I want to become a vegan but it's hard and I don't know where to start...?

Normally i would write a whole essay on the subject. but i have just three different suggestions and you can just go from there.

1. At the bottom of the Cowspiracy web page is a link to the "30 day Vegan Challenge". it normally costs 20 bucks but its free from there. its 30 days of audio, video, essays and recipes.

2. the 21 day Vegan Kickstart program is very good also. (and shorter!). it has an app and a social media component too.

3. or just start here.

http://vegankit.com/

It's not a matter of alternatives "tasting horrible." It's a matter of you getting used to them, or you're up shyte creek without a paddle.

Going vegan is a dedication. You have to prep yourself for it. The worst thing you can do is going into it with NO plan. You're doomed to fail if you do not plan. Start slowly. You need to look up certain items that you LIKE and find alternatives. Most items have some kind of replacement, such as milk and ice cream. You could replace milk with soy, almond, or hemp milk. Try some out. Get some in small serving sizes and try everything out. How are you going to know you like something then? You will need to spend some money to see which alternatives work best for you.

As far as other foods go, you will have to research your favorite recipes and see what it can be replaced with. Mac and cheese used to be your favorite? Going to miss all that ooey-gooey goodness? Many vegans will use almond flours, nutritional yeast, and cauliflower to mimic the creaminess factor and garlic, cayenne, and salt to amp up flavor. Honestly, as a devout mac and cheese lover myself, I tried this alternative and it wasn't half bad, actually.

You should learn to cook. Seriously. Pre-packaged vegan food can be JUST AS UNHEALTHY as pre-packaged non-vegan food. They still use fat and sugar and preservatives to make it taste better and last longer on shelves, so learning to cook will benefit you.

Some simple replacements:

Milk- Soy, almond, hemp. Rice milk can be a treat, as it is loaded with sugar.

Sugar- Beet sugar, agave, stevia, etc.

Cheese- You can make your own with nuts, nutritional yeast, and salt and garlic, or can buy your own in stores, though many vegans even consider this pretty icky sometimes. Don't expect it to melt the same.

Creamy savory- Replace any cream/milk with a roux of alternative flours, salts, and vegan oils/butters. You can also use pureed potatoes and cauliflower to mimic creaminess.

Eggs- For baking, you can use a flax egg (tsp/tbsp of flax seeds with equal parts water, I believe) or 1/2 a mashed banana will equal one egg, as well.

Chocolate- Cacao nibs are the purest form without milk or sugar. You can pair with sweet fruits for a chocolate craving, or you can replace it all together with carob chips.

Good luck to you :)

Start off easy with trying it one day and just progress gradually

Google supergrains.

"I want to become a vegan but it's hard and I don't know where to start...?

The first place to begin is to learn where to get all of the known essential nutrients. That's the first thing that you need to do. The hard part though, will be giving up some of the things you lie, but slowly removing them, will help reduce the craving for them as time goes on. It's during the phasing things out, that you can use to learn how to get what you need. If you don't know how to replace the nutrients that they supply. WILL leave your health in shambles. As stated in one answer about going vegan, you don't know enough about nutrition. Now knowing about protein, carbohydrates, fats. fiber, vitamins, minerals, and the other components, is nice, but first you need to know what foods to eat to get them, and what foods they're found in. Forget about all of the films, movies, and videos, and any articles, books, and magazines. Those will NOT give you advice on going vegan, and hopefully to be healthy as a vegan.

When I said my advice was to start learning about food first, that means actually knowing which foods has which nutrients, and in what amounts. I do mean that. What you've learned about nutrition, is just barely a beginning, where food is concerned. Now about learning what is in what you eat. Or what nutrients something has in good amounts, low amounts, or are totally lacking. A simple basic search will help in learning what is or isn't in what you're eating. Modifiers are also important with how a food is served and eaten, as these can affect the nutritional values of what you eat. Some of the modifiers are, baked, broiled, canned, cooked (this includes steamed, dry or moist heat), dry roasted, fried, raw and roasted. There are other affects from cooking, that I'll not get into right now. But here are two examples of the search I use.

broccoli raw nutritional value

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and...

broccoli cooked nutritional value

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and...

Now I use nutritiondata.self.com as it has the most complete set of tables. With the labels on food packaging, all to many only cover a few basic nutritional points. The same applies to what you're going to find on most websites, you look at. Now while nutritiondata.self.com isn't perfect, it's the best I've found to date. There is still a god bit of information, that's missing, but it's complete enough, to give anyone a good start, at eating a more healthy diet.

You won't find for example in any plant vitamin B12. Vitamin D3, has one source, and that's rarely ever eaten, lichen, and then only with one specific type. There is no plant form of the retinol form of vitamin A. With plant iron, you need about double the amount, as it's not as well absorbed, as that which comes from dairy, eggs, and meat. Calcium from plant based sources aren't absorbed as well, as from animal based foods. Zinc can be another issue as well, with a vegan or plant based diet. With the omega three fatty acids, it's easy to be short there, as well. In a more specific manner the two that are low, or hard to get are DHA, and EPA. Also difficult to get is choline, which was classed recently as an essential micronutrient. Come up short in any of these, and your health WILL suffer.

Now when it comes to research on nutrition, you want to use reliable sources. The least reliable sources are those which promote one dietary style over others. It doesn't matter whether it's about a diet that contains meat, or one the excludes meat, and even other animal products. They're all going to have, and show a bias. Some of the best sources, are going to be medical nutritional research facilities such as found with large well known hospitals, or colleges. Here are some, that you can use, for information. Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, Mayo Clinic, Mount Sinai Medical Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, St. Jude's Hospital, Harvard School of Public Medicine, Maryland State University, Michigan State University, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York-Presbyterian University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell, Ohio State University, Oregon State University, University of Oxford, University of Rochester Medical Center, and the University of North Carolina.

After nearly thirty nine years, at the age of fifty eight, I'm still learning more as I go. Now also the claim that meat has been proven to cause, or contribute to contribute to diabetes, heart disease, cancer, hypertension, along with high cholesterol issues has NOT been proven. There has been POSSIBLE links to those from eating meat. Now O will take cholesterol specifically as an example. Eighty five percent is created by the body in the liver, and does NOT come from dietary sources as was once believed. Only about fifteen percent s dietary, and that came from my cardiologist. However this information although over fifteen years old now, is still just getting out to the public. But there are still some people who know this, but deny it. Instead they're using outdated information, that's been found to be incorrect.

There are plenty of long term vegans (twenty or more years as a vegan) out there, who have heard the following words, or this affect, "you have high cholesterol." I'm talking blood serum levels that are over two hundred fifty. But those who prescribe to the claims put forth by some vegans, simply will not accept those findings, or recently discovered information. To them new findings MUST at ALL costs, be discounted as pseudo/crank science, which doesn't hold up to what they declared as proven fact. It's things like this, is why I strongly recommend in using reliable scientific