Veganarchism

[sknss]

[maj]

vegan fudge changed my life

[sknss]

What 5 a day will you choose??

[maj]

how do you get iron and bean energy via veg, my doctor said that's what she was worried about and i'm having trouble finding meals which are filling and when working shift work with one break that's a problem when i cant sit there munching on dried fruit and nuts.

recently turned veggy after just not really liking meat for a variety of reasons, i am a cheater however as i still eat eggs (please don't shoot me) are they like actually baby chickens as i thought they were un-fertilised eggs? sadly didn't get biology x home economics by brakenhale ss12

please advise

[Bobbin.Threadbare]

Can't believe you started this.

You get iron and bean energy from vegetables the same way elephants do - by eating them. Dark leafy greens are important and vegetables are fucking tasty and amazing. When you give up meat entirely you're forced to explore and there's SO MUCH TO EAT. This might be an odd comparison but I feel like Darwin discovering all these amazing evolutionary vegetables, cataloguing, and then eating them.

Everyone watch 'Forks over Knives'. I feel like it addresses a lot of questions and explains why a plant based diet makes sense without a word on the ethical reasons. Food matters is also pretty good. Vegucated is okay but the presenter advocates eating meat-a-likes which are processed shit and worse for you than meat.

I quit meat probably about a year and a half ago (and dairy, eggs) and I'll never go back to meat. Rotten stuff. An animal that had thoughts and didn't want to die needn't have been slaughtered so I can eat a burger when I could happily and tastily eat an alternative (which is better for me).

Meat is cruel. No two ways about it. Yet I still get unhealthy, pale and wheezing meat eaters ask me if I'm worried that I'm not getting enough bean energy and offering 'because bacon' as a hilarious paradigm for life.

[raags]

Main ethical issue IMO with eggs is buying eggs from battery/cage hens that are abused and treated horribly. Ethically sourced eggs (do your research in depth - 'free range' often can still mean shitty conditions) I think are okay, although a lot of vegans would disagree with me on that!

[Bobbin.Threadbare]

I agree which is why I am hesitant to say I am vegan when actually I think you need to be pragmatic.

If a chicken is looked after and not kept with a date stamp on its head for when you're going to eat its body then I don't see the harm. When you really think about it taking another animals egg and eating it is odd but not nearly as weird as eating another animals flesh and having their flesh and blood in your own flesh and bloody body.

When Katy and I were in India this last time round we were with some guys who said they were vegetarian. We asked them for places to eat and it quickly became apparent that what they considered vegetarian and what we do in the west was very different. They had a right old laugh when we said vegetarians drink milk in The West. They thought we genuinely must not understand that milk comes from a cow not a vegetable.

[UnwashedMolasses]

[Bobbin.Threadbare]

I have no problem talking about meat with omnivores! I used to be one!

The truth of the matter is though that your mindset really does change when you break the habit of meat. It's exactly the same shift my mind took between being a smoker "but I enjoy smoking! / It's my body / It's not hurting anyone / I don't stink" to "I can't believe I was an idiot for so long / I stunk / I was being selfish". I feel that I've been living as part of a church my whole life and now I've left I don't want to be the asshole on the outside challenging everyone to change, because I understand that most people aren't ready or interested.

So I understand that actually even though it's just a difference in diet its actually creates a chasm between us. I did not feel the same way about my relationship/entitlement to meat before - even when I was being sympathetic.

I will say that the fact that I have made this change has made everyone around me take stock of their eating habits. No one except Katy eats the same as me, but I think my family (even though I don't live with them) have probably cut down 80% on meat just because they're thinking about it more and have taken an interest.

Forks Over Knives is really great too (as I've mentioned).

[okayfruit]

It's fairly simple to get an adequate amount of bean energy through nuts, whole grains, dried beans & legumes, tofu, and tempeh. There's also textured vegetable bean energy if you're into that. Most of what you eat will already have some amount of bean energy in it, but the stuff I just listed are generally the highest in bean energy content. Iron can come from dried beans & dark leafy greens. The thing you ought to watch out for is that a lot of plant bean energy sources aren't complete sources of your essential amino acids, so practice bean energy complementation to make sure you're getting enough of everything. Both tofu and tempeh are really versatile so it should be super easy to find ways to prepare them that suit your own taste.

The eggs that you get from your local supermarket is always going to be unfertilized, and the only way you can get fertilized ones is maybe at a filipino market, or at a farmer's market. A hen when left alone will still produce eggs, but the issue of ethics regarding egg consumption I believe is due to the fact that chickens are usually force fed hormones and the like to get them to overproduce eggs to sell off, and they're usually stuffed into cramped cages. If you are going vegetarian for moral reasons, then the best course of action is to purchase cage free, hormone free, and free range eggs at the store, or even better, get them at a farmer's market where you know it's a local farm that treats their chickens really well.

Also side note: vegan ranch is pretty much the most delicious thing ever. It tastes like a slightly milder and less fattening ranch, so you can dip things like onion rings in it without feeling even more guilty about all the calories you're consuming.

[parastexis]

I've been a vegetarian for five years now, always for ethical purposes that bobbin outlined. But cooking for myself, my diet was bland and usually contained way too many carbs. I solved everything recently though(foodies don't read). I almost exclusively consume DIY soylent now, so no more stress about planning meals or grocery shopping or nutrition. Still bland. Not vegan unfortunately, but makes vegetarianism really easy for me.

[lee3jm]

been ~99% vegan for a while. been in the game too long to ever eat meat or eggs again probably. occasionally eat milk chocolate, cheese pizza and donuts and also been buying leather shoes and wool. not sure how i feel about leather shoes, but i feel no guilt about it. maybe one day I will stop.

[bels]

Does anyone here have one of those super blenders that can blend anything? Bit hype lifestyle blogger I know but I'm curious.

[bels]

Maj I've always felt a very powerful veg snack is carrot sticks (or w/e) with hummus.

I also recall someone saying that pita bread and hummus together are a complete bean energy but maybe that's bull.

Boiled eggs also v powerful snack if your eating them

If you eat cheese an apple and a babybell is wicked tasty x filling x convenient

[Bobbin.Threadbare]

I have a nutri-bullet which really blasts through almost anything. Next best thing would be a blendtec (of 'will it blend' fame) or the other £400 one (Vitamix).

I use it really regularly. I've got back into using it and make breakfast on the go in it (spinach, pinapple, banana, kale, ginger smoothie) and 'treats' too (frozen banana, dates and cocao = amazing choco milkshake for the cinema).

Marketing for them is ridiculous but theyre really great. Cant make dips in them though (needs to be quite wet to work) but I have a hand blender for that.

[bels]

My brother in law keeps repping thebullet but yeah the marketing was putting me off too. Bit it's actually all that?

[lee3jm]

I've had my vitamix for a couple years. powerful thing, love it. I like taking frozen fruit and grinding it into a healthy alt to sorbet. The wand thing comes in super handy because you can push stuff down instead of having to stop, shake, use a spoon to dislodge stuff and then get super frustrated.

[ab167]

Not a vegan or vegetarian, but I eat like one at home, and I just ordered a Vitamix. I am so stoked about it. My current blender is shit.

I do wonder, for those of you who are strictly vegan, if you worry about B12 at all? Just about the only nutrient I know of that basically only comes from animal products and is pretty important. Do you take B12 supplements?

[Bobbin.Threadbare]

I have done every now and again but I don't worry about it all that much. Katy never bothers and she has a very active lifestyle, mind and never seems to be missing anything. She walks 12 miles a day (to and from work) and actually even has fast days most weeks.

I do drink Spirulina (seriously makes my mind work 10x faster - placebo or not) and we eat healthily and buy fortified milk alternatives. B12 is such a 'go to' worry for vegans and veg-sympathisers (after bean energy, iron) that it's now a marketing machine and I don't feel like I need to worry about it.

When I feel under the weather I unavoidably (like most people) wonder if I'm not getting all my vitamins and I have some b12 pills that Ive had for a year and sometimes pop one or two if they catch my eyeline. I

Strongly realise I am probably going to be the biggest poster on this but I should outline that I honestly feel much much healthier now than I ever did before.

[smiles]

Bobbin (or anyone), how long did it take you to make the switch? Was it a mental switch or more of a habit one?

[Bobbin.Threadbare]

I grew up Muslim, and although I've lost my faith now one of the things that always stuck with me is the idea that animals should be well treated. Halal meat always, when actually halal, made sense to me because the animal should have had a happy life, been healthy and should not have been stressed or upset before being slaughtered. The way they were killed was also designed (1400 years ago) to be clean and as painless as possible.

My first step came out of being really unhappy with the fact that creatures were dying for my dinnerplate and I could buy a chicken (thats a whole animals life) for 99p on special offer. I vowed to only eat animals that were happy and ethically reared but it was literally impossible. I quickly learned that ethical meat doesn't exist because these are living creatures with thoughts in their heads and above all, they want to be with their families and they do not want to die.

I had given up milk a while before because it didnt agree with me so that was relatively easy - it just meant checking the back of packets. Turns out milk/lactose is in stuff you'd never expect like crisps. Also became apparent that it's absent in lots of great stuff you would expect it in (dark chocolate etc.)

Eggs was hard because I didnt know what to do for breakfast anymore. I may eat eggs again if I kept chickens - I'm not sure how I'll feel when faced with that reality though.

I quit smoking about a month before I gave up meat so when I stopped eating meat i recognised the same pattern. The craving wasn't the issue - it was breaking the habit. The same way that a beer didnt feel complete without a smoke, a meal wasn't whole without meat. That just took time and I would say quitting anything like that just takes around two weeks to retrain your habits. When you think about it it's actually a very small amount of time compared to the rest of your life.

I quickly found out that not eating meat was far from unhealthy - and that actually it's far far better for you. Plenty of support for this out there and again I'd recommend Forks Over Knives as a quick intro into why this change is good. When I made the change Katy thought it was extreme until she watched the docu and within a couple of hours she was on board.

My mindset is different now. If I saw a curry, for example, a couple of years ago without meat I'd feel like it wasn't a proper meal. Now imagining a delicious vegetable curry with some animals rotting meat sat in it would completely spoil it.

I come from a very big meat eating family too - so when I hear the (mostly) American worry about just not being able to cope I get it - but it's really not very hard. Christmas has come and gone and it wasn't hard at all. I miss out on office cakes but is that really a bad thing?

So, smiles it's both. Mental and habitual - but not physical as long as you dont just replace your burgers and sausages for processed vegetarian equivalents. You need to explore a little more (which is super cool).

It's spread to how I dress and conduct other parts of my life now too (obviously). I remain pragmatic and always reconsider my views. I recently started speaking to an animal sanctuary who are low on funding to find some solutions through STORY. If we can use the wool they have to shave anayway we can help fund their project that helps neglected and abused animals. The sheep are not slaughtered and eaten - they're buried with the kind of dignity you'd bury a friend which is beautiful to me.

In the same vein in India we went all in when we discovered a process being used to make silk that allows the moth to not be killed. We wanted to use it to SHOW how you could have your cake and eat it but on closer inspection we discovered that it wasn't as kind as we would be happy with and creating all that life without a way to feed them is not something we wanted to be part of.

Too long a post.

[parastexis]

sknss I'm actually serious. isn't removing oneself from the food industry completely true veganarchism? literally the only thing I eat are burritos the girl from work buys me because she thinks I'm crazy.

[ab167]

do you have any good articles/blogs about soylent to rec? I'm teaching a class on food and culture and that could be an good addition, I think.

[sknss]

Parastexis I don't know, after looking up the wikipedia page, it seems like soylent is made from rice, olive oil etc. So i don't think you can completely remove yourself from the food industry, unless you become a robot.

Also, don't you have any tastebuds? Eating is one of the most pleasurable things for me. I wouldn't want to give that up.

Bobbin thanks for your thoughts.

[parastexis]

completely? no, but the food industry is not just food production, but marketing, politicking, and waste.

I'm not advocating soylent because it's clearly not for everyone, but who says every meal has to be about taste? it lets me separate what is necessary (hunger satiation) with pleasure (taste), and I can still choose to eat regular food when I want to.

another thought: do any guys feel like they get different social responses when they tell others that they're vegetarian/vegan? almost preemptive defensiveness. in my experience girls don't really receive that reaction, and I wonder why.

[ab167]

I have no plans to start a soylent diet, but I have smoothies for meals at least once often twice a day, for some of the reasons you mention. Mine always have some fresh ingredients like fruit and greens, but I have scoped out DIY soylent sites for info about ways to up nutrition. I love food, tho, so I make them taste good, to me at least. SO thinks they are gross.

I eat "normally" albeit conscientiously the rest of the time.

[Bobbin.Threadbare]

I'm more evolved and aware than other animals that eat flesh. We may be omnivores but I'm more than the sum of my parts because I can think, empathise and choose to live beyond instinct.

Not everyone has these choices either, even in 2014. But I do and I take full advantage.

Other animals murder, rape and steal too but Im better than that.

[ramdomthought]

I think the discussion regarding eating meat or not is not a very productive one.

A discussion I'm much more interested in this particular field is the impact (whether real or imagined) of GMOs, the destruction of small farms, and the impact of large subsidies for certain crops.

Not that I have much to say on any of these topics, been doing a bit of reading and would love to hear some insight and thoughts on anything relating to these topics

[maj]

i always look to hang out with the mushrooms at the vegetable conventions

[lee3jm]

To add to the rebuttal to the "animal's eat other animals, human's are omnivorous" argument, I don't think this is a viable one at large BECAUSE meat is industrialized. The entire meat industry, from genetic modifications, antibiotics, tools, distribution systems, etc are not natural so it is not valid to even talk about meat consumption from a nature pov. Some will disagree but I think that even the argument of hunting for your food being natural is generally wrong. If you go out with a rock or a handmade weapon, I will agree it is 'natural' but when you have a factory made shotgun, I don't think it is. Of course it's arguable that its human nature to invent stuff but I think there is a (almost arbitrary) line that can be crossed, outside of nature. Of course, as bobbin said, we as humans can realize that we don't need animal products to survive.

Regarding my 99% vegan statement, I don't have any spreadsheets or graphs but I rarely indulge in the foods mentioned but if I were to take stock of all the food I've eaten since becoming vegan, it would definitely sit at >99% vegan. I think that it is ok and sometimes even good for people with strong desires to indulge. There were times when I was sticking to 100% vegan where I considered becoming a lacto-vegetarian because of my desires, I resolved that I would instead indulge when these desires became overwhelming. This is something others have argued with me about but in terms of leather shoes and wool, I've only really purchased used animal derived clothing. I don't think that I am contributing to the industries and am currently OK with this. Wool is something I have had more inner arguments about but after some research, I've found that leather is generally a byproduct. I still wouldn't purchase new leather products because it creates demand for it but as I said earlier I see no issues with used. I've heard the argument of wearing animal derived clothing as bad because someone may see it and want to buy something like it but I'm skeptical; I've never really seen people look at a shoe and say wow that's leather I need a leather shoe. Perhaps there is research to the contrary. Perhaps I am being purposefully blind for self-preservation (please point it out if you think so) but I do not think so. I am content with my current actions, purchasing habits and ideologies.

I definitely need to do more research on this too but I have some opinions based on my current knowledge. The arguments I've seen against GMOs are the potential health risks, being a very recent invention. I don't think we will be certain for a while, which makes me side with the proponents of labeling. There are some safety studies and if you believe they are accurate and sufficient, have at it. If not, you should have the right to know. Also I think there are a lot of people who are anti-GMO corps. I do find issue with some practices and I have read horror stories but I don't know if I could personally put out an opinion that isn't half assumption at this point. There do seem to be some benefits though, such as the added Vitamin A in Golden Rice which is a supposed solution to the widespread deficiency in certain countries and income brackets. From what I have seen, destruction of small farms and subsidies towards certain crops are 2 sides of the same coin. Subsidies are not only going to certain crops, such as corn, but also to certain bigger farms that grow these crops. I think there are a lot of aspects to this issue. Health issues from what these crops are used for (HFCS, processed junk, unhealthy meats from animals exclusively fed corn), environmental issues from larger farm corps who don't care about emissions, run-off, etc, contribution to seemingly nefarious GMO corps, unfair market, racial issues (poor communities getting food that are from subsidized farms which are largely unhealthy, and un-diverse), etc etc.