Talk to me about being a Vegan?

Fatboy123

Fatboy123

Fatboy123

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23 Aug 2020
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Have been looking into the idea of maybe going vegan on environmental reasons for 5 days a week and vastly cutting down on my already pretty megre meat consumption on the other 2 days.

Doing a bit of research into what I'd need to do to be vegan has left me on a number of occasions scratching my head or thinking Eh?

I've spoken to a number of vegans but I've been judged to be difficult/vegan hater if I ask any genuine but possibly contentious questions.

Any ideas?
Thanks
 
Why not try going veggie first and slowly replace veggie alternatives with vegan alternatives?

Can be pretty extreme just going straight to vegan and you are less likely to stick at it if you just jump straight in. There are thousands of veggie and vegan receipes for things so just need to think of what you might normally have e.g. chicken curry and look at replacing with lentils or something.
 
(Bival)Vegan speaking, its not very difficult to go vegan these days imo, the amount of choice available for meat replacements is vast.

Protein is very easy as long as your eating a wide variety of foods and pick at least one protein (tofu, fake meat, beans etc) per main meal. Take B12 supplements every now and then and you're good to go.

Don't jump in two feet at once though, ease yourself into it. Cook as much as you can from scratch, for two reasons - one, its tastier, particularly when you're cooking certain fake meats, as you need to spice them properly for them to be worth it; and two because then you're not reliant on certain things being available from the supermarket.

This was my meal tonight for instance
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Fake beef was this: https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/308085099
Then it was just onion, ginger, green chili, a splash of dark soy and a pack of spicy radish from an Asian shop, and for the greens was broccoli, choi sum, garlic, and a little sauce made from veg stock, cornflour and light soy. The amount above made two portions

Very easy to cook and tastes better than most restaurant meals.
 
Be prepared for lots of trumping and the fake meat products often have more crap in them than a McDonald's.
 
You’d be far better off in health and well-being by shopping locally with locally grown and reared produce mainly organic or biodynamic and only eat what’s in season.

That will have a greater environmental impact than eating veg picked unripe and flown across the world.

Why anyone thought for the uk veganuary was a good idea beggars belief. Why not august or September when there’s loads of lovely ripe in season local veg around.
 
Checking in.

Check out my posts in my meal plan thread for some good inspiration. All the meals are pretty quick to get on the table. I'll update it again tonight once I've done the next set but the last few weeks dinners are below. If you want some good recipes, check out Meera Sodha who puts a lot on the Guardian. Mainly Indian/Asian inspired but all very tasty. Ottolenghi also does some amazing things with vegetables.
https://www.theguardian.com/profile/meera-sodha
https://www.theguardian.com/food/series/yotam-ottolenghi-recipes

What are your questions? I went from having meat/fish pretty every meal to slowly reducing it to now cut it out entirely. You'll miss some things, cheese is the one for me, but cutting out dairy aside from that has been incredibly easy.

There are plenty of meat substitutes to help you through (Richmond vegan sausages are pretty good, although normal Richmond ones are horrible, and perfect for a Sunday sandwich), the fake burgers are also quite good and Beyond Meat are so close to the real thing but they aren't cheap> However, I do think it's better to just let the vegetables shine and not try and replace the flesh. You may think you hate tofu, but learn how to cook it (dredge it in seasoned cornflour and then bake for example) and it's great. Buy the Tofoo brand.

Vegan cakes are so much better than non vegan cakes as well, but that's because they are full of oil...

But yea, just ask away and we can help. LiE is the forums resident hench vegan so if you're into that world he may have some good advice.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/forums/threads/post-your-meal-plan.18918784/

Ben Ben Noodles
White Ramen
Courgette Lasange (Minimalist Baker) https://minimalistbaker.com/8-ingredient-zucchini-lasagna-gf/
Butternut squash rice (Jamie Oliver) https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/rice-recipes/pumpkin-rice/
Tempeh with Pak Choi
Thai Green Curry
Stuffed Cabbage Leaves (Great British Chefs)(https://www.greatbritishchefs.com/recipes/vegan-gluten-free-stuffed-cabbage-rolls-recipe
Tomato & Olive 'Paella' (Olive Magazine) https://www.olivemagazine.com/recipes/vegan/sunblush-tomato-and-olive-vegan-paella/
Banana blossom & Mushroom Tacos
Cauliflower Shawarma & Salad (Olive) https://www.olivemagazine.com/recip...er-shawarma-pomegranate-tahini-and-pine-nuts/
Kochumber, onion bhajis & naan
Firecracker tofu (Veganricha) https://www.veganricha.com/firecracker-tofu-wings/
Scrambled tofu tacos
Walnut chili with broccoli orzo
Courgetti Pasta
Mushroom & Cauliflower Shepherd's Pie
Nut Roast with swede roasties
 
Maccapacca said:
You’d be far better off in health and well-being by shopping locally with locally grown and reared produce mainly organic or biodynamic and only eat what’s in season.

That will have a greater environmental impact than eating veg picked unripe and flown across the world.
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Well that's just entirely misleading. No one is flying veg around the world. I like how you purposefully picked flying to try and give your argument some weight. Food is generally shipped around the world, and the general consensus is that it's still more environmentally friendly to eat a global plant based diet than a local meat based one. There are a lot of environmentally unfriendly products that are marketed as vegan and people assume they are environmentally 'good' (Almonds & Avocado - I'm looking at you) however the sheer amount of energy, chemicals and landuse for meat is staggering. Your argument is all about transporting, but you are ignoring the environmental impacts of actually rearing that meat in the first place. That is where the problem lies with meat, not driving a pig from a farm to an abattoir to your butcher.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181023110627.htm
https://hbr.org/2011/06/local-food-or-less-meat-data-t.html

You are right with some of your message however. We absolutely should be eating local, in season, produce. But don't peddle the misinformation that eating a global plant based diet is more environmentally damaging than a local meat one.

Maccapacca said:
Why anyone thought for the uk veganuary was a good idea beggars belief. Why not august or September when there’s loads of lovely ripe in season local veg around.
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I can only imagine it's to try and tap into the 'New Year, New Me' resolution kind of thing.
 
Not vegan personally, but do often cook vegetarian or vegan meals. The "fake" meats are OK, but I don't use them very often, favouring replacing the meat component with something else. For example, instead of using chicken in a pasta bake type thing, you can instead used fried aubergine or courgette. Instead of mince in a chilli, you can use finely chopped or shredded mushroom.
 
tom_e said:
@LiE is another man in the know.
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:p

Vegan checking in. Personally I do it for the animals, the environment is 2nd but obviously closely linked to animal agriculture.

Being vegan is easy these days, a little more challenging for me as I'm big into weight training. I simply have a few scoops of vegan protein powder each day to top me up.

Breakfast
I go with porridge made with plant milk, berries, walnuts, chia seeds. Most cereals are vegan, just use a plant milk, I'd recommend Oatly it's damn good.

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Lunch
So many options. I usually go with either Tofu, protein pasta (made with either beans or soya, from Aldi), some kind of mex bowl (beans, rice, salsa, avocado, etc) or in a pinch I'll have a vegan burger (the Aldi v-beef ones are really good).

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Snack
Peanut butter and vegan choc spread on a bagel, with some fruit.
I also have a good supply of Trek bars for when I'm peckish.

Dinner
I will eat with my wife so dinners need to cater for both of us, she is pescatarian.
- Ramen (mine with Tofu).
- Pizza
- Burger, sweet potato chips and veg
- Thai curry with Tofu
- Spag bol with vegan mince
- Goulash made without the sour cream, made with the beef pieces from above.
- Chinese fried rice with hoisin duck wraps (the Linda McCartney duck is amazing)
- Vegan fry up (vegan sausages, hash browns, beans, mushrooms, fried bread, tomatoes, vegan bacon if you feel fancy).
- Dhaal with chapati
- 5 bean chili.



Shopping tips
- Tesco is really good for vegan food, the wicked kitchen range is amazing. The ready meals are really fresh and tasty, vegan cookies and donuts are also lovely.
- Aldi's own brand vegan burgers are the best I've found, they also sell vegan brioche burger buns. Devine.
- Loads of places now sell vegan food, so when you're out, you will have no issues.
- Amazon do a good range of vegan products.
- You can get some decent fried chicken alternatives from https://www.vfc.co.uk/
- Find your local vegan take away spots, we have a really good all vegan Chinese. Dominoes vegan pizza is pretty good too and some kebab shops do Falafel wraps.

This is the brand of vegan protein I use and the vegan chocolate spread I use on my bagel.
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and just something to leave here as a closing thought.

These animals, they are no different from our dogs and cats, they feel and experience the world just like any other sentient being. They want to live, but we don't give them a choice. All for a 10 minute meal. They aren't robots that don't feel anything, they are all individuals and we don't need to eat them.

Ella and Moksha:
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Eric:
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Nigel:
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All these were rescued from slaughter houses.

I'd recommend watching stuff put out by Earthling Ed, really good stuff.

This is an amazing speech he did.

 
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flea.rider said:
hmm no .. it's flown ..from spain to uk your looking at 4-5 days shipped ..from Africa 10-15+ Thailand 20+
most veg would have such a short sell by or even be rotten in that time ..
https://www.intracen.org/uploadedFi...t_Transport_of_Fresh_Fruit_and_Vegetables.pdf

i will give you meat(frozen) and tinned stuff but even then some is flown in ..
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Fair enough, some is flown but I suspect the majority is still shipped. Annoyingly, that article doesn't break it down. However, that article doesn't disprove what I said. Infact, it actually supports my argument against Maccapacca.

He states that we should be eating more local produce to save the environment, but this just isn't necessarily the case. It's somewhat counter intuitive but backed up by the research.

Interestingly in that article this jumped out at me:
For example, a consumer’s shopping trip of more than 10 km to solely purchase one kilogram of fresh produce will generate more CO2 emissions than the airfreighting of one kilogram from Kenya (van Hauwermeiren, Coene, Engelen & Mathijs, 2007).
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Your article also says that :
Several studies have been completed investigating the emissions and energy associated with the apple supply chains sourcing fruit locally and from further a field (e.g. EU and the Southern Hemisphere). Canals, Cowell, Sim and Besson (2007) did not find that clear support that a local (UK) supply would necessarily be superior to the alternative European or Southern Hemisphere supply scenario
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Plus, your report actually says flying is the lowest producer of CO2s for food freight:

The report provides a useful breakdown of food kilometres and CO2 emissions by transport mode (see Figures 5-5 and 5-6). For 2002 the authors estimate cars account for the single largest proportion of vehicle kilometres (48 per cent) followed by heavy goods vehicles (HGV) operating in the UK (19 per cent) and light goods vehicles (LGV) operating in the UK (16 per cent). The balance of the food vehicle kilometres are made up of heavy and light goods vehicles transporting produce overseas, and 14 sea, rail and airfreight. However, in terms of the CO2 emissions associated with UK food transport, HGV transport is the largest contributor (33 percent) followed by HGVs operating overseas (12 per cent) and HGVs carrying export product (12 per cent). The car contributes a smaller proportion of CO2 emissions at 13 percent, whilst sea contributes 12 per cent and air 10 per cent.
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And, their own conclusion state the whole thing is simplistic and can't be looked at in isolation.

In conclusion, food and air miles are simplistic concepts and not indicators of sustainability or environmental impact. The much wider picture has to be considered and the alternative sources of supply assessed.
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The research seems quite old, so not sure if it has been superseded but if that's what you're linking to I'm happy to discuss it. I did only skim read it but I think my points above are valid.

Edit- found something more up to date, and it goes against what you are saying:

This is very interesting @Maccapacca. The environmental impact of meat isn't because we are moving it around the world, it's the amount of energy/water/materials it takes to raise that animal (and the associated pollution coming out the other end!).

https://ourworldindata.org/food-transport-by-mode
As the data here shows, only 0.16% of food miles come from air travel. Most – nearly 60% – comes by boat.
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You might think that this figure of 6% is strongly dependent on where in the world you live – that if you live somewhere very remote, that the role of transport must be much higher. But this is not really the case.

Let’s take the example of beef from a beef herd. The average footprint of this beef is approximately 60 kilograms of CO2eq per kilogram of beef. Let’s compare the transport footprint of buying from your local farmer (who lives just down the road from you), versus someone in the UK transporting beef from Central America (approximately 9000 kilometers away).

Transporting food by boat emits 0.023 kilograms of CO2eq per tonne of product per kilometer. To transport the 9000 kilometers from Central America to the UK therefore emits 0.207 kilograms CO2eq [9000km * 0.023kg per tonne-kilometer / 1000 = 0.207 kg CO2eq per kg]. This is only equivalent to 0.35% of the total footprint of the 60 kilograms of CO2eq per kilogram of beef.

If you buy from your local farmer – let’s assume you walk there, and have zero transport emissions – your beef footprint is 59.8 kilograms CO2eq per kilogram [we calculate this as 60kg – 0.2kg]. It makes almost no difference.

Especially for foods with a large footprint, transport as a share of the food’s total emissions is fairly insensitive to the distance travelled.
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Ahleckz said:
d the associated pollution coming out the other end!).
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that would be to put on your plants it helps them grow ...organic farming was done for 1000's of years ..and was good for all ... it's the large multinational farms that are destroying things .. when you have 50000 head of cattle in stocks fed by
machine and there urine piped out to a lake .. thats bad .. organic is more intense and less profit .. so let a farmer run his farm .. not someone just looking for profit
 
flea.rider said:
that would be to put on your plants it helps them grow ...organic farming was done for 1000's of years ..and was good for all ... it's the large multinational farms that are destroying things .. when you have 50000 head of cattle in stocks fed by
machine and there urine piped out to a lake .. thats bad .. organic is more intense and less profit .. so let a farmer run his farm .. not someone just looking for profit
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Meat rearing, a proven huge CO2 polluter is OK because the plants need the farts from cows to grow. Without cattle herds, there'd be no vegetables. Is that what you're arguing?

Gotcha.

The large multinational farms, that are growing the feed for your small local farmer is also part of the problem. The huge use of water by the small local farmer is part of the issue. Don't kid yourself that the small farmer isn't part of the problem.

Do you accept what you posted about most food being flown is simply untrue? And, secondly to that, do you accept that eating local meat isn't necessarily better than a global vegan diet?
 
Ahleckz said:
Meat rearing, a proven huge CO2 polluter is OK because the plants need the farts from cows to grow. Without cattle herds, there'd be no vegetables. Is that what you're arguing?
no plants need the manure they spread it in the fields ..and i see your problem co2 is just plant food .. nothing nasty in it .. you want to update your thinking .. more co2 more plant life less co2 below 200ppm and we all die ..


Gotcha.

The large multinational farms, that are growing the feed for your small local farmer is also part of the problem. The huge use of water by the small local farmer is part of the issue. Don't kid yourself that the small farmer isn't part of the problem.
a small farm will produce it's own feed ..do you know how a proper farm works everything to run it is grown on site ..

Do you accept what you posted about most food being flown is simply untrue? And, secondly to that, do you accept that eating local meat isn't necessarily better than a global vegan diet?
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lol wonder if you would be culled as we fart more than beef on a vegan diet .. ..

i'm done here .. cya
 
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