Reddit reviews Hot Damn and Hell Yeah! Recipes for Hungry Banditos/The Dirty South Vegan Cookbook (Vegan Cooking)

> ignorant if you think going vegan is easy for everyone

True, going vegan is not easy for everyone.

> I live in the Caribbean where practically all dishes contain meat

I became vegan in a small town in the US, where practically all the dishes contained meat.

> I’m not throwing away my childhood like that.

My grandparents were racist. Some parts of your childhood are okay to throw away, part of growing up.

>Am I going to ask my mother to make vegetarian pelau? Hell no!

I don't think anyone expects you to ask other people to feed you different food. Personally, I make my own food and have never asked anyone to prepare vegan food for me. That said, some members of my family are supportive and occasionally prepare vegan versions of their food. That is what good families tend to do, support each other.

>Also there are literally no vegan substitutes in any of my local supermarkets and the ones you do find in the “fancy” food stores are too bloody expensive.

They are expensive where I am too. But very few vegans actually eat substitute meats and manufactured products after being vegan for awhile, at least not very often. The foods we actually eat to replace the protein in meat, like beans/rice, hummus/pita, tofu, peanut butter/bread, are actually far cheaper than meat in most circumstances. Even the fad grains like quinoa and chia are often comparable to meat on a calorie/calorie and gram/gram of protein basis, depending on the location.

>Vegan diets are also high maintenance, you have to make so you're getting the right amount of everything

If you want to be a healthy vegan it is high maintenance. But the same is true of any diet. Millions of people die every year from preventable diseases because they don't "get the right amount of everything" when they eat diets loaded with too much salt, saturated fats, refined sugars, not enough fiber, etc.

>might also have to take supplements like B12

A single pill once a week that is extremely cheap. Supplementation is also the source for B12 in a lot of factory farmed animals who are confined much of their lives, so supplementing it directly just cuts out the middle man.

>There are also people that lived way over 100 and they weren’t vegan

There have been people who lived over 100 and smoked everyday. Statistics are like that, it doesn't mean smoking is healthy. That said, eating meat can be relatively healthy if done right. Not for the animal, mind you, just for the human.

>I’m going to have to find products that will give me not just enough but more calories and as I stated we have a lack of those here

It is pretty easy to find calorie dense vegan food, like the aforementioned peanut butter. Most of the depend on the region, but coconut cornbread, chickpea curry, various pastas, can all be quite calorically dense. When I first went vegan I got a copy of Hot Damn and Hell Yeah a cookbook full of Southern US comfort food for vegans.

>So why can’t I eat both.

You can, that is up to you. But a lot of the arguments you've presented for why you ought to continue to eat both are based on misunderstandings that are easily corrected.