When adopting an organic plant-based diet, people fear the expense. But nutrient-rich, disease-preventing, obesity-fighting plant foods will save you money on medical bills in the long run (and make you feel better right away).

Certainly, organic produce is more expensive than the standard type because it's in short supply, more labor intensive, and produced in much smaller volume.

Besides produce, other nutrient-rich plant foods can come at daunting costs. Superfood spirulina sounds like a great idea, until you realize it costs $20 for a small bottle. Maca, raw cacao, hemp protein, and raw vegan convenience foods like kale chips come with price tags that might make any newbie want to run to the nearest McDonald's.

But don't do that! You don't need all that fancy stuff.. Here are ten highly nutritious plant-based foods that come at crazy low prices.
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It's easy to miss La Vie en Raw Cafe while driving the busy strip of Calle Ocho near Coral Gables where the vegan restaurant has been operating for the past two and a half years. I for one drove by the narrow restaurant three times before spotting both the sign in the window and the alley next to it which leads to an ample and free parking lot for customers.

Once I figured it all out, I made my way to the front door, pausing to admire the artistic poster in the window, featuring a woman juggling a mushroom, a carrot, a piece of broccoli, and other raw veggies.

Inside, owner Sabina Torrieri greeted me with a mild Italian accent and notable caution. But once assured her I was not trying to wrangle any money out of her for advertising, she smiled a bit. Still, she said she wouldn't be able to talk much because of the "busy" lunch hour. I looked around, noting the eatery's single other customer, and said I understood.
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Last week, I reviewed Vegan Is Love, a children's book that explains the reasons behind the choice to go vegan. It contains a page dedicated to the health aspect of the lifestyle, but most of the book is devoted to outlining the ethics of veganism -- how animals are treated on the dairy farm, at the circus, and in the testing lab. One read-through of the beautiful book would convince most people that a vegan diet might be appealing to many sensitive, animal-loving children. That's probably why the book caused such a fearful uproar in some circles. But it still leaves one question unanswered: Is a vegan diet a healthful option for kids?

I went to Lisa Dorfman, board certified sports dietitian, registered dietitian, licensed mental health counselor, director of the Masters in Nutrition for Health & Human Performance Program in the Department of Kinesiology & Sport Sciences at University of Miami, and author of four books on nutrition including the The Vegetarian Sports Nutrition Guide. In addition to these accomplishments, she's been a vegetarian since the age of 15, run 34 marathons, been a professional triathlete, and had three healthy pregnancies. So I figured she was a relatively qualified person to consult on the matter. She outlined three main points of what people want to keep in mind when raising vegan kids.
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During lunchtime at Choices Vegan Cafe off Brickell on Saturday, five workers were in constant motion behind the counter and there was literally not a seat. It was a madhouse. Like a comedy routine, families and small groups walked in the front door, one after another, where their conversation would abruptly stop, they'd blink a few times and say, "Oh my God..." Meanwhile, guests who came for the vegan pancakes or tofu and pesto sandwiches didn't seem to be in any hurry to leave. They ordered slices of vegan cakes and pies to top off their brunches.

The wonderful thing is, it was pretty clear that many patrons were not initiated health foodies. One guest, while waiting with his wife and small children for a table, grabbed a coconut-flavored kombucha from below the front counter. He took a sip and said, "Pshah! This has gone off!" holding the open drink out for his wife, and even me, a stranger, to sniff. I laughed and told him that kombucha is by definition fermented, or in other words, "purposely off;" it's the probiotic bacteria inside it that make it good for your guts. He blushed and his whole group had a chuckle about his confusion.
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The big news on the vegan scene is that Deuce Lutui, the Seattle Seahawks' new guard, has gone (mostly) vegan to get his weight in check (he's dropped 60 pounds since June 2010) and improve his performance on the field. This is just more proof that anyone can benefit from embracing a vegan diet, but as evidenced by the controversy surrounding the recent launch of a children's book on the subject, some people think that "anyone" should exclude kids.

I responded to one critique of Vegan Is Love: Having Heart and Taking Action, by writer/illustrator Ruby Roth, from an LA Times writer a few weeks ago, which spurred Roth to send me a copy of the much talked-about book.

I slowly turned the pages this morning. The beautifully illustrated book begins with an uplifting introduction:

"How wonderful that at this very moment, every person, big and small, has the power to create a better world! We don't have to wait to grow older, for laws to change, or for presidents to be elected. We can begin right now."

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I ran into an optometrist we'll call "Richard" at Ultra and then a month later at Arkadia. Thanks to his unrelenting persistence, I agreed to go out with him. But I knew we might have some issues when he told me he was working on eating healthier by consistently ordering the chicken sandwich with the whole-wheat bun at the McDonald's drive-thru.

He knew I was pretty seriously into veganism, but I don't think he really understood it. He would try to impress me by pulling on white linen pants and attending moonlit yoga sessions -- stuff so hippie-dippy that I might not even do it -- and then telling me all about it the next day. I took him to a juice party, and he spiked all his organic green juices with Grey Goose. He invited me over for dinner and proceeded to microwave bags of frozen peas and carrots and then open a can of Dole pineapple for dessert.

I thought all of this was adorable, but it was clear he was trying really hard to be something he was not -- and not doing it very well, either. Not surprisingly, he broke down in tears one day (OK, the tears were surprising) and told me he felt he was "living a lie." That was pretty much the end of that relationship.
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Until I found out about the Dirty Dozen and Clean 15 lists, shopping for produce seemed like a game of Let's Make a Deal. I loaded my cart with a mixture of organic and conventional produce, trying to stick to a reasonable food budget, but with no system or info to help me choose which organic foods to splurge on and which conventional ones to settle for. For all I knew, I could have been buying the most toxic conventional produce (and sometimes I was) and forking over three times as much for organic produce whose nutritional and "pesticidal" portrait wasn't too far off its conventional brother's.

While reading Victoria Moran's Main Street Vegan, I came across these lists from the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit whose mission is "to use the power of public information to protect public health and the environment." They tell consumers which conventional fruits and vegetables are most toxic and which are virtually pesticide-free. The group bases its recommendations on analysis of 51,000 tests for pesticides in produce as conducted by the USDA and FDA from 2000 to 2009. Foods were usually tested after they were rinsed or peeled.

Here's the Dirty Dozen list -- the most pesticide-laden conventional produce you can buy. Many of these items have thin leaves or skins that make it easy for them to absorb more toxins. You should buy these fruits and vegetables organic whenever possible to minimize toxicity in your diet:
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Since I recently hit the dating scene again, the difficulties the vegan diet can present when navigating eligible singles has been at the forefront of my mind. Sometimes I think it's no big deal. And then I read something like this, a question excerpted from the New York Post's "Ask Ashley" dating column:

"I'm considering going on a date with this guy, but he's -- wait for it -- vegan. Am I total bitch for thinking vegan guys are lame?"

Anonymous

Yes, vegans make up a small percentage of the population. But I thought vegan culture was so much at the forefront of general pop culture and fitness culture that attitudes like that one were a thing of the past. Worse yet, here's the beginning of Ashley's meatheaded answer:

"Hmm. I don't think I could trust a man who doesn't eat red meat! I mean, for men, isn't it their animalistic nature to crave red meat? I don't know. I wouldn't be able to do it, either. Especially if you're a carnivore yourself."

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This past weekend, the LA Times published an editorial suggesting pregnant women who adhere to a vegan diet and subsequently raise vegan children are irresponsible. The writer, Alexandra Le Tellier, was responding to the release of Vegan Is Love, a new children's book that explains and advocates a vegan diet. Le Tellier was clearly looking for evidence to support her own half-baked belief that veganism can't be good for kids. Shamefully, some of the sources she came up with were pathetic, and she cited the decent ones incompletely.

First, she quotes another LA Times article that explains a study by Swedish researchers which concluded that early humans' meat consumption helped them reproduce faster than they could have if they'd adhered to a strictly plant-based diet. What Le Tellier forgot to mention is that Elia Psouni, one of the Lund University researchers, was careful to note that the results of the study say nothing about what humans today should or should not eat.

Of course they don't! I don't think I need to explain to anyone how different our world and available nutritional choices -- plant and otherwise -- are from what would have been available to our cave-dwelling ancestors. Read on as I continue to rip this nutritionally and ethically ignorant editorial apart.
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When I first read about Victoria Moran's Main Street Vegan, I thought the book was beneath me. After all, it's primarily a guidebook for aspiring vegans, and I've been on the vegan wagon for a few years now.

In reading it, though, I learned some powerful new things about the ethics of veganism (and here I thought I already knew everything I didn't want to know about slaughterhouses!), some addictive food factors that destroy aspiring vegans' best efforts, tips on how to save money at the grocery store, good vegan etiquette, and a bunch of cool recipes (which I swear I'll start using tomorrow).

Beyond all that, I appreciated Moran's personal and relatable storytelling, through which she shared her own non-linear journey to and in veganism: breaking out of disordered eating patterns, overcoming numerous "sea-lapses" (reverting to eating fish), getting married vegan, and raising a vegan kid.

Reading the first pages of the book, I'll admit, I started to feel a little superior. I'm not just an "ethical vegan," but a "health vegan" as well (she explains the difference in the book), so I was put off by the fact that the first recipe she included (there's one at the end of each chapter -- 40 in total) was for chocolate cake and made use of white flour, sugar and oil.
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