Thread: Ask me about VEGANISM

Originally Posted by Jules2007

Know what I find ironic... Well I'm a vegetarian, and I get my mum to buy all sorts of soya milk and Quorn products, but she won't try them at all. She says they're too weird or something. After all the crap they put in meat these days and all the fat you get in it and all that stuff, and then you get Quorn which isn't made out of animals, and my mum who eats all sorts of meat and weird stuff, won't even TRY quorn or anything like that!

I find that ironic too. My dad did the same when I was a vegetarian teenager. My mum would cook nut roasts every so often, but if we were all eating something vegetarian he would insist on having meat mixed in with his serving.

I am Vegan at the moment. I don't think its an eating disorder. I have heard veganism being called one because some people get obsessive about moral and healthy eating.

Anyway, my question. Where is the line in veganism for you? If for instance you are out on a long walk and the only food available has an e number you don't recognise, do you eat it? For instance. Also, whats wrong with honey? Isn't that relationship fairly symbiotic. I don't know much about farming.

Originally Posted by apachama

I find that ironic too. My dad did the same when I was a vegetarian teenager. My mum would cook nut roasts every so often, but if we were all eating something vegetarian he would insist on having meat mixed in with his serving.

I am Vegan at the moment. I don't think its an eating disorder. I have heard veganism being called one because some people get obsessive about moral and healthy eating.

Anyway, my question. Where is the line in veganism for you? If for instance you are out on a long walk and the only food available has an e number you don't recognise, do you eat it? For instance. Also, whats wrong with honey? Isn't that relationship fairly symbiotic. I don't know much about farming.

Yeh, it's weird, I wish my mum would try it, I think she might like it, but she's tried Soya Milk and doesn't like it, that's about the only thing I've gotten her to try!

Know what annoyed me, well I've considered myself a veggie for about 2 yrs, and I just realised a few weeks ago that fruit pastills (which I love!) have gelatine in them, was so annoyed! So I guess I can only say I've been a veggie for a few weeks?!

I would like an answer to that question too about where you draw the line. I thought about becoming a Vegan, but for me I think it's too complicated-that's for me personally. If someone made a Vegan store near me then it'd be a lot easier.

Also with the honey question, I know your question is for Ben, but I think the reason is because a lot of the bees get killed (trampled on etc) while the honey is collected- I'm sure I read that but I could be wrong. I'll leave that for Ben to ellaborate on. Also, I would think that because you are making a statement about not eating anything from an animal, you have to not eat honey either, regardless of the methods used in farming it.

Gelatine is a bastard. My general rule is to do the best I can. We all accidentally eat something with animal products in. The trick is to at least remember to check for it.

Originally Posted by apachama

Gelatine is a bastard. My general rule is to do the best I can. We all accidentally eat something with animal products in. The trick is to at least remember to check for it.

Yeh I know, I should've checked, I should know that all those kinda sweets have it in em! Ugh even if I wasn't a vegetarian, the thought of Gelatine in sweets is enough to put me off them anyway! Maybe one day they can make them without gelatine. I wonder who first came up with the idea- "hey, I know a great thing to put in sweets..."!

I know a great thing to put in copper - cow bones.

Originally Posted by Serkat

I know a great thing to put in copper - cow bones.

WTF?

My general rule is to do the best I can. We all accidentally eat something with animal products in. The trick is to at least remember to check for it.

DING. This pretty much sums me up.

I can't really comment to veganism, but I've been a vegetarian for about 3.5 years now, and I'm quite a bit healthier than I ever was when I ate meat.

I agree that there are a lot of people who cut meat out of their diet that end up with issues of malnutrition, but there are plenty of people out there who eat meat that have terrible malnutrition issues as well.

It is true that some people who make the switch don't realize that their bodies need certain amounts of things to run at optimal efficiency. It's easy for some people to miss the fact that they can't necessarily just subtract the meat and eat what they used to, as many times those diets revolved around meat. But I wouldn't put the blame on vegetarianism, but rather on the way our current society almost totally ignores education about nutrition. Once we get past the food pyramid, education about "eating right" sort of stops. A vegetarian who is conscious of their nutritional needs can have a perfectly healthy diet. An excellent book/cook book on the matter is Laurel's Kitchen.

Personally, I just couldn't justify eating meat anymore, once I honestly examined my reasons for doing so. They mostly came down to "because I like it", and when I thought about it, it seemed pretty selfish. As I said, though, this was a personal decision.

I'm not one of those "in-your-face, preachy" vegetarians. I choose to eat what I eat, and if others are inspired to question their own diets by seeing my choices, I like that just fine. In general, most people seem to make a bigger deal of my vegetarianism than I do of their meat-filled diet. Some even seem honestly offended that I would dare commit the ultimate heresy of refusing meat. I've had more than my fair share of people arguing at me about why I should eat meat. How's that for your stereotype reversal?

One of the big things that I think people overlook in the meat/veg issue is that of energy shrinkage. It can take up to 16 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of edible animal flesh. Grain that could be eaten by people, I might add. Add this to the massive overproduction of meat-livestock in America (it's where I live, and thus what I know most about), and the ridiculous figures about how much meat/protein should be in the average American's diet, and that adds up to a lot of food that could have been.

I do have a question about veganism, though, and I assume that the answer varies from person to person. What's your stance on leavened bread?