Poll of the Day > Alternative to being a vegetarian.

(+) Yeah! (+)

So, over the years I have tried multiple times to stop eating meat. I have failed every time. First.....I love meat, steak especially. Other than pizza (which I often get with meat on it), there is no other food I like more.

That by itself would be surmountable, especially after seeing some horrible things that inspired me to stop eating meat in the first place. I drove by Harris Ranch with my wife waaaay back in the distant past and it was insanely horrid. It was so bad they shut them down, multiple times till the changed things, but that was after I saw the miles of suffering as I drove by. I made it almost 2 months that time before giving up.

Anyway, no matter what I did, what other substitutes I tried, if I didn't eat meat (red meat specifically) for too long, I just felt horrid and it kept getting worse over time. Suppliments didn't help, beans etc didn't do the trick, nothing worked. Maybe it was mental, since I love to eat steak/beef so much, I don't know. I just never was able to pull it off long term. Not sure if there other people who have the same thing happen, or if people like me just don't even bother to try to stop eating meat lol...cause yeah, it's a huge sacrifice to my happiness levels.

Anyway I tried switching to just fish/chicken etc, still had the same problem. I did moderation (instead of most meals having beef/meet I tried alternating more etc, but as a diabetic that is more difficult than it sounds). Anyway the moderation thing worked a bit, and now I tend to use MUCH LESS meat in many dishes. Instead of having a nice 1 pound ribeye steak, I'll use a few ounces and add it to a mushroom and onion soup (with beef broth and tomato sauce as a base (and 50% water). Still gives me the beefy flavor, but way less actual beef used.

Another change is to make a nice Salad, which I used to just give to my wife. Now I make a nice salad with live lettuce, chop up about 4 ounces of steak, add in olives, baby tomatoes sometimes some cheese and it's quite filling. Again, 4 ounces instead of 16 or so (generally would go with 1 pound steak once a day (although after cutting off the fat and cooking it was probably more like 12 ounces).

Anyway that is where I am currently. I do alternate in chicken/fish as well, still eating about the same amount, and I also found (through a friend) these frozen burger patties at winco, 100% Angus beef, 20 in a package for $20. They are AMAZING not only because of the flavor, but because they are frozen and can be bbq'd from that state. This allows me to not have to buy fresh ground beef and just use them when I get a severe craving (and just make 1 burger). I think because of this and the other meals I have halved the amount of beef I eat or even more. It's also significantly cheaper lol.

Anyway, anyone else ever had this problem and came up with solutions for it? I think I have cut down about as much as is possible, and really refined my meals to be both cost effective, healthy, tasty and not result in the murder of quite as many cows. I am still a horrible mass murderer of cows throughout my life, but I am trying to be better at least. I have relatives/friends who don't eat any meat at all and it doesn't seem to bother them even a little. I think they are aliens, or I am an alien or something, cause we do not seem like the same species at all.

You could always do protien shakes eggs and multivitimans. You probably get cravings when you don't get the right nutrition.

I don't do meat substitutions because it just makes you want the original. Also I think it's pretty fair morally if you buy expensive the free range eggs.

just eat meat as a garnish rather than as a main.

Lokarin posted...

just eat meat as a garnish rather than as a main.

Yeah, not quite that far but kinda what I am doing. Less meat over all for sure, but I still get some and that seems to work. The soup especially works great that way. Get the beef flavor in the mushrooms/onions/brocolli etc, but very little actual beef used.

My soup is basically made by sauting 3 mushrooms (white) and about 1/8th of a chopped up onion in a bit of oil. I then add 50% beef broth and 50% water to that (after it browns), about 1/2 of a jalapeno (cut into 4 pieces so easy to remove later), garlic, oregino, crushed black pepper and red pepper flakes. I cut up about 2-3 brocolli florets into small pieces and add that as well. I then cut up/shave off the fatty pieces of a steak into small pieces and add that as well. Finally after it has simmered for awhile I ad about 1/5th of a jar of prego pasta sauce. Let that simmer for another 10 minutes or so and bam, a really yummy, flavorful soup, that is filling and very beefy.

It's honestly delicious and amazingly cheap. 1 2$ thing of beef broth lasts for 3 soups. The steak is barely noticable, mushrooms are dog cheap and the onion as well. All together it's probably like $2 or so to make the soup and it's very yummy.

Things like that really let you get away with eating less beef, but still being satisfied, or at least it works for me.

Yellow posted...

You could always do protien shakes eggs and multivitimans. You probably get cravings when you don't get the right nutrition.

I don't do meat substitutions because it just makes you want the original. Also I think it's pretty fair morally if you buy expensive the free range eggs.

I don't like eggs at all. I tried vitamans when trying not to eat meat before and it didn't work for me. Protien shakes sound really disgusting as well lol.

I am a "meat and potatoes" type guy who has struggled throughout his life to expand past that. I'm not one because of lack of effort, I was just meant to be a carnivore and try as I may, I have not been able to fully overcome that. I was married for years and my wife loved to eat all kinds of food, so I tried to expand my options, but I just plain don't like sushi, most thai food, most vegies etc.

Over the years I have expanded though, initially not likeing any vegies, mushrooms etc. I do like broccoli now, string beans, brussel sprouts, mushrooms (just a few kinds though) etc.

Still dont' do any mayo, humos, pretty much any indian food, don't like sushi, sweat potatoes/yams, cranberries (or sauce), turkey (though I can eat it but prefer chicken so much more) etc.

I love food so much, just....so limited on the kinds I actually enjoy/can eat. Melted yellow cheeses (not the color, so white cheder still counts) make me actually sick. It's crazy. I can eat those cheeses if they are not melted but something changes when you melt them (I'm fine with swiss/mozz/provolone etc).

Now that i'm diabetic I have to avoid carbs as well, cutting out most pizza/pasta/breads etc. Without meats....ugh......luckily I have found some healthy alternatives.

If you've never tried TVP (textured vegetable protein) you should give it a shot. Super tasty when you season it right.

And don't forget to make sure you're getting vitamin B12 enriched foods if you're also limiting other animal products. Plant milks and Nutritional Yeast are what I get my B12 from, as well as a daily multivitamin.

I've been vegan for like 6 months now, and have been loving all the new foods I'm trying. Even with my gluten allergy, there's lots of tasty, healthy options out there.

Well if it helps farming for your veggies kills a lot more animals. And you don't even eat them.

Aside from personalized health benefits theres really no wrong diet if youre trying to help the environment.

Because no diet helps the environment. Youre indirectly supporting the destruction of habitats no matter what you eat.

SinisterSlay posted...

Well if it helps farming for your veggies kills a lot more animals. And you don't even eat them.

Trophic levels, yo. Every 1000 calories of herbivore meat you eat requires ~10,000 calories of plants to raise. It doesn't strictly scale that linearly because you generally get a higher yield from livestock feed than from crops for human consumption (simply because livestock are less picky about which parts of the plants they eat), but across the board any suffering caused by growing and harvesting plants for human consumption is caused in greater measure by growing and harvesting plants for livestock, in addition to whatever suffering is caused directly to the livestock.

LonelyStoner posted...

Aside from personalized health benefits theres really no wrong diet if youre trying to help the environment.

Because no diet helps the environment. Youre indirectly supporting the destruction of habitats no matter what you eat.

No diet is without *some* environmental impact, but different foods absolutely do differ in terms of their environmental impact, whether that's water use, GHG emissions, land use, chemical pollution... You can mitigate some of that without making major changes to what you eat by instead making changes to where you source it from (though that tends to have extra monetary costs), but what you choose to eat is still a major component of your overall environmental footprint.

adjl posted...

Trophic levels, yo. Every 1000 calories of herbivore meat you eat requires ~10,000 calories of plants to raise. It doesn't strictly scale that linearly because you generally get a higher yield from livestock feed than from crops for human consumption (simply because livestock are less picky about which parts of the plants they eat), but across the board any suffering caused by growing and harvesting plants for human consumption is caused in greater measure by growing and harvesting plants for livestock, in addition to whatever suffering is caused directly to the livestock.

This is true, if you harvest for livestock feed you make the problem even worse.

If I could hunt and kill my own meat I would be ok with it. Circle of life and all that. The main problem I had was with the way the animals were being treated, it looked like a literally cow hell, but not the fun kind like in D2.

I don't like suffering, so to some extent in my weird twisted mind, killing an animal (As long as you don't make it suffer a long time) is not a bad thing, especially if it sustains life etc. Forcing an animal to live and suffer for a long time before killing it though, that is a different story, especially if you are doing that to TONS of them.

So that was my real problem with it, and it's mostly with beef (though i'm guessing chickens probably are not super happy with however they exist before being killed for food either).

As far as what is good for the environment I'm way ahead of the norm on that since I barely create garbage, use gas etc. I have always been sort of a minimalist, with reading and video games being my main hobbies, and now that I'm retired/old I barely use utilities etc. The small amount I do use is so tiny compared to all of humanity that I really don't feel like anything I do, or cut back on more than I already use, will make any difference at all.

I basically gave up on eating no meat mostly because, even with the large amount I ate compared to most throughout my life, it still really ultimately makes absolutely no difference in the # of cows killed or the suffering they experience. Me not buying steaks, isn't going to ever cause even 1 less cow to die, and since not eating meat makes me feel horrid, it just doesn't seem worth it just to make a pointless protest that makes no change at all.

Even though that is true though, I do feel better cutting back on beef at least, and am glad I seem to have found a way to at least eat less. I may switch over to grass fed which I have had suggested before (except it is much more expensive), but honestly the difference now isn't as much since meat prices have skyrocketed anyway. Before if a Ribeye was say $8 a pound base, Grass fed would be $4 more a pound or 50% more..which is significant. Now though the base price is $14 for a ribeyes, so $4 more, or $18 a pound....still sucks, but it's not 50% more at this point, so coupled with eating less all together.....It's manageable and I am not eating cows that were forced to stand shoulder to shoulder for miles suffering till they are eventually killed.

Strangely enough, I have never suffered ANY health problems from eating mostly meat, often going long periods of time in the past eating nothing but beef. Literally no fruit or veggies. Sailors used to get sick from that I think, but not me. I seem to be able to consist only on meat with no negatives, but if I don't eat meat for to long, I have less and less energy, feel sick, can't think as clearly etc. It gets worse the longer I go without meat, or specifically beef it seems.

Anyway, I certainly seem to be ok eating less per day on average. Back in my 20's and early 30's though, it was really crazy how much I would/could eat. I used all you can eat places like home town buffet, chinese buffets etc, and even steak challenges like at Beck's steakhouse where they had a truck drives challenge, if you ate the 6 pound steak you got it for free (I ate 2 of them back to back heh).

I go with a general 1 pound steak at this point, which drops to about 12 ounces after trimming and grilling, but that is way down from what my normal was even a year ago. I have done the math, and I think I have eaten about 500 whole cows worth of meat in my life (averaging 70 pounds of steak per cow). I have WAY slowed down, not even averaging 1 pound every other day now, and may eventually get to about 2 pounds a week. Doubt I'll ever stop completely, but it is way better than it was at least.

The life of a chicken is awful.
Even to begin, your born, your face smashed, then you have a 50% chance is being tossed into a grinder. Escape that and it's a life of suffering. Worse in some countries.

There are certain corners they have to cut to get mass produced meat at an affordable price, unfortunately one of those corners is the wellbeing of the animals.

There are still sources you can go to that go out of their way to treat the animals well, but those will probably be relatively expensive. Ideally everyone who eats meat should look for ethically sourced meat, but I don't blame poor people who eat meat that is unethically sourced.

Beans.

And nuts.

Eat unprocessed as much as possible.

SunWuKung420 posted...

Beans.

And nuts.

Eat unprocessed as much as possible.

I was putting pork wontons in my soup until not that long ago. I actually liked the pork and chicken signature select wontons but they stopped carrying them. The pork ones suck, so I have not used them.

Considering buying some beans and putting like 1/4th a can in my soup. Gonna try it next time I go shopping:)

Personally, I adjust a lot of recipes by replacing up to a pound of the meat in it with a can of chickpeas. That's mostly for chicken dishes, though, since the flavour of the meat tends not to be a major part of them and most things that go with chicken also go with chickpeas. A big part of that is also that I tend to freeze meat in 1-pound portions, so if a recipe calls for something like 1.5 pounds, replacing that half pound with something else means I don't have to either break up a portion or buy new meat.