idk the amount of times I’ve tried to explain my wife and kid’s dietary restrictions that mean veganism is basically impossible for us in other places I get a lot of hate.
The kids are autistic and have major taste and texture aversions, which maybe we could work around with the right things. My wife though had a malabsorptive bariatric surgery that means she needs to eat Low carb, High protein, and most importantly Low volume meals. When you need like 1.5 cups of beans to get the same protein as like 3oz of ground beef and only have a 6 ounce stomach volume you kinda have to go with the one that gives you the most protein for the least volume.
I could imagine vegans being upset if you weren’t vegan solely because your wife and kids can’t be (like they are a shield or something, idk). Modern veganism should be about harm reduction. I know someone mentioned beans but I think seitan has more protein per punch (has more than steak according to a random google, *forgot about the carb limit tho, it looks like it wouldn’t go over too much but depends on the source). I don’t have much experience with your family’s conditions. I need a bunch of fiber or else I get severely constipated, I was shocked at how little your wife gets. Sorry you got hate for your wife and kids. It sounds like your wife was (is?) in a bad spot, I hope her recovery gets better.
The only problem with that is we live on a fixed budget as I don’t work since they all need varying degrees of care around the clock. We live entirely off my wife’s disability and whatever assistance programs we qualify for. I have neither the time, the energy, nor the money to prepare meals for myself entirely separate from their dietary restrictions.
Each kid eats maybe a dozen things themselves, 20 for the oldest, and there’s maybe 6 that overlap between them. By the time I’ve figured out what they’re willing to eat and made it I almost zero desire to even look at food let alone prepare an entirely separate vegan meal with all of that no money I have to purchase vegan ingredients that again likely nobody but me would be able to eat.
(Edit: I should add I’m not completely against the idea of changing my own diet. It’s just that by the time I’m feeding myself I’m so done with the whole thing that my “diet” is whatever I can easily shove in my food hole without fussing too much about it)
That sounds really rough, sorry you are going through this. I am also on disability and welfare and have a caregiver partner (so my benefits meant for 1 person have to be stretched for 2), but I do not have children (let alone disabled children). I’m guessing your wife isn’t able to eat the seitan after all? That sucks. Seitan is chewier than tofu or tempeh but you know your kids the best. I hope you hang in there. You are doing your best and it is appreciated. I’ve read about caregiver burnout before, the suffering the people around us go through is awful. Fuck the system we live in.
I’m not sure we’ve never actually found seitan around to try it. Wholeheartedly agree about the caregiver burnout and the way the system works though. So much “invisible” care work it just expected to be done for free with zero support it’s crazy.
The wildest part about that to me was that Medicare would pay me to care for her… if we weren’t married. But because we are I’m ineligible for that.
Omg yeah, the system does not want disabled people married!!! Once a disabled person marries, their disability income gets cut and chore services gets cut. What a load of bs, both partners need to have an income in this stupid economy just to be able to live and a partner will absolutely burnout without support. It’s the main reason I can’t marry. If I marry, I essentially lose all of my benefits (also how is a limit of $3k in total assets for a married couple fair?!). Disabled people are penalized for having any type of savings or assets like life insurance ffs. Even with chore services, insurance will makeup excuses like some hypothetical person is providing free support and thus they don’t give as many hours. Getting paid is a mess because of the EVV crap to “prevent fraud” aka just more spyware embedded in your phone. I’ve actually heard of people getting legal divorces just to get around this crap. Also people like me who can’t get married but are terrified of being found to be “holding out” on marriage which can cause benefits to be cut completely. I’ve read articles on people having children out of wedlock (not that there is anything wrong with that) simply because of the disability welfare system. IT SUCKS.
So I mean this from a place of curiosity not trying to get you all to change anything, I’m not even vegetarian. Is there a particular reason your wife couldn’t do several smaller meals over the day? Like do their organs not allow something like that anymore or more like it would be ridiculous to carry around a bag of beans to snack on over the course of 4 hours?
I’m going to preface this by saying that I’m going to be adding some addendums/emphasis and providing some additional context for some things about her condition in here. I do not mean any of this to say that I believe that you personally are or plan on discounting her condition. It is meant only for emphasis because the particular bariatric surgery she had, the Duodenal Switch is significantly more involved than most other surgeries. A lot of people end up having to have the surgery partially reversed because they can’t keep up with the vitamin supplementation and end up hospitalized and dying of malnutrition.
The malabsorption means that she already has to have many small meals through the day. Then each of those meals needs to hit certain macros while being under that volume.
So like to give an example. She needs at least 200g of protein in a day while staying as far under 50g of carbs as possible (fiber included) to not be utterly miserable. That’s not “the doctor told me to get this much” they told her to go for 150g. That’s the levels she’s found over the years result in her not being in significant gastrointestinal distress and actually having decent energy levels along with the roughly 50 vitamin supplements she HAS TO TAKE TO NOT DIE OF MALNUTRITION because and I cannot stress this enough the malabsorption means she CANNOT properly absorb most of these vitamins from food. They need to be very specific formulations at specific times of day to keep her levels up. Like 125,000IU+ PER DAY of Vitamin A (This is WILL KILL YOU levels for a normal person BTW) to still be partially night blind from deficiency (yes she has seen a doctor about it to make sure it’s nothing else)
That 1.5 cups of black beans is around 22.5g of protein and 60g of carbs. So that’s 2 entire “meals” of nothing but beans to have a little over 1/10th of the protein she needs in a day and 20% over the entire day’s limit for carbs.
One might think “Why get this surgery then?” if it’s like this. Which is a fair question. For my wife in particular she had a condition called pseudotumor cerebri where she was producing too much cerebrospinal fluid and not getting rid of it fast enough so it was compressing her brain and optic nerve much like a brain tumor (hence why it is called pseudo tumor). She was significantly overweight at the time and had this issue before. It resolved temporarily when she lost weight but due to heavy food insecurity and other trauma when she was younger she struggled to keep the weight off. So she had 2 options: Aggressive weight loss from bariatric surgery, or getting a shunt implanted in her skull to drain the fluid. She chose the bariatric surgery that gave her the best chance of not still needing the shunt, which was the DS. Since having severe OCD she knew for a fact she could keep up with the vitamin supplementation and use managing the vitamins as an adaptive outlet for the OCD.
Why specific formulations and times for vitamins? A couple reasons, one is ease of absorption. Certain formulations have to be basically digested a little first to get properly absorbed which because of the surgery her body just doesn’t properly do. This is basically why she needs the supplements to begin with. Since her body only properly digests part of what she eats she doesn’t actually absorb a bunch of the nutrients from it and needs to supplement the vitamins her body can’t absorb well from food. The second is that certain vitamins interfere with the absorption of others, calcium inhibiting iron absorption for example.
idk the amount of times I’ve tried to explain my wife and kid’s dietary restrictions that mean veganism is basically impossible for us in other places I get a lot of hate.
The kids are autistic and have major taste and texture aversions, which maybe we could work around with the right things. My wife though had a malabsorptive bariatric surgery that means she needs to eat Low carb, High protein, and most importantly Low volume meals. When you need like 1.5 cups of beans to get the same protein as like 3oz of ground beef and only have a 6 ounce stomach volume you kinda have to go with the one that gives you the most protein for the least volume.
I could imagine vegans being upset if you weren’t vegan solely because your wife and kids can’t be (like they are a shield or something, idk). Modern veganism should be about harm reduction. I know someone mentioned beans but I think seitan has more protein per punch (has more than steak according to a random google, *forgot about the carb limit tho, it looks like it wouldn’t go over too much but depends on the source). I don’t have much experience with your family’s conditions. I need a bunch of fiber or else I get severely constipated, I was shocked at how little your wife gets. Sorry you got hate for your wife and kids. It sounds like your wife was (is?) in a bad spot, I hope her recovery gets better.
*edit
The only problem with that is we live on a fixed budget as I don’t work since they all need varying degrees of care around the clock. We live entirely off my wife’s disability and whatever assistance programs we qualify for. I have neither the time, the energy, nor the money to prepare meals for myself entirely separate from their dietary restrictions.
Each kid eats maybe a dozen things themselves, 20 for the oldest, and there’s maybe 6 that overlap between them. By the time I’ve figured out what they’re willing to eat and made it I almost zero desire to even look at food let alone prepare an entirely separate vegan meal with all of that no money I have to purchase vegan ingredients that again likely nobody but me would be able to eat.
(Edit: I should add I’m not completely against the idea of changing my own diet. It’s just that by the time I’m feeding myself I’m so done with the whole thing that my “diet” is whatever I can easily shove in my food hole without fussing too much about it)
That sounds really rough, sorry you are going through this. I am also on disability and welfare and have a caregiver partner (so my benefits meant for 1 person have to be stretched for 2), but I do not have children (let alone disabled children). I’m guessing your wife isn’t able to eat the seitan after all? That sucks. Seitan is chewier than tofu or tempeh but you know your kids the best. I hope you hang in there. You are doing your best and it is appreciated. I’ve read about caregiver burnout before, the suffering the people around us go through is awful. Fuck the system we live in.
I’m not sure we’ve never actually found seitan around to try it. Wholeheartedly agree about the caregiver burnout and the way the system works though. So much “invisible” care work it just expected to be done for free with zero support it’s crazy.
The wildest part about that to me was that Medicare would pay me to care for her… if we weren’t married. But because we are I’m ineligible for that.
Omg yeah, the system does not want disabled people married!!! Once a disabled person marries, their disability income gets cut and chore services gets cut. What a load of bs, both partners need to have an income in this stupid economy just to be able to live and a partner will absolutely burnout without support. It’s the main reason I can’t marry. If I marry, I essentially lose all of my benefits (also how is a limit of $3k in total assets for a married couple fair?!). Disabled people are penalized for having any type of savings or assets like life insurance ffs. Even with chore services, insurance will makeup excuses like some hypothetical person is providing free support and thus they don’t give as many hours. Getting paid is a mess because of the EVV crap to “prevent fraud” aka just more spyware embedded in your phone. I’ve actually heard of people getting legal divorces just to get around this crap. Also people like me who can’t get married but are terrified of being found to be “holding out” on marriage which can cause benefits to be cut completely. I’ve read articles on people having children out of wedlock (not that there is anything wrong with that) simply because of the disability welfare system. IT SUCKS.
So I mean this from a place of curiosity not trying to get you all to change anything, I’m not even vegetarian. Is there a particular reason your wife couldn’t do several smaller meals over the day? Like do their organs not allow something like that anymore or more like it would be ridiculous to carry around a bag of beans to snack on over the course of 4 hours?
I’m going to preface this by saying that I’m going to be adding some addendums/emphasis and providing some additional context for some things about her condition in here. I do not mean any of this to say that I believe that you personally are or plan on discounting her condition. It is meant only for emphasis because the particular bariatric surgery she had, the Duodenal Switch is significantly more involved than most other surgeries. A lot of people end up having to have the surgery partially reversed because they can’t keep up with the vitamin supplementation and end up hospitalized and dying of malnutrition.
The malabsorption means that she already has to have many small meals through the day. Then each of those meals needs to hit certain macros while being under that volume.
So like to give an example. She needs at least 200g of protein in a day while staying as far under 50g of carbs as possible (fiber included) to not be utterly miserable. That’s not “the doctor told me to get this much” they told her to go for 150g. That’s the levels she’s found over the years result in her not being in significant gastrointestinal distress and actually having decent energy levels along with the roughly 50 vitamin supplements she HAS TO TAKE TO NOT DIE OF MALNUTRITION because and I cannot stress this enough the malabsorption means she CANNOT properly absorb most of these vitamins from food. They need to be very specific formulations at specific times of day to keep her levels up. Like 125,000IU+ PER DAY of Vitamin A (This is WILL KILL YOU levels for a normal person BTW) to still be partially night blind from deficiency (yes she has seen a doctor about it to make sure it’s nothing else)
That 1.5 cups of black beans is around 22.5g of protein and 60g of carbs. So that’s 2 entire “meals” of nothing but beans to have a little over 1/10th of the protein she needs in a day and 20% over the entire day’s limit for carbs.
One might think “Why get this surgery then?” if it’s like this. Which is a fair question. For my wife in particular she had a condition called pseudotumor cerebri where she was producing too much cerebrospinal fluid and not getting rid of it fast enough so it was compressing her brain and optic nerve much like a brain tumor (hence why it is called pseudo tumor). She was significantly overweight at the time and had this issue before. It resolved temporarily when she lost weight but due to heavy food insecurity and other trauma when she was younger she struggled to keep the weight off. So she had 2 options: Aggressive weight loss from bariatric surgery, or getting a shunt implanted in her skull to drain the fluid. She chose the bariatric surgery that gave her the best chance of not still needing the shunt, which was the DS. Since having severe OCD she knew for a fact she could keep up with the vitamin supplementation and use managing the vitamins as an adaptive outlet for the OCD.
Why specific formulations and times for vitamins? A couple reasons, one is ease of absorption. Certain formulations have to be basically digested a little first to get properly absorbed which because of the surgery her body just doesn’t properly do. This is basically why she needs the supplements to begin with. Since her body only properly digests part of what she eats she doesn’t actually absorb a bunch of the nutrients from it and needs to supplement the vitamins her body can’t absorb well from food. The second is that certain vitamins interfere with the absorption of others, calcium inhibiting iron absorption for example.