Are you a vegetarian? (poll)

I feel I could give up cheese tomorrow, no problem

I've been a vegetarian more than half my life and was a vegan for about two years before going back to dairy. I'm definitely cutting down on the amount of dairy i consume but you'll take my cheddar when you prise it from my dead, cheesy fingers.

I found veganism quite a struggle in the UK as there's lots of stuff that has hidden dairy-derived ingredients and it always seemed like hard work to get enough protein and energy (mostly because i'm lazy, tbh - there are good vegan cookbooks out there). I don't think i consumed any dairy products in two months in China, though, and felt great.

I am an unashamed and unabashed meat eater, but I do quite often cook vegetarian dishes. We probably eat met 4-5 days out of seven.

flexi but probably bordering on veg when I cook for myself.

I found veganism quite a struggle in the UK as there's lots of stuff that has hidden dairy

^^^ I would have been vegan between 1999-2000 if not for this.

whoops that should be 1999-2001

If I had to, I could subsist on vegetarian food at home and not miss meat too much, but I HATE HATE HATE going to vege/vegan cafes or restaurants. They never have anything I find even vaguely palatable. At least if you go to meat-serving places they have vegetarian options, but, nooo, WHERE'S MY BACON YOU FUCKERS?

That brings up an interesting point: the main problem being veg (although not so much now) or vegan (definitely still a problem) is that being veg/vegan means having to have boring conversations with smug veg/vegan people.

I eat out with a vegan quite often whose gf is not, both of whom are quite foody. It makes for really interesting dining, actually.

magical things are possible in san francisco

Pesco here. Been a vegetarian since 1992 but never gave up dairy/eggs. Started eating very occasional fish (maybe once-twice per month) a few years back just for some additional menu options when eating out. But I don't even like most seafood, so it's really the occasional tuna steak or salmon. Not interested in going vegan, although been doing a lot less dairy at home by default since my wife seems to have developed a slight dairy allergy. I just love cheese way too much.

xxxxp that's kinda like complaining that you can't get a BLT or cheeseburger at a kosher deli I mean

I HATE HATE HATE going to vege/vegan cafes or restaurants. They never have anything I find even vaguely palatable.

emil.y, have you tried Terre a Terre? Seriously amazing food and head and shoulders above any other veggie place in Brighton.

I guess flexitarian. Rarely cook meat at home. When I'm out, I'll eat chicken, fish, sometimes kangaroo. Mostly avoid cow and sheep for environmental reasons.

i like veg restaurants! especially the kind where you can just order a heaping plate of brown rice and steamed vegetables, and there's good-quality produce. i love tofu and seitan but usually i find fake meat/cheese ridiculous. that said, i like the thai vegan places where you can get a nice tofu curry on the cheap.

fuck it. we wouldn't even have cows if not for people like me and our cheese & steaks.

I bet aurochs either tasted shite or weren't docile enough to take a good slicing.

'flexitarian', having (depressingly) slid all the way down from vegan via each of these stages over the past twelve months

I just looked at the menu for Terre a Terre, and... no. Just no. I really don't want to spend £15 on any of those dishes. I mean, I don't want to eat them at all, but then having to pay £15 for them makes it quite a lot worse.

Yeah, I can't afford to eat there that often, but it's really nice as a treat.

I am a vegetarian because....I seriously don't enjoy meat. I mean, I got sick on badly cooked meat a few times. Too many bad meatloafs. At first I cut out just red meat. I don't drink milk either and only consume processed dairy products. I have some dietary allergies but don't like to be a pain in the ass about it. I can't digest bananas or fruit pulp either!

However, I am pragmatic, if there is chicken stock in the soup, I hope no orthodox people are watching...I mean, if I'm traveling, I'll eat what is there...as long as it's not a pig or a cow. I prefer to keep the peace and not be difficult about it.

A chicken kiev or a fish slathered with butter can still entice me.

I genuinely enjoy fake meat, it has lots of healthy oils and makes me feel healthy!

unrepentant carnivore, eat meat every day though not every meal, has hunted game, slaughtered cows, pigs and chickens, and knows how to butcher, hasn't eaten carbohydrates in years

Was straight-up ovo-lacto vegetarian from 1998-2006 and pescatarian since then. I eat fish/seafood at least once a week, although not very often at home.

(And to be perfectly honest, it's probably going to take me a while before I cook fish again after some oven-baked whitefish a few days ago struck me with the worst bout of food poisoning I've ever had.)

I'm a meat eater, but I've been phasing blood red meat out of my diet for several years. Have hated steak for a long time, and I'm getting to a point with burgers. Still, I eat lots of pork, poultry and fish. Unfortunately, you didn't create an option for me in this poll.

option # 7 "I am Johnny Fever"

Part of what I enjoy about pescatarianism is just that it opens up so many options at restaurants. I live in a big city, so it's not particularly difficult for me to find vegetarian meals, but there are still a lot of places that either don't include vegetarian dishes or treat them as an afterthought.

I used to be more serious about vegetarianism but at some point I changed my mind, I realized what i respect is food awareness, like healthy choices. It was the unhealthiness of some of the food I ate as a child that turned me off to meat. I like reading about healthy diets including fish. I still don't like red meat though. I used to love ribs as a child, however...if they made fake ribs I could die happy. Also lobster or crab looks good to me even though I won't eat it.

if they made fake ribs I could die happy.

Pretty sure you can get fake anything in this day and age.

http://www.morningstarfarms.com/content/dam/common/products/MorningStarFarmsHickoryBBQRiblets_16331.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2406/2424225078_377ca05d13.jpg

^ these do look a bit dodgy (and what are those weird things next to the corn?), but you could probably make yr own out of seitan or something.

what are those weird things next to the corn?

Potatoes, obvs.

They are? What the hell have they done to those poor things?

Red potatoes, to be more specific.

Looked like some sort of cheesey apple to me.

look like cheesy bollocks to me.

That would definately not be vegetarian.

I <3 u vegetarians but fake ribs make me want to cry

I have never seen those fake ribs before! They don't have them where I live. I would like "raw" ribs that you could bring to a barbecue. I'm sure if I look hard enough.

Whatever you think about vegetarianism, it has certainly expanded people's ideas of what one should eat...restaurants include more vegetable dishes or salads and people include vegetarian items at parties. It used to be that office parties and the like barely served vegetables...everything was fattening and had meat in it!

veg for years trending toward vegan. pretty much the only dairy I eat these days is local eggs from people we know at the farmers' market, I rarely buy any cheese any more but when I'm away on business there's much pizza to be eaten and even at home pizza's still a thing once or twice a month. I expect that at some point in my life I'll make the leap to fully vegan.

Xps to snoball - for every smug vegan/vegetarian there is at least one smug meateater/ I-love-bacon-so-much-I-use-bacon-grease-as-lube person.

i would be interested to see the results broken down into gender and reason why

xp my cousin-in-law is an un-smug vegetarian married to an I-love-bacon-so-much-I-use-bacon-grease-as-lube person : /

The only thing I've found difficult about vegan cooking is not being able to use worcestershire sauce (although you can buy expensive vegan kinds our make your own).

I almost always order chicken/seafood when eating out, but only cook vegan at home.

I would probably go straight vegan if I had the money. I'd do juices and smoothies in a blender. I did do this diet for a while but went broke. I'd do it to see how much better I'd feel....changes in your body are interesting. I like that you can throw a bunch of fruit and peanut butter in a blender with some weird protein powder and feel full all day!

That brings up an interesting point: the main problem being veg (although not so much now) or vegan (definitely still a problem) is that being veg/vegan means having to have boring conversations with smug veg/vegan people.

i've experienced this, but almost entirely in the opposite direction, which is non-vegs who bring up the vegetarian thing over and over and over and over again. "I'd give you a piece of this - but you can't eat meat!!" "I don't know how you do this, oh man the meat is so good!" "It must be so hard for you here because you don't eat meat!" "I could never not eat meat, I don't know how you do it!". The repeated thing drives me wacky, especially as the chance of me talking about meat vs. not eating meat in a conversation is approximately 0.0000000001%

i would be interested to see the results broken down into gender and reason why

(a) woman
(b) i'm not one of those BACOOOOOOOON types but the occasional meat cravings are such that i can't commit myself fully to vegetarianism (and i've tried)

xpost
this is most painfully apparent at thanksgiving, which is solidified in my head as the holiday where you have to hear about how difficult it must be to be a vegetarian all day.

but the side dishes (mostly vegetarian) are the best part of thanksgiving!

was a vegetarian/pescetarian for two years, gave it up in january. i don't regret doing it, and being forced to eat no meat is a good lesson in teaching yourself to eat a better diet, but you can't really keep it up forever if your heart isn't in it.

a) woman
b) I really really do enjoy the taste of meat. I love vegetables fine, but food in general for me is as much about enjoyment as it is nutrition, so I think I would be a sad panda if I had to only eat vegetables all day, no matter how tasty.

Z® otm. I'm not even vegan/vege and it drives me into a rage when ppl do this.

Lol z®

scrolling this thread and seeing how much ive shifted...i dont care that much about animal rights anymore aside from i just dont want them to die or suffer, but its no longer at the core of my politics overall bc you know "no ethical consumption under capitalism" and all. environmental reasons prob my main reason to not eat dairy/eggs anymore.

I couldn't find a non-wack thread on veganism or animal rights, so I'll post this here, an excellent essay offering a socialist feminist argument for veganism (though it's not focused on personal diet per se) by Astra and Sunaura Taylor: https://lux-magazine.com/article/our-animals-ourselves/

I couldn't find a non-wack thread on veganism or animal rights

― in the time of NFTs I bought a monkey (rob),

what point are you trying to make?

I think Deflatormouse was punning on "animal rights" and "I bought a monkey"?

This is a good article, I'll say more when I finish the second half.

Ah ok fair enough...and speaking of username/post !

rob thank you for sharing that essay

i often keep my vegetarianism to myself but i at least partially stopped eating meat bc i'm a huge propagandhi fan, and they were def making a socialist feminist argument for veganism

i'd be curious to see the voting distribution on a new version of this poll, but i would be sad when it only got 37 votes

I wasn't a vegetarian in 2012 but I am now.

gang

I'm basically a pescatarian but I don't eat any dairy (except eggs, which I buy locally and I know are free-range).

ive now been vegan the majority of my life (18 years) and we have a 9 year old who's been vegan his whole life. not without his own explorations outside of the world (never meat, but he's snuck in some nonvegan halloween candy out of FOMO and we had a Productive Talk about it) but he understands why we do what we do. i think he has a classmate or two that's vegetarian but im p sure he's the only vegan. i told him he'll probably find some vegan classmates by the time he hits middle or high school.

I'm amazed by how much pushback I get, particularly from colleagues at work. Students I can accept because they're kids, but my colleagues will sit there with some processed sludge from the canteen and obsess over whatever I'm eating, constantly trying to catch me out.

those moments are always revealing, the fear of and preemptive hostility towards perceived implicit judgment

Aye. I try not to be a dick about it as I suspect I was a *bit* like it before.

And y'know, plants are living things too and it's narcissistic to use humanity as the standard to judge which other species are capable of feeling or deserve good treatment, but it's the animal condition to consume living things to get enough energy to live ourselves, and we all have to draw our line somewhere. Personally, I would have a really hard time giving up eggs & cheese.

what point are you trying to make?

― rob,

oh, just that I've seen some *extremely shitty* posts on here re: animal rights

I think Deflatormouse was punning on "animal rights" and "I bought a monkey"?

LOL thanks for trying

ah sorry I completely misunderstood you there! yes, all the animal rights and veganism threads looked depressingly hostile and defensive and some are sexist

plants are living things too and it's narcissistic to use humanity as the standard to judge which other species are capable of feeling or deserve good treatment, but it's the animal condition to consume living things to get enough energy to live ourselves, and we all have to draw our line somewhere

Maybe on an abstract philosophical level this is true—and the cultural hypocrisy over which animals deserve rescuing and which should be slaughtered or exploited en masse bothers me for this reason— but humans are the only species engaged in large-scale animal agriculture, which is also destructive to plants, so if you really think plants and animals should be treated equally, you should still not support animal agriculture. At any rate, I encourage to read the essay if you didn't already, it raises some very specific issues with animal breeding that do not apply to horticulture

That said I am not a vegan (though I have involuntary intolerances of both eggs and lactose), so I'm not trying to personally shame anyone. The best thing about that article is framing it as a politics rather than a lifestyle!

I was a vegetarian between about 1989 - 2007 but gave up at an Argentinian owned steak restaurant in my early 30's. But I still go through periods of not eating meat. At the moment I have a tender gap in my gob where used to be there a molar and am doing lots of green soup made from broccoli/spinach/kale/spring greens. I actually got angry when some dickhead tory foodie dismissed kale as "cattle food" recently. But still I'm decidedly NOT a vegetarian any more.

It's a very insightful article that takes into account a lot of the misconceptions and unfortunate truths around veganism. Like the authors, I can't take an aggressive attitude when discussing other people's meals; it's something that is so central to the self-conception of many people. I'm also hyper-conscious of not wanting to harm things for "our side" by being called out as either a hypocrite or a scold from one side or the other, so I try simply to eat as best I can.