The Vegetarian & Vegan Thread

[Elegance.Is.Refusal.]

I'm going to have all the regular unhealthy christmas stuff. Stove top stuffing, (no meat in it, and not cooked inside a turkey) some green beans, some salad, some mashed potatoes! ...Chocolates!

ah the chocolates if forgot about them i've been sneaking the coins off the christmas tree

 

[thebeautybrains]

Do bear in mind that a lot of these chemicals aren't 'naturally' found in the planet. They're artifical lab chemicals, created by men.

is everything created by man just naturally bad? That would mean all cosmetics are bad because none of them are found in nature. This can't be true. I don't want to live feeling guilty about everything. People are nature and natural just like everything else. People are good.

 

[chanelnumber5]

Even vegetarianism is a bit extreme

Just curious, why do you think its extreme? I believe it is perfectly rational and healthy.

since it is the christmas season and alot of people will be having christmas dinner around the table with all the family.

my question is do you just go without the meat part of the meal? or what do you have as alternative?

i usually just get a couple of quorn sausages thrown in for good measure so i dont have to eat all brussel sprouts

My mom and grandmother (who come down for Christmas most years) are also vegetarian, so we normally have something like stuffed mushrooms for starters if the meat eaters are having a starter, and then we have some sort of homemade nut roast/bake, my moms considering doing a cashew one this year, but you can buy them in the shops. With it we usually have veggie gravy or mushroom sauce (Yes we love our mushrooms at my house!), various veggies, roasties or mash and roast parsnips. Then of course some delicous puddings normally for my grandmother and father there is a mini suitable for vegetarians xmas pud with white sauce and then something like pavolova or gateau for the rest of us. Ooooo yes and in the days running up to Christmas there is excess consumption of chocolate decorations and coins, candy canes off the tree, mince pies and chocolate log (I'm hungry thinking about all of this food!) One thing to watch though is mince pies, they often have lard in the pastry . If you want any recipes I can find some for you
Random question, but at Christmas if you have lots of relatives, do you ever get the "funny" vegetarian remarks e.g. "Dont carrots have feelings too??"

 

[lcm]

i have a question for those of you vegetarians....

1. what was your reason for no longer wanting to eat meat- whether it was family influenced, personal reasons..health reasons etc.

also,

2. exactly how do you substitute and with what, the essentials that come with eating meat. thing such as protein and iron.

I know that there are vitamins and shakes, but in reality- do you think that its really healthier if you may not be getting the right amount of nutrients your body really needs?

**i am not against vegetarians- ive just always wondered these things. I animals, and the truth is i feel awful for the way they are treated on the farms before the meat gets to our supermarkets, but I have never tried to stop eating meat- pretty much because i dont believe id get enough of the nutrients i needed from other things ie vitamins.

 

[chanelnumber5]

i have a question for those of you vegetarians....

1. what was your reason for no longer wanting to eat meat- whether it was family influenced, personal reasons..health reasons etc.

also,

2. exactly how do you substitute and with what, the essentials that come with eating meat. thing such as protein and iron.

I know that there are vitamins and shakes, but in reality- do you think that its really healthier if you may not be getting the right amount of nutrients your body really needs?

1. I honestly cant remember why I stopped eating meat, I was 7 at the time so I cant really remember. To be quite honest I dont even like animals that much, but now my moral reasoning is that I believe that there is so much uneccessary suffering of animals in the meat industry when we can live perfectly happily with out eating meat. Also, there is the enivormental impact of the meat industry which I am opposed to.

2. I substitute meat with quorn, tofu, lentils, chick peas, different kinds of beans and green veggies such a broccoli which is super nutritious and spinach for its high iron content. I do think its healthier even if there is a risk that I could be low on a few nutrients , but at the end of the day the benefits outway the negatives. It is like with a ominivorous (sp?) diet, you wont get the right nutrients if you dont eat a balanced diet.

 

[Elegance.Is.Refusal.]

My mom and grandmother (who come down for Christmas most years) are also vegetarian, so we normally have something like stuffed mushrooms for starters if the meat eaters are having a starter, and then we have some sort of homemade nut roast/bake, my moms considering doing a cashew one this year, but you can buy them in the shops. With it we usually have veggie gravy or mushroom sauce (Yes we love our mushrooms at my house!), various veggies, roasties or mash and roast parsnips. Then of course some delicous puddings normally for my grandmother and father there is a mini suitable for vegetarians xmas pud with white sauce and then something like pavolova or gateau for the rest of us. Ooooo yes and in the days running up to Christmas there is excess consumption of chocolate decorations and coins, candy canes off the tree, mince pies and chocolate log (I'm hungry thinking about all of this food!) One thing to watch though is mince pies, they often have lard in the pastry . If you want any recipes I can find some for you
Random question, but at Christmas if you have lots of relatives, do you ever get the "funny" vegetarian remarks e.g. "Dont carrots have feelings too??"

Your christmas meal sounds lovely esp with all the mushrooms im so obsessed with them at the moment

i wish i wasnt the only vegetarian in the family just to make abit more effort with the christmas grub my mum wont let me anywhere near the kitchen on christmas day there just isnt enough room in there with all the food

 

[Irene_A]

as for hormones... they cause have the potential to cause mutations and to trigger unwanted changes. for instance, the hormones that they put into cows, if given to a girl going through puberty, would speed up certain psyciologicall processes while not others. this obviously has the potential to cause many problems.

That's right but what they don't say is that the main reason for the advance of puberty in girls is the improvement in nutrition, not the level of hormones, although of course they have side effects and imho shouldn't be used in animals for commercial purposes. Anyway hormones don't cause mutations, some of them increase cell division but don't affect the DNA in that way.

 

[Irene_A]

This is great. You're my hero! You could be an honorary Beauty Brain.

The death of skepticism is the real tragedy in this world.

Should finish my studies before I guess, but it's quite interesting the way science can be useful in everyday life.

 

[kisa]

i have a question for those of you vegetarians....

1. what was your reason for no longer wanting to eat meat- whether it was family influenced, personal reasons..health reasons etc.

also,

2. exactly how do you substitute and with what, the essentials that come with eating meat. thing such as protein and iron.

1. I stopped eating meat completely about 8 months ago. Before that I would eat a bit of meat a couple of times a week. I actually stopped eating meat for a few reasons, a couple of ridiculous ones! Reason one was that I was looking at the stringy grainy texture of a chicken breast I was eating, and looking at my arm imagining an anatomy image with like the muscles drawn on and stuff. The stringy texture reminded me of the lines drawn on the anatomy picture. So then I stopped eating chicken. Then I dreamt that I was in KFC and KFC was developing a new type of cow that would be like chicken. The Cow lived in like a closet in the dark and started to get all mutated, I decided I must rescue the cow! And I couldn't leave the other cows, so I stole a big truck and trucked the cows to a mountain, KFC had the Much Music Vjs chase me! I released the cows on the mountain and they turned into puppies, the Much Music Vjs started to pick the puppies up and put them in sacks to take back to KFC. I then realize that puppies cows horses etc are all the same. A reason I stay vegetarian is that the thought of meat now disgusts me, and when I think about it it's not like I would go kill and butcher a cow myself to eat it, I think it's ignorant to have someone else do it and just pretend it doesn't happen. Steak wasn't born a steak!

2. I eat a lot of vegetables, I try to put vegetables into everything I cook now. I sometimes have veggie-meat products, like fake beef or whatever. I actually eat mostly the same as I did before, I can get veggie chicken nuggets, veggie hot dogs, etc. they usually just have less calories and less fat. One of my favourite dinner meals is veggie burritos! I sometimes have breakfast shakes if I have been eating badly, but I'm not so worried about it. It's not like eating meat automatically means you have a healthy and well balanced diet. I know many meat-eaters who eat very badly, so I'm not particularily worried!

 

[lcm]

1. I honestly cant remember why I stopped eating meat, I was 7 at the time so I cant really remember. To be quite honest I dont even like animals that much, but now my moral reasoning is that I believe that there is so much uneccessary suffering of animals in the meat industry when we can live perfectly happily with out eating meat. Also, there is the enivormental impact of the meat industry which I am opposed to.

2. I substitute meat with quorn, tofu, lentils, chick peas, different kinds of beans and green veggies such a broccoli which is super nutritious and spinach for its high iron content. I do think its healthier even if there is a risk that I could be low on a few nutrients , but at the end of the day the benefits outway the negatives. It is like with a ominivorous (sp?) diet, you wont get the right nutrients if you dont eat a balanced diet.

you make some very good points! thank you

 

[lcm]

1. I stopped eating meat completely about 8 months ago. Before that I would eat a bit of meat a couple of times a week. I actually stopped eating meat for a few reasons, a couple of ridiculous ones! Reason one was that I was looking at the stringy grainy texture of a chicken breast I was eating, and looking at my arm imagining an anatomy image with like the muscles drawn on and stuff. The stringy texture reminded me of the lines drawn on the anatomy picture. So then I stopped eating chicken. Then I dreamt that I was in KFC and KFC was developing a new type of cow that would be like chicken. The Cow lived in like a closet in the dark and started to get all mutated, I decided I must rescue the cow! And I couldn't leave the other cows, so I stole a big truck and trucked the cows to a mountain, KFC had the Much Music Vjs chase me! I released the cows on the mountain and they turned into puppies, the Much Music Vjs started to pick the puppies up and put them in sacks to take back to KFC. I then realize that puppies cows horses etc are all the same. A reason I stay vegetarian is that the thought of meat now disgusts me, and when I think about it it's not like I would go kill and butcher a cow myself to eat it, I think it's ignorant to have someone else do it and just pretend it doesn't happen. Steak wasn't born a steak!

2. I eat a lot of vegetables, I try to put vegetables into everything I cook now. I sometimes have veggie-meat products, like fake beef or whatever. I actually eat mostly the same as I did before, I can get veggie chicken nuggets, veggie hot dogs, etc. they usually just have less calories and less fat. One of my favourite dinner meals is veggie burritos! I sometimes have breakfast shakes if I have been eating badly, but I'm not so worried about it. It's not like eating meat automatically means you have a healthy and well balanced diet. I know many meat-eaters who eat very badly, so I'm not particularily worried!

hahah! love your reasons!! i do agree with you, it is very much about eating a balanced diet...i dont think that eating the actual foods themselves (meat/no meat) change much of anything, as long as they are substituted. same goes pretty much for someone who prefers onion rings over a salad..its pretty much just about putting the right things in your body

 

[misssakura]

i have a question for those of you vegetarians....

1. what was your reason for no longer wanting to eat meat- whether it was family influenced, personal reasons..health reasons etc.

also,

2. exactly how do you substitute and with what, the essentials that come with eating meat. thing such as protein and iron.

I know that there are vitamins and shakes, but in reality- do you think that its really healthier if you may not be getting the right amount of nutrients your body really needs?

**i am not against vegetarians- ive just always wondered these things. I animals, and the truth is i feel awful for the way they are treated on the farms before the meat gets to our supermarkets, but I have never tried to stop eating meat- pretty much because i dont believe id get enough of the nutrients i needed from other things ie vitamins.

Just eating meat doesn't ensure you get enough nutrients in your diet. In fact the majority of meat consumed today is void of important nutrients as it is cheaply produced and also pressure washed.

1. The change to vegetarianism was instant but the feelings about it were gradual. My two main foods (I didn't really eat chicken at all, most likely because I've had them as pets) were pork mince/beef mince and canned tuna. I started feeling quite guilty about what I ate. When I ate tuna I'd wonder how much damage this one can of tuna was doing to the environment. And when I'd eat pork or beef I'd think to myself..for a start I wouldn't have a clue how to go about killing these things if they were in the wild. And secondly I wouldn't kill them anyway. My cat got really sick just before my birthday and when we tried so many expensive treatments for her, caring for her the best way possible, spending every bit of cash we had, and still having her die in my arms in the most humane way possible (injection) I realised that I just couldn't eat meat anymore. We put her to sleep in a warm cosy vet's room, with an injection, and she was still terrified. So how much worse would it be for all those other animals? I used to say to myself "I don't like pigs, cows or turkeys so I don't care about them dying" and that was my rationale. Because meat is an addiction and it's easier to turn your back on the lack of responsibility when you eat it. But after Rory died I realised that it was too much of a double standard I was setting for myself. I told my boyfriend I'd like to try just cutting meat out of my diet for a while to see how it worked. He was sceptical and sometimes would sneak in beef to his diet when he was out. But now he believes in not eating meat as much as I do. It's a way of living, it's a way of thinking about the world and I wouldn't go back for the world. Many of my friends say "so if somebody cooked you a meal with meat in, if they slaved over it for hours, you wouldn't eat it? That's so rude". But they don't understand that it's rude for people to expect me to eat meat because I've thought about this issue so much. It's a way of living and it's the way I want to live my life for the rest of my life. I really think people should think long and hard about what they eat, the consequences and global impact of what they eat - and it's not just meat. It's all the excessive junk food and cheaply produced grains too. We really need to be more responsible. There are people starving just so the rich can eat meat. There are rainforests being cut down just to produce grain for cattle to feed the rich. There are animals needlessly suffering when all it takes to produce a better society is compassion. </rant>

2. As for substitutions, I find it pretty easy.

Beef = refried beans, vegetarian mince, sanitarium's nutmeat, sanitarium's tender pieces, ground red kidney beans/whole kidney beans, crumbled frozen tofu marinated in vegetarian beef stock

Pork & Chicken = tempeh/tofu

Also lots of vegetables. And when I go to the supermarket I don't use any plastic bags, just put the veggies straigt into the basket or my jute bag. We blend together at least 4 vegetables in every meal we eat with our manual chopper. Onions, capsicums, mushrooms, swede, kumara etc. We also have fruit juices and don't drink milk, but we have fortified soy.

 

[lcm]

^ i see..well like i said, i dont know about the medical facts about people who eat meat vs people who do not, i was just curious...bc ive always felt that we as humans needed certain things to stay healthy, now that i see the substitutes and reasons behind this point of view, i respect it a lot more now! so thank you for all who responded Im not sure if im ready for the transition but its definately an option.

 

[kare2711]

(1) Simple. I love animals too much. I love life. I would think twice about killing a pest (usually I just hope they disappear out of my sight so that I wouldn't have to kill them), what say an animal. And yah, I began feeling guilty preaching the better treatment of animals when all along, I'm enjoying their meat. I love meat, still do. But it doesn't mean that loving meat means we have a right to kill animals to eat them. No matter how well they were being treated before the kill. By saying that they were being fed very good meals, treated very well, before the kill, imo, is just to make ourselves feel better about eating them.

(2) I'm still searching. Over here in my country, finding vegetarian food is so difficult. If I go out for hawker food, I usually eat the noodles/rice without the meat. I left the meat alone. I've yet to eat a fulfilling & satisfying vegetarian meal since turning veg a month ago. I miss a meal where I can eat everything on the table, like a glutton.

When I'm out with friends, I don't tell people I'm a vegetarian. I just nit pick my food. It sounds so tiring having to explain why I am a vegetarian. And people usually just assumed it's for health reasons but personally, at least over here in my country, I don't see vegetarian food being more healthy. In fact, I find it easier to find FRIED vegetarian food than not.

 

[thebeautybrains]

(1) Simple. I love animals too much. I love life.

You've all given great answers to why you are vegetarians. It really can be a healthy way to live.

The reason given above has always made me curious about the following questions.

1. Why don't people feel guilty about cutting and killing plants? They are just trying to grow and reproduce the same as animals. They are made up of cells just like animals. Some plants (like a venus fly trap) even have a type of nervous system which means they could have feelings.

2. What level of animal causes these guilty feelings? Sure monkeys, cows, and pigs are relatable. But how about spiders, ants, worms? Or how about these little animals that live in the pores on your face? Do people feel guilty about the dozens of animals they kill everyday just by cleaning themselves or walking around?

Why do people feel so guilty?

 

[thebeautybrains]

Just curious, why do you think its extreme? I believe it is perfectly rational and healthy.

I didn't mean "extreme" as in an irrational or political. I just meant, for me, adhering to a vegetarian diet would be too extreme a lifestyle change. The food choices are extremely limited when compared to the number of choices that meat-eaters have.

 

[lcm]

1. Why don't people feel guilty about cutting and killing plants? They are just trying to grow and reproduce the same as animals. They are made up of cells just like animals. Some plants (like a venus fly trap) even have a type of nervous system which means they could have feelings.
:

this is a good question,...

 

[chanelnumber5]

You've all given great answers to why you are vegetarians. It really can be a healthy way to live.

The reason given above has always made me curious about the following questions.

1. Why don't people feel guilty about cutting and killing plants? They are just trying to grow and reproduce the same as animals. They are made up of cells just like animals. Some plants (like a venus fly trap) even have a type of nervous system which means they could have feelings.

2. What level of animal causes these guilty feelings? Sure monkeys, cows, and pigs are relatable. But how about spiders, ants, worms? Or how about these little animals that live in the pores on your face? Do people feel guilty about the dozens of animals they kill everyday just by cleaning themselves or walking around?

Why do people feel so guilty?

Answer to part 1)If someone invented a way of me being able to stop killing and cutting up plants healthily (I do not believe that a Fruitarian diet is plausaible or healthy for me) then believe me I would do it. However, until I can do that I can stop the suffering of all the animals which I know for a fact can cause immence distress and pain to the animals.

Answer to part 2) simply this: There is so much suffering in this world, and i know that being vegetarian can lessen some of this but I cant stop all of the suffering, but surely its better to do this small bit than nothing at all.

 

[Sweets]

ah the chocolates if forgot about them i've been sneaking the coins off the christmas tree

this has nothing to do with vegetarianism... But the chocolate coins sold around xmas time are for chanukah, they are called chanukah gilt. It's possible that you're talking about a different kind of chocolate, but just to bring light to the situation- it is mildly offensive to the jewish population when something traditional to chanukah, is combined with the all encompassing christmas.

 

[Anastasia]

1. Why don't people feel guilty about cutting and killing plants? They are just trying to grow and reproduce the same as animals. They are made up of cells just like animals. Some plants (like a venus fly trap) even have a type of nervous system which means they could have feelings.

Waiting at a stop light yesterday, I noticed this weird tree in a person's yard. It was all...twisty and coiled, like something plastic from Star Trek. But it wasn't - it was a young weeping willow, that had been trained to curve repeatedly like a snakey S. It upset me a tremendous amount, so much so I don't even feel silly about it. I do believe plants experience sensations, and maybe even emotions, perhaps not as animals do, but they still have life. This young tree was meant to grow up straight and tall, stretching towards the sun, and because of someone's whim, it's bent and broken, caved in on itself and tortured. I felt about as bad as if I had been looking at a cat or something that had been similarly bound and "trained" while growing into an abnormal, twisted shape. It really shook me me up.

2. What level of animal causes these guilty feelings? Sure monkeys, cows, and pigs are relatable. But how about spiders, ants, worms? Or how about these little animals that live in the pores on your face? Do people feel guilty about the dozens of animals they kill everyday just by cleaning themselves or walking around?

For me it's not the "level". I eat meat, but less and less as I get older, and I've been strictly veggie for years in the past. I won't eat lobster for ethical reasons, but I will eat veal. Sometimes chicken and pork give me qualms. Never cows though, and I don't even like beef all that much. They just seem like they were made for eating. Being around cows only reinforced that feeling, which makes me feel heartless. I go back and forth on duck and rabbit. I object to fish and don't want them eaten because of all the "vegetarians" that don't count them, because they're not mammals or something. I feel badly for them.

One weird food for me is ribs - when I eat them, I'm keenly aware of the animal and its life/death. Kind of hard not to be, when you're chewing meat off a bone. But I still eat them, and enjoy them, and do not feel guilt.

Why do people feel so guilty?

I don't know about people, but my excuse is that I was raised Catholic - when everything's a sin, everything's your fault, we're all horrible disgusting losers and there's no hope, it's pretty easy to feel guilty and discouraged