Another vegan question

[misshardbroom]

I read an interesting article in the Sainsbury's magazine about vegan diets, the gist of which was that vegans are not necessarily cartoon sandal-wearing, hessian-woven types, and that it is a healthy and enjoyable diet for all walks of life. Got me thinking.

Has anyone got any experience of shifting their entire family to a vegan diet, and how did you get on?

Yep - I did it overnight and now only feed my family vegan food at home. They all 100% love what I provide. No complaints at all. We eat porridge and fruit or toast/cereal for breakfast. The only difference being soya milk and pure spread instead of cow's milk/dairy spread. Try porridge made with jumbo oats with banana, dates and flax seed, agave syrup and soya milk/cream. It's delicious!
Lunch today was bagels with red pepper hummus, sliced tomatoes with garlic salt and a big mixed herb salad with fruit for desert.
Tonight I will be making a big roast dinner with no meat but a huge selection of colourful roasted and steamed veg. With vegan gravy. Homemade fruit crumble and custard for desert.
We have never eaten so well and have also all lost weight without ever being hungry.

Thanks very much for that, your lunch sounds delicious!

Were you all vegetarian to begin with? I imagine that if you were, then a move to being vegan would have been less profound a change than if I eliminated all animal products from the diets of my largely carnivorous family!

I think I could manage a vegan diet quite happily myself, but my mainly vegetarian but cheese & egg loving DD would struggle.

No, we were also all total meat eaters/omnivores. It was my new year's resolution to be vegetarian. It lasted a day once I researched and decided that only veganism made complete sense to me. Dh was initially game to try vegetarianism but quite horrified at the thought of veganism and a bit scared I think.
Even I wasn't sure I could do it - it seemd so extreme. But made so much more sense to me than vegetarianism.
A few weeks into it we were all converted and now, after over a year, we consider animal eating to be extreme!
I have to say that I do still keep cow's milk and cheddar in the fridge for some of my family. But that is all. I never personally eat or cook anything that isn't vegan.

I tried to be vegan (no family then, well, DH, who wouldn't even consider it!). It was great, I ate well...but the main problem for me was that I had to make more food - lunches (couldn't take a chance and buy a sandwich) and eating out wasn't brilliant either.
And no chocolate...

Cheese brought me down in the end!