Becoming vegetarian..

[adelrose]

Its kind of a new years resolution...not to become total vegan tho..The more i think about what i eat , the more it makes me want to be vegetarian.

I dont eat meat usually as i dont really like it...I like chicken but am getting more concious of the whys and wherefores of why i eat it and should i eat it...

 

what do you all think? Is it an healthier way of life?

[EdnaKrabappe]

I've been one for 27 years now. It's a lot easier now than it was 27 years ago. Nearly everything has a label on to say if it's suitable for veggies.

I'd say don't beat yourself up at first for getting things wrong and find your own level. For my first year, I ate gravy from the meat and ate polos which are veggie now but weren't then.

If you want to do it, a way into it is to think of the meals you currently eat that are vegetarian. If you are a lump of meat, potatoes and veg person, replace the meat item with some sort of quorn item otherwise you'll just see your plate as lacking something. If you eat spaghetti bolognaise or shepherds pie, replace the meat with quorn mince. If you eat a lot of chicken there are quorn fillets, quorn chunks, the kievs which are good, and lots of the turkey roll type of products, there are also some cold quorn things.

There are even fishless fingers now and ocean pie!

Cheese- lots of cheese isn't vegetarian. It says on it now if it is and there are lots that are, you don't need to go anywhere special.

Sweets, desserts and cakes are the enemy. Check they are veggie before you tuck in. Veggie percys are my favourite thing to come out this year.

Lots of beers and wines are becoming increasingly vegetarian - marks and spencer and coop are getting brilliant at labelling this. Spirits you are generally fine with.

http://www.veggiewines.co.uk/popularbeers.htm#lager - also has beers and ciders.

 

:(I've just found out lilt isn't vegetarian... I've had that.. not anymore then.

[andyofborg]

Lots of beers and wines are becoming increasingly vegetarian - marks and spencer and coop are getting brilliant at labelling this. Spirits you are generally fine with.

 

you mean they make beer and wine out of animals?

[EdnaKrabappe]

you mean they make beer and wine out of animals?

Yes. they use finings from tropical fish to filter the beers.

[medusa]

you mean they make beer and wine out of animals?

 

No, but things used in the process are often animal derivatives, like isinglass, which is used to clarify wine and beer, which is made from fish bladders.

 

Obviously using something like this, which involves a product which can't be harvested without killing the animal, is part of the same process of deciding not to kill animals to eat.

 

My personal advice would be to find a really good way of building into your cooking the nutrients that you currently get from meat into whatever you're going to cook now, because if you just cut out the meat you can find yourself malnourished unless you supplement your diet with pulses and things like Marmite (you can put this into virtually all sauces and gravies without even tasting it) as a good vegetarian source of B vitamins and blackstrap molasses, also a great source of B6 and calcium.

 

It's perfectly possible to call yourself vegetarian and eat just chips and pasta and end up malnourished as a result, but it's also really easy to be well nourished if you include a few basic rules in your diet.

[LeMaquis]

My understanding of vegetarianism is that as long as you don't eat meat, fish and fowl then you're vegetarian. If you avoid other food and drink that has been touched by animal and fish products - dairy products, alcohol as described above, etc - then that's veganism. It's a massive jump from vegetarianism to veganism. I never got further than drinking soya milk.

[JenC]

My understanding of vegetarianism is that as long as you don't eat meat, fish and fowl then you're vegetarian. If you avoid other food and drink that has been touched by animal and fish products - dairy products, alcohol as described above, etc - then that's veganism. It's a massive jump from vegetarianism to veganism. I never got further than drinking soya milk.

 

Avoiding food which has used animal products during the production process and not consuming dairy products are different things. Most vegetarians will adhere to the former without considering themselves in any way a vegan.

[medusa]

My understanding of vegetarianism is that as long as you don't eat meat, fish and fowl then you're vegetarian. If you avoid other food and drink that has been touched by animal and fish products - dairy products, alcohol as described above, etc - then that's veganism. It's a massive jump from vegetarianism to veganism. I never got further than drinking soya milk.

 

There's a difference between drinking milk, which can be gathered without harming the cow (ethical debate about the dairy industry aside) and drinking beer which has by necessity caused the death of animals to produce.

 

Many cheeses are not vegetarian not because of the milk aspect but because the rennet used to start the transformation to curds and whey is derived from cow's stomachs, which obviously need the cow to be killed in order to get the rennet. Vegetarian rennets are becoming more available and when these are more widely used then it will be easier to decide whether to eat cheese as a vegetarian.

 

For anybody who is worried about the ethical aspect of intensive dairy farming BTW- goat and sheep dairy is much harder to do in an intensive way and therefore the animal welfare in goat and sheep dairy farming is likely to be much better than with cow dairy. Added on top of that, goat and sheep milk have almost double the calcium content of cow milk

[Mecky]

If you decide to turn veggie you'll need to boost your zinc intake by the use of vitamin tablets. Zinc helps boost your immune system, which is a problem for veggies.

[andyofborg]

If you decide to turn veggie you'll need to boost your zinc intake by the use of vitamin tablets. Zinc helps boost your immune system, which is a problem for veggies.

 

you could always chew on a bit of galvanised steel and get your iron intake at the same time

 

anyway, most of the meat animals we eat are vegetarians, so really meat is a vegetable product which means it should be ok for vegetarians to eat it