What are you biggest must-haves for vegan health?

[HadEnough798]

What have you found made the biggest difference to how you feel (health-wise and energy-wise) on a vegan diet?

e.g. started eating seaweed for x-nutrient, or started adding a scoop of seeds to your porridge...

I've been vegan for almost two years - generally my diet is healthy (mostly cooking from scratch, stews, beans, veg, rice, tofu, oat milk etc). But I feel like I could have a bit more energy etc - and when I start researching nutrients etc it it gets a bit overwhelming... please tell me your biggest wins!

Not much to say, sorry, but you must supplement B12 as a vegan, it’s really important.

Nooch!!! Better known as nutritional yeast - Engevita, or the Bosh Boys have their own out now. It's dry flakes that are extremely, hugely savoury. Sprinkle them in casseroles, soups, gravy - whatever - adds flavour and B12....

And is incredibly tasty.

If you go to the Vegan Society pages they have extremely good dietary advice, and so do the Viva! pages. The assorted vegan cooking magazines are usually helpful too. I joined Viva! and they sent me a bunch of wipe-clean charts with food groups etc. which I didn't really need so I passed them along to my DIL who is veggie bordering on vegan.

@samsalmon

Not much to say, sorry, but you must supplement B12 as a vegan, it’s really important.

This ^^

B12 is the only nutrient not naturally available in a vegan diet.

• nutritional yeast for the B vitamins
• 1 Brazil nut for selenium
• seaweed for iodine
• flax seed for ALA
• broccoli, tofu for calcium
• cauliflower for choline

After testing my omega 3 index, I now supplement with EPA-DHA from algae, I take vitamin D and K2, vitamin b12,

Nutritional values are tricky because the nutrients in a food, do not equal nutrient your body will absorb and retain, so after testing bloods several times while keeping a nutritional journal on cronometer.com, I now supplement far more today than I did years ago.

We have the misconception of a single vitamin being needed in order to avoid a specific illness and we ignore the fact that vitamins and nutrients are needed for optimal gene functioning.
It is not about deficiency but adequacy.
Prof Bruce Ames explains it better than I do www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1693790/

Oh, and if you like it - Marmite. Full of B group vitamins and soooo savoury. I remember my dad told me that if I got a cold sore (and we did back then, doesn't seem to happen to kids these days) then we should eat more Marmite and we'd be fine. It worked!

Nutritionfacts dot org is a great website for discovering the health benefits of every day veg etc. The articles on broccoli are fascinating.

Set up by Dr Greger, they are a not for profit organisation of people scouring medical papers finding interesting studies which wouldn't get shouted about by big companies because there's no profit to be made from them!

Cormoran sounds a good combo! Have been vegan for 4 years ans sometimes feel floaty tired. I have ( treated wirh med s) a thyroid problem
What algae supplemenr do you use please ans what seaweed? Thanks!
I think iodine is good for thyroid issues but will check.its intresting aa ive only ever eatwn fish a few times in my life pre veg veggan and i absolutely crave fish and chicken . I wonder if my body is telling me something.?