I tried to go Vegetarian (mmm it lasted about a week) and there was no end to the derision I experienced. People launched into studies of this and that, from it’s unhealthy to It makes you less intelligent. I chose to do so because I like the satisfied, but not full feeling one gets after eating a healthy veggie meal, unlike the omigod Im going to hurl overfull feeling after eating some brots. I stopped doing it because of general laziness and I wanted a chicken salad sandwich.
One thing about ‘flexitarianism’ and what have you: Perfectly fine option to choose, but please don’t call yourself a vegetarian and intentionally go around eating hamburgers and such. It just makes it harder for those of us who do stick to no meat! People then start expecting that all vegetarians are flexitarians who will eat meat if prodded enough.
Just a aside - Some have reported totally managing their diabetes on a low carb Atkins style diet, which could be a almost exclusive carnivorous diet - the reason it works is that you don’t give your body enoght carbs to screw things up, and you start using fat as your main fuel.
I’ve been vegetarian all my adult life - 11 years. Not all of that has been “healty diet” time so don’t think all vegetarians are health nuts. I did it for ethical reasons (factory farming), but I do struggle with a healthier diet too.
In theory I would eat wild game and that sort of thing, but in practice I am 100% vegetarian. I went cold turkey and honestly it was no problem except for family taking awhile to accept it and the rest of the world never accepting it. Being a teenager probably helped though, especially because my mom told me I could never stick to it. Ha!
Being in Iowa, people are sometimes shocked or angry when they find out, so I just don’t tell anyone unless necessary (i.e. meat being shoved upon me and polite refusal not being accepted). Since I’m not militant and I don’t attempt to change others, this means for me no real negative impact on my life. Don’t get me wrong, most people are fine about it, it’s just the jerks or the truly ignorant. (So you don’t eat chicken? You don’t eat beef? You don’t eat pork?! How do you survive?!)
I’ve thought about eating seafood again, and it’s conceivable I might eat poultry (though I doubt it - chicken farms squick me out). I sincerely doubt I’ll ever eat red meat again, unless my friend finally ponies up that $100 for me to eat a steak. However, it’s just become habit and I rarely think about it. You get less choice in restaurants, but now I’m so used to it that when I walk into a restaurant with more than 10 vegetarian choices I have a hard time dealing with it! On the flip side, even here in pork country I have no real difficulty finding vegetarian dishes (I just avoid the dedicated barbeque and steak places - I don’t care for the smell, anyway).
I was a vegetarian once (for ethical reasons). It lasted about two years. I didn’t miss the meat, but my diet was still terrible…I had replaced the meat in my diet with cookies. I served pretty much the same meals I always had, but substituting Boca products or the like. My family was not happy with the change, no matter how many times I told them the horror stories about how the poor little animals live and die. I didn’t know any other vegetarians, either, so I felt pretty much like the odd one out all the time. Plus, I was still eating eggs and dairy products, which made me feel guilty as hell. Finally, one day I looked in the mirror and realized that I had lost a ghastly amount of weight.
After that, I went back to being a “normal” person. Everyone was delighted that I had finally come to my senses. Eating in restaurants and shopping for food suddenly became far easier. I gained some weight and didn’t have to buy clothes in the little girls’ department anymore.
These days, I’m married to an omnivore (who has no intention of giving up meat, ever) and I have a standing weekly dinner with my daughter at McDonald’s. I eat as much dead animal as anyone else. However, I still do a lot of reading about food production. I buy cage-free eggs and order vegetarian at restaurants whenever possible. Some day, I plan to go back to vegetarianism and do a much better job.
I’ve been a vegetarian for about a year. I became highly concerned with my health and came to the belief that a plant based diet is the best thing. I eat no meat, but I will eat dairy and eggs. I try to avoid dairy, but I do enjoy cheese so, I don’t see myself becoming vegan any time soon.
I am not a preachy vegetarian and I have no problem with people eating meat. I just think that meat processing is cruel…animals are not killed instantly.
I practice yoga and am trying to incorporate it in my life. One of the tenets of the yoga philosophy is ahimsa or non-harming. So vegetarianism is how I practice this.
I’ve had to forgo many restaurant meals, because they do not offer healthy vegetarian meals. (Currently my daughter, who is also vegetarian, and I like to go out to lunch at Wild Oats Market.)
Some people don’t understand my decision and seem troubled by it, but most are supportive.
I never really considered the difference it would make being from a place like, say, Iowa and living in a place heavily populated by Asian people or being close to a coastal urban centre like, say, Vancouver. Whenever we do venture out to the big city, there’s always plenty of vegetarian restaurants and organic/free-range restaurants. I have a spot more respect for rural vegetarians all of a sudden.
It is fairly easy and inexpensive to find a steak that came from a happy cow here, but the last time I ate meat I found it really wasn’t as satisfying as I’d convinced myself it would be. As a result of my little foray into meateating, I doubt I’ll ever eat meat or poultry again.
That made me laugh out loud. I love that statement.
Skald the Rhymer, if you are inclined to rock the boat or distinguish yourself- by all means: do so by rebuking something which is already dubious in nature. Tweaks the family and spares a few cows and chickens some unneeded suffering.
There is some serious yin and yang in your decision.
gives rock on hands
I am not a vegetarian and have no plans to become one. I love my steak.
However, I don’t have a problem with vegetarians and vegans, so long as they keep it to themselves, for instance, not pester me to give up my steak. As long as they follow that rule, we’re cool, and them not eating meat in general is kind of like me not eating pork (I think it’s gross, although I have no problem with pork hot dogs and pork sausage…just pork steaks and chops).
A friend who I’ve known for years recently became vegan, for moral reasons - he’s a firm supporter of the hunter/gatherer type society, and feels that in a technological society such as ours there’s no need for animal products to be used, as we should have found an alternative. He has had a few problems adjusting because people keep forgetting and offering him non-vegan fare.
I’m working on a cookbook and I’ve convinced him to help me make a vegan section to it - I love experimenting with cooking so he’s going to come over and help me make vegan stuff, which he will then try out and rate. I’m actually quite excited about it, but apparently he’s stunned that I’ve been so interested in his veganism, when not interested in becoming vegan myself. Is that not normal?
~Tasha
There are organic restaurants? I’ve heard of these ‘vegetarian restaurants’ and figured they had to be in the Big City somewhere, but an organic restaurant, I never even thought of it.
Fortunately, this ain’t the boonies, and we have Thai, Indian, and other vegetarian-friendly types of cuisine here. Still, there is that country mentality. People really, literally just assume I just eat all salads and fruit. The idea that I eat beans, rice, pasta, and so on just never occurs to a lot of people here. Either that or they don’t get the “no meat” part. I had a nice employee bring me a ton of crab rangoons he made especially for me since I wouldn’t want the pork eggrolls for the potluck. I felt pretty bad declining. He kept insisting, “but it’s not real crab!” Er…
I have been vegetarian for 14 years now. Started when I was 16, stated reason was to “save the animals” possible real reason was to piss off my mom. I still eat eggs and dairy. I am pretty stern about my food and always check ingredients for chicken/beef fat, gelatin, rennet, etc. I try not to be a pain in the ass at restaurants though. I can’t even think of a single restaurant that doesn’t have vegetarian dishes nowadays.
One of my favorite stories is the one time I went to Red Lobster (10 years ago?) and they didn’t have anything vegetarian on the menu. I asked the server if she could do a pasta dish without seafood or something. She brought me a delicious heaping plate of fettucini alfredo with broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, etc. When we got the bill, my meal was charged as “side of noodles” $1.50, and “side of veg” $1.50. Best $3.00 meal I ever ate!
It’s weird because I have no self-control in any other areas of my life. It seems I don’t really have self-control about food either, I could eat a whole bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos all the while telling myself to stop. But tomorrow, if they started putting chicken powder on Doritos, I would never eat another one again. The other weird thing is I love the smell of BBQ or bacon or pastrami, but I just won’t touch it.
I remember the last bite of meat I took. After I had decided to become vegetarian, I tried to eat a Gordon’s fish fillet that my mom cooked. I thought maybe fish could still be “in” but as I took a bite and imagined the fish’s body it seemed so disgusting to eat another being’s flesh, I couldn’t chew it. I just spit it out and that was that. It seems that it should be equally disgusting to eat eggs or drink milk out of another being’s body, but for some reason it doesn’t occur to me. That is why I don’t judge meat-eaters. I’m sure for some reason it doesn’t occur to them that they are chewing a corpse. 
Well, by “plenty” I mean “approximately four” dedicated vegan or free-range and/or organic-only restaurants in Vancouver. There are likely at least two dozen other places in the city that are mostly-vegetarian due to the nature of the food (Indian, Middle Eastern, so on and so forth). If you stuff together a few million people, you’re going to have a market for people who like eating really pricey smallish fruits.
With Atkins and similar diets, the question becomes “is it sustainable?” My anecdotal experience with those dieters is that they all lose weight initially becuase they’re managing what they eat, but don’t keep it up over a long period of time. Don’t know how this helps Skald and I’m not a nutritionist, I’m just wondering.
Bear in mind that controlling my blood glucose isn’t the motive behind thinking about vegetarianism–just an added impetus. Ethical queasiness is a bigger factor, so I can’t say going the atkins route. My plan to lose weight involves 330-60 minutes a day on the treadmill.
I’ve posted this here before on the many veg ? threads, but cycles make it new again: I don’t see any of the old veg Dopers here.
I’ve been ovo-lacto vegetarian for 20 years. In a twist on the usual turning veg development, I first started specifically Not Eating Seafood. My parents are marine biologists, and, at age 11, I saw the usual haul my Dad brought up, saw the fish struggle and die, and just decided(I was a sweet kid) to not eat anything that died that way. And pretty much haven’t eaten seafood since then. My parents were OK with it, but they reasonably said, with six kids to feed, and Dad’s bonus of fish from his work, said I had to cook my own meal, then. So I would cook hot dogs , with no connection of where those came from.
Learned that eventually, and more about the way animals are treated in the food industry, and the initial compassion for fish expanded to the rest of critters. I’m not preachy about it, always respect that it’s a personal choice, and that was the right one for me.I spent my time as a young adult in Chapel Hill, NC, so it was easy to be veg, plenty of restaurants and food co-ops.
After 20 years, I’ve heard just about every argument against vegetarianism, and all the witticisms, lalala. It was harder to be veg when I lived in Mississippi, but, during that time, restaurants in that college town started to serve veg fare; I even got to help develop a weekly veg entree selection at the one I worked at.
It’s been amazing to see vegetarianism get more accepted as a normal diet. I rarely encounter the old “But how do you EAT???” schpiel. Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, etc, are now glossy grocery stores, rather than the old brown rice-n-tofu co-ops they usta be.
The cookbook that most educated me was Laurel’s Kitchen, it has a wealth of nutritional info, the newer editions even more. Deborah Madison’s are very fine, as well. As others have said, don’t get overwhelmed, just cook some veg dishes as you can, and see if you like them. My vegetarianism developed in stages; at first I was heavy on cheese and eggs, and ate the usual white flour stuff. Now; almost no refined flour, heavy on whole grains, and have eggs–from a friend who raises chickens free-range, former Ag professor who does this well-- maybe twice a month. Cheese, well, my Dutch blood just loves it, but I use really tasty good cheese sparingly. Cream, once a day in my tea. Don’t feel like it’s a rulebook, just explore a little, and see if you find the food to be good.
In the edgy comeback category, Skald, my fave back when people would give me some grief about my choice, when pushed too much, was: “You know, if I can’t run it down myself and rip it’s jugular out with my bare teeth, it’s just lost a certain je ne sais quoi…” That usually drew the conversation to a tidy, and welcome, closing.
Went vegetarian in college, as a 1-month experiment. Giving up the “meat” products on offer in the dorms wasn’t difficult. The 1-month experiment felt good and lasted about 10 years, and I still don’t eat much meat. My main gripe against meat-eating is the ridiculous quantity of water required to produce a unit of meat.*
Protein is everywhere. It’s the iron that can be a little tricky.
When people make a big deal out of participation at some social gathering (you’re supposed to eat hot dogs on July 4, turkey on Thanksgiving, etc) - I would acknowledge that the food was important, but I was really attending for the company.
Another line that came up a lot, even when I explained that my reason was environmental rather than strictly ethical, was “What if you were starving to death, would you eat an animal then?” (Get used to challenges). This was easy - I answered that of course I would. I think this answer would work for ethical vegetaians as well. I would definitely kill an animal if my life were on the line. I see it as similar to the understanding that it’s acceptable to kill a human in self-defense (I said similar, not the same - not advocating cannibalism!). But I think it’s fine to say that you might do something in an extreme situation that you wouldn’t do if there were alternatives.
*2500 gallons/pound gets tossed aruond a lot, but as “low” as 400 gallons/pound.