of a day or week.

“Health benefits may come as much from what vegetarians do eat as from what they don’t.  Studies show that vegetarians not only consume less artery clogging saturated fat and cholesterol but also get more antioxidants and vitamins such as potassium, magnesium and vitamin C.  They eat up to twice as much heart-healthy fiber, from fruit, vegetables and whole grains.  They have lower cholesterol levels and blood pressure readings.  And they tend to be leaner than meat-eaters.”

Vegetarianism may help kids, research suggests, by cutting down on meat early in life, it can be one way to counter the rising rates of obesity and chronic diseases such as diabetes.  Studies also show that vegetarian teens eat fewer sweets and junk food and get more fruits, vegetables and fiber.  Food habits form early, which means that learning to like a variety of grains and vegetables as a kid is easier than learning to like them as adults.

It’s important to remember that just because a meal is vegetarian, it doesn’t guarantee that it’s good for you.  As a parent, keep in mind your growing child’s nutritional needs and carefully plan meals to support their developing brains and bodies.  The benefits of a vegetarian diet are wonderful for both kids and adults as long as we are mindful that we are giving our bodies what it needs.  You don’t have to become vegetarian overnight.  Just making an effort to eat less meat can have a positive effect on your body and the environment.

Meal Suggestions for Vegetarian Teens

• Omelettes made with vegetables such as asparagus, broccoli, onions, bell peppers and mushrooms
• Burritos or tacos made with black, kidney or refried beans
• Stir fries made with tofu, vegetables, nuts and brown rice
• Almond butter on whole wheat bread with banana slices
• Falafels with hummus or yogurt with whole grain pita bread, cucumbers and tomatoes
• Salads made with dark, leafy greens, chick peas, beans, nuts, vegetables, pasta or rice
• Soups made with lentils and vegetables served with whole grain bread or crackers
• Pizza topped with lots of vegetables
• Vegetarian chili
• Vegetarian lasagna
• Smoothies made with bananas, frozen berries, soy milk or orange juice

For more information, check out articles pertaining to vegetarian teens at LA Times Health.

Foer argues that there’s no difference between the value of the lives of pets and the lives of the animals that we eat every day.

“If our next-door neighbor kept a dog in the conditions that well more than 90 percent of pigs are kept in, we would call the police.  We wouldn’t just be offended.  We wouldn’t just think it was wrong.  We would be compelled to take action,” Foer says.

Eating Animals, is more than just a case for vegetarianism and an anti-meat lecture.  It’s a book that challenges America’s meat-dominated diet.

Foer says his problem with meat isn’t that some people make the decision to eat it; instead, it’s that people don’t think about the decision.  And that, he argues, is just how the American factory farm system want it: “What does it say that there’s an entire industry… that asks us to give them money, asks us to ingest in our bodies and to feed to our children a product whose production they won’t let us see?”

Foer says overconsumption of meat – and the factory system that produces it – cause multiple health problems and contribute hugely to global warming and other environmental disasters.  These factors make the purchase of a cheap breast of chicken much more expensive than it might initially seem.

“More than anything, I want people to come away with the idea that meat matters,” Foer says.  He believes the decisions we make when ordering at restaurants and when we shop at supermarkets, are some of the most important decisions we make each day.

According to Ayurveda, eating raw produce in the cooler months can strain your digestive system.  Raw fruits and vegetables actually cause your agni, or digestive fire, to work harder to break down food so that your body can assimilate the nutrients.  A study in the Journal of Food Science showed that some vegetables including carrots and green beans actually have higher levels of antioxidants after they’ve been cooked.  So enjoy those dark, leafy greens during this cold weather.

Eat Less, Live Longer

The first tip is something we can all learn from the diets of centenarians.  Most centenarians, people who are 100 years old and older, eat less than the average amount.  Some fasted at time because they were poor and simply had no food.  Most centenarians follow the “three-quarters” rule: stop eating when you are three-quarters full.  Studies have shown that a reduction in caloric intake can increase life expectancy in animals – why not humans?

Because most of what we’re consuming today is not food, and how we’re consuming it — in the car, in front of the TV, and increasingly alone — is not really eating. Instead of food, we’re consuming “edible foodlike substances” — no longer the products of nature but of food science. Many of them come packaged with health claims that should be our first clue they are anything but healthy. In the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become.

In Defense of Food

Eat food, not too much, mostly plants