I was challenged by a vegan friend to try out a vegetarian diet for the summer. I said I would give it a shot, though I stated FTR to my friend that I most certainly did not have the discipline to go all-out vegan. I would attempt to eat no meat no sooner than Labor Day. And if it works out, maybe I’d make it a permanent thing.
I’ve gone since Monday night with no meat, however I did have eggs this morning. It didn’t even occur to me that this might be considered non-vegetarian until after breakfast. Technically it isn’t meat, but the more I think about it, it does seem like a step up from eating cheese or honey. So any full-time vegetarians out there, what’s your opinion? Are eggs on the grocery list or off?
I’ve heard that what we call “vegan” used to be the definition of a vegetarian, and that what we call “vegetarian” was called “normal person”. (IOW, vegetarians are sanrky about defintions)
Vegan and vegetarian are not the same. A vegan, for instance, won’t use or eat any animal products. Although honey can cause some debate. A vegetarian might eat dairy and eggs, but no actual meat or fish.
Your friend, being a vegan, probably thinks you cheated.
Depends on what the vegan friend specified. If said friend calls his diet vegan but told the OP to go vegetarian, then no, he’s good. I’m an ovo-lacto vegetarian, and make strong distinctions between the two diet types. Your average omnivore would have a rather easier time adhering to a vegetarian diet rather than a vegan one, going just by ease of finding food on the go, finding interesting recipes, etc. Going straight to vegan would be much more likely to fail.
My daughter and her husband are both vegetarian, and they’ll eat eggs. He prefers not to eat eggs as a separate dish (that is, he doesn’t like scrambled eggs) but he doesn’t mind them mixed into other foods. She’ll eat eggs straight.
Vegans (rather than simply vegetarians) also eschew dairy products such as milk and cheese. And there are countless variations in between. There needs to be a word for those who avoid meat and poultry but eat fish (piscatorians?), as well.
You do know that the regular eggs you buy are not fertilized, right? I assume you probably do, but, as an egg-eating vegetarian, I’ve met plenty of people who don’t know that. I wouldn’t eat a fertilized egg (because it would be nasty, but also because I’m a vegetarian), but I don’t see how a non-fertilized egg is any different from milk.
The Vegetarian society in the UK (an organisation that endorses food products as meeting their ‘offical’ standards) will certify foods that contain ‘free-range’ eggs.
Healthy chickens will lay (infertile if they have no access to a male) eggs every few days regardless- it’s what they’re been bred to do; cows on the other hand only lactate when they’ve given birth, and if there’s spare milk, that means the calf isn’t getting it, possibly due to the calf being seperated from the mother and hand-reared, (cows will frequently ‘hold back’ their milk, giving a crap yield, if they have access to their calf), but probably due to the calf being killed. It’d be quite easy to make a case that eggs can be produced in a much more ethical fashion than milk.
Personally, I hard to get eggs from small-scale free range suppliers, as the official definition of ‘free-range’ is pointless; 20,000 chickens in a shed, with a tiny strip of mud outside that only 5% of the chickens ever reach in their lives? That qualifies (numbers from a trainee vet friend who did a research project on 'em). Fortunately, it’s quite common round here for farms to keep just a small number of chickens wandering round the farm, and my local (hippy) shop deals excusively with this scale suppliers. That doesn’t seem a bad life- at least until they wind up as sunday lunch.
Back in January I went vegetarian (not vegan) on a whim with about 10 seconds of thought on the subject. It’s been five months now; about the only time I miss meat is once in a while when out to breakfast.
I would strongly encourage you to watch the movie “Food Inc.”. It changed the way I looked at food production in the US. I never gave much thought to the ethics of eating eggs from factory farms until I saw that movie. The chickens often are kept in small cages and never get to see the outdoors. Male chicks are frequently killed en masse because they’re not worth anything compared to the female chicks that can lay eggs later (which is one reason that some people become vegans and are against all egg consumption).
Typically eggs are unfertilized, so from that angle there’s nothing wrong with eating them (while some might find it unethical to eat a chicken embryo, I can’t see any logic to say that applies to an unfertilized egg). Many of us who are vegetarian do eat eggs. So, to me, the main issue is how the hens who lay the eggs are treated.
I do still eat eggs, but I avoid the factory farm eggs. I get my eggs from sources that make efforts to give their hens a humane life such as allowing them to have access to the outdoors.
During the summer, we like to get our eggs from local farmers at the farmer’s market. Many farmer’s markets are starting their seasons right now - check into the ones in your area and get to know the farmers.
I’ve been vegetarian (with occasional fish) for nine years or so. A portion of that time I was actually vegan.
I’ve been enjoying pig lately. Pig will always be my weakness!
How you define vegetarian is entirely up to YOU. There are far too many “diet Nazis” in the world who spend their lives judging other people and their food intake, and are quick to pounce if you violate some ethereal law.
If you want to be a PITA and absolutely AVOID animal products, make sure you give up your shoes and your belts and your wallet. Don’t eat anything which might have broth or stock or consomme in it. Check out the kitchen wherever you eat, to insure that the same cutting board, the same knife, the same cooking pot is not contaminated by meat.
Confine yourself to eating bread, french fries and salad in public. BUT ONLY if you get proof positive that the fries were cooked in 100% vegetable oil.
Or, you can start by eliminating meat, enjoying an occasional egg (but NOT cooked in bacon fat!), and using dairy, but not as your primary source of protein. If you count on dairy being your protein, you tend to consume too much fat. Look to beans, lentils, and grains.
Try soy milk, almond milk, rice milk, just to see what it is like!
It’s up to YOU.
(One of my favorite explanations of vegetarianism is a remark about a bacon-and-egg breakfast: the chicken is involved, but the pig is COMMITTED!)
~VOW
I guess it’s not a huge deal because most people don’t spend a whole lot on eggs, but the local eggs at my farmers’ market are about 3x as expensive as even the organic ones in the supermarket.
Which brings up interesting questions on vegan/vegetarians and oral sex. But yes, an unfertilized egg is not an “animal” and therefore it doesn’t matter what the chemical protein string looks like, most vegetarians (though not vegans) will eat them.
Vegetarians don’t and can’t completely avoid animal protein anyway, because there are always going to be tiny residual animal bits in your food - especially when you are eating organic.