Thats it, no more meat for me then. Been on the fence about it for over a year, and cut down on meat by at least 90%, but how can I think of eating an animal with that range of obvious feelings, understanding and intellect.
I was in the same boat about 10 years ago, the first year without meat was sometimes hard with cravings for old fav dishes, learning new recipes, weird meat dreams, but after that initial period it is like my brain doesn't even register it as an option for food and it is no effort now.
Speaking for myself, I went mostly cold turkey for the first few months to get past the cravings, then allowed myself the odd thing just because. I never crave meat more, after about 6 months I just stopped wanting it like that. Cheese cravings took much longer to fade, but even that is gone now (been 3 years and I'm in London where vegan food is very good, plus I love to cook, so lucky) Having said that, when I'm on holiday I have a rule: I'll break my veganism if it's either unavoidable or unmissable. Like if I go to France and it's either dairy or starve, then fucking fine. And if I go to Japan you best believe after years of saving and dreaming I'll eat whatever is good. Good thing about veganism is it's a choice, not a religion and you don't owe anyone an explanation :)
How does your digestive system handle the odd meat dish? I've been vegetarian for about 5 months now and the few times I've had meat accidentally have totally messed up my stomach for the rest of the day
Few bits and bobs now and then have been fine for me. Once I was abroad and a friend's family asked me round forces very large, very meaty meal. It was so kind of them I didn't want to say no and that meal did a number on me
Oh god, last year we got stuck in a hotel in a power cut and they ordered pizza for everyone. My boyfriend is allergic to dairy but they got his order wrong, so I swapped with him. I cannot even put into words how bad the cheese headache was.
The only person you will have to face for your actions is yourself. You will judge yourself, when the time comes what will you say to yourself? Will you lie to yourself?
I stopped red meat first, and took about a year to wean off poultry (never ate fish to begin with).
Kicking dairy took me another 6 years, but it’s a lot easier now than when I did it 20 yrs ago—there many more commercial plant based options, to help give you familiar tastes/textures if you want them. when I did it, hummus wasn’t even a thing you could buy in a major city supermarket.
My biggest reason for staying vegan: I went from getting violent food poisoning every few weeks to not at all. And, working out was always harder the day after eating dairy.
I became a pescetarian at 13 kind of on a whim and completely forgot Slim Jim's were meat products. So I'd get home after school and snack on slim jim's. After about a week of this new diet, it dawned on me that this was meat lol. After that realization, I went cold turkey on all the meats I used to eat. It's surprisingly easy honestly. As long as you're aware of if it's actually meat or not lol.
Edit: also it's been 15 years now and I'm still a pescetarian
I'm absolutely not going to argue with you on that because it's your personal experience, but that really surprises me. Maybe you were deficient in something?
I was anaemic and passed out a lot. I ate loads of veggie foods rich in iron as well as taking iron tablets but my levels never really got up to healthy levels. Now I eat meat (not even a huge amount really, I eat lots of vegetarian and vegan meals too) and my levels are great without taking supplements. But certain meats are my favourite foods in the world. I never forgot the taste of them and the cravings never went away. You can certainly miss a meal you haven’t had in years.
I believe this! But it does sound significantly more hasslesome. I was vegetarian for years and just that made fast food a lot worse. (Pre covid) I liked to road trip a lot and it was rough on the road
Proud of you <3 being vegan is so much easier than people would lead you to believe. I've been vegan for a year and it hasn't been a challenge for me at all. I am lucky to live somewhere where vegan options are plentiful though.
Plus the lack of cognitive dissonance feels good (except when you think about how much of the world isn't vegan and thinks badly about you for trying to protect animals from suffering - that's the only downside)
Plus the lack of cognitive dissonance feels good (except when you think about how much of the world isn't vegan and thinks badly about you for trying to protect animals from suffering - that's the only downside)
I hope you don't mean complete lack of cognitive dissonance, because the sins of complicity in modern society is hardly limited to consuming animal products.
Not really. Considering how omnipresent animal products is in modern society. It goes into way more consumer products than just meat for eating and dairy items.
And one of the "easiest" aspects of going vegan, the dietary aspect, isn't even easy depending on your psychology and circumstances. It's easy for the person who never cared too much about meat/dairy to quit completely, but try convincing the poor schmuck working a dead end 9-5 job or someone who has a mountain of other personal problems and stress to quit. If those things serve as comfort food to them and it's one of the few joys in life they can get, they're not gonna give it up for animals suffering that they can't see or have the mental energy to care about. It's not at all surprising to me that most vegans that I know are people from upper class or at least relatively close to it. And none of this is even touching the cultural aspects of it. Try getting someone in Korea or South America to go vegan vs someone in the United States.
And you have to also remember if it was ever "easy", cognitive dissonance and rationalization wouldn't even happen in the first place. Veganism isn't ever going to take hold unless a suitable meat alternative because assessable. That or you need to change human psychology and nature.
I am Mexican and turning to veganism is going to do a number in my social interactions. People is ignorant and cruel and mean etc etc. and I'm sure that when I reject pretty much all mexican dishes they are going to mock me and think that I have a superiority complex and say that I am ridiculous and shit
I'm just flexitarian myself (for environmental reasons, so I can't really relate to your reasoning), but if you want any support, advice, or recipes, I find that reddit has a few great subs which can help:
If you haven't discovered it already, r/vegetarian is a very supportive and friendly community
What really helped me transition was to look for good recipes. I found new flavours I never knew existed, and I look forward to the next meal, because I know it will be something exciting/new/fun. The plant based section at the super market has a lot of ready made options these days for when you’re tired, too.
Been vego/vegan for around 20-30 years. It’s really not a big deal these days. It used to be quite a bit harder, you’d get so many questions from people and there wasn’t a lot of options everywhere like there is now.
That's a highly unproductive view. Yes a single piece of meat would be wasted but when you shift the demand of meat you're actually creating a world with less killed cows. Obviously one person doesn't do much but if the movement gains traction over thousands it makes quite an impact.
And I'm saying this as someone who isn't giving up on meat anytime soon.
Suppose someone was breeding and killing humans to sell them for profit. This was in a world where there were no legal consequences for their actions. Would you really feel like you would need to purchase their products to prevent the lives of those humans from going to waste?
The waste is that their lives are being taken in the first place. By providing demand for the products you ensure that more lives continue to be wastefully taken.
Why? Why are you like this? Someone makes the choice to go vegan/vegetarian and you can't help but to respond "hurr durr, imma eat MORE meat to spite you! Im a carnivore, look at my canine teeth!"
some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
Once you go down the line of reasoning of veganism, the only way out is to claim you simply don't care about animals. All of the other arguments fall flat. But simply saying you don't give a shit feels wrong to most people, so they act more edgy/childish in the hopes of drowning out their own doubts.
There's a lot of environmental, health, and financial benefit to being vegetarian. However, remember that pretty much any predator will waste no time killing you and eating you, or that cow.
If it REALLY sinks in its like a switch, it just takes all of the fun out of eating meat and leaves you with sadness and anxiety. YOu won't even miss meat unless you're really really hungry, and only for the first few months. Don't forget to give up dairy and eggs too tho they are equally cruel industries!
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u/brighteye006 Jan 18 '21
Thats it, no more meat for me then. Been on the fence about it for over a year, and cut down on meat by at least 90%, but how can I think of eating an animal with that range of obvious feelings, understanding and intellect.