Is being a vegetarian really feasible?

[Aurora Elegance]

I've toyed with the idea of lowering my meat intake but I don't really see how a completely vegetarian diet could work? Can anyone help with some advice?

[LadyShea]

Do you want to be a vegetarian for ethical or health reasons? This may make a difference in any kind of eating plan.

[beyelzu]

I was a vegetarian, well I didnt eat any warm blooded animals, for about a year, I lost weight and felt pretty good but I missed eating steaks and wearing leather.

Now I have a really nice leather jacket.

[dave_a]

I've toyed with the idea of lowering my meat intake but I don't really see how a completely vegetarian diet could work? Can anyone help with some advice?

Not me, my idea of good cooking involves pretty much any dead animal's meat and a hot grill. I think it is possible to have all dietary needs met with a vegetarian lifestyle providing you do your homework, but I tend to view vegetarians like I do the blind or people without legs. I feel badly for them, I just don't like to brag about what they are missing.

That's just me. I love meat and the other food stuffs animals make. Being a vegetarian would be like being sent to hell.

[Aurora Elegance]

Do you want to be a vegetarian for ethical or health reasons? This may make a difference in any kind of eating plan.
Health reasons mostly. A little ethical on the side but I don't want to be flamed...

[beyelzu]

Do you want to be a vegetarian for ethical or health reasons? This may make a difference in any kind of eating plan.
Health reasons mostly. A little ethical on the side but I don't want to be flamed...
too late, allow me to introduce you to maddox.

http://maddox.xmission.com/grill.html

seriously, I once felt as you do, I suppose. I cant be sure but you said that there were ethical reasons, and I once had ethical reasons myself. I decided that animals werent sentient so fuck em.

but I dont plan to eat any great apes anytime soon because that line is just too fucking blurry.

[Dingfod]

I went meatless one summer, but that was of financial necessity, not by choice. I happened to already have a bunch of nitrogen packed freeze-dried food storage that included, corn meal, pinto beans, sugar, some rasberry stuff, a variet of pretty awful freeze-dried vegetables, and gawdawful TVP* meat substitute. We ate carrots, radishes, and lettuce from our garden, and zucchini and sweet corn donated by a coworker with several acres of garden. It was about 3-1/2 months before we won $100 worth of groceries from the local market. I was so hungry for beef by then that I was about ready to jump a fence and take a bite out of a sleeping cow, tipping not required. If our money situation had not improved by hunting season, I was going to bag as many as the law would allow... no, not cows, deer and elk. Come to think of it, Wyomingites called cows either Slow Elk or Red Deer and, if coming home empty handed from a hunting trip, would consider "accidently" shooting one of them out on the open range land.

*Textured Vegetable Protein, regardless of advertising to the contrary, does not taste like nor have the texture of any actual meat of any indentifiable kind.

[LadyShea]

The biggest deficiencies vegetarians/vegans seem to have are B12 (there is no plant source, and supplementts are made from animal products. If you go vegan you will need a prescription for the synthetic...if you are okay eating eggs and dairy they are a good source) and omega 3. For the Omega 3 you can eat fish, or flaxseed oil.

You will need to also be very careful and do a lot of research to ensure you get enough quality protein, but it is certainly possible to be a healthy vegetarian.

[Sonnet]

I haven't had a bite of anything but fish once or twice a year since 1993, and in the last few years the fish has gone by the wayside as well.

It really depends on why you do it. I do it for health reasons - the physical health of the animals and my own spiritual well-being. If you really want to do it, if you really take it seriously, then it can be done. If your reasons for doing so aren't clear-cut, then it's going to be hard.

[RevDahlia]

Being an ovo-lacto vegetarian is totally feasible. Veganism is another story. I know several self-proclaimed vegans who get along all right, but I also happen to know that they cheat regularly.

You have to figure out where you draw the line. There are lots of dead-animal products in places where you wouldn't expect to find them -- gelatin, for instance, and Worcestershire sauce, and whatnot. If you don't want to adopt an out-of-sight, out-of-mind policy, get used to reading ingredients labels carefully.

I've gone veggie a couple of times, mostly for economic reasons, and it wasn't that hard. I suggest phasing it in slowly -- cutting your meat consumption to once or twice a week, for instance, before you go cold turkey. You may want to consider just eating meat very rarely and deliberately, instead of banning it altogether, so you won't feel deprived; you just won't get to call yourself a vegetarian.

And if you like tofu, you're already ahead of the game.

I think that we, as a culture, would do well to eat less meat. It's horribly inefficient to produce and bad for the environment, even if it is tasty. Less meat, of better quality, is probably the way to go.

[Godless Wonder]

I wouldn't want to try to go totally vegetarian, and vegan, never. I know lots of Indian people are vegetarians, and they seem to get by just fine.

BTW, did anybody watch that wife swap show last night? They swapped a vegan woman with a cajun woman. Vegan Cajun. Now there's a niche market just waiting to explode.. Oh, that vegan woman would drive anyone nuts, (not that the other folks on that show didn't have their faults.)

[Dingfod]

Being an ovo-lacto vegetarian is totally feasible. Veganism is another story. I know several self-proclaimed vegans who get along all right, but I also happen to know that they cheat regularly.My youngest brother is a lacto-ovo vegetarian. He used to say he was the only fat vegetarian he knew. He lost over 50 pounds in a couple of years by cutting back on starchy foods and sugar, no bread, no rice and no potatoes. He isn't fat any more. Then again, he doesn't look well, his complexion is pallid and he has lost a lot of muscle mass. He's gone from a vital fit former athlete to a thin pale wimp. Is it the vegetarian diet? Probably. He lives with our other brother, who isn't vegetarian and is also not fat, but looks good and is reasonably fit without any formal exercise program.

I've gone veggie a couple of times, mostly for economic reasons, and it wasn't that hard. I suggest phasing it in slowly -- cutting your meat consumption to once or twice a week, for instance, before you go cold turkey. You may want to consider just eating meat very rarely and deliberately, instead of banning it altogether, so you won't feel deprived; you just won't get to call yourself a vegetarian.A friend of my wife once commented, as my wife was cooking pork chops for dinner, "I thought you guys were vegetarian." She was over there visiting quite a bit when my wife and I were preparing meals. At the time, we didn't eat a lot of red meat because that was during out fat gram counting days. My wife replied "But we eat chicken all the time." The friend said she knew that but thought eating fish and chicken was okay for vegetarians.

I think that we, as a culture, would do well to eat less meat. It's horribly inefficient to produce and bad for the environment, even if it is tasty. Less meat, of better quality, is probably the way to go.WRONG! Didn't you read Maddox's rant and the links therein? Direct me to the nearest steakhouse, thank you very much, it is the moral choice. And ever so tasty.

[lisarea]

Unless you go out a lot or something, you probably just alternate a fairly limited menu, anyway. Just about everyone I know does. You've got maybe ten or fifteen different things that you make most of the time. The trick, then, is to change what those things are. Remember the beans and rice rule. It's pretty much the cheapest and most versatile vegetarian option I can think of. You can make burritos, red beans and rice, Indian style lentil soup with rice, and probably a million other things that are slipping my mind right now, all based on the simple beans + rice foundation. (It's actually grains + legumes, so peanut butter on bread and things like that work, too.) And you probably already know how to cook vegetables.

I was a vegetarian for five or so years, and that's basically what I did. And I never felt deprived or anything. It's just a matter of getting used to it, learning a few basic rules about nutrition, and learning how to cook different things. (Experiment with tofu and tempeh and things, too. They're endlessly adaptable.) The one thing that never really made sense to me was the 'meat substitution' model, where people buy these slabs of TVP that look like salisbury steaks, tofurkeys, fake bacon, and crap like that. That approach always struck me as focusing too much on deprivation. Like meat idolatry or something. I've always thought the best way to go about it without feeling like you're being deprived is to change your model. Dinner does not have to include a slab of something sitting on a plate. (That might just be me, because I never fully understood the appeal.)

BTW, did anybody watch that wife swap show last night? They swapped a vegan woman with a cajun woman. Vegan Cajun. Now there's a niche market just waiting to explode.. Oh, that vegan woman would drive anyone nuts, (not that the other folks on that show didn't have their faults.)

Dangit. So last night, about ten minutes before it ended, I looked at the TV guide and said, "Oh, no, ODB! We done missed the Wife Swap!" and he said, "Oh, no! That was going to be the one with the annoying people, too!" And it got real quiet for a minute before he said, "Unlike, uh, all the other ones, of course."

I am so mad that we missed that.

[lisarea]

A friend of my wife once commented, as my wife was cooking pork chops for dinner, "I thought you guys were vegetarian." She was over there visiting quite a bit when my wife and I were preparing meals. At the time, we didn't eat a lot of red meat because that was during out fat gram counting days. My wife replied "But we eat chicken all the time." The friend said she knew that but thought eating fish and chicken was okay for vegetarians.

I used to go to this one deli nearby my office every now and again for lunch. I could only go infrequently because they gave you just these ridiculously humongous piles of meat and I can't tolerate that on a regular basis, but there were lots of people I knew who went every day, and finished the whole sandwiches every time, even. I mean, those things were HUGE. I am no delicate little flower, but I could only eat about half of one at a time.

So, one day, I'm waiting in line there, and these two guys are talking really loudly behind me. One of them says, "My wife is a vegetarian, so I have to eat roast beef sandwiches for lunch" or something like that. The other guy starts asking him all about this vegetarian thing, and it comes out that this guy's definition of 'vegetarian' is that his wife eats fish, chicken, and pork, but does not eat hamburgers and steaks VERY OFTEN.

Also, I have a friend who was a vegetarian, and he went to a girlfriend's house for dinner, where they served him this rice dish with little tiny chopped up pieces of pork, saying it was vegetarian because the meat was chopped up really small. I used to have this borderline retarded girl I knew try to make me eat hot dogs all the time, using basically the same argument. It's all chopped up, so it doesn't count. (She even tried to trick me a couple of times after I told her that it wasn't up for discussion anymore.)

I'm thinking it might be really easy to become a vegetarian according to one of those models.

You could only eat chicken, fish, pork, hot dogs, sausage, and loose ground beef, and only eat steaks and hamburgers once a week or so.

[Sonnet]

The one thing that never really made sense to me was the 'meat substitution' model, where people buy these slabs of TVP that look like salisbury steaks, tofurkeys, fake bacon, and crap like that. That approach always struck me as focusing too much on deprivation. Like meat idolatry or something. I've always thought the best way to go about it without feeling like you're being deprived is to change your model. Dinner does not have to include a slab of something sitting on a plate. (That might just be me, because I never fully understood the appeal.)

I LOVE fake meat. I use fake pepperoni on pizza, eat fake hamburgers and hot dogs, put fake ground beef in my chili. I spent a LONG time without those things, reinventing my diet and missing the old tastes. Sometimes what I WANT is pepperoni pizza or a big hot dog with onions and sauerkraut. If you haven't had meat in over 10 years, that stuff's pretty damn close to the real thing. It's nice to be able to just shove a hunk of protein into my mouth without having to mince around combining my legumes. I mean, why not? Fake meat has come a long way in the last few years. It's FOOD, not a food substitute.

[Dingfod]

I used to go to this one deli nearby my office every now and again for lunch. I could only go infrequently because they gave you just these ridiculously humongous piles of meat and I can't tolerate that on a regular basis, but there were lots of people I knew who went every day, and finished the whole sandwiches every time, even. I mean, those things were HUGE. I am no delicate little flower, but I could only eat about half of one at a time.You've seen me, Lisa. I AM one of those guys that finish whole sandwiches every time. I didn't get this big by leaving food on the table... or in the kitchen for that matter.

[lisarea]

You've seen me, Lisa. I AM one of those guys that finish whole sandwiches every time. I didn't get this big by leaving food on the table... or in the kitchen for that matter.

You're not as fat as you think you are, you big showoff. Sheesh.

And it's not even the volume. You've seen ME. I can eat big things, too.

It's the sheer meat density that does me in. I'm talking like a pound of meat between two slices of bread. But again, that might be me again, which addresses Sonnet's response, too. One of the myriad reasons I gave up meat was that I didn't like it much. I mean, I like it now, but I can't eat a huge pile of it all at once, and even now, all other things being equal, I could probably get by happily eating meat less than once a week or even not at all if I weren't flirting with anemia these days.

Like I said, though, when I was a vegetarian, I really didn't miss meat, and it was mostly a matter of adopting a new model and just learning to cook a few core things. I really didn't miss the meat at all and had no desire to substitute it. YMMV.

[Dingfod]

You've seen ME. I can eat big things, too.Speaking of you eating big things... I know another source of protein... :heh:

Would that be OK for a vegetarian? :think:

[lisarea]

Oh. My. God.

I cannot believe I just WALKED INTO THAT like that.

That was quite the boner!

[Dingfod]

Well then, don't just lay there and take it.

[Bella]

Seriously, though folks - if you're looking into a vegetarian type diet, check out the original Moosewood cookbook and its sister-book, The Enchanted Broccoli Forest.