Vegetarianism

I'm not touching this topic with a ten foot pole, Ive seen how ugly it can get...

although arguably it's less wrong than eating cows and stuff, because they get to live natural lives and stuff before being killed.

also, you could argue that the closer animals are to people the worse it is to eat them. So eating chimps is very very bad, other mammals not good at all, birds kind of alright, reptiles more or less OK, likewise fish, and you can eat your fill of insects and invertebrates.

But anyways.... Yeah, I've been vegetarian for 10 years. Yeah, this topic is touchy. I eat lots of morning star products. That's good for you, right? And I find that eating foreign foods, ie: indian, chinese, vietnamese, tai, etc, gives me plenty of healthy tofu-rific options.

Vegetarians are cool, and if it wasn't for all that lovely meatfish then i would def be one. although i do eat quorn mince - see above - and i really like it

Vegetarianism isn't as annoying as people who preach it.

My IP address should now be blocked from this thread as I am one of those preachy vegetarians Noodles don't like

That didn't come out right at ALL.

Oh heavens yes. :-)

Come on, let us nibble your noodle!! ahem - i do apologise!

Some of them may be. More likely they're made with seitan -- or wheat gluten -- which is firmer and "meatier" than tofu. And k-delicious. (Me = veggie for four and a half years now.)

In any case, mock meats and tofu are my saviors. In fact, last night, I just bought a whole bunch of cold sandwiches made by these guys -- Hillside Quickies, an African American vegan kitchen/bakery based in Tacoma. It's folks like these, among many, that prove that even vegan meals can be the the opposite of bland.

Morningstar Farms are theoretically not all that good for you since they're laden with as many preservative-type chemicals as most processed foods, so you are better off going with other, smaller fake meats.

I eat too many carbs but they make me sooooooo happy. Sigh.

YES, YOU WOULD FIGURE. Sigh, sadly Dan, SOMEHOW certain natural/hippie food establishments which shall remain nameless tend to break well into the Bland Zone despite all opposing efforts from Planet Spice.

Howevah, I've been getting lots of my essential proteins/fats from other sources, avocados & cashews & walnuts & sunflower seeds etc. I really only eat fish like maybe twice a week.

Tofu can be friggin awesome and very easy to cook with, once you get a knack for it. I wasn't a fan of soft/silky tofu, until I started putting little cubes of it in miso soup.

Look at him TODAY:
http://www.richardsandrak.com/ (click bottom b/w photos, too)

http://www.photo2000.co.uk/moby225-29.jpg

"Vegan food is nice to look at"
Essay 3, 'Play'

*looks at sizzling porterhouse steak and smacks lips*

The only dietary problem vegans face is that you can't get vitamin B12 from vegetables, the only source for that is animal products. And B12 is quite important, since it has a part in the formation of red blood cells. Luckily, I'm not some hippie who wouldn't want to eat anything "unnatural", so I have no problems eating B12 pills (they're produced using bacteria, so it's not against the vegan principle).

I'm a non-preachy vegan who sometimes cheats with cheese.

I totally symphatize with you, Neudonym, this happens to me too once in a while. I think cheese is the animal product hardest to give up. Of course there's soy cheese, but's it's quite expensive, and doesn't really taste like the real thing.

Apart from that, I know that Red Bull contains 300% of the ol' daily-recommended amount of B-12. So there's always that.

It might be real in cases where these "vegetarians" avoid meat but eat only pasta, sweets and other junk food... Other than that, I think that dairy allergies cause "eczema" a lot of times (my mother, brother and now myself), but it's really just your body utilizing a convenient organ (your skin) to expell toxins in dairy products which are harmful to your body (more harmful, apparantly, than ripping up the surface of your skin).

If you're referring to acne, there's no way in hell a properly balanced vegetarian diet including plenty of fruits and vegetables is going to result in acne. In fact, it will result in tighter, smoother, clearer skin.

Hmmm... I eat lots of lentinls and chick peas... Are mung beans those weird looking things on the salad bar?

Famous vegetarians

My favorite celebrity vegetarian = Kevin Nealon

That's vitamin D, surely.

Ha ha, according to this, Meatloaf's a vegetarian.

What has cheese to do with mucus?

What has cheese to do with mucus?

I seem to recall an allergist telling me that dairy products can lead to increased mucus production - so that when one is all clogged-up (er, with mucus, not with the stuff you need an enema for) dairy products should be avoided.

I could be mis-remembering this, though, so take it with a grain of salt or two, Tuomas.

Thank you, Dan.

What's cheese but a second hand bacterium...

Name Bosko Balaban
Team Aston Villa
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So I ate most of what I brought to work with me this morning (ha ha, purse and all!) before noon. I saw two coworkers stepping out and asked if I could come with - they were going to McDonald's. I ask, "So, they have salads at McDonald's, right?" "Yeah, we get them all the time." So we go up to the drive through and I see huge photos of salads with chicken on top. My coworker who's driving goes out of her way for me by asking the box if they have any salads without meat. No, they say, just get one and say no chicken. So then she amazes me again by asking ever so nicely, "Now, does this mean the salads are prepackaged and you're just going to take the chicken out?" "No," box says, "We add the chicken later." So I get one, she hands it back, and it's covered in bacon! URGH! And it didn't look like fake bacon bits either. Of course, why should I expect McDonald's to cater to me and my weird eating habits? But anyway, it was frustrating. So then I gave it to my boss and ate Subway (blah) instead.

i want to see ingredient lists before i buy, also not buying fast food is healthier and cheaper.

or something.

for the last two months or so

it = TEH YUM

carry on.

http://home.tiscali.be/cartoon/Real9/vegetarian.jpg

So loaded with vegetables, you'll hardly notice the meat!

xpost the SPERMS die. in your STOMACH. also you don't have to kill anyone to drink milk but if you drink milk it is not vegan!

xpost DID THE VEGAN EAT THE FETUS?? PROBABLY NOT

silly!

xpost

this sounds suspiciously like cutty's definition of vegans!!!!

xpost but i never understood why human pieces aren't considered animal products.

it's not fucked up that this ad makes me hungry is it?

By the way, shouldn't communion ideally include some cheese along with the crackers and wine? What part of Christ would that represent?

haha jbr's "bum steer" joke on that thread is so classic

Cheese would improve communion, but not as much as guacamole would.

I'm basically tooo lazy.

babies drink their mothers' milk and aren't considered cannibals.

Not anymore it isnt. Not in the UK and Australia anyway - mad cow disease and all that put paid to those feeding methoods I think. And I dont know/think theyre used at all anyway in Aus (maybe I am wrong but I thnk our cattle are grass and grain fed).

I am in hysterics over this.

I think whoever said that vegans don't give blowjobs was right, because even if they spit and didn't swallow, they would STILL be killing the sperm even though they weren't consuming them, which I guess is technically vegan but doesn't really jibe with the whole concept of veganism.

What if you spit the sperm into a woman's cervix?

Likewise any ejaculative sex performed under the influence of contraceptives. How many vegans are hard-core Catholics also?

What if the guy is shooting blanks? This would be the equivalent of say making a leather jacket from a cow who has died of old age.

My mom refuses to eat Altoids cos she says they are made of cows, is this true?

Mainly we were just teasing about the shoe thing because she gave this weird sanctimonious speech in debate class (utilizing cow hand puppets and funny voices) about being vegan and not ever, ever using any animal products while wearing a bunch of leather shit. But seriously!

You are, like, SO pregnant. Babyist.

I am a vegetarian - could someone convince me not to be? I really like meat.

I am totally persuadable that this is a bad/shonky argument.

veganism really taught me how to cook though.

sort of if you're not willing to kill something, you probably shouldn't be eating it.

fourteen years of vegetarianism contributed to TOOTH DECAY for me - i know it!

Were you just eating a ton of Wintergreen Lifesavers as they are not meat? That gave me tooth problems, but I wasn't eating them to avoid meat.

You know, I have to say it kind of pisses me off that bell peppers cost as much per pound as beef. What I mean to say is veg is not so cheap as I wish it was. Whine whine whine.

i just ate a carne asada burrito and my teeth feel clean! there may be nutritional issues involved but really chewing tough meat also cleans your teeth.

Spinach helps keep teeth clean as that really bizarre after-feeling makes me brush straightaway.

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=vegetarianism+%22tooth+decay%22&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Why do some (most?) vegetarians think it's OK to eat eggs? wtf is an egg if not a tiny baby animal?

Yeah, way to stop a beating heart, guys.

Not if it's not fertilised, man. An unfertilised egg is no more a baby than a period is.

Do you eat periods?

Don't mean to cause any aggro with this, btw, just that it came up in conversation in the pub on Friday, and then saw your post about eating eggs three days a week instead of everyday, Kate - I don't eat eggs three times a month and I'm not a vegetarian at all.

Don't mean to cause any aggro either, but seriously did no one at the pub know what an egg is?

Also eggs are a wonderful protein source for the jet-setting veg on the go.

never really *really* got the vegan problem with eggs. assuming you've raised yr chickens humanely, then deciding to eat eggs is just theft, not murder

so unless yr going to rep for the idea that raising chickens, even humanely, is still just slavery, then not eating eggs doesn't compute---they're food pills!

an unfertilised human ovum is pretty tiny compared to a bird's egg, though! Maybe my biology is off, but a human baby's going to grow inside the womb and get its nutrients from the mother so the ovum doesn't need much beyond genetic content, whereas the baby bird will grow inside the egg so it has to be packed full of protein and nutrition. There wouldn't be much nutritional benefit in eating human unfertilised eggs, if you could even find them among the remains of the uterine lining (which has been building up for like a fortnight. blood that's been standing in a warm place for two weeks? that's not appetising).

chickens need to expel unfertilised eggs just as humans need to expel unused ova, and neither have yet become zygotes. They're equivalent in that sense; they're not equivalent in physical makeup, size, nutritional content, etc etc etc.

idk this is the sort of thing that might seem like a dilemma when pub devil's advocating but does not hold up at all the moment you think about it.

What a lot of straight up omnivores seem to not get is that, though there are often ethical reasons involved, vegetarianism/veganism isn't a party platform or a ethos or anything, it's just something we don't do for whatever reason and doesn't have to conform to a strict set of rules to be valid.

I'll never fully understand why not eating meat causes such confusion and consternation among people. I also don't drive a car while most people do but no one pontificates about my rule structure for that one.

I totally understand and accept the moral / ethical / it's not an animal, it needs expunging, why waste it, good source of protein etc argument; what I don't get is that, for vegetarians who do it out of... not wanting to eat meat because it's meat, rather than because of any ethical reason, wtf is an egg, in terms of consistency and composition, if not animal tissue? Em's started eating meat since we moved in together as her vegetarianism was never about an ethical stance, but she wont touch an egg (unless it's as an ingredient in, say, Yorkshire pudding).

I don't like tomatoes but I like a good tomato soup, but no one's ever been all "I don't get it, what is tomato soup but a bunch of tomatoes? It just doesn't make sense!"

'consistency and composition': but the texture of an egg is nothing like the texture of meat? It is nothing like the texture of any meat or dairy product? It is its own thing. I have a friend who thinks the yolk of the egg is the most offputting taste and texture in the world, and so she doesn't eat them (but she loves meat). I had a friend who stopped eating meat cos he couldn't bear the texture of it, and he still ate eggs.

I don't like tomatoes but I like a good tomato soup, but no one's ever been all "I don't get it, what is tomato soup but a bunch of tomatoes? It just doesn't make sense!"

but i think the argument is more akin to you liking chicken soup but not liking chicken, and it being pointed out that they're both tissue. i am vegetarian and eat eggs when they're an ingredient in other stuff, but am just saying. i'm vegetarian btw.

it's just something we don't do for whatever reason and doesn't have to conform to a strict set of rules to be valid.

is great. it's sad that you're open to interrogation as soon as you make a small step in the direction of doing or not doing something.

O.P. asked for my experiences with a healthy veg diet. OK.

I ate a healthy vegetarian diet for about 20 months when I was in my early 20s. I based my diet of the books Diet for a Small Planet and Recipes for a Small Planet, which emphasized complementing amino acids to provide whole proteins. This was back in the day (1977-78).

Although I moved back to eating meat again, my dietary habits have remained centered on vegetables, grains and legumes, with some milk, eggs, cheese and not much meat. (I'm not too big on fruit. I'm not sure why.) I easily get less than 10% of my calories from meat in an average week. Closer to 5%.

Because my initial reasons for vegetarianism were more practical than religious, I find I can maintain most of the practicality and add some variety and interest by letting meat into the mix. I never did buy the argument that meat was tatamount to murder or that it was some kind of "impure" thing to eat.

Ha, Nick, I'm really not getting your POV on this: it strikes me as perfectly reasonable to see eggs and milk as pretty wildly different from eating the actual flesh of animals. For instance, we do not consider breastfeeding babies cannibals. You're right that eggs are kinda different, as byproducts go, but they're still ... byproducts. And no one's ever claimed that "vegetarian" means the same thing as "pure herbivore."

I've been a vegetarian for 22 years now. I find the taste and smell of eggs to be disgusting, and I won't eat eggs unless they're undetectable. If I started eating beef tomorrow, I'd still not eat eggs or any fowl at all.

The reason I'm a vegetarian is because I find factory farming to be disgusting. I'm not perfect about it, nor do I want to be: I'm not in it to prove anything to the Sick Mouthys of the world. Also, I love cheese and would never voluntarily give it up entirely.

It's no harder to eat a healthy vegetarian diet than a healthy meat diet. At least in my experience, it's harder to work in enough fresh produce than it is to get enough protein and iron and such. (I'm not vegetarian, but I live with one, so I only cook meat once every couple months or so. We eat a lot of eggs, but are trying to make more of an effort to get free range ones.)

It's no harder to eat a healthy vegetarian diet than a healthy meat diet.

^^ totally true due to the word "healthy" -- obviously the issue lots of people have is that it is harder and less appealing to eat vegetarian than to eat what's convenient, healthy or not. (For, you know, the contingent here who sees acquiring decent food as a constant hassle.)

I'd think that the easiest diet is the pure-fast-food diet, which is a very difficult option for vegetarians.

I mean, you get tired of Taco Bell bean burritos after awhile.

http://www.veggiebite.net/

Yeah, casual restaurants, quick lunches at work, etc.: even people who eat anything get worn out on their options pretty quickly. Also, maybe I'm wrong -- I haven't done a lot of vegetarian cooking -- but this can extend into home cooking a little, can't it? Obviously a lot of quick things are the same either: stir-fries, pastas, whatever, it's the same with meat or without. But there are a lot of meats you can cook up in a flash, whereas a lot of more substantive vegetarian dishes look like they take a bit more preparation and time. (E.g., some sort of casserole versus throwing a filet in a pan.)

I eat a lot of salads.

I've been for 16 years.

Only recently have I learned to balance macronutrients.

I think cooking varied and interesting food at home takes more imagination if you're vegetarian because you just have less to work with...but cooking really simple, quick food is easy. Rice and beans, omelets, and pasta with canned sauce are basically the next step up from Ramen.

i eat a lot of eggs

because they are cheap, easy to make, and a good protein source

what resulting difference now that they are balanced?
xpost

weight management, more energy, healthier hair/skin/nails

wtf's a macronutrient?

never really *really* got the vegan problem with eggs. assuming you've raised yr chickens humanely, then deciding to eat eggs is just theft, not murder

^^^ that's a decent question. There's possibly a few answers to this I think, depending on who you talk to. Firstly, it's a much clearer position to say 'I don't eat animal products', than to start introducing exceptions - once you do that you're on a bit of a slippery slope. How do you define what a humanely raised chicken is, where do you draw the line as to which eggs you're going to consume? If it's just limiting yourself to the most ethical source possible e.g. only eggs from ex-battery hens that you've rescued from slaughter that you can give shelter to in the most hen-friendly of environments, then maybe that's fair enough. I do think it's going to be harder to stick to that than to simply rule all eggs out altogether.

Secondly, and slightly conceptual maybe - I'd say that even in the rescue scenario, once you start shifting your focus from the hen to her eggs, your perception of that hen will subtly shift towards viewing her as a means to an end, rather than simply as an animal that lives entirely on its own terms. Dunno if that makes sense, but it's about breaking away from thinking of animals as something that's there to be exploited.

Thirdly, a small part of being vegan is showing that it's perfectly possibly to live without using animals as a source of food or clothes or whatever. If you're eating eggs, then you're undermining that fundamental position.

We are talking about a MAJOR hypothetical here though. Most vegans won't eat eggs just because of the methods used by the overwhelming majority of egg producers, even free-range ones (e.g. beak trimming, discards of male chicks at the hatchery, birds sent for slaughter en masse once fertility decreases past an optimal point etc). And if you buy any processed food with egg in it, you generally have absolutely no idea how those eggs were made.

Thirdly, a small part of being vegan is showing that it's perfectly possibly to live without using animals as a source of food or clothes or whatever. If you're eating eggs, then you're undermining that fundamental position.

Umm do you mean to say "vegetarian" here? I think we can all stipulate that it's pretty non-vegan to eat eggs.

(hope that doesn't sound preachy btw gbx. I just think that's a good question to wrestle with)

x-post

Nabisoc, no. There are vegans that rescue chickens that then eat their eggs. So they're not technically vegan vegans, but self-defined as vegans nonetheless. I don't geddit either.

Sorry, nabisoc nabisco

P.S. I think you're conflating levels of morality that aren't at all equivalent for most people.

"I don't do X because I think it's wrong" (like not eating dead animal flesh) is a totally different level of belief from "I don't do X because, while I don't think X in itself isn't necessarily wrong, it implicates me in the grander mechanics of X's availability, which I do not support" (like eating eggs, if you happen not to have inherent issues with that).

People do this every day with plenty of stuff that's not eggs -- there's no big logical inconsistency in it.

xpost - Oh, sorry Nick -- I totally misread your post, my bad

NickB that is precisely the sort of answer I was looking for, thanks!

"I don't do X because I think it's wrong" (like not eating dead animal flesh) is a totally different level of belief from "I don't do X because, while I don't think X in itself isn't necessarily wrong, it implicates me in the grander mechanics of X's availability, which I do not support" (like eating eggs, if you happen not to have inherent issues with that).

The latter bit of that is definitely where I'd say vegans were at with eggs. There is the 'yuck - A EGG!' thing too, but maybe not so much.

I wd like to know more about this macronutrient balance too, am curious.

I'm not even remotely vegetarian, but I've noticed lately that I'm pretty much not eating red meat at all, just by default. OK it's summer, that probably helps, but I seem to be living on salad, lentils, chickpeas, rice, vegies and tuna/salmon. I have been a bit tired, but I dont think its my diet (I think its the smoking).

Any good lentil recipe suggestions, Trayce? The only thing I know to make with them is soup.

I make this lovely salad with canned lentils:

get a can of brown lentils, strain off the brine and pop into a container, then add a load of chopped up antipasto type things: roast bell pepper, oloves, artichoke, maybe some marinated mushrooms or beans, feta cheese etc. Stir in some EV olive oil and either lemon juice or white balsamic vinegear, salt and pepper... let it all mingle for a while then dump it over some baby spinach leaves and eat, delicious.

Also lentil curries are nice, I just cook brown lentils for about half an hour til most of the water's absorbed, with some fried onion and garlic and cumin and turmeric and chili then add some garam masala at the end and pile it up on rice.

I'm more confused with red dal, it always goes so porrigey so quickly :(

I would go this route, but I love chicken wings too much. No substitute.

I'll never fully understand why not eating meat causes such confusion and consternation among people. I also don't drive a car while most people do but no one pontificates about my rule structure for that one.

I get SO much grief from people for not owning a car.

yeah, for sure. people seem to see not having a car as not reaching full adulthood, it seems like.

"But HOW do you GET places?"

I'll never fully understand why not eating meat causes such confusion and consternation among people. I also don't drive a car while most people do but no one pontificates about my rule structure for that one.

I get SO much grief from people for not owning a car.

― i'm shy (Abbott),

Me too - from my wife AND my daughter. It never ends.

bahahahahaha

To all carless ilxors,

I kiss you now. Keep up the good work. P.S. Eat your vegies to maintain your bloom.

CARLESS WHISPER

Me three not having car. Mind you it is a bother for buying heavy things, or going on a holiday (ie, I pretty much can't do either all that easily or cheaply), but I manage somehow.

Trains can never mend
the carless whisper
of a good ... wait this isnt working at all.

No, I'm trying too, and really struggling. I even tried to make jokes about a pedestrian being hit by a car(Wham!) but all was laboured, contrived, forced.

I'm never gonna drive again
Guilty streets that I've been given

Hahah bless you, my custosian brethren.

The worst part about not having a car is not being able to visit friends two or three hours away for less than $65. It's prohibitive.

And thanks for the salad idea, Trayce, sounds good! Similar to one I make with white beans.

Veganism is simply the practice of the belief that an animal should not be treated as a means to an end, but rather than as something with inherent value. Since veganism, unlike vegetarianism, describes an ethical principle rather than a dietary practice per se, it's perfectly acceptable (as someone pointed out upthread) for a vegan to eat eggs, dairy, or even meat in situations where doing so would not contribute to furthering the existence of the factory farm system or anything similar. However, I doubt ultra-humane free-range egg-farming techniques are really a feasible universal solution to the cruelty problem -- factory farming exists partially because it's one of the only ways that large urban populations can be supplied with animal products, and free-range farming is too land- and labor- intensive to ever be anything more than a specialty market. Vegans of a Kantian bent might avoid eggs for that reason alone. Either way, I've rarely been approached by someone asking me if I wanted to eat some eggs they were about to throw out.

i know some kantian vegans, but i'm more of a hegelian vegan myself. = fuck eggs.

i've been sticking to a mostly vegetarian diet since i got to the US, mostly by default because my bf is vegan, but now i find when i do occasionally have meat (probably less than 10 times in the last 7 months) i'm more and more repulsed by it.

this was not helped by driving through coalinga on our way to LA - god, the STENCH uugghh

coalinga... home to a large beef packing plant, a prison (in which outbreaks of a fungal infection called "valley fever" is common), and a mental hospital for sexually violent predators. fun times!

*are common.

lack of meat has killed your brain cells

the treatment of animals in the modern world is a disgrace. there are other disgraces too but this is a big one. i think i agree with shelley that our indifference to the suffering of animals is connected to our indifference to the suffering of other people, is all part of the same ecosystem of cruelty. i get pleasure from meat eating, sure, but what kind of justification is that for anything? the fact that i haven't really made any concrete steps yet toward veganism makes me scared of myself and my selfish laziness.

anyone here successfully convert to veganism? how did you do it? i think eating more ethically will be an important step in my larger, lifelong quest to live more "consciously". haven't had much success with other components of this quest though so far.

iirc, one simply makes the decision and then figures out the implementation as they go along. The number of things one cannot ingest as a vegan are decidedly more numerous than the proscribed list of a vegetarian, but it all boils down to not putting certain things in your mouth, which is merely an extension of a skill we learned as toddlers.

obvious but worth stating: if you go vegan don't forget b-12 supplementation.

get a good rice cooker if you can afford it.

early on maybe err on the side of giving yourself some leeway in terms of how healthy you eat until you get used to the lack of animal protein/fat. this can be a shock to the system if you ate a lot of it previously.

Do you have free access to a kitchen and adequate refrigerator space you can monopolize? Do you buy your own groceries? If so, then you have the correct tools to begin. If you have no particular skill at cooking, then get a good basic cookbook and study it closely. It can be a library book, if you prefer not to lay out cash for it. To be Captain Obvious once more, you must crawl before you can walk and walk before you can run.

Lentils are a good place to start. They are very friendly and quite forgiving. Bread is more of a graduate-level course.

basically cooking for yourself is essential. it's tough to eat out often and stay vegan (but mb not so much in your area? yr'e in nyc or thereabouts right?).

lotsa grains (rice, quinoa, buckwheat, barley, lentils as aimless said &c &c), greens, legumes, root veggies, &c. there are so many varieties of veggies i don't see how anyone would want to go back to eating meat, but people do.

replace butter w/ veggie oils (olive, grapeseed, hemp &c &c); replace meats w/ tofu, tempeh, seitan.

i personally wouldn't even bother w/ vegan cheeses as i can't stand them, plus an aspect of veganism for me is avoidance of overly-processed foods so it doesn't make sense (to me) to eat something that's just as processed as pizza-flavored pringles.

cuisines that i find lend themselves to being veganized: japanese, middle eastern, central american, south asian and southeast asian. maybe find vegan cookbooks you like or just tweak recipes from non-specifically vegan cbs.

also keep up your supplements but make sure to do some research about the sourcing for some of them (for instance, i recently found out that it's difficult to obtain b-12 from non-animal sources o_O).

these are all super posts. if you're srsly vegan there are little things to beware of like the fact that powdered sugar is filtered through bone char and hence not vegan unless you find a specifically vegan brand. forgetting other surprising examples i've come across since niece started all-out vegan-ing a few years ago but there are quite a few

i've been vegan for 7 years, so i'm kind of the stage where i don't even think about what i eat all that much now. you develop a bunch of recipes that you cook and you figure out what are the best restaurants to go to for you and you suss out how to deal with situations outside of those everyday things and it's pretty straight forward. i can't say that i've spent too much time thinking about how to get the optimal diet or anything, i've just gone with instinct and tried to keep things varied as much as i can be bothered. just run my sixth marathon and haven't dropped dead or anything so things seem to be working for me. have to say though that i am hugely lucky to have a supportive family and live in a pretty vegan friendly city, but there are a whole bunch of folks out there who don't have those things and get along just fine anyhow. it all boils down to remembering why you do it and developing good everyday habits around that and once you reach that point it just becomes an easy thing imo.

sorry if that sounds smug btw but i'm a little drunk tbh

you get drunk faster as a vegan.

i live with a vegan and cook almost exclusively vegan at home. but i don't think it has to be all or nothing. i know it's really important to many vegans to avoid any minute non-vegan thing, but i think it's the effort that counts, and that cutting out meat and dairy out as a main ingredient in your diet is pretty huge and beneficial - eating the occasional item with egg or gelatin or cheese or powdered sugar is not gonna make you a bad person for 'failing' as a vegan. even ethically-sourced animal products is a great step. i don't think it does anyone or any animal any favours to be super hardline about being vegan.

there are tons and tons of vegan recipe blogs out there, and even as a subpar cook i don't have any trouble coming up with things to make. many animal-based recipes can be easily converted to vegan ones if you do a bit of research.

yeah, this is an important point, i think. about 20 years ago i became an ovo lacto vegetarian, and since our daughter was born in 2001 i moved to being a pescatarian. but i don't carefully check restaurant items, beyond asking whether, for instance, a given soup is made with chicken or beef stock.

not sure if any of its made me healthier. just something i wanted to do, and now i don't want to go back.

my god, someone from my running circle made a super awesome vegan cheesecake yesterday and i found myself wondering why the heck i don't do any baking or anything, but the thing is, you don't really need to cook fancy stuff to get by if yr not that way inclined or just plain lazy like me. i know just1n3 posts amazing sounding recipes though!

i buy groceries vegan and eat out vegetarian, which i find really manageable. the only difficulty i had at first was that i felt like i wasn't getting enough protein, which is something i've heard from a lot of other guys. i don't have this problem at all anymore mostly thanks to two products: tofurky brand sausages, which have 30 grams of protein (soy and gluten) and actually taste like real sausage, and nutribiotic brand rice protein, which i use in shakes with soy milk and in my oatmeal. i get over 100 grams of protein a day easy, and i feel satiated.

i used to love meat, and if you told me in the past that i could go without it i wouldn't have believed you. but i honestly don't even crave it anymore--maybe if i'm walking by a food truck with fried chicken or something, but that's it. i feel good and look forward to what i eat.

a serious upside also is that it's cheaper--i can shop at whole foods and don't have to think twice about whether i can afford it, which was definitely not true before!

you don't find eliminating egg and dairy and, say, fish, creates a very limited diet that is hard to maintain?

i can dress up salads a lot, and i can go for weeks eating, say, morningside farm's faux-chicken nuggets, but i'm not sure i could sustain it for months or years.

you get so used to it - i don't even think twice about cooking vegan, which is def not something i could ever have conceived of 5 years ago. i really don't find it limiting and i don't think i use that many fancy or processed ingredients to replace meat/dairy. i mean, i will use tofutti sour cream on nachos bc it tastes like the real thing, but there are simple recipes out there for homemade vegan sourcream, i just can't be bothered and don't care that it's processed.

nickb, this baked vegan cheesecake is SO GOOD: http://sundaymorningbananapancakes.yummly.com/2011/11/turtle-cheesecake.html

i want to try it as a ginger version - make the base out of those little ginger snap cookies from trader joe's, same filling as the original, and then a caramel sauce and walnuts on top.

actually, i never really cooked until i started cooking vegan - it made me become a better cook. it forces you to discover new veggies, to use different lentils and grains, to research 'weird' ingredients; real food daily has a recipe for pate that tastes like the real thing, made of lentils and walnuts and a few other basic things, but also ume plum paste, which i didn't know existed.

also, bc i'm not vegan, i feel fairly confident when i say something tastes like the 'real thing', as opposed to some vegan recipe bloggers who haven't eaten animals in 10+ years.

i think of veganism as kind of the oulipo of the food world - having to work within the parameters of veganism has made me much more creative than cooking omnivore ever did.

that's a great analogy, and i personally hope that that having dietary restrictions would make me a more creative cook/eater. today i ate a tuna sandwich, fries, and appetizer portion of fried calamari, and a green smoothie for breakfast to prevent me from getting rickets and that's it. oh yeah and three cups of coffee, a manhattan, and three beers. i want to sort this shit out and eat in a way that shows that i actually care about both my body and the earth, which i do (nominally).

thanks for all of the encouraging, helpful comments btw. i love ilx. i'm definitely going to start working toward this in earnest starting this week.

i live with a vegan and cook almost exclusively vegan at home. but i don't think it has to be all or nothing. i know it's really important to many vegans to avoid any minute non-vegan thing, but i think it's the effort that counts, and that cutting out meat and dairy out as a main ingredient in your diet is pretty huge and beneficial - eating the occasional item with egg or gelatin or cheese or powdered sugar is not gonna make you a bad person for 'failing' as a vegan. even ethically-sourced animal products is a great step. i don't think it does anyone or any animal any favours to be super hardline about being vegan.

^ like this attitude

we've gone to no-meat meals twice a week or so, haven't had to repeat a recipe yet. if i was to give anything up for my health it'd be sugar but going veg doesnt seem to be the impossibility i'd have thought it a couple of years back

For me baby steps has been the way to go. I couldn't have contemplated the switch directly from eating meat regularly to veganism, but after a couple of years of semi-pescetarianism, I do find that I now often go several days without eating any meat without a thought.

I went dietary vegan cold-turkey in late 1999 trying to get my life sorted: alcoholic, regular-smoking, 80 lbs over weight, but final straw was my hair started greying post-financial crisis. All the evidence at the time pointed to a minimal animal product diet having the lowest health risks, and no internet denizen can spend much time looking for vegan recipes without encountering the reality of the modern factory farm. Dropping animal products entirely is probably a marginal gain healthwise (compared to minimal animal products), but a huge weight lifted from one's conscience.

Today I drink once a week, replaced > 90% of my smoking risk with snus, lost 50 lbs, and can look at my dinner plate without guilt. I'm still salt & pepper at the temples.

If you care about the health issues, read The China Study, follow Dr. Greger, or if you're an unfortunate 'sperg like myself start there's a vast peer reviewed literature supporting a whole food plant based diet.

I am not veg vegan, but a couple of cookbooks have helped me cut a lot of meat out of my diet because the food is so damned good. Yotam Ottolenghi's plenty and various iterations of the tassajara cookbooks. Neither is 100% vegan but fantastic recipes that have made me much more creative without meat.

i live with a vegan and cook almost exclusively vegan at home. but i don't think it has to be all or nothing. i know it's really important to many vegans to avoid any minute non-vegan thing, but i think it's the effort that counts, and that cutting out meat and dairy out as a main ingredient in your diet is pretty huge and beneficial - eating the occasional item with egg or gelatin or cheese or powdered sugar is not gonna make you a bad person for 'failing' as a vegan. even ethically-sourced animal products is a great step. i don't think it does anyone or any animal any favours to be super hardline about being vegan.

^^^great attitude and really good advice. lots of good advice elsewhere in this thread.

imho getting particular about powdered sugar and isinglass-filtered beer and all that noise will make you more frustrated eating vegan. use it as a general guiding philosophy for eating and living. it should simplify your life and not make it more complicated. it's about living gently and compassionately, on animals, others, and yourself. there is no point in being hardline about it. i was hardline for a year or two early on and i alienated others and myself.

i was vegan for about 10 or 11 years, and have now been vegetarian for the past two years. you pretty much only need one to three really good cookbooks. simply, plant-based and vegetable-focused cookbooks that draw on a broad variety of foods. my tome is "vegetarian cooking for everyone" by deborah madison (here is a newly updated version: http://deborahmadison.com/vegetarian-cooking-for-everyone/. basically any type of vegetable is covered in that book and the cooking is simple, accessible, and delicious. it's comprehensive but not intimidating. it's really ideal for any level of cook, beginner or advanced.

i avoid super-fancy or fussy vegan cookbooks as well as "vegan diner and junk-food" cookbooks, not my thing (though occasionally i do enjoy vegan diner food, especially in the winter).

i was happy as a vegan but i do find that i'm a little more satisfied being vegetarian. organic eggs sourced by small farms in the area have really been a wonderful thing for me. i have eggs almost every morning, and i feel like i appreciate them a lot more after 11 years of being vegan. i do eat some dairy, mostly whole-milk plain yogurt but that's about it. i find that i am happier being vegetarian, there is some greater flexibility especially when dining out with non-vegan friends. that said, except for eggs and yogurt, i still cook about 95% vegan. my wife is vegan too so that is a motivating factor.

While we're recommending cookbooks, I like "Vegetarian Classics" by Jeanne Lemlin. Several of her recipes have become standbys for me:

http://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Classics-Essential-Recipes-Course/dp/0060194820/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397486034&sr=1-2&keywords=vegetarian+classics

Mark Bittman's "How To Cook Everything Vegetarian" also has a lot of great recipes and is a useful reference work:

http://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Everything-Vegetarian-Meatless/dp/0764524836/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397486366&sr=1-1&keywords=mark+bittman+how+to+cook+everything+vegetarian

The vegetarian sausage was invented by Konrad Adenauer

2 months now and it feels so good

That's awesome. I was vegetarian for 20 years before finally deciding to go the distance and become vegan the last 5 - a real game-changer that transition was for feeling free & clear. My only cheat were (appropriately) cheeto's for like a year

The transition to a meat-free diet was, for me, much easier (and healthier!) the most recent time I tried (5 years ago) compared to the first time I tried (20 years ago, jeeeezes), especially since there are a lot of great vegetarian/vegan food bloggers now to guide you (the flipside is that there are also a lot of bad food bloggers too).

Well I broke ranks over the weekend with a “28 day aged burger”

No worries! We had a company potluck and one of my coworkers brought in a lasagna made with ground bison, which I had, because how often am I going to get to try bison meat?

It's a pretty common offering at burger places in the NY area.

I switched to vegetarian in August and haven't regretted it for a minute. I don't eat dairy but have been eating fish, so a weird hybrid of vegan/veggie, I guess. I've also largely cut out bread and damn do I feel better - much less bloated after meals and, uh, some extraordinary visits to the toilet.

My current approach seems to be that I never eat meat, except sometimes when it 1) was prepared by someone's immigrant mother/grandmother, or 2) comes on a pizza, and it's the only available pizza.

I LOVE JERKY!