Mango & Grape Tomato Salad

When you eat like a nutritarian "salad is the main dish".  I eat salad at least once or twice every day, and I  have to keep coming up with new salad recipes, or I get bored! Here's another healthy, nutritarian-style salad I've been enjoying lately: Mango & Grape Tomato Salad.

The flavors here are bright and sweet, and the recipe is simple. For the dressing, whisk together 1/2 cup mango juice (I used a mango-peach blend with no added sugar, but I bet you could easily put chopped mango into a blender with water and strain to make your own mango juice), 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice, 2 tablespoons minced fresh mint, a pinch of clove and a pinch of coriander.

For the salad, cut a pint of grape tomatoes in half, dice two ripe mangoes (I like Ataulfo mangoes, they're so creamy), slice or dice 1/4 of a small red onion, and toss with the dressing. Serve on a bed of lettuce with black beans and diced avocado.

For my lunch I wrapped my avocado on the side to dice at lunchtime, so it stayed fresh.

Lentil Beet Orange Salad

This was a great salad! I was looking for something fun to do with leftover cooked lentils when I came up with the idea for a Lentil Beet Orange Salad.

I baked whole beets the night before: scrub whole beets without peeling, wrap them in foil, and bake at 400F for about 45 minutes, until easily pierced with a knife. After they cool down the skins slip off easily when rubbed with the back of a paring knife.

In the morning I tossed diced beets, orange segments, and lentils on a bed of lettuce and packed the salad with Orange Sesame Cashew Dressing. The combination of sweet beets, earthy lentils, and bright citrus was amazing!

Food Revolution Virtual Summit

John Robbins was one of the first inspirational figures in my young adult life. His book Diet for a New Americahelped shape me into a young vegetarian and environmental activist, and as I've continued on through my life, his light has continued to shine and point me towards a life of greater compassion and kindness. Most recently, his books Healthy at 100and The New Good Life, have helped me to believe that it is possible to live a life of simplicity, purpose, health, and joy well into your later years.

So I was excited to hear about the free Food Revolution Summit happening this month, where John Robbins will be personally interviewing 21 people who are "leaders in movements for healthy, sustainable, humane and delicious food". The guests include a bunch of names I'm sure you'll recognize if you're part of the vegan/plant-based movement: Dr. Joel Fuhrman (one of my heroes interviewing another one of my heroes, I can't wait!), Dr. T. Colin Campbell, Dr. Neal Barnard, Dr. Dean Ornish, Morgan Spurlock, Gene Baur, Rory Freedman, and more.

From April 28-May 6 there will be three interviews broadcast daily, and you can listen for free. You can get more info on the summit speakers and register at foodrevolution.org.

Here's some more info from their website:

The Summit offers training, inspiration and practical know-how from modern day heroes of health and sustainability. Participants are promised answers to burning questions, tools for dealing with family and peers, and practically useful insights, ideas, motivation and tips, all from the comfort and convenience of your phone and computer.

The summit will include focus on the latest thinking on preventing and reversing heart disease, cancer and diabetes; the truth about GMOs, soy, raw foods, and grass-fed beef; the social, ethical and environmental impact of what you eat; and how to inspire your family to join you in making healthy choices.

I'm going to go register!

Bean Chili with Zucchini

I'm having fun with my new lunch boxes. The insulated stainless steel bowl is topped by a small plate before you put the lid on -- just the perfect size for freshly-made corn tortillas from the Mexican grocery!

I warmed the tortillas and layered them with damp paper towels, then filled the bowls with two hot servings of Bean and Vegetable Chili made with extra zucchini and sprinkled with fresh cilantro.

I brought this lunch to my girlfriend who was reading palms at the psychic fair and we ate our little picnic together. We got lots of ooh and aahs at the cuteness of our lunch boxes and how yummy our healthy lunches looked!

Switching Lunch & Dinner

Sometimes it's a struggle finding time to work, shop, cook, clean, and still make it to the gym and have some time to relax. Planning meals and cooking when I get home has been especially hard; usually I'm starving and tired by the time I make it home and just want dinner to be ready.

So lately I'm trying something new: swapping out lunch and dinner. Instead of the usual big salad, I've been making a pot of soup and cooked veggies on Sundays and packing them for lunch. When I get home I fix my big daily salad for dinner.

So far this new routine is working splendidly! My lunch is warm and filling, which means less temptation to eat all the free goodies in the office kitchen, and my salad doesn't need a lot of prep work when I get home, so it's ready fast.

Today I packed an old favorite, Dr. Fuhrman's Creamy Asparagus Soup, half a baked carnival squash, and a pretty pear. (Look, it still has a leaf on it!)

Strawberry Salad

Last night I invited my friends over for a "Happy Healthy New Year Party", to kick off all our healthy eating resolutions with fresh fruits and veggies!

Here are a few of the yummy dishes I made, starting at the top: Mediterranean Eggplant (from Eat To Live, made without the garbanzo beans) with endive leaves for scooping; blanched green beans with lemon mayonnaise (mix lemon juice, zest, and white pepper with Vegenaise...this one isn't nutritarian but I enjoyed the plain green beans); celery, jicama, and sugar snap peas; and homemade white bean dip with cucumber slices and whole wheat pita bread. Not pictured are a big bowl of roasted carrots and another bowl filled with fresh strawberries and mango slices.

The party was a lot of fun, with everyone contributing other healthy dishes (one friend brought vegan Hoppin' John with black-eyed peas and mustard greens, perfect for the New Year!), and we all looked silly and got sweaty playing Just Dance on the Wii. Proof that people can still have fun and be social while eating healthfully!

This morning I made a beautiful lunch with leftovers, although there hardly were any! One friend brought this amazing roasted red pepper hummus, which I packed with cucumber slices for dipping. I sliced strawberries, apple, endive, romaine, and baby spinach for today's salad and topped with pecans and pomegranate balsamic vinegar.

Pineapple Cranberry Salad

Here's a great Pineapple Cranberry Sauce recipe someone shared at Dr. Fuhrman's Member Support Center: cook 1 package of cranberries with 1 can of crushed pineapple until the berries pop. Stir in 2 tablespoons agave, maple syrup, or date sugar (to taste, we liked it a bit tart), 1/4 teaspoon almond extract, and some chopped pecans.

We enjoyed this as a side dish at Thanksgiving, but I love it even more as a salad topping, mixed into a salad with chopped apple and pecans. I packed us whole apples to slice into the salad at lunchtime, so they don't turn brown.

The gel-cool bentos are filled with Fennel Cucumber Salad from my first book, garnished with a kalamata olive. (BTW, the side dishes fit perfectly in the top compartments of our To-Go Ware containers, even with the lids on, but I've ordered large stainless steel sidekicks for the future, because I prefer them to plastic.)

P.S. This picture sucks! You can't even see the cute little smiley faces on the apple picks holding the olives. Oh well, I was running out the door this morning and took it with my iphone. Bad shmoo!

Mirror Image Acorn Squash Supreme

Hi! Long time no post! A lot of changes have been going on in my life, not the least of which is that I now aspire to the label "nutritarian" rather than vegan. That transition has been happening for a long time, as anyone who's followed me in the past or spoken to me personally probably knows.

For example, I would no longer pack Oreos or potato chips in a lunch box just because they contain no animal products. Vegan does not automatically equal healthy. I would also not turn down something that contained a modest amount of an animal product if it were the healthiest choice available. I don't believe that animal products are unhealthy in the amounts that would have been present in humankind's natural diet before SAD came along. Rather I think of modern processed foods as the enemy: white flour, white sugar, oil, etc.

I wanted to go on record with this because I've kept pretty quiet about it out of fear, and I'm tired of living in fear of being who I am openly and honestly, 100%. I fully support and admire Voracious, the once-vegan blogger who shared in this now-infamous post about the health problems she experienced on a strict vegan diet. That took a lot of courage. I can relate, and I think that when being vegan becomes more important than listening to your body, or when it becomes a "vegangelical" fundamentalism that leads to actual death threats against those who don't agree with you, it has become something unhelpful, unkind, and unworthy of us.

That doesn't mean that I will be changing the fact that all the lunches I post here contain no animal products. I mean, I did write two vegan cookbooks and stand behind the idea that most of our meals should be entirely plant-based for optimal health.

And speaking of "coming out", let me also add that my divorce has been final for almost a year and I'm now with a beautiful woman that I love very much! For the first time, I'm in a relationship with someone who not only supports and encourages me, but also likes the same foods that I do and has transitioned to a mostly-nutritarian diet alongside me. It's amazing to be with someone who doesn't make fun of my food or hightail it to McDonald's when she sees what's on the table. Instead, she's loved all the dishes I've made so far and is even surprised that some of her long-standing health problems have gone away with this new way of eating.


We have a deal that she makes breakfast for us, usually a green smoothie or maybe oatmeal with fresh fruit, and I pack lunch. Today I packed us each some Acorn Squash Supreme from Eat To Live and big fresh salads with salsa for dressing and half an avocado each. I added a pear for a snack or dessert.


I even used a pear cozy!

My Modified Eat To Live

Salad, salad, salad, is that all you ever eat for lunch? Yep, pretty much. But gosh darn, I like it!

Here's the salad-of-the-day in my two-tier To-Go Ware tiffin. I'm so happy that To-Go Ware has added little Sidekick containers to their line. The lids are stainless steel (no more crying over cracked plastic!) and they fit snug; I haven't had any leak problems. I used three today to hold black beans, picante sauce, and half an avocado to top my salad with at lunchtime. I love the way they all fit in the tiffin.

Shmoo has now proclaimed that he "only eats pears" and has stopped eating all other fruit. ("Who are you and what have you done with my son?") I tried to tempt him with some of this fresh pineapple, but ended up eating it all myself. I packed it in the smaller top container from the three-tier tiffin -- it can be packed and used alone for small snacks. And look at the pretty food picks I found to eat it with!

I've been feeling so good lately! I've been improving my eating style and getting back on track with Eat To Live, with the help of my wellness coach, a personal trainer (basically I need people telling me what to do at all times or I wind up face first in a vat of pudding), the support of my friends, and a lot of hard work.

Right now my slightly-modified Eat To Live food plan goes as follows:

• A green smoothie for breakfast.
  
  
• A small snack if necessary (usually a piece of fruit).
  
  
• A big salad with different toppings, some steamed vegetables, and fresh fruit for lunch.
  
  
• A snack if necessary (usually fruit and an ounce of nuts, or a slice of sprouted wheat bread with almond butter).
  
  
• A big bowl of soup or stew, cooked vegetables, or a stir-fry for dinner.
  
  
• beans are in there at least once a day, at lunch, dinner, or both.

What have I modified? Dr. Fuhrman advises people not to snack, but I find I get too hungry and fall off the wagon if I don't get those snacks. So I snack. I also use a bit of olive oil at times, and I sprinkle salt on something if it means the difference between enjoying it or hating it and feeling sorry for myself.

Apologies for all you non-ETLers out there who might find this post terribly boring. Hopefully I'll find someone else to pack a lunch for soon! Preferably someone who hasn't entered the terrible tweens....

Acne

It must be true. Shmoo must really be hitting his preteens, because now he has zits. Last night he pointed to the big red blotches on his chin and asked me, "What is this?" My little baby!! Next thing you know he'll be going on dates and asking to borrow the car...

I've dealt with acne my entire adult life (they all told me I'd grow out of it, the liars). And although acne has been linked to milk and dairy products in several studies, going vegan did not clear up my skin at all.

Of course, although it didn't contain dairy, my early vegan diet did include daily servings of things like soda, chips, candy, and french fries.

When I learned about nutrient-density and started following Eat To Live, things changed. I cleared sugar, white flour, and oil out of my diet and added more fruits and vegetables, and within two to three weeks my acne had disappeared. At first I didn't know what to make of it. Each morning I would stare intently into the bathroom mirror, ready to do battle with my face, and would find that I had nothing to fight. I would stand back and gape at myself. No zits!

Of course, I'll always have acne scars and pores you can see across the room (along with wrinkles now, how lovely), but for the first time in my adult life I have clear skin. The nasty bumps return and flare up all along my chin and jawline within two to three weeks of bringing sweets back into my diet. (I wish I could say one experience of this was enough to keep me on the wagon forever, but I must admit I've fallen off a few times now, always with the same results.)

Then last week I discovered that I'm not alone. Here's the passage I read in Anticancer:

"When [Loren Cordain, PhD] was told that certain population groups whose way of life is very different from ours had no experience of acne (which is caused by an inflammation of the epidermis, among other mechanisms), he wanted to find out how this could occur...Cordain accompanied a team of dermatologists to examine the skin of 1,200 adolescents cut off from the rest of the world in the Kitavan Islands of New Guinea, and 130 Ache Indians living in isolation in Paraguay. In these two groups they found no trace whatsoever of acne. In their article in Archives of Dermatology, the researchers attributed their amazing discovery to the adolescents' nutrition. The diets of these contemporary sheltered groups resemble those of our distant ancestors: no refined sugar or white flour, thus no peaks of insulin or IGF in the blood.

"In Australia, researchers convinced Western adolescents to try a diet restricting sugar and white flour for three months. In a few weeks, their insulin and IGF levels diminished. So did their acne."

Think this information will be enough to convince shmoo to go sugar-free? I doubt it. That monkey just don't let go. But maybe when he gets interested in girls...

Shmoo Review: Dr. Fuhrman's Eat for Health

Hey, Dr. Fuhrman's Disease-Proof Blog has a new look beginning this week. I was asked to be a guest blogger this week; you can visit and read an edited version of my Summer Veg Out post on the wonders of smoothies.

Speaking of Dr. Fuhrman, he also recently produced a new set of books and a DVD. As most of you long-time readers know I'm a huge fan of Dr. Fuhrman, so I couldn't wait to pick up a copy to review.

First, I read through his new two-volume set Eat For Health.If you've read the previous books Eat To Liveor Disease-Proof Your Child,Eat for Health doesn't offer too much in the way of new information. The basics are all the same: lose weight and live longer by making nutrient-dense foods the foundation of your diet, eliminating salt, exercising, obtaining healthy fat from nuts instead of oils, etc.

What is new is the slower step-by-step transition to nutrient-dense eating, which may make it easier for people who are just getting started, and the attention paid to emotional issues that may stand in the way of healthier eating. As an emotional eater myself, I appreciated the acknowledgment that sometimes healthy eating is easier said than done, especially when issues of addiction and self-worth are standing in your way.

Book One addresses all the basics while Book Two is made up of the exciting let's-get-to-it stuff: menu plans for each phase in the transition to healthier eating, dozens of new recipes, and information on how to shop.

Next, I was absolutely delighted with the new DVD Secrets to Healthy Cooking.Dr. Fuhrman and his wife Lisa demonstrate how to make the staple dishes central to his eating style: smoothies, salads and nut-based dressings, vegetable soups (including my favorite), a stir-fry, and sorbet. The production quality is excellent, the demonstrations are fun to watch, and best of all, each recipe section concludes with a recipe template showing you how to make up your own recipes using his model. Brilliant!

Eat To Live Bundle

FYI for those of you who are interested in learning more about Eat To Live, I am selling an Eat To Live Bundle on ebay.

The set includes both of Dr. Fuhrman's DVDs, the 5 CD audio book "Disease-Proof Your Child", and an unused container of Dr. Fuhrman's Cocoa Powder (I bought it, then thought better of adding cocoa powder back to my diet -- too tempting!).

Even after you've sat down and watched them once, these DVDs are great for putting on in the background for snippets of encouragement and inspiration as you putter around during the day. The CDs are especially great for listening to in the car with the kids. After they hear these lessons on the fabulous disease-fighting properties of a healthy, plant-based diet, you might find your kids becoming more enthusiastic about eating their vegetables!

Mediterranean Eggplant and Beans

Many people have emailed me asking how they should handle social events now that they are vegan. What do you do when your business meeting lunch is going to be catered? When Aunt Fran invites you to dinner? When your Bible study group is meeting over donuts and pastries?

Bring food. Always bring food. If they tell you you don't need to, bring food anyway. Unless you are absolutely positive about where you're going and what you will have there eat, bring food. Make a dish to share if it is appropriate; if not, bring a fun, well-balanced meal just for yourself.

Because if you don't bring food (as I learned once again last week), you may end up with nothing to eat while all around you are enjoying a feast. This sends the wrong message about veganism to yourself and to everyone else. You may end up feeling hungry and sorry for yourself; your choice may start to feel lonely or isolating. Even worse, other people may look at you and decide that vegans are sad-looking people who eat nothing but carrot sticks.

But bring along a vibrant, fabulous lunch or dish to share and you show yourself and them how fabulous vegan dining can be!

Heeding my own advice, here's a little lunch I packed myself for a recent gathering. In the larger container is a green salad topped with kiwi fruit, almond slices, and strawberry balsamic vinegar (from Trader Joe's).

The smaller container holds a trio of delightful dishes. First I prepared Green Beans & Carrots in a Tarragon Viniagrette from Vegan Lunch Box. By the way, if you're a health-conscious veghead like me, it's easy to cut back on the fat in this recipe; I used just a small drizzle of olive oil as opposed to 2 tablespoons. I also left out the salt and no one was the wiser; Shmoo helped finish the rest of these off with gusto.

Across the happy pink divider is another salad: Cabbage, Apple, and Raisin Slaw from The Vegetarian Family Cookbook by Nava Atlas. I always hated slaw until I tried this one filled with tart apples and sweet raisins; I could eat the entire batch! But I resisted the urge and instead brought the rest to share.

Next to the salads is a ramekin of Mediterranean Eggplant and Beans from Eat To Live. Creamy eggplant and chickpeas taste luscious together with onions and red bell pepper (gee, it's fun to feature foods shmoo would never touch!) I packed this dish in a microwave-safe container in case I wanted to warm it up.

Verdict: It feels nice to be well-fed and taken care of, even when you're the one taking care of yourself! 5 stars.

Road Food

We're heading out for a little summer vacation today, and I'm too excited to sleep! So here I am at 4am preparing a few healthy snacks to take along.

I've been working on creating healthy bars and cookies that shmoo will eat but that are also Eat To Live-friendly for me, meaning no white flour, sugar, oil, or salt.

Here are our two favorites so far: Fruit & Nut Bars made with spelt, oats, raisins, apricots, and walnuts, and Banana Oatmeal Cookies, made with oats, bananas, sunflower seeds, and dates.

We don't like to eat out more than once a day when we're on vacation (too many other things to see and do), so I'll be packing a big cooler with these cookies & bars, plus tons of fresh fruit, veggie sticks, hummus, sandwiches, crackers, juices, and a jar of almond butter.

We're off! I'll probably fall asleep as soon as we hit the road....

An Interview with Dr. Joel Fuhrman

I had the honor recently of speaking via email with Dr. Joel Fuhrman, author of several books on plant-based nutrition, including Eat To Live and Disease-Proof Your Child, and host of the Disease-Proof Blog. Dr. Fuhrman emphasizes eating a healthy, vegan-friendly diet rich in nutrient-dense plant foods like vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts, and seeds. His work has been the inspiration behind my recent series of picnic posts, and following his nutrient-dense plan has helped me kick sugar addiction for the first time in my entire life.

Dr. Fuhrman, what advice would you give the vegan community? In what ways do most vegans fall short of nutritional excellence, and how can we improve?

Dr. Fuhrman: Most vegans fall short in that they follow the same suboptimal and outmoded nutritional recommendations as omnivores, utilizing grains or white potatoes as the major source of calories in the diet and wind up eating a diet low in high phytochemical foods such as green vegetables and raw nuts and seeds. They do not understand that 90 calories from a pretzel or white potato does not have the nutrient richness of 90 calories from a kiwi or red kidney beans. Without the knowledge of nutrient density they are eating in the dark and not optimizing their longevity.

The second serious error of the vegan community is the heavy use of fake meat and cheese analogues usually made from soy and almost always high in salt. Besides the lack of nutrients and high levels of acrylamides in these highly processed foods, with continuation of the high salt diet hemorrhagic strokes are even more likely in a vegan than in a person on a heart-disease promoting diet rich in animal products. Consuming salted foods should not be taken lightly; it is a killer.

The third error common in the vegan community is the lack of concern for individual differences which may heighten nutritional requirements in some individuals, especially the elderly, which make it advisable to supplement when appropriate with Vitamin D, B12, Taurine, DHA, or iodine, for example, to assure that no one develops a medical condition as a result of sub-optimal nutritional intake. To better assure nutritional completeness I recommend to my patients my vegan multi Gentle Care Formula and my vegan DHA Purity, and then if not getting regular sunshine to also add a Vitamin D supplement. Many vegans think supplementing with B12 is enough to guarantee nutritional excellence for most people. Long-term nutritional deficiencies are not harmless. Omnivores develop deficiencies, too, and blood tests can be used to ascertain if deficiencies exist.

Many of my readers pack lunches for their children every day. What advice would you give parents on packing a healthy lunch?

Dr. Fuhrman:Make a great tasting nut-based salad dressing or sauce and then you can use that to stuff veggies or salad into a whole wheat pita. And remember kids who eat more fruit have dramatically lower cancer rates as adults, so always pack a few fresh fruits with lunch.

How should parents respond to the vast amounts of junk food offered to our kids when they go to school, parties, etc.? It seems my son gets offered cake, candy, and soda almost every place we go!

Dr. Fuhrman:There has to be time invested to discussing nutrition in the home. This is a serious matter. In my book, Disease-Proof Your Child, I review the science that reveals adult cancers are predominantly caused by what we ate in our childhood. When this information is passed along to our children, they can grasp the concept that what they choose to put in their mouth dictates their future wellness. Even young children can learn it is dangerous to eat these foods and why. Junk food is dangerous, we should fight it as strongly as we fight drug abuse and smoking. Maybe we should put tee shirts on our kids that say:

No Thank You to Drugs

No Thank You to Smoking

No Thank You to Junk Food

We value our future health!

Thank you, Dr. Fuhrman!

Just Eatin' in the Rain

As promised, I'm back with the first installment of our summer picnics! We're having a great, if somewhat damp, summer so far. Despite the rain, I decided to pack us up a picnic lunch this week and take it to the park. I used my spiffy new stainless steel food carrier to pack enough for the both of us.

For the past few weeks I've been following Dr. Fuhrman's nutrient dense "Eat To Live" program. For the picnic, I wanted to find a lunch that was both Fuhrman- and shmoo-friendly so we could share. The large food jar holds Creamy Asparagus Soup, while the top portion of the tiffin holds a mixed fruit salad (pineapple, banana, apple, and fresh local cherries), and the larger bottom portion holds a giant tossed salad (romaine, spinach, cabbage, garbanzos, carrot, raisins, and sunflower seeds) with, of course, some Asian Miracle Dressing for shmoo (yes, the little container has a lid, too).

And here it is all packed up and ready to go. I love the way everything fits together with a nifty handle and a stainless steel plate in the middle. I tucked everything in a picnic basket with water, napkins, utensils, and an umbrella.

Verdict: Even though the rain cancelled our planned play date, we still had such a good time! We visited the art gallery next to the park, played tennis in the rain, and walked by the river. I set up lunch in the gazebo next to the river. "Sometimes I like spending time with just you," shmoo said.

"Yes, it's nice sometimes," I replied.

"Yep, especially when there's lunch in a gazebo!" he said.

I served shmoo's salad on the plate with the dressing and most of the raisins. Next time I'll pack a sugar-free dressing for me, too. We both took turns eating the fruit and soup, and even with two of us it was more food than we could eat! Shmoo isn't used to salt-free dining, and wished the soup had salt, although I'm surprised to find that I'm not missing salt at all. 4 Fuhrman-Friendly stars.

Pixie-Update

First I want to thank everyone out there for not ripping me to pieces for showcasing a product that turned out not to be vegan -- I feel so bad! As someone pointed out, Dr. Fuhrman's Pixie-Vites contain the variety of vitamin D that comes from sheep's wool. Although I always try to be careful and read labels, I completely failed to notice this one.

I contacted Dr. Fuhrman right away and asked about the Pixie-Vites. You can visit the Disease Proof blog to read his response.

Here's a quote:

The reason why the Vitamin D in Pixie Vites is not vegan and made from wool (please note it is not made by killing animals) is because that form of D is twice as absorbable as the vegan type and many kids do not eat a whole Pixie Vite and only take a small portion of one. I did not want to short change some kid by not supplying them with adequate D, so I let that one non-vegan ingredient slip by (since it is made from a by product of wool manufacturing).

Blackberries & Pixie Vites

Today was a noon release day leading into SPRING BREAK -- hooray, an entire week off to play! Don't worry, though, I plan on posting a lil' bit of this-n-that next week to tide us over.
For school snacktime today shmoo chose some fresh blackberries (I covered them with a bit of crumpled parchment paper to keep them from knocking about). He also wanted to take one of his new Dr. Fuhrman's Pixie-Vites to school, basically to show off. They arrived Monday, and shmoo is quite enamored! He stirs them into his juice (which he turns into some kind of elaborate science experiment role-playing game) or eats them straight à la Pixy Stix.
I love Dr. Fuhrman's vitamins (no, I'm not being paid). They're designed for people eating a healthy, plant-rich diet, with no mega-doses of anything, and no isolated vitamin A or beta carotene.
Personally, I think a good supplement can help fill in gaps even in the healthiest diet. One interesting study showed that vegan diets tended to be deficient in calcium, iodine and vitamin B12. The same study showed meat-eating diets tended to be deficient in calcium, iodine, vitamin C, vitamin E, fiber, folate, and magnesium. So either way, it couldn't hurt!