Is it normal to be err... marginally (very?) dependant on chocolate and coffee to get through the day?

[firstimer30s]

My lovely vegan DSis gave me a lecture about cows milk (bad for the planet, health and general existence apparently) and then raised eyebrows when I had a second coffee (had 1st at 11am and 2nd at 1pm) and muttered 'addiction' at me.
She is in her 20s with limited responsibilities while I am in my 30s, work and have a DC.
At the mo I feel like coffee and chocolate keep me going . AIBU to think this is normal at this stage of life?
How much coffee and chocolate do you consume daily and do you have DCs?

This is a list of the ingredients for Alpro soy milk taken direct from its website:-
Water, Hulled SOYA beans (8%), Sugar, Acidity regulators (Monopotassium phosphate, Dipotassium phosphate), Calcium (Calcium carbonate), Flavouring, Sea salt, Stabiliser (Gellan gum), Vitamins (Riboflavin (B2), B12, D2)
If your SIL is putting that shit in her body she can't lecture you about your caffeine use.

I consider coffee and chocolate a balanced diet, but only if I have a lot of both.

1 double espresso and at least a few squares of dark chocolate a day, ideally on an empty stomach. Kids are now adults so I can't use that excuse. I accept it is an addiction because on the rare days I go without, I feel like shit. But hey, it makes me happy.

Normal here. Approx 5 cups of tea a day, nothing after 3pm though.

Always have chocolate with lunch and supper. I don't drink or smoke and I exercise regularly.

I don't consume any caffeine so not normal to me but I accept that I'm the odd one.

I'm a vegan but still spend the majority of my day eating vegan chocolate I defiantly need to cut down so you don't have to be super healthy just to be a vegan

She's not immune; she's addicted to control.

I'm vegetarian & eat dark chocolate all day long and have pea protein or almond milk in coffee. You can be vegan and addicted.

I don't think it's a terrible thing to eat chocolate & drink lots of coffee - though in my case the choccy addiction (Green & Blacks mostly) is because I'm stressed & depressed.

Lizzie sorry to hear

I have a bean to cup machine at home and have several cups everyday, and night as I also work shifts. I'd never get through a night shift without coffee or chocolate!

Thanks :) It is what it is. Combination of life stress and perimenopause hormones.

I rely on caffeine. 3-6 coffees per day.

I rarely eat chocolate though.

I have one dc and another on the way. Can't drink coffee while pregnant but generally have maybe a cup a week if that when not. Tea about the same unless at mils, in which case one to two cups per visit.

Chocolate maybe a small bar per week unless I'm stressed at work when I can easily go through two bars or more a day during office hours. at how that makes me sound reasonably healthy I wish!

Cross your fingers and hope she never starts going on about palm oil.

Water, Hulled SOYA beans (8%), Sugar, Acidity regulators (Monopotassium phosphate, Dipotassium phosphate), Calcium (Calcium carbonate), Flavouring, Sea salt, Stabiliser (Gellan gum), Vitamins (Riboflavin (B2), B12, D2)
If your SIL is putting that shit in her body she can't lecture you about your caffeine use

What part of that list are you objecting to?

Not that I would drink Alpro stuff, it tastes weird. I drink regular cow's milk, just a lactose-free version. Except when I'm being lazy/indulgent and using Dolce Gusto capsules all day instead.

Aren't they cutting down swathes of rainforest to plant soya beans?
And soya products are heavily processed (carbon footprint) and contain a hormone similar to oestrogen so affecting male fertility?
That's the best I can do without googling.

Soy has nothing on meat production when it comes to destroying the planet. And the amount of soy products you'd have to eat to grow man-boobs is way above and beyond what a vegetarian/vegan would eat.

That's meat-industry propaganda. The relative was being rude to comment on op's coffee and chocolate intake, but that does not mean being a vegetarian/vegan is wrong. Just that that one individual is rude. Not eating animals is better for our health, better for the planet, and most importantly, better for the animals.

Klaphat well having to add sugar to make the drink palatable is shit for a start. And as for monopotassium phosphate "Monopotassium phosphate, MKP, KH₂PO₄, is a soluble salt of potassium and the dihydrogen phosphate ion which is used as a fertilizer, a food additive and a fungicide. It is a source of phosphorus and potassium. It is also a buffering agent." Wikipedia

Fertiliser and fungicide on your muesli? Yum yum.

Fertiliser and fungicide on your muesli? Yum yum.

Fertiliser = plant food. And if you don't have any idea why it works as a fungicide and whether that means anything at all for the human body, why are you using that as a reason to argue it's bad? It just comes off as utterly ignorant. Oh no, a chemical!

We need both potassium and phosphate for large numbers of biological processes in our cells. Why not add it to everything we eat? Why not only eat that? My argument's as good as yours...

But milk has sugar in it, it's called lactose. Sweetness occurs naturally in many foods. It's not an inherent evil, heck breast milk is apparently fairly sweet. It's an excess of sugar that's the problem.

But healthy "natural" food shouldn't need a shed load of stuff to make it palatable or to preserve it. And someone who is vegan and claims to therefore hold the moral high ground when it comes to making food choices - as the OP's SIL is doing is herself ignorant and misinformed if she thinks Alpro soy milk, for example, is better than coffee.

I recommend Swallow This by Joanna Blythman.

And I quite agree that we need certain substances that Alpro puts in its drinks - but a healthy balanced diet means we don't need them to be added to our foods via an industrial process - we derive them from real food sources. And that should be the case for vegans and non-vegans alike.

And sugar in breast milk is a totally different thing to added sugar in soy milk. If vegans are going to object to intensive animal farming for environmental (and not just ethical reasons) then they should also be objecting to the type of wasteful intensive plant farming that, in over-producing sugar, is putting the farming of empty calories over the production of real food.

fertiliser = plant food and your point is? Eating a fresh tomato is one thing, lobbing it into the compost heap and turning it into plant food months later does not mean it retains the qualities of an edible fresh tomato. At that point it would not make a welcome addition to a fresh salad so I fail to see the point you are trying to make.

Soya farming is definitely an issue for rainforest destruction. So to say it's much more ethical than cows milk simply ain't true. I actually love the taste of soya milk though (must be all those chemicals ) whereas oat milk and almond milk I find very watery and bland.

But the soy is largely being grown to feed cattle. If we were all vegans there would not be massive soya farming (vegans get protein from loads of sources, soya is just one).