this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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Meat... :( We could all live without, but this damn learned behavior...
Donβt try to eat less meat, try to eat more veggie. I know itβs technically the same but the thought process is different. Before you know it, you had weeks without meat.
I have a lot of asian friends and their meals are always the opposite of typical American meals. It's a ton of veggies/rice with meat as a 'topping' rather than meat being the centerpiece with veggies as sides. I'd love to incorporate that more but I love meat so much...
Have you actually tried making vegetarian meals at home?
I did to some degree. I have some issues with certain fruits and vegetables due to their fructose and alditole composition. So it's not so easy for me, yet, but I made lasagna with alternative minced meat and oat milk, chili 'con' carne with the same minced meat, once with wheat basis, more times with peas. Sushi without fish or meat. But originally and natural vegetarian meals, I guess not really. At least I can't remember right now.
Start easy, cut out 1 animal you don't eat too much of and go from there. Once I stopped eating beef, pork and lamb I felt weird about eating chicken, so just stopped altogether! (amongst other reasons)
Good luck on your journey!
That's a great idea!
Another thing that helped was to hold of 'recreating' your favourite dishes by making them veggie/vegan, at least to start with. Since you'll have just given up meat, you'll be directly comparing to the meat counterpart.
There are so many amazing veggie and vegan dishes out there, have a go at making some of them first. After all you want to give yourself the best chance possible.
It certainly takes a lot of effort to change your eating behaviour, but I've certainly felt a lot better after making the change. Good luck and remember to start small! :)
Great advice overall! Thank you! Hopefully others can make some small changes, too. :) Step by step. But completely stopping on recreating meals is really tough, at least for me.
No worries! Yeah for sure I get that, if it doesn't work for you then it doesn't work, just gotta try and make the transition as easy as possible, so knowing what works for you is always the best :)
I did so for greenhouse gases reasons. First I stopped with beef, never enjoyed lamb (poor young thing), and several others. Pork pretty much, too, but sometimes I still eat it, same with chicken. Not at home, there are amazing alternatives for sausage and 'meat'. But when eating at restaurants, I have issues eating vegan or vegetarian due to some intolerances. And eggs are still a problem for me. But I buy from a source where male hatchlings are not getting shredded.
Same reasons I stopped initially too! I think just being concious about what you're putting in your body is always a good thing, and if you're still eating meat / eggs / dairy, knowing where those things come from and how they're actually harvested is good.
Like you say, sustainably sourced eggs are great! I love eggs so much, always a treat when I get them when we're out for food!
You could reduce your mince meat consuption by adding TVP/ soy protein crumble in it. This is what some fast food places actually do and people don't notice the difference unless they hear about it. There are also many vegan proteins in freezer section in many stores. Tofu can be super delicious once you learn how to cook it. I think cooking yummy tofu is sign of good chef.
So far I exchanged minced meat by bought alternatives of peas and wheat. With differing textures and formes and I really enjoy them in my meals. I still need to learn to process and cook more with tofu. What I learned already some months ago, you need to press tofu with some weight for half an hour, potentially freeze it to further reduce their water by open pores, and then cook it in some sauce so that it can absorb the taste. Made sense afterwards, but always wondered how they got their taste. Good advice!
The alternatives we have nowadays are so varied and some are really great at mimicking the flavour and mouth-feel of meat!
I have tried like 5 different vegan meat things now and they ranged from bad (the times they involved cheese, my god vegan cheese sucks) to "ok, but would rather just eat something that is vegan without trying to be fake meat."
Is there any particular type of product that's good? Brands will probably only help if you're also in germany, but maybe fake chicken is just the wrong fake meat to buy.
A lot of them have just as much saturated fat as their meat counterparts, and can be chock-full of inflammatory seed oils. Not exactly βhealthy.β
Can you get Impossible brand in Germany?
I would argue we shouldn't live without it, but it does need to be cut back and less glorified. There are soo many alternatives that are healthier, cheaper, better for environment but you should still be able to have a medium rare steak and some chicken wings when you want it.
Am veggie. Agree.
well as of the ethics doing a bad thing once is still having done a bad thing, but I guess sure if you want to decrease animal suffering the fastest realistic way, getting 10 people to reduce their consumption trumps 3 people completely cutting their meat consumption. (yet you'll still have 10 people exploiting animals for their "products" who should be living without doing just that. vegan btw)
The only thing wrong with your arguement is many don't believe eating meat is unethical.
You are completely correct that you will get more change getting people to reduce consumption than eliminate it
As a vegetarian, we can all tell that youβre vegan. The disclaimer wasnβt necessary.
This aggressive behavior and labeling isnβt productive if your goal is to persuade people to try something entirely new to them (remove meat from their diet).
Yeah they could have left out the whole judgemental thing about animal suffering and be more encouraging. Instead they chose to be an insufferable, smug and arrogant microaggressor.
Who said anything about animal suffering? I feel like this is more about personal health...
Same! I would like to be vegan but i love a great steak, or burger, or...
nah, meat is great. Just the sourcing of it is not so great. Get your meat from a local butcher where you know where the animal came from.
Or better yet, if you have the space, time and money: get your own livestock.
I talked to my vegan son about buying meat from local farms. He got mad at me for wanting to only kill the happy cows.
Wow, your son has a point π
the animals don't care wether their dead corpse is shipped to you from Argentina or from your local butcher that is just such a nice and friendly guy :^) they'd prefer not having their throat slit by anyone at all
They do care about how they lived their lives though. And I'd much rather like an animal which could roam around almost freely and enjoy its short life instead of one locked up in a tiny box in which it can barely move, suffering until its death.
Agreed. Ideally, the animals you eat have only one bad day in their entire life.
You apparently don't know that most of the time, their throat is not slit to kill them, but rather animals are shot with a pneumatic bolt. Stay with the facts and you sound less aggressive.