Vegetarians

I LOVED eating meat, it was very hard for the 18 years I was veggie.

My sister on the other hand has never liked meat at all, so is veggie because of that.

L
xx

I've never liked it and have been vegetarian pretty much my whole life. I have tried to start eating meat, because it would make life so much easier, but it just makes me feel ill.

I liked eating meat but I didn't see giving it up as a sacrifice as such. Fast forward 22 years and I have this year denounced my 'vegetarian' status. Having said that, I could count on one hand what meat I have tried since then and it's 4 or 5 bites of meat, usually when we've been eating out and I've fancied trying something.

I liked chicken, loved roast lamb, wasn't too fussed on beef (was 12 though) but adored bacon & sausages. It was tough to start with as my parents refused to cook 2 meals so I had to start doing all my own cooking, but I don't ever remember wanting to eat theirs. I had a very strong conviction, even at that age, that I was doing the 'right thing'.

I'm well past the point of missing it or craving it, and the smell of meat or fish now tends to make me feel sick rather than anything else.

I gave up being veggie about 8 years ago after being veggie for about 8/10 years. I have recently actually started to try eating some meat ? I can do bacon sarnies (crispy though), pork sausages and chicken. This weekend I tried some lamb which was OK and some steak, which wasn't. I find it all a bit, well, meaty ?

I am not a fussy eater and eat anything else, including some minging things, but I'm just not cut out for meat-eating.

Oddly, in the sixteen years I was veggie I didn't miss it. The day I did, eyeing up poached salmon pasta in M&S, I ate it. I gradually re-introduced meat after that. I could live without meat again, but probably not fish. I adore Sushi. mmmm Sushi.

I am a " part time" veggie - I only eat chicken (dont laught at me) ? and I use the 'I am a veggie' excuse whenever I go out - it is very Naughty, i know -but it saves me eating nasty beef and lamb etc

I really really really really miss Pork though

I often wonder why I still think it is "ok" to eat chicken when I wouldnt eat any other meat? I am such a idiot - but I still cant work me out

I'm not a real veggie as eat fish but I haven't eat meat for 21 years. I did enjoy bacon and casserole type dishes. I had a real problem with eating roast meats as seeing the joint made me realise I was eating a sheep / pig / chicken etc and that was ultimately what made me give it up. I don't miss meat but I did miss fish in the 15 years I didn't eat it so I took it back up again. V. fussy about it though & really only like white fish & seafood.

? brilliant. No really sara you are not a veggie. Not even part time. You are a meat eater who doesn't eat meat all the time. Rarely red meat. No harm there, but definitely not a veggie.

WSS! Definitely not in any way a veggie AFAIC ?

I was veggie for abour 2 years and then started eating meat again as I was lazy and ate too much cheese! Feel very guilty about eating meat though so planning to try again relatively soon. I do like meat so did miss it but mostly had trouble with thinking of things to cook. Am very very careful about meat I buy now and only eat meat when out if I know it is free-range. I've got massive reservations about the whole dairy industry as well but couldn't face giving up cheese.

I gave up fish about 5 years ago for ethical reasons - over-fishing and awful trawling methods mostly. I do miss it but don't think enough is being done about the situation to make me eat it again yet.

AFAIK chicken can be one of the worst meats to choose, ethically speaking, because of the terrible production methods of cheap poultry. Lamb is a good one though (according to veggie SIL, who is a vet and has done her time on farms/abbatoirs) as it is not factory farmed.

I'm not a veggie, but in the rarely eats meat camp. Have a chorizo salad about once a week, and that's it. Sometimes I flirt with tuna sandwiches, but then I cannot be bothered again! I don't like the taste *enough* to be bothered, and the meat industry as a whole bothers me. I prefer grains, pulses and vegetables anyway.

I feel really torn as I would like to be veggie (and did it for three years as a teen), but OH would not give up meat. He's happy to minimise the meat we eat, and I'm too lazy (and busy!) to cook two meals, so I feel that this is the best balance for now. I don't really 'do' dairy either, apart from milk (which I could easily give up), so I think there's a vegan waiting to come out somewhere... one who likes knitting with wool and wearing leather ?

ETA - chicken is pretty much a no-no for me. The industry is rank and it seems daft that one life is given over to a single meal. For this reason I don't eat mussels or prawns either (mass homicide in a sandwich!)... Yes, I know I am ridiculous ?

This is the thing I stuggle with the most. I have been vegan in the past for periods of a few months at a time, because imho it's quite hyprocritical to 'just' be veggie as the dairy industry is dependent on mass cull of calves, which aren't even eaten.

I really do struggle to reconcile this knowledge with how much I love cheese and ice cream. I am eating a lot less dairy than I have in the past, though this is mainly due to sat fat reasons, not ethical ones. However, I think it's only a matter of time before I go vegan really, my conscience is bound to out at some point, annoyingly.

Fliss, that's what my OH said to start with too <evil cackle> ?

Actually I didn't really pressurise him, he just realised 3 yrs into our relationship that he was eating veggie most of the time anyway, and didn't really miss meat.

So in terms of ethical treatment of animals, lamb is usually the safest option?

Speaking as someone on a budget who cannot always afford to buy organic free range chicken etc it would be good to know which items were the best.

I do buy free range eggs, and buy most of my meat from the butchers/farm shop but occasionally all I can get to as ASDA.

I've been trying for nine years - I think he's pretty much a lost cause! I let him choose what he wanted to do for his 30th... and we ended up with a night at the local and a extra large burger to eat on the way home. And his idea of holiday bliss is 5 pints and a burger every night, followed by a bacon buttie in the morning. Every day. He's so un-classy ?

At least I've weaned him off kebabs by pointing out the meat tubes, and 'baa-ing' like a lamb ?

This is what made me give up being veggie after so long. I couldn't get my head round the fact that I drank milk, ate cheese, had leather handbags and leather shoes etc yet wouldn't eat meat. I was vegan for about 6 months for health reasons (to see if it would help my skin problems) and I could no way be vegan so thought I'd denounce being veggie and eat happy meat if I wanted to eat any meat at all.

I was vegetarian for about 12 years, then went back to eating meat a few years ago. It did start off as an ill-thought-out moral objection (not saying for a second that a moral objection to eating meat is necessarily ill-thought-out, there are perfectly convincing and coherent objections, but they don't fit in with my general moral/philosophical outlook so for me it was ill-thought-out!).

I can honestly say that during that time, aged 12-24, I didn't miss the taste of meat at all, and continued to be vegetarian (although not strict about meat stock/additives) even when the moral objection had gone, just because I saw no reason to change (plus it was cheaper). I went back to eating meat when I started travelling more widely, because it really is extremely difficult not to eat meat in a lot of countries, although that's a worthwhile sacrifice if you have a strong moral objection, which I don't. I enjoy all types of meat now, although interestingly if I'm cooking for just me I'll generally cook something without meat.

I can't actually remember when I gave up meat. I know that my Mum was carving a chicken. And I said that I really couldn't eat it, and I was turning veggie! This must have been about 15 - 20 years ago I guess. I didn't really like meat before that. Hated lamb. Chicken was ok. Hated beef. Thought fish was ok. So honestly, I've never missed it.

Although ironically, I've had 3 near misses in the last month. Iain's elderly aunt forgot I was veggie, and tried to feed me some kind of chicken thing. Then I went out to eat and the restaurant accidentally put chicken in my fajitas! Then I got a pasty from the station and it had lamb in! I think someone's trying to tell me something!

I think so but happy to be told otherwise if anyone got better info. In supermarkets you can sometimes get good deals on free range chicken if you get stuff on special offer - maybe only a day or so in date. I freeze it or cook immediately and freeze. My mum often buys half a lamb (jointed of course) from the farmer down the road for very cheap but she's got one of those gigantic chest freezers. I cook cheap lamb cuts in the slow cooker for hours and hours - they can be really lovely. We try only to eat meat two or three times a week which keeps budget down a bit. Having said that I think there are some environmental (rather than animal welfare) objections to sheep farming. It really is a minefield.

I don't buy organic milk or cheese because my SIL told me that organic dairy farmers can't give antibiotics to cows that have mastitis and I felt bad about it. I've had mastitis twice and it really hurt!

I was a veggie for about 10 years from the age of six. I didn't miss it, but I also didn't like it. I still remember forcing a sausage sandwich down at a sleepover- in the end I hid it down the side of the bed (?) I just couldn't eat it. When I woudl eat mean, it would have to be cooked so specifically that it was just easier to be veggie.

Somehow, my tastes changed. I tried a Mcdonalds burger at 16 (thank god I lived in a nice city which didn't have McDoanlds until they finally forced their way in in the mid 90s) They say Bacon sandwiches are most likely to turn a veggie- I didn't even try one until 23, and even then I would have to cut off all the fat with a pair of scissors and grill the tiny medalions that were left.

Weirdly, I am now very much the carnviore and love meat and especially fish. i can eat gristle, fat, offal, gut a fish, whatever. Whilst i think its more than possible to be healthy as a veggie I also think its a far harder way to be.

The good thing is though, I'm as sure as one can be that I don't have mad cows disease, having not touched meat until the late 90s?

What makes you say that?

I always think one of the advantages of being a veggie is how much easier it is to eat healthily. I don't have anywhere near the number of 'temptations' ?

And statistically speaking, of course, veggies have much lower incidences of heart disease, high blood pressure, bowel cancer, diabetes, breast cancer, obesity etc etc (mainly through reduced saturated fat & higher fibre intake from what I understand) (whoops, went a bit veggie warrior there ?)

well, completely anocdotally, I recently had to up my Iron intake- thats really quite hard on a veggie diet (spinach really doesn't have as much Iron as people think ?) and whilst you can certainly meet your daily Iron requirement through veggie food, I found it hard to hit mine on a meat diet- when you consider most sources of meat have between 3 & 10 times as much Iron per serving than no meat sources- its easier to be meeting that through meat. Not better, but easier.

I'mn not veggie bashing- a huge proportion of the world population are vegetarian and almost all of them have lower levels of obesity, heart disease, bowel cancer etc.. than ours- and as I mentioned I'm an ex veggie myself so the first to support it as a lifestyle, BUT I do find western veggies often fill up on pasta and cheese because its simple, especially when eating outside the home.

Hyacinth, I think there's a massive difference between junk food vegetarians (pasta, cheese, diet coke, chocolate) and wholefood vegetarians. if you are the latter it's certainly easy to eat healthily. well, i think so anyway.

I became a veggie about the time I started practicing yoga more seriously, which is also when I fell pg and completely went off meat. the smell made me want to vom, I just couldn't have eaten it. once my daughter was born I was feeling pretty fab on a wholefood veggie diet so just never went back to meat.

recently I've had fish a few times, so am obv not a strict veggie, but only about three times in the last six months. I've also recently switched cows milk for soy/oat/almond milk and can't remember the last time I had any cheese but haven't specifically avoided it - i just seem to have lost the taste / need for it somehow? weird.

I guess I could always take or leave meat but my family did think it odd when I stopped altogether, however they've accepted it now. I only cook veggie / vegan at home, and occasionally MrF gets a caveman urge and goes to buy half a cow / a rack of ribs / a whole chicken and eats the lots over two days ?. which is prob much more how our diets used to be - mostly veg, pulses etc, meat when available.

I've been veggie for about 20 years now. When I turned veggie (11) the things I found hardest to give up were chicken and McDonalds burgers ?

I don't think I've ever missed it really, certainly not red meat. I have had the occasional lapse when I've had too much to drink and fancied a bit of whatever was on offer but I've always regretted it - and not particularly enjoyed it.

I did decide about five years ago to try and start eating meat again - mainly for convenience purposes and had a chicken meal. Half way through eating it I felt ill and couldn't cope with the thought of eating flesh.

I find this really interesting: I toy with the idea of being veggie all the time. We really don't eat that much meat, and all the sustainabilty issues surrounding it really upset me. The dairy thing is ridic to, so I could only ever become a full on vegan I think.

However, I do love meat. Really, really love it. Only ever buy local, free-range organic stuff so it really is an occasional thing, so i don't think I'd be very good at it.

As I say, interesting discussion.

I am exactly the same as Geekypants. Whenever I think through the morality of meat and dairy, I struggle to come to any conclusion other than that both are unacceptable (to me, based on my view of the world) and I should become a vegan. However I truly love meat and fish- they are absolutely my favourite things to eat in the world- and I don't know that I could do it. I also hate the idea of being a pain in the arse to cater for. So I've started sticking my head in the sand and avoiding thinking about the issue- I even stopped reading this fascinating book http://www.amazon.co.uk/Animal-Liberation-Peter-Singer/dp/0712674446/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251651015&sr=8-3 because I was scared of being too convinced ?

Actually, I don't have much of a problem with eggs (assuming properly free range, by which I mean a higher standard than supermarket free range) so I could be an egg-eating "vegan". As it is, I'm a hypocritical carnivore (albeit of free range meat only) and, when I'm not thinking about it, happy to be so.

I've been veggie for 19 years. I turned veggie at 6 because I just did not like the taste of meat. I have tried over the last couple of years to eat different types of fish just so I could have a bit more choice when eating out, but I haven't found any I like!

Having been to a couple of so-called 'intensive' poultry farms in the last couple of years, I think Hugh F-W's programme did many farmers a massive disservice. You can't get away from the fact that these chickens don't ever go outside of a shed but the conditions are pretty good considering, with a good amount of space and no evidence of dead chicks or deformed birds (these were birds destined for Tesco and M&S).

The grimmest conditions endured by any animal reared for food has to be pig farming. Truly hideous for such obviously social creatures. I'll happily buy supermarket chicken (not precooked, which mostly comes from Thailand) but avoid buying pork unless it's from my local farm shop. What's worse is that so much pork comes in from Europe, where conditions are even worse.

Even with those admittedly sloppy ethical standards, it's very difficult to be ethically sound when you grab a sandwich on the run, eat a bacon sandwich from a cafe etc.