Your recommendations for daily food intake add up a LOT of food! I feel like I would be eating all day just to meet these requirements. I’ve been a vegetarian for a year and have been trying to go vegan for the past 10 months. Sometimes I eat a lot in one day and other days I just snack and barely eat anything. I don’t think I could follow a strict plan. I’m worried that I can’t eat enough food to follow a healthy vegan diet.

You don’t need to follow a strict plan every single day. Most of us have days when we don’t eat very well and don’t meet nutrient needs. The goal is to eat enough healthful food on most days. You can do this through snacking or regular sit-down meals. And I think that once you get used to eating the foods that make up a healthful vegan diet, you’ll find that it’s not very difficult, or constricting. It becomes sort of second nature to make sure you are including grains and legumes in your meals and to include plenty of fruits and vegetables in meals and snacks. Keep in mind that no matter what kind of diet you eat–omnivore, lacto-ovo vegetarian, or vegan–it does require some degree of planning to be sure you are meeting nutrient needs.

It doesn’t take as much food as you might think to meet nutrient needs on a vegan diet. These are the bare minimum amounts of foods that vegans should eat every day:

6 servings of grains (Bread, rice, cereal, or any food made from a grain. Emphasize whole grains. A serving is just one-half cup of cooked grain or a slice of bread.)

5 servings of legumes (This includes beans, soyfoods, and nuts or seeds. A serving is one-half cup of cooked beans, 1 cup of soymilk, or 2 tablespoons of nuts or nut butters.)

8 servings of fruits and vegetables (A serving is one-half cup of cooked fruit or veggie, 1 cup raw, or one small piece of raw fruit.)

2-3 servings of vegetable fats (A serving is just 1 teaspoon of oil or soft margarine.)

Within these food choices, be sure to include the following:

• A good source of vitamin B12 or a B12 supplement
• A good source of vitamin D or a supplement
• Enough servings of calcium-rich foods to provide 1000 mg per day–or, if you don’t get quite that much, make up the difference using supplements.

Depending on your food choices, a menu based on these guidelines will provide between 1500 and 2000 calories. Most adults, particularly young adults and people who are doing adequate exercise, will need at least 1500 calories. But many people need more than 2000 calories so they will need to eat more food than what I’ve outlined above.

Keep in mind that a "serving" is a specific amount of food. For example, a serving of cooked grain is one-half cup. So if you eat a cup of rice for dinner, that counts as two servings.

Here are a couple of sample menus that follow these guidelines. You’ll see that this really isn’t that much food. Although you don’t need to actually measure your food on a regular basis, it might be interesting to do so for a few days just to get a feeling for serving sizes which are often much smaller than what people think.

Menu 1
Breakfast:

Half cup oatmeal with teaspoon flaxseed oil mixed in

1 cup fortified soymilk

Half cup strawberries

Midmorning snack:

1 slice whole wheat toast with 2 tablespoons almond butter

Half cup calcium fortified orange juice

Lunch:

Hummus sandwich in whole wheat bread with sliced tomatoes

1 kiwifruit

Carrot sticks

Afternoon snack:

Quarter cup soynuts

Half cup grapes

Dinner:

1 cup rice

Half cup baked beans

1 cup steamed kale

1 tossed salad with oil and vinegar dressing

Menu 2

Breakfast:

1 bran muffin

Half cup calcium-fortified apple juice

1 banana

Midmorning snack:

1 slice whole wheat bread with 2 tablespoons peanut butter

Lunch:

1 cup instant lentil soup

Salad with _ cup soynuts and dressing

Slice of Italian bread

2 apricots

Afternoon snack:

1 cup fortified soymilk

1 slice cinnamon toast with soft margarine

Half cup grapes

Dinner:

1 cup pasta

1 cup spaghetti sauce with sliced vegetarian sausage

1 cup braised spinach