Viewing 40 posts - 41 through 80 (of 151 total)
  • What tipped you to become vegetarian?
  • chrispo
    Free Member

    (And anyone who says ‘what about bacon’ is a dick :0P )

    Oops, didn’t see that earlier before posting “Bacon”. I should elaborate: greasy bacon in hotel room breakfast buffets put me off eating meat. Brought home how gross the stuff is. Cooked right, bacon and most other types of meat are heavenly, but it’s still basically the same shite going into your body.

    johnnymarone
    Free Member

    Theres no getting away from the fact that life eats life, no matter where on the planet you look. Plants absorb the nutrients released by dead and decaying animal and vegetable matter. To try and avoid causing death is pointless, as it is inevitable somewhere along the line.
    I gave up eating mammal meat as I couldnt see myself looking into a farmed cow ,sheep or pigs eyes, seeing the suffering and t he fear whilst being transported to an unnatural, planned death. My basic rule is I will not eat anything I would not kill myself, so I am sticking with poultry and fish. For the most part, the fish I eat are living t he life they were designed to, unaltered by selective breeding by man, right up until the point of capture. They were riding their luck in the sea right up until then, and there arent many vegetarian fish in the sea. I am OK with that.
    Poultry though is different, not nearly as easy to justify to myself, so I eat mostly fish and eat chicken when fish is unobtainable.
    Would I eat wild game though? That is living freely and naturally right up until it feels the impact of the projectile? If I could be convinced that no suffering was involved then yes, it would be a waste not to. Tried to emigrate to remote areas of Canada a few times in my life and was totally ready to shoot my own food if needed.
    So, in a nutshell, im not OK with the suffering of farm animals , but tge eating of other dead , free born and free living animals is OK with me.

    grahamt1980
    Full Member

    Not gone full vegi here, but have definitely cut down on the amount of meat and veg definitely impoverished the quality of meat we eat.
    I can def see the appeal in going vegi but it just isn’t for me for now. That being said the majority of meals we have in a week is meat free now. With the remainder being meat from regenerative farms mainly

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    brads
    Free Member

    Had been killing most of my own meat for years, Wanted to try it to improve my health and am still veggie over a year and a half later.

    Not buying farmed or cheap meat made it easy for me I think.

    As for bacon. Visit a pig farm and be instantly cured of that addiction.

    sirromj
    Full Member

    I spoke to my partner so it looks like we’ll be cutting down on our meat consumption. We tried a reduction in the past but then we… should say I, just drifted back to daily consumption.

    But cheese, I love cheese, but dairy farming is not a nice thing is it.

    ogri
    Free Member

    Wafer thin Ham allowed?

    Cougar
    Full Member

    My basic rule is I will not eat anything I would not kill myself

    I kinda think this should be the default stance for folk. I’ve no problems with people eating meat, it’s their own choice and it affects me not a jot so why should I care, but it seems weird to me that people would eat it but be wiggy about the wetwork. Is there a cognitive denial around where it comes from? Here’s a big knife, there’s Larry the Lamb and Piglet over there, crack on or don’t “yes but bacon” me again, dickhead.

    But cheese, I love cheese, but dairy farming is not a nice thing is it.

    Depends on the farm / farming really.

    Wafer thin Ham allowed?

    Is that really the best you can do? It’s sad.

    I long for the day when butthurt meatheads come up with something original. The Royle Family did that particular gag like fifteen years ago and the best thing I can say about the show as a whole is that it wasn’t quite as unfunny as Mrs Brown’s Boys.

    This is what you sound like to us:

    … Big Nose.

    2tyred
    Full Member

    30 years ago, girl I really fancied, at a party she was vocal about being a vegetarian so I told her I was one too despite not really knowing what one was.

    We went out for a few weeks, I stopped eating meat, the not eating meat bit has lasted quite a bit longer than the relationship. Pissed my mum right off at the time, she had no idea what to feed me.

    Couldn’t imagine eating meat.

    stupot
    Free Member

    My eldest decided to become vegetarian; after a few months of cooking a separate dinner for him I decided to switch as well. Environmental and welfare grounds. Too be honest once I was forced to find a few veggie alternatives for the mid week, quick meal staples, it was easy (I.e mushroom curry in place of chicken; halloumi bugers; bean wraps etc).

    Cooking chicken and pork now actually turns my stomach. It’s the smell; always concerns me I couldn’t tell if the meat was bad

    patagonian
    Free Member

    I’ve been vegetarian since some unknown disease was causing cows to die….only later was it understood and given a name. However I was already heading that way as I’d cut out processed meat because of quality issues so it was an easy step to make.
    Animal welfare didn’t play any part in that decision, it was all about me but since then I’ve come to realise what goes on in the industry and it has become important.

    v7fmp
    Full Member

    the Game Changers documentary did it for me. Then once i realised the health benefits, it took me down a rabbit hole of how animals are abused, raped and murdered so someone can have a sandwich. Then that led onto the environmental devastation it causes.

    I am vegetarian and doing my best to go Vegan. I dont eat cheese or use milk anymore.

    Thankfully my wife is the same (bar the cheese and milk… annoyingly), and she likes to cook, so we have a varied and tasty home cooked meals 95% of the time.

    I think the beauty of the meat/dairy industry is the ignorance of it all. People dont associate the lump of meat on their plate with the animal it came from.

    my biggest regret is not doing it sooner. We just need more people to get involved!

    stripeysocks
    Free Member

    I had a summer job at Unilever knocking up a database of British meat-eating habits, had to read a lot of Meat and Livestock Comission publications during that, and this was peak Smiths era…
    So luckily by the time I got together with the OH (who was vegetarian) I was veggie too. Ironically I have since gone vegan so it’s not ME that occasionally fills the fridge with cheese and gets followed there by the dog !

    Vegan cake is piss easy and chocolate is just an excuse to have only the nicest most expensive chocolate. The real heartbreak is when you’re gagging for chips and the chippy tells you they fry in lard #sadface

    nickc
    Full Member

    I think the beauty of the meat/dairy industry is the ignorance of it all

    A previous partner of mine worked for of the largest chicken processing companies in the UK (go figure) I went on a tour of the factory once. The highlight of the trip was the Co2 tank that they’d recently installed at some ridiculous cost that rendered the live chickens coming into the plant unconscious before slaughter. The economics of it was staggering, you see the birds tended to thrash about (I guess being hung on a track suspended upside down will do that) and this caused the line to be run slower to accommodate the electrocution being a bit haphazard sometimes. Once the birds had been pre-stunned, they could run the line just that bit faster to improve productivity….

    It’s a grim business.

    kayla1
    Free Member

    It happened for us gradually over a few months I suppose, we’d go out for a curry and I’d plump for a veggie madras and veggie sides rather than meat and my OH pretty much followed suit. We didn’t discuss it as such but it was good that it happened at the same time rather than one of us dragging the other down a path they weren’t ready to go down yet.

    My OH has a bit of a traumatic memory from when he was little, his family were away somewhere and a local pub had that coming Sunday’s dinner (a live lamb) tied up outside the pub for everyone to see. It’s understandably stuck with him, he comes at it from an animal welfare perspective whereas I think I’m maybe more from the environmental aspect of it, like some kind of green commie Venn diagram.

    If you’re into curries and chilis and stuff it’s dead easy to be veggie. That said, we still eat game meat if/when we can get it which isn’t very often.

    bennyboy1
    Free Member

    For me it was growing up in Newlyn (Cornwall) & having one too many bad meat experiences from local Cornish pasties!

    At age 8 I decided I no longer wanted / needed meat, my parents were supportive & I’ve never looked back.

    I’ve also always said that if I wanted meat or felt my body needing meat then I would eat it again but in 33 years since have never reached that point.

    ThePilot
    Free Member

    I became a vegetarian when I was about 10. Mostly because I was influenced by my older sister but also because once I thought about it, I just couldn’t eat it any more. This was almost 40 years ago so I was considered most strange and there wasn’t very much in the way of meat substitutes back then.

    I lapsed when I was about 20. I lived in a shared house at uni and would sometimes pinch a fish finger from the freezer and cook it when I was drunk as a guilty pleasure.
    Then, one night when I’d gone out for dinner and I’d ordered some sort of aubergine thing as the only option for veggies and other people were eating steak, I tried a bit of someone’s steak and that was it for many years.
    Just closed my eyes to the abject cruelty I guess and I like the taste of meat and fish.

    I’ve been vegan now for the past five years or so. I live on my own so find it much easier as I just cook for myself. I live in a fairly rural area and I see the pain many sheep live in – in fields with no shelter, on hillsides so they never get to stand on even ground, little lambs shivering in the cold, sheep being chased by sheepdogs. If they do live on a flat piece of ground, it’s often too wet for them and they develop foot issues and a limp and can barely run and then when they have to, others come to form a protective shield around them and I wonder why the hell we think we have the right to treat animals in this way.

    I buy meat for my dog but try to buy the waste stuff. Chicken carcass from the butchers, tripe, venison (I think it’s the head as it’s got a high bone content) eggs from a house where they keep a few ex battery hens and give them a new life. I always pay double (only £2 instead of £1 as the profits go to help other battery hens). I’d eat those myself but I don’t really like eggs.

    I used to miss cheese but not really anymore. I sometimes get tempted by a cream cake from the bakers but I think of the poor cow being made to produce milk for its entire life to satisfy us. I’ve not had kids myself but I think many women would say that while breastfeeding maybe what they chose to do for their own child for a certain amount of time, I’m not sure they’d want to walk round with breasts full of milk for someone else for the rest of their lives.

    I can really see animal products – at least in the way we produce it now – being excluded as a foodstuff in the future. I hope so at least.

    PJay
    Free Member

    Purely ethical for me (we’re now vegan) as I find the slaughter of animals for food pretty grim and causes huge amounts of terror and suffering (although we feed our cats cat food, so there’s a lapse there).

    You’re not though, are you, that’s just anthropomorphism.

    Fairly standard response to vegetarianism/veganism and although there may be a small element of this, anyone who’s owned a cat or dog will know that they’re capable of emotions and feeling; animals breed for meat (which includes cats and dogs in some countries) are just as aware (pigs are particularly advanced and out perform dogs in intelligence tests).

    Anthropomorphism usually assumes that we see something of ourselves (that some would argue doesn’t exist) in animals and that we tend to anthropomorphise cute fluffy mammals rather than fish, reptiles etc. My octopus teacher on Netflix is a good watch if you want to challenge this.

    DaveyBoyWonder
    Free Member

    My girlfriend at the time.

    Then after 10 years together including getting married, we both just got tired of it. We enjoy eating out and being limited to 10% of the menu was a bit crap. And, well, bacon. And sausages. And roast lamb. And lamb in curry. And steak. And burgers.

    IHN
    Full Member

    I’ve no problems with people eating meat, it’s their own choice and it affects me not a jot so why should I care, but it seems weird to me that people would eat it but be wiggy about the wetwork. Is there a cognitive denial around where it comes from?

    As a non-veggie, I’d agree with this, plus the thing that really pisses me off is squeamishness about which bits of the thing you’ll eat, like when people go “black pudding, made from blood, eeuugh!”. If you don’t like the taste/texture, fine, but if you’ll eat one bit, you should be prepared to eat (or at least try) any bit.

    And going back to a previous point, yes, assuming it’s not going to poison me I have no qualms about eating horse/dog/cat (not that I’ve tried the latter two, horse is lovely though), because, again, if you’ll eat one dead animal you should be prepared to eat any.

    I say all this though as someone who has never has to kill anything and eat it. If it came to that, I think I could do it, but you never know.

    kayla1
    Free Member

    black pudding

    The best black pudding I’ve had was rabbit from a game butcher, it was bloody gorgeous.

    icic
    Free Member

    Bacon, for me it was the cooking smell of bacon.

    I shared a house with someone who ate a lot of meat and the smell was something I couldn’t stand.

    poly
    Free Member

    Probably, to some extent, but isn’t there some attachment between mother sheep and lamb? Also remember some years ago visiting a farm and there was this little lamb in the corner of the barn, a couple of holes in the wall letting sunbeams through, it literally looked angelic!

    I’m not going to try and persuade you one way or the other – but we don’t eat the little lambs – almost exclusively by the time we eat lamb in the UK it is something most people seeing in a field would call “a sheep”. If you want to let it live a bit longer – but mutton (your local butcher will get it for you) – just cook at slower and longer, it tastes better anyway.

    However if your objection is to killing the really young ones you probably need to give up dairy. Male calves and kids from varieties used for milk have a limited market and many will be culled – as I don’t have an objection to eating meat, I prefer to eat Rose Veal or Kid Goat if I see it – because at least its not going to waste.

    lucasshmucas
    Full Member

    Ethical reasons, that and actually paying attention to the behaviour of animals. They have unique personalities and behave in very different ways, despite having similarities within a species or breed. I don’t see anything different or special about us other than power. Eating animals for food is very similar to racism or sexism (or some driver’s views on cyclists), in that an line is drawn between us and the other, and then it’s OK to do what you want to the other. There was a gradual process after stopping eating meat of letting go of the denial that I’d been clinging on to, to justify my behaviour (YMMV). I’m much happier and healthier for it, physically and mentally.

    nickjb
    Free Member

    They have unique personalities and behave in very different ways, despite having similarities within a species or breed. I don’t see anything different or special about us other than power. Eating animals for food is very similar to racism or sexism (or some driver’s views on cyclists), in that an line is drawn between us and the other, and then it’s OK to do what you want to the other.

    That trickles down right through the animal kingdom though. I don’t think it is possible to produce food without killing animals so we all just choose which animals we are willing kill or let die so we can eat. Which animals we are willing to ‘other’. On a recent ‘life in the wild’ program a chap on there cut himself off to live as sustainably and ethically as possible. When he was fishing the presenter questioned him about the ethics and his response was that he’d kill a lot more animals in an hour tending the veg garden than an hour fishing.

    padkinson
    Free Member

    I think I’ve always found eating meat unsettling. As a kid all I’d eat were things that didn’t seem too much like chunks of flesh – sausages, chicken nuggets etc. The tipping point came at about 7 or 8 years old when I’d been to a friend’s birthday at McDonalds, eating horrible nuggets and the like. On returning home, my mum had slaughtered and cooked one of our hens for dinner, and I refused to eat it. My dad pointed out the hypocrisy and suggested I go vegetarian if I had a problem with it.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    The real heartbreak is when you’re gagging for chips and the chippy tells you they fry in lard #sadface

    Happened to me twice in recent times.

    The first was last year sometime, I dropped into a chippie I’d not been to since I was a kid. No-one around serving and a big proud sign, “we fry in beef dripping!” Ordinarily I’d ask but as the counter was empty I just left. A few weeks later the same chippie popped up on a friend’s Facebook feed so I commented saying essentially what I’ve just said here. Next thing, I got this massive rant from the owner banging on about how lots of people like it and how he doesn’t understand how you can make gravy without meat (I never asked him to and I doubt his is anything more than gravy mix anyway) and a bunch of other non-sequiturs. I was glad I hadn’t given them my business.

    The second was just last week. Local place, similar sign. I’ve been a few times before and whilst it’s not on the menu they’ve done me ‘vegetarian chips’ when asked. Until this visit, “oh, we can’t”. You did last time, I said. “Yeah, we’ve changed the fryers.” Uh, OK… so how do you cook the veggie burgers then? “We’ve a fryer out back.” Cool, can’t you chuck some chips in that, then? “No, it’s not big enough.” At which point I figured they were either being awkward for the sake of it or just couldn’t be arsed.

    we feed our cats cat food, so there’s a lapse there

    It’s not really the same though, cats are obligate carnivores. If you don’t want to feed cats meat products, your only solution is “don’t have a cat”.

    It’s not like you’ll be getting choice cuts anyway, regardless of the glossy labels. Meat going to animal feed will likely just have been thrown away otherwise.

    IHN
    Full Member

    It’s not really the same though, cats are obligate carnivores. If you don’t want to feed cats meat products, your only solution is “don’t have a cat”.

    It’s not like you’ll be getting choice cuts anyway, regardless of the glossy labels. Meat going to animal feed will likely just have been thrown away otherwise.

    It is from an ‘animal cruelty’ point though; the meat that goes into pet food comes (in the vast majority of cases) from the same intensively farmed animals. Just cos it’s the offcuts doesn’t really make any difference, you’re still supporting a market for that kind of farming and production.

    You can buy pet food made from free range meat, and that’s where we’ve decided to strike the balance with our dog. It’s a LOT more expensive then Pedigree Winachum Prime et al though…

    Cougar
    Full Member

    Suppose it depends whether animals are being farmed specifically for the pet food market or whether it’s a biproduct of our own food industry. If the former then you’re absolutely right, if the latter then is it not more ethical to use as much as possible in order to minimise wastage?

    (I don’t have the answer to this, just throwing it out there.)

    ayjaydoubleyou
    Full Member

    What I think is really important is not worrying about the absolutes. I’m talking more about the envirionmental side but 20 people eating half the amount of meat than previous is better than one absolutely devout vegetarian.

    You aren’t a failure if you don’t cut out meat completely. but if everyone reduced their consumption a small amount it would be a massive difference

    I’m one of these. (due to Vegetarian girlfriend).

    Lack of restaurants for the last year, we have done a lot more in the kitchen, and a lot of vegetarian recipes these days are also vegan. I think we both more than make up for it with our cheese consumption.

    I had the most amazing burger on Suturday (friend’s BBQ though), having not had a burger or any beef product since last autumn.
    That was amazing, and enough to make me sure I will never be voluntarily full veggie.

    ThePilot
    Free Member

    @IHN Not sure I agree with this. I get her bones from the butcher which would otherwise be transported 60 miles away to be burned in an incinerator.
    Same with the chicken carcasses, they would only be used by humans to make stock and it’s easier to use one of those stock cubes that come in a plastic pot.
    The idea of free range meat is great but the standards are so low, I’m not sure it makes a huge amount of difference.

    IHN
    Full Member

    Suppose it depends whether animals are being farmed specifically for the pet food market or whether it’s a biproduct of our own food industry.

    It’s (in the vast majority of cases) a by-product

    if the latter then is it not more ethical to use as much as possible in order to minimise wastage?

    No, not really, that’s like saying “these battery farmed chicken breasts in the supermarket will be thrown away if no-one else buys them, so the ethical thing to to is buy them”. The ethical thing to do is not buy them, and buy free range ones (or none at all), so the market for intensively-farmed stuff shrinks, so it stops being done that way (in extremis, idealistic over simplified example outcome, obvs). Same goes for the battery farmed chicken that goes in catfood.

    ThePilot
    Free Member

    ^^^
    But the battery farmed chicken breasts are not a by-product.
    The way I see it is, if 10 cows are raised and killed in order to supply a supermarket with steak and the by-product of 5 of those go to make pet food, the by-product of 3 is thrown away and the remaining amount is sold in a supermarket, then I can’t see what harm there is in buying it. Especially if for a cat for less so a dog.
    I guess it means you’re buying fewer lentils.
    And there’s the packaging aspect.
    I said I am a vegan but I’m not actually. If the bone I get my dog has a lot of fat on it, I will cut it off and use it to fry my palm-oil free, vegan sausages. If I didn’t do that, she would either eat it and the fat is no good to her, it would go in the bin or, if I didn’t get them in the first place, they’d be burnt as a waste product.
    In the winter I mix it with seeds and use it to make fat balls for the birds but I don’t do it all year as I don’t think it’s the best for them either but hopefully so in the depths of winter.

    ogri
    Free Member

    Wow Cougar,it was just a light hearted comment,I haven’t expressed an opinion either way.As it happens over the last few years I’ve drastically cut my meat consumption for the very reasons expressed within this thread.I seem unable or unwilling to go all the way.
    The ROYLE FAMILY was great you miserable git.

    dyna-ti
    Full Member

    Bit of an odd comparison, your son being 4. We slaughter lambs at 6/7 months.

    He’d be for stewing 😆

    thisisnotaspoon
    Free Member

    Wow Cougar,it was just a light hearted comment

    The Edinburgh defence?

    Blackflag
    Free Member

    Similar to Atomizer – I grew up with anarcho / peace punk in the 80s and being veggie / vegan and animal rights was a big part of that. I drifted back to meat in the 90s out of sheer laziness (my diet was about 90% bread). Then a chance meeting and a few pints with Steve Ignorant (the singer of Crass and main man behind the whole anarcho punk thing) discussing veggie pizzas made me feel a bit guilty about my laziness and so i went back to being veggie. Now i have a very healthy diet i enjoy and see no reason to eat meat again.

    v7fmp
    Full Member

    i tell thee what gets my goat….. people who instantly turn their noses up at a ‘vegan’ product.

    Case in point, bloke in work was checking his Ginsters Pasty ‘stock levels’ at home. He spotted he picked up a Vegan pepper steak slice by mistake. So instead of trying it, he asked if i wanted it (which i said yes, cos you know, free food). Its like he automatically writes the item off as its meat free….. its like its engrained in certain people/generations that if its got no meat its going to be tasteless/rubbish/not worth eating.

    The mind boggles… once the urine has stopped boiling.

    Kuco
    Full Member

    Maybe your mate was just being kind hearted, realised he picked up the wrong one and thought I know who would like this I’ll give it to them.

    IHN
    Full Member

    But the battery farmed chicken breasts are not a by-product.

    I was thinking about this last night, I think the problem is actually in classifying the ‘pet food bits’ as a by-product of the food production business (which I myself was doing). They’re not, they’re a straight product, cue simplified example…

    A farmer raises chickens and sells them the the meat production plant. The meat production plant buys them, knowing it turn a profit by processing them and selling the breasts/legs/thighs to the supermarket chains, the scraggy pressure hosed bits to the chicken nugget manufacturer and the remaining ‘lips, tits and arseholes’ as a farmer friend once called them, to the pet food manufacturer. There’s a market for all of it, and that market has depressed the price so much (mainly because of the purchasing power of the supermarkets, and our demand for crazily cheap meat) that they have to ring out every profit stream they can to make any money, so none of it would have ‘gone to waste’.

    So, by buying pet food from this production process, you are supporting that process, in the same way that you would be by buying the chicken breasts or the chicken nuggets.

    moonwrasse
    Free Member

    Never liked meat after finding out where it came from as a child. Made the switch 35 years ago and still can’t understand why you would want to kill an animal for food/sport.

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