Except he’s not paying me to be a vegan, he’s paying me to keep a vegan diet. Once the year is done, none of that hundred grand is going to impede me from walking straight into a McDonalds and celebrating with a cheeseburger and a milkshake.
We’re not talking about Indecent Proposal here. 
That billionaire ain’t the boss of you, is he??
I just got back from Hong Kong, and had a vegetarian (maybe not vegan, I’m unsure) meal at the big Buddha there, and it was basically like a high-quality version of the Chinese food that I’ve had on the mainland, except without meat. It was quite good.
Actually compared to normal Chinese food, it was better, because without meat means without meat bones in every, single morsel, and so it was a good thing. (The Chinese apparently haven’t learned the art of butchering.)
Hey, I’ve already been vegan for the past year. Where’s my money?
You’re disqualified, per the OP.
Now, if you want to switch to a pure meat diet for the next year, I can offer you… a thousand Korean won. It’s all I’ve got in my wallet.
Oh, yeah, sorry about that. And no, I’ll pass on the offer, but thanks. 
I will say, though, to encourage any of you who want to pocket the quick hundred grand, that sticking to a vegan diet, provided that you live somewhere where being a vegan is reasonably convenient, really is very easy. It’s really no big deal. Most of the time, it’s just like a regular diet, just a lot less meaty and a lot less cheesy. It won’t hurt you, and you probably won’t feel like you’re missing out on anything. You might even discover some awesome foodstuffs that you didn’t know about or weren’t that into before.
I’m not sure how vegan I am (discounting dinner), but I’m a heck of a lot more vegetarian now for breakfast and lunch than I used to be. Mostly, lunch is the change. Sometimes there’s bits of meat, but it’s mostly vegetables or noodles. I mean the stuff served at work as a free benefit, Chinese style. Considering that it’s mass made food (which I usually hate), it’s really quite good.
Although honestly, just today for the first time I found proper skirt steak in town, so that, Tawainese sausage, some hot peppers of unknown name, and I decided to do my first carne asada in China. I couldn’t cut the skirt as thin as a traditional arrachera, but it was awesome.
Today’s grilled on charcoal feast makes me seriously doubt the convictions I expressed in my earlier post!
All right. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks, and from a conversation with her plus some looking around, I have a book to link to which cites studies on vegan vs. vegetarian vs. omnivorous children and growth rates. Starts on the bottom right of the page and goes to the next page. An excerpt from Simply Vegan demonstrates the (very) basic dietary strategy needed to keep a vegan baby healthy.
It comes down to the diet being equal, as long as proper attention is paid to a few details, not superior. Which is what I expected to find. I’m not sure why it would have to be “the best thing,” which sounds like it has to be “better” in your eyes than an omnivorous diet, rather than equally as good. So. Perhaps this is a draw. It’s no worse, it’s no better. Children raised on a properly balanced vegan diet are just as healthy as those on a properly balanced omnivorous diet.
There are certainly studies and cites that show vegan-raised infants having problems. Those cases largely came down to parents who were improperly feeding their children, not having educated themselves on what considerations are necessary for proper nutrition. I’m not convinced those people would have fed their babies properly whether animals were in the diet or not. There are plenty of “starved to death” babies out there that had nothing to do with being raised vegan or vegetarian.
In the eyes of my friend, raising a child who can say he’s never eaten an animal or participated in factory farming, is a better choice. With the nutrition argument being equal, it comes down to moral choices, so it’s hard to leave that out.
I’m not here to change anybody’s mind. That would be a Great Debate thread, and this is a bit of a hijack, though the thread’s old enough maybe not. I considered just making this a PM to RR, but thought I’d just put this out there for anyone else who’s curious.
Yeah, but it’s only one year. It’s possible to socialize without food. I don’t think I have a single friend who would object; indeed I’m pretty sure they would call me an idiot if I didn’t take Crazy Billionaire up on his offer.
Maybe $100 grand isn’t a big deal to you, but that’s a very pretty chunk of change for some of us.
Too easy.
Hell, I was happily vegetarian for a decade and only started eating meat again because I was finding it hard to put on weight and because eating meat is darned convenient.
You’re going to have someone prepare meals for me and pay me a bit more than twice my regular income? And I’m going to shed my accumulated five-years-of-daily-Tim-Hortons-bacon-sandwich weight?
I can wait a year for Hollandaise on my steamed asparagus, thanks.
I’m bummed that I can’t be in on it since I’m already a vegetarian 