That's your business! :D

[andy]

She's so cool...

I was vegan 15-20 and have been doing it on and off for weeks/months. Have been doing it again past 3 weeks and feel great!
Tabitha Brown - Actress/Comedian/Vegan Cook

[InbetweenDreams]

@andy are you vegan?

[andy]

@InbetweenDreams Yeah, I'm doing it for a few months! (started 3 weeks ago) Purely just to give my system a break/detox from meat. I seem to have more energy than before and feel less bloated!

[Tjemka88]

More power to vegans but I like meat

[InbetweenDreams]

I do like meat. I do think we, at least in the US, probably consume far too much meat (errr...well everything). I do think the quality of the meat regardless of what it is does matter. I do think grass fed, grass finished beef is going to be way better for you than the generic corn fed beef. Corn is used to fatten up the cattle, but the result is less omega 3's in the meat. Same with chicken and hogs. Same goes for whether the animals are stressed out, pumped full of hormones and so on.

I did do keto last year and did have success...whether it was a healthy thing or not I'm kind of leaning towards no. So going vegan or going more plant based might be a move in the right direction....

Reminds me that I have a book on the shelf I ought to read https://www.amazon.com/How-Not-Die-Disco...1250066115 (I think this is the one).

In my experience diet is probably more important than being active but being active definitely helps and probably is more important if you eat junk food.

My problem is yo-yo-ing all the time. I've gone from walking to running 5 miles to doing nothing from eating whatever to doing keto, gaining 25 to losing 43 lbs. Somehow, some what I have got to find the happy place where I can be consistent, that's the only way I think I'll have any real success with weight loss and staying healthy.

The only concern I see is getting enough protein as that seemed to be one thing that was a problem for some.

[andy]

The list of celebrity vegans is quite eye opening! Texas born Beyonce used to be known for loving fried chicken and has completely converted to veganism! https://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/galler...-are-vegan

You can get protein from lots of plant based stuff... vegan protein powder, soya/tofu/tempeh, beans/pulses, quinoa, oatmeal, lentils, peas etc. Soya/tofu/tempeh is usually higher in protein than meat... about 11-20g per 1oz/28g cup! So you don't have to worry about lack of protein. I think as long as you eat a wide mix of veggies and occasional fruit you will definitely get a lot more vitamins and nutrients than a traditional meat based diet.

With a vegan diet you can eat bigger portion sizes to fill yourself up and you still won't feel bloated as your digestion system has a much easier time processing it than with meat which takes much longer to break down in your guts. The result is that you feel more satisfied (not hungry) having consumed less calories and saturated fats!

[marshlander]

I hope these comments are relevant and don't sound preachy. My relationship with what I eat has been a journey, my personal journey. We've all heard the quips about never having to enquire about who are the vegans in the room ...

It's interesting that diet has become so political. I became a vegetarian fifty-three years ago at the age of twelve, but eventually, and for decades, I found it difficult to justify eating or drinking any of the products that come from animal sources. However, for most of those years, I somehow managed to ignore what I knew about dairy and eggs. Through keeping goats and chickens for a while, I could see how all food from animals involves loss or slaughter, whether the meat is eaten directly or not. The male of the species is destined for the freezer so that milk or egg products are produced in great enough quantities to satisfy demand. The only exception I could see is possibly honey, but I don't know enough about bees, so I decided not to eat that either. I have friends who keep bees, so I may eventually end up making an exception for honey, specially if I know the source and the conditions under which their bees are kept.

Thinking about the ethical implications around food that almost inevitably follow "turning vegan" and how our food is produced is a never-ending trip down the rabbit hole. A lot of food that I might want to eat as part of a vegan diet has clocked up thousands of miles to reach me. That is one of my contributions to climate change. Some items are grown in expanding monocultural systems with the corresponding loss of habitat for other plant and animal species and a devastating effect on biodiversity. My privileged choice of consuming only plant-based food has spawned a new industry and new products in terms of processed and what PA calls "industrial" food. I am forced to ask questions about why some products suddenly become available in vast quantities and added to our supermarket shelves. Apart from not liking the taste, Quorn make me think of something that could have been produced by the Soylant Corporation had Ray Bradbury known about it at the time.

I read a heartbreaking article written by a beekeeper who contracted to rent bees seasonally from his own orchards to pollinate almonds being grown in California. This meant stepping up his own hives on an industrial scale. However, year on year he has been losing millions of bees that have died because they have succumbed to the effects of the chemicals sprayed on the almond orchards. He has had to make the devastating decision that he will forgo the very healthy income because the bee population is suffering. He has lost production from his own less intensive orchards elsewhere in the USA, because he has lost so many bees. The end point is obvious, if maybe not quite imminent.

When a food becomes fashionable for its lauded nutritional benefits it becomes much more profitable to grow it for export than it does to grow it as part of a mixed farming system that has fed people locally since time immemorial. We have heard about avocados becoming too expensive and unavailable to ordinary people in, say, Mexico or quinoa being exported from Peru and leaving people to go hungry. My question for the past few years is how come we suddenly see such an explosion in the number of coconut products available? It can only be that production has been stepped up to an industrial scale and at great cost to a more sustainable and local agricultural economy. Jackfruit is a more recent phenomenon. Then, of course, there are issues around the exploitation of labour. Chocolate, tea and coffee are just three commodities that have very murky histories indeed.

I like to add nuts and seeds to my food, but I read every label closely and forgo anything that makes me suspicious. I am surrounded by fields of pumpkins, but the local stores only seem to stock pumpkin seeds from China! That is completely bonkers. Quinoa is grown in Essex, but not many people know where to get it. I no longer drink almond milk, but I can buy delicious oat milk grown and processed twenty miles away from me.

I know many of the choices I make about the food I eat are not available to others. If one lives in a city, it will be more difficult to know the journey the food has taken. I am fortunate enough to live in a rural area and I can buy most of what I eat from a farm shop a few miles away that stocks local produce as available. It has taken a while, but they now know I prefer food grown locally, organically and they even tip it out of any plastic bags or packaging into my shopping bag for me these days.

I'm not a paragon of anything. I'm just one person trying to do what I can to minimise my effect on the rest of the world. I still buy some food that has travelled, but I am trying to do better. Some of my friends do far better than me. Some can even grow everything they need for three-quarters if the year in their own gardens.

I wish I could say I am losing weight. I was doing well, but I like what I cook and the benefits of changing my diet have come unravelled since lockdown. One thing I have noticed that I wasn't expecting concerns the food I have given up over the past three years. When I was in Italy in February I ate two items that I was assured were suitable. Unfortunately one contained milk and one contained egg. The result on both occasions was unpleasant. It seems I may have compromised the ability to be able to metabolise some foods I no longer eat. So, Andy, if you are going vegan for a few months be careful.

[andy]

@marshlander Hey D, that's cool you went vegan for the animal cruelty reason and worry about the ethical side... how far the food travels from abroad etc. I've always said that if we had to go out and kill an animal ourselves and then cut it up - around 99% of the population would be vegan! It's just the disconnect between buying meat pre-prepared from supermarkets and shops that stops people thinking about how it was made and where it came from. I would find it hard enough going out and catching a fish and gutting it - never mind a big furry animal!

It's funny you should mention about being careful with the veganism and developing intollerances! I'm already allergic to dairy (think it's the casein protein), eggs and corn/maize! I discovered it after I feeling unwell for a few months (with headaches and stomach pain) and had an allergy blood test done about 15 years ago.

In my opinion - plant based milk tastes much better anyway! At the moment - my favourite is Alpro hazelnut milk! In tea I just have a dash of unsweetened soya milk (Sainburys, Tesco or Waitrose own brand). The Alpro soya is too overpowering for tea.

I've recently got addicted to this vegan cheese:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Violife-Epic-Ma...B084ZTMRJC

It's the best vegan cheese I've tasted and even melts like real cheese!

Also available at Sainsburys (usually sold out!) and Waitrose supermarkets in the UK... costs about £2.30.

Being vegan usually means you cook a lot more for yourself and how many skinny chefs do you know of? Even though it's healthy some vegan stuff can still be really high in calories or carbs/sugars.

[marshlander]

Thanks Andy,

As I mentioned, it is a personal journey and I try not to preach. It doesn't always come over that way though! When I was twelve and stopped eating meat it was much to my mother's consternation. She didn't like cooking and only cooked because she had to. Having to deal with a fussy eater in the family was a challenge for her. It was just one of many examples where my parents respected my choices even though they didn't always understand them. The reason I stopped eating meat then was down to reading some literature from the Animal Defence League and Anti-Vivisection Society about poultry and meat products, not that we ever ate veal or foie gras! I discovered the pamphlets among a pile of papers my dad brought home from one of his jobs in London.

When I was married my (ex)wife bought me a goat for my birthday. She also accepted the gift of some chickens and assorted paraphernalia from a friend who was giving up her own flock. Funny how I didn't want the livestock, but they became my responsibility! One year she decided for reasons known only to herself that she would put a hundred eggs in the incubator. Although I contested the decision I didn't push it because I didn't expect them all to hatch, but you can guess what happened! We had to keep a hundred newly born chicks under heat lamps in big cardboard boxes in the house until they were able to go outside. The smell was horrendous. We only had a third of an acre, so there wasn't a massive amount of space when we put them out either. The priority was to try and get rid of them before they became too old. It's amazing how, when looking for day-old chicks, one can never find them but, when trying to sell or give them away, no one wants them either. I think I found homes for about twenty. After a few weeks it becomes more obvious which are the cocks and which are the hens. No one wants cockerels, but I did manage to get rid of most of the hens at "point of lay". That left me with about forty feisty young roosters in a garden that was nowhere near big enough. They had begun fighting and were going to rip each other to shreds if I didn't take drastic action. As the only vegetarian in the family I had to learn to pull their necks and pluck them. Any other course of inaction was simply inhumane. It was a truly awful experience and I never want to have to do anything like that again. I managed to draw a line somewhere. I refused to gut them and my wife did that. Had she not hated wasting food so much she might have left that to me too. That was the first lesson in the uselessness of the male of the species in animal husbandry. The other was with my nanny goat, which again thanks to my beloved who wanted to introduce her to a local billy, in order to keep the milk flowing, grew to a small herd of five. No one else would drink the milk by the way and I had to freeze most of it because I couldn't keep up the consumption by myself! I do actually find goats fun and interesting creatures, but I don't need to keep them to enjoy them. Milking was an onerous duty before work and before bedtime. Holidays and hobbies had to be arranged around the availability of a friendly goat-milker. The billy kids had to be castrated and after a couple of months I had to load them in the car and take them to a local butcher, who gave them back to me a couple of days later in freezer bags as joints of meat for the freezer, which of course I wouldn't eat and which the rest of the family would only eat if very heavily disguised in a curry. Again, I found the experience absolutely awful, though I suspect it was more traumatic for the goats. Any vegetarian who claims that dairy and eggs are okay is only selectively informed. Like you say, Andy, if people had to kill and prepare any meat they eat there would probably be more vegans in the world. On a different forum I'm on we have a couple of Americans. One has only just today written that he only wants to eat meat if he has hunted, killed and prepared it himself.

Cheese was actually what stopped me becoming vegan for so many years. I just liked it, despite the cognitive dissonance brought about by the experiences I've mentioned. When I met PA and spent more time in France cheese was a great point of contact with his family. I think it actually cleared a lot of barriers that this Englishman was so interested in cheese and willing to try it all. PA is far more selective in that he doesn't care for soft cheeses, blue cheeses or anything that has been anywhere near a goat. Giving up the cheese was specially hard for these reasons I think. PA's father thinks I've completely lost the plot and his standing joke is that there is always plenty of grass in the garden and the seed he puts out for the wild birds if I feel "peckish" ...

From the beginning I never saw the point in meat substitutes. I thought I could wean myself away from cheese by eating the cheese substitutes instead, but I never found any I liked enough to keep bothering - even Violife, which I could buy locally if I chose. Of course it is also one of those mysterious coconut products that have appeared in recent years ...

[andy]

OMG your nasty and traumatic experiences with animals over the years would be enough to turn anyone vegan for life!

I used to love cheese too before giving up dairy. I actually used to buy goat's cheese (Helen's Farm) until a few years ago as someone said goat's cheese had less casein protein in it than cow's milk but still got stomach ache after a few hours!

I'm not too much of a fan of Violife's other stuff... slices are a bit meh and bland and the feta alternative is good but isn't my favourite. They've refined the cheddar one's taste a lot though and it actually tastes quite authentic with slight tang and creaminess!  I even grate/melt it on homemade pizza!

My favourite vegan meat substitutes at the moment are Richmond Vegan Sausages... we had them for lunch and they actually taste better than the real thing!