Topic: Vegetarian ?? ayone

[Jeannine]

Oh eck, what ever have I done!! Drinking from puddles !! Well day 3 and we are ok still, only three days  I hear you ask but that would have been at least three mainmeals all with meat , lots of meat,plus lunch , probably meat again.  For me that is a big achievement. It was a laugh though,, ended up as egg and chips followed by rhubarb and custard !! World War 2 all over again

Can anyone suggest a good recipe book for non meat eaters that eat fish, eggs and cheese please....quickly.

 Xx Jeannine

[ninnyscrops]

On the case - just emailed my bro' who (along with his family)  is long-time vegetarian. Not the fastest in replying to emails but will report back as soon as I hear from him.

[emmy1978]

Sorry Jeannine, but will ask sis on weekend. Forgot to say...Good luck, you've made the decision to do it and i'm sure you will! x If you didn't catch up with the books thread, thanky-ou for the offer, if my mum doesn't have it i'll pm you my addy!

[Jeannine]

Thank you both, no probs with Daughters of either XX Jeannine

[Heldi]

In May last year I stopped eating meat.  I am a finicky eater anyway. I've not eaten lamb since my mid twenties because the last bit I tasted was yukky and then I couldn't get the thought of eating a baby animal out of my head. So I don't eat it. My OH lurves lamb and just smirks when I try to give him the guilt....but then I do that on purpose to wind him up but he knows I'm not a dictator and would prefer to him to make up his own mind...which he obviously has done lol!

Right. I gave up on ethical grounds...the cruelty to animals when they are alive and how they are treated etc etc.  I maintained that I wasn't a strict veggie I just didn't have anywhere local to shop where I could buy meat that was ethically produced.

Since then I have tried many of the the supermarkets own versions of veggie foods.  I've not got any great complaints,they have suited their purpose very well. Asda pretend beef pieces are great.  My children even prefer ASDA veggie burgers now.

I discovered in the co op that there is such a thing as RSPCA monitored produce. It's called "freedom food".  My local co op only stocks the sausages. I bought some and had my first bit of meat in months just about Christmas time. It was okay...rather disappointing.

In the last couple of months we have had a farm shop open in a village down the road from us. We get all our meat there now.  I eat a little beef, though I'm not keen as I have seen the cows in the field and wonder which one it is lol. It tastes really good though after years of supermarket stuff. We've had the rare breed sausies. I don't eat any other part of a pig because it tastes yukky in my opinion...an opinion I have held since about 7 years old.   I'm helping a local producer with buying those sausages,I guess in a funny kind of way it helps keep the breed going doesn't it? Does my head in a bit that thought. We've had the organic chicken,sorry but I think Quorn chicken fillets taste just as good. I'm not that impressed.

Don't eat turkey. Cos I don't like it.
Wouldn't eat veal.
Never tried game..I can't remember trying it anyway.

Where I am at now. I am eating mostly vegetarian but have meat from the farm shop about twice a week. My family eat meat more often though they will eat vegetarian without a fuss. OH loves meat but enjoys veggie meals too.

We eat fish once in a while.

We don't buy any meat products from the supermarkets and have found that since I have started to eat a little of the farm shop meat we don't buy much of the pretend veggie meat stuff. The costs seem to even themselves out.

I always eat veggie when I am eating out.  

I feel I am doing my bit and I hope I'm doing my bit to support a more responsible attitude towards our farm animals.  My OH feels the same and is enjoying a far better quality of meat.  We feel our kids will benefit from the quality and also because we talk to them about it.

Lish is right to bring up the subject of milk. We use loads of it. I'm too embarrassed to say how much. I don't know how it is produced...I have an idea but never the truth. Do I want to know the truth? Probably yes even though it will cause me problems in respect of how to deal with the truth.

I will say...as I B F my two children I know the pain of missed feeds or just too much milk. Mastitis is awful and makes you quite ill. I was also told at a B F clinic that a B feeding woman can stop for a matter of months but can start to reproduce milk given the right stimuli. Could that be the same for animals? The scary bit would be the stimuli...the cry of a hungry baby?

[Wicker]

I've followed this thread with interest - always have the notion of eating "veggie" at the back of my mind but even tho I have delved into all the methods of production it's amazing how selective my thinking can be and how easily I just keep on pushing that knowledge aside when I am "tucking in" and

I do use the excuse that Mr W is happy with us just being a bit choosy about the meat we buy within our budget (free range where poss, wild fish, never veal etc)  In other words I chicken out (pun intended) :-\

On the subject of milk production, the following link is to an American report but the same conditions apply here I am sure
http://www.factoryfarming.com/dairy.htm

[Jeannine]

Wicker it has been simmering in me for ages,I am determined but mot too hopeful,I think when I get busy will be dangerous. You know what did it for me.

I went to Supersprouts funeral, I ate some couscous and a leek dish, I had no meat, I didn't miss the meat  and I enjoyed the delicate leek dish which  stayed with me, my mind kept going back to it so last week  I bought leeks,cream,celery which I don't like cooked and parmesan cheese. I made up the dish as best as I could from memory but added pasta to it, it was excellent, Supersprouts leek dish with pasta, we ate that on day 1. I didn't feel derived without meat, so I am trying to carry it on.

XX Jeannine

[grawrc]

 How about this then:
All dairy cows must give birth in order to begin producing milk. Today, dairy cows are forced to have a calf every year. Like human beings, cows have a nine-month gestation period, and so giving birth every twelve months is physically demanding. The cows are also artificially re-impregnated while they are still lactating from their previous birthing, so their bodies are still producing milk during seven months of their nine-month pregnancy.
With genetic manipulation and intensive production technologies, it is common for modern dairy cows to produce 100 pounds of milk a day — ten times more than they would produce naturally. As a result, the cows' bodies are under constant stress, and they are at risk for numerous health problems.

Approximately half of the country's dairy cows suffer from mastitis, a bacterial infection of their udders. This is such a common and costly ailment that a dairy industry group, the National Mastitis Council, was formed specifically to combat the disease. Other diseases, such as Bovine Leukemia Virus, Bovine Immunodeficiency Virus, and Johne's disease (whose human counterpart is Crohn's disease) are also rampant on modern dairies, but they commonly go unnoticed because they are either difficult to detect or have a long incubation period.
A cow eating a normal grass diet could not produce milk at the abnormal levels expected on modern dairies, and so today's dairy cows must be given high energy feeds. The unnaturally rich diet causes metabolic disorders including ketosis, which can be fatal, and laminitis, which causes lameness.

Another dairy industry disease caused by intensive milk production is "Milk Fever." This ailment is caused by calcium deficiency, and it occurs when milk secretion depletes calcium faster than it can be replenished in the blood.

In a healthy environment, cows would live in excess of twenty-five years, but on modern dairies, they are slaughtered and made into ground beef after just three or four years. The abuse wreaked upon the bodies of dairy cows is so intense that the dairy industry also is a huge source of "downed animals" — animals who are so sick or injured that they are unable to walk even stand. Investigators have documented downed animals routinely being beaten, dragged, or pushed with bulldozers in attempts to move them to slaughter.

Although the dairy industry is familiar with the cows' health problems and suffering associated with intensive milk production, it continues to subject cows to even worse abuses in the name of increased profit. Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH), a synthetic hormone, is now being injected into cows to get them to produce even more milk. Besides adversely affecting the cows' health, BGH also increases birth defects in their calves.

Calves born to dairy cows are separated from their mothers immediately after birth. The half that are born female are raised to replace older dairy cows in the milking herd. The other half of the calves are male, and because they will never produce milk, they are raised and slaughtered for meat. Most are killed for beef, but about one million are used for veal.

The veal industry was created as a by-product of the dairy industry to take advantage of an abundant supply of unwanted male calves. Veal calves commonly live for eighteen to twenty weeks in wooden crates that are so small that they cannot turn around, stretch their legs, or even lie down comfortably. The calves are fed a liquid milk substitute, deficient in iron and fiber, which is designed to make the animals anemic, resulting in the light-colored flesh that is prized as veal. In addition to this high-priced veal, some calves are killed at just a few days old to be sold as low-grade 'bob' veal for products like frozen TV dinners.

 

 

[Jeannine]

The last bit I can verify , the bit about the male calves. I lived in Sheerness for a couple of years and male calf from a Jersey or Guernsey cow was taken to market after birth, they cold not be reared for beef. They were not fed as the butchers wanted them as new baby veal and food in there stomachs changes something in the meat. My job took me into Sheerness market as I took bacon pigs in, I would visit the calf house and see these little mites hungry,they would suck on fingers, it was so distressing that I took bottles of warm milk and discreetly fed them till somebody cottoned on after a few weeks and I got banned from the veal calf area.

It was this single experience that stopped me eating veal, I had done so before,I have never touched it since the early seventies, these calves were slaughtered om Mondays after the Saturday market, some only three days old , the oldest being 1 week. There was no way I could justify that.

XX Jeannine

[Hyacinth]

 :o moral of the story is..if you don't want the answer don't ask the question..I'd no idea about the milk cows....whew! Modom Controller, where did you get the info please?

Jeannine, when I decided that I'd only eat 'happy' meat - both in their upbringing & slaughter, as much as I could (so that excludes eating out at friends'...if they're good enough to want to feed me I'm polite enough to accept ;D) I needed to go through my cupboards pretty carefully...Oxo cubes and so on? And gelatine...

Pasta's a good way to go, so so many different sauces there...and veggie curries, and all the things you can do with eggs....oh! and you know your stuffing recipe for turkey? When I saw it I thought it would make lovely veggie-balls with a mushroom+chilli-for-a-kick gravy..and that's what I'm having today 8) Will report back in the Recipe thread later tonight.. :)

[grawrc]

http://www.factoryfarming.com/dairy.htm pretty shocking I thought. Could be soya milk for us from now on... :o

[Barnowl]

 Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH), a synthetic hormone, is now being injected into cows to get them to produce even more milk. Besides adversely affecting the cows' health, BGH also increases birth defects in their calves.

I sympathise with a lot of what you are saying Grawc but just wanted to say that, because of the pain it inflicted on the cows, BST / BGH is illegal throughout the EC though is widely used in USA. There are now concerns about the health impact on those drinking milk or eating meat from animals treated with BGH.

[Marymary]

http://www.factoryfarming.com/dairy.htm pretty shocking I thought. Could be soya milk for us from now on... :o

Don't think soya milk is the answer grawrc, the soya industry has its own problems like deforestation & genetic modification - also some concerns about oestrogens. 

I try to buy organic milk when I can but it is only available in big supermarkets round here & I try to avoid them.  Sometimes feel I just can't win.

[grawrc]

Not my own thoughts, Barnowl. Sorry I should have put it in quotation marks and listed my source:http://www.factoryfarming.com/dairy.htm I do realise it's American and therefore not totally true for what happens in the EU, nevertheless I think it gives food for thought.

[isbister]

This is an interesting debate, I thought I'd throw in a couple of thoughts.
I've been vegetarian for over thirty years. It was agricultural college that did it for me - having to get up at 5.30am and castrate the piglets was the final straw and i switched courses to arboriculture and havn't touched meat (or fish or foul) since.

For me the problem lies with the amount of meat people eat, three portions a day for everybody simply isn't sustainable ecologically. It's reckoned that about 65% 0f all agricultural land is given over to meat production, either the animals are on it or food is being grown for them. That leaves 35% for all the veg, cereals, wine etc that we consume. There's reckoned to be 6 animals for every person. Rainforests are being flattened for pasture, the meat industry is reckoned to be more polluting than the car manufacturing industry.

The solution is to return meat production to being a byproduct of a sustainable agricultural system and not as an end in itself, (good example 2nd WW and dig for victory, meat rationing etc) getting  billions of animals pregnant each year and then eating their babies isn't going to work for very long.
So if we have sheep for wool we can have a bit of mutton, if we have hens for eggs we can have an occasional drumstick etc. Meat should be a luxury item and not the staple food it is regarded as today. Next time you're down the allotment try and imagine how much land you'd need to sustain a three portion a day meat habit... you'd probably need the whole site...and the site up the road.

[angle shades]

 :)

Brilliant reply isbister,

also does anyone know how many male one day old chicks are destroyed every day in the egg 'industry'? /shades x

[Barnowl]

Interesting you should mention mutton, Isbister. When I was in New Zealand some years ago, they hardly ever ate lamb - reckoned lambs were too lightweight (hence poor value) and hadn't had enough time to develop a proper flavour. They mainly ate hogget (about 12-15 months old) and mutton.

[Bionic Wellies]

Interesting thread, thought that I would pitch in ....

We decided many years ago to eat a vegetarian diet, not because we were strongly opposed to meat production - but because we were hard up - and meat was/is (and should be) relatively expensive.  We did this for 5 or 6 years - no meat at all, only dairy products.

We then introduced a few meals based on meat, a couple of times per week and have continued to eat like this ever since (25 years).  I think that the variety of meals that we have is fantastic, far wider than meals based on meat alone - even given the different ways of preparing them.

There are some things that I would like to say tho'. 

I abhor maltreatment of livestock - it is unnecessary.  The animals deserve to live as they were meant to - and when they do the taste of the meat is so much better.
But people want to eat meat every day and want the product to be cheap enough to do so - this is wrong (in my opinion).  We should recognise, and be prepared to pay, the true cost of rearing livestock.  Our barmy country (or our political representatives) impose restrictions on our farmers and then allow meat from unrestricted countries to flood our markets - this is insane.  We should not buy our meat from such sources.

The vitamin B12 issue.  We must have this vitamin in our diet, especially children, and can only really obtain the vitamin from meat & dairy products (there seem to be a few fungus based exceptions that may or may not give useful quantities of this vitamin - see http://www.vegsoc.org/info/b12.html)  Veggies and Vegans must get B12 from somewhere - so I guess that greenfly and caterpillars have it :(.

Then the issue of pasture/grazing vs crop.  Much of the land that animals live on cannot be used for other purposes - (Sheep farming in Wales is an obvious example - one would need dynamite to plant anything other that grass).

We have a responsibility to support our farmers when they rear/grow our food properly - it costs them - we need to pay them a fair wage.  We also need to educate people to eat sensibly - a balanced diet where vegetables form a major component. (An aside: I have seen some parts of a program called "Half Ton Hospital" (sp) where they look after patients that have become so large, through over indulgence, that they are in serious danger.  Whilst I feel for these folk I have to say that it seems to be a sad symptom of society where food (OK -  beef burgers) are so cheap and available that individuals can get themselves into this condition - especially when there is so much hunger in the world ... nearly went into an angry rant there ... have calmed down now).

I guess that I am saying that people should eat what they want to without feeling guilty .. because it's not wrong to eat meat - but it isn't necessary either.   We have to learn about the consequences of our actions - asking for meat every day means that meat production has to increase and tends to result in poorer conditions for the animals.

We, on this site, are obviously involved in the production of vegetables and most likely eat more of these that the average household - so we can all legitimately feel kinda smug ...

[Robert_Brenchley]

A lot of land used for grazing would be unsuitable for arable crops, but a lot of animals are kept in intensive units and fed with crops raised on land which could just as well be used to grow food for humans. That's the really big problem. One of them anyway.

[Biscombe]

What about the meat industry and global warming?

Raising animals for food generates more greenhouse gases than all the cars and trucks in the world combined.

Read more

http://goveg.com/environment-globalwarming.asp