What do you eat?
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Do we have vegetarians or vegans in our midst?
What do you guys think about Impossible Foods and manufactured meat in general?
Let's talk food habits more under the scope of how it relates to social or health issues than just what we like to shove into our mouths.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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I'm not a strict vegetarian, but I only prepare meat in my household once a week, and that's usually goat. Goat farming is much more ecologically responsible than most other meats. I will very rarely eat beef, lamb or poultry, but never pork.
I think the rise of plant-based alternatives are great, and I love that it's becoming mainstream.
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@Arkandel Impossible Foods is made from people!
Generally, I will eat anything set before me unless it's made from people or bugs. -
@Tyche Cricket flour is delicious
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I have done omnivore and vegan but never vegetarian. I prefer to eat vegan from a feminist perspective, because with milk and eggs, it is specifically female bodies we are exploiting and destroying.
That said, at the moment I am plant based 6 days a week, and one day a week give myself a pass to cheat on that if there is something I just can't live without foodwise. Because of the one day a week, the other six don't technically count as vegan although in practice, they are.
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Vegetarianism is simple. Veganism is less simple.
I've had a decent sampling of "Vegan substitute foods" (cheese, meat, and other products), and my assessment is that I think vegan food producers should spend less time trying to create vegan versions of non-vegan foods, but focus on making openly vegan foods better.
I love veggie burgers, but vegan cheese (without milk) is not tasty, nor is it actually cheese. So what I'm saying is, I think instead of "Impossible Food" substitutes, I don't care if it's a burger patty made of bean curd and soy, or a mass of legumes broiled into a puck like falafel. I get excited about new recipes and flavors, but if I hear "Vegan Cheese", I think in my head what cheese tastes like, and every...fucking...time the taste hits my tongue I have that weird sensation where you're expecting one flavor, get another, and then immediately your brain questions whether or not that odd flavor means food poisoning.
To be honest, there's a lot of stuff in those categories that I'd go vegetarian for, but not because I want to trick myself out of wanting sirloin, but because I love falafel.
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I eat meat frequently. Usually pork or chick, sometimes beef. I don't like to think about where it comes from. I'd happily eat vat grown meat if it tasted the same and was affordable.
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My body responds better to meat, veggies, fruit, and dairy than it does to anything else. The fresher the better.
I would have no issue giving lab-grown meat a try, with some concern it 'might not work'. A number of 'replacement foods' are so much further divorced from nature than what they're replacing, and somehow, my body seems to recognize the difference and rebel in ways that make me marvel at how many ways your innards can hate the shit out of you (sometimes literally).
I can't do artificial sweeteners, for instance, even naturally derived ones. A few sips of diet soda is a recipe for a vicious headache that will last for several hours. I'd rather go without sugar -- seltzer, black coffee, etc. -- than use a sweetener that isn't sugar. (I don't actually use much sugar, either, and get minimally processed kinds or beverages with cane sugar if I'm going to have them in the house at all.)
Meanwhile, I can eat a pound of bacon a day for a week and I will lose weight, because apparently I am one of those alien experiments that didn't work quite as intended, unless my model of human was bred to make money for Dr. Atkins.
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I am mainly a vegetarian, though I admittedly will cheat with fish -- I feel like I'm in a grey area where I don't know if I eat it frequently enough to constitute pescatarianism, though I would respect far more faithful vegetarians telling me I'm not truly veg. I went off meat for a combination of health reasons (lifelong digestive issues, and a plant diet has done wonders for it) and personal ethics.
I'm saturated with opinions about how western society should reshape its diet -- when people ask me for advice, I usually suggest that if you don't want to give up meat eating, then to buy your meat as locally as possible. Intimate yourself with the process and support the business model that is ecologically sustainable and far less torturous for the animal involved. Honestly, the same can go for a plant-based diet. We're killing the world transporting in unnecessary produce because the local cash crops are corn, corn, and corn for cheap corn syrup and cheap factory farm feed.
I know it sucks because not everyone benefits equally from local farming (if you're in a major city, your choices are threadbare without a strong, faithful community, and even 'farmer's markets' now are rife with deceptive business where trucked in grocery store produce is resold as local, organic food, many times its original price). It's also far more expensive to do this, so the sacrifice for omnivores is to eat less meat per week. Which, in my opinion, is what we should be doing. It's unsustainable and deleterious to your health to make meat a daily thing, whether it's carcinogens from the cooking process or nitrates/salts in curing, to elevated saturated fat levels -- of course, wholly dependent on your diet and family history.
I've heard great things about Impossible meat, but haven't had a chance to try it. I'm excited to! Manufactured meat is two thumbs-up from me, because really anything is better than factory farming situation going on. It's awful. It's awful. It is nothing short of pure suffering, both for the animals and for persons who work in those facilities -- usually migrant hires. They report higher domestic violence rates among those same workers, no doubt in part of the stressful and violent work they have to do. How could it not be mentally disturbing to assembly line dispatch of animals in the thousands, every day? There's frequent reports of factory animals being neglected or tortured, perhaps as the only outlet these workers have for their stress levels. It's not a hunter field-dressing his kill, and it's not a family farmer reaping his livestock. I equate it to torture -- the same torture people support when they buy products like foie gras. Giving up grocery store meat is the best forward step anyone could take.
My opinions are legion, hahaha!
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I'm not vegetarian or vegan, I like burgers, chicken and eggs too much. I am one of those people who would be content to eat the same food at each different meal on a daily basis, especially when I am very busy. (Example: I eat 2 eggs for breakfast and have a cup of tea for breakfast 6 out of 7 (and sometimes 7) days a week.) What I eat tends to be seasonal, lots of salads through warmer weather as sides, steamed vegetables as sides through the colder weather - or I have a lot of soups/stews.
I don't do artificial sweetener at all, I prefer unsweet black tea and lots and lots of water. Occasionally I drink soda. I'm the mother to kids who won't drink anything carbonated at all, which I've always found kind of funny (but personally am totally okay with, it's healthier anyway).
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@Arkandel said in What do you eat?:
Do we have vegetarians or vegans in our midst?
What do you guys think about Impossible Foods and manufactured meat in general?
Let's talk food habits more under the scope of how it relates to social or health issues than just what we like to shove into our mouths.
Vegan, I think Impossible Foods and lab grown meat are fantastic things for helping the environment and limiting suffering. Personally, I tend to stay away from things that are accurately imitating meat because I first became vegetarian after working at a deli and think meat's groady, and I've become accustomed to the hockypuck veggie burgers, and really didn't notice the difference at all with hot dogs versus veggie dogs, they both taste like ass, and you drown them in condiments anyways.
Health wise? I think getting away from Dairy has been the best thing I've ever done for my health. My eczema pretty much disappeared, like easily 90% reduced after eliminating dairy.
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Bananerz, don't go crazy, don't go cra.....
Cost, time and how folks were raised/personal likes can create a lot of negative perceptions to a vegan lifestyle, and I don't help when I get on my soapbox and preach regarding the treatment of animals.
I don't like impossible foods personally, I don't want to taste dead flesh but if it means that more folks would be interested in swapping out meat for a substitute, that makes me happier. A sudden drastic change isn't realistic but slow and steady can do it.
The swap though of the animal-based industries with non-animal based industries will have a lot of negative impacts to a lot of people worldwide in terms of employment and living, and that's a big problem needing solutions such as universal wage, housing and healthcare. That isn't at all an easy thing to address.
An aside: maybe if there was truth in food labels which outline the environmental impact of that particular food item, that could help folks make better decisions for those wanting help. Perhaps showing actually where it's sourced so you can see for yourself the conditions/etc.
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@tek said in What do you eat?:
@Tyche Cricket flour is delicious
Well I'd eat bugs if I had to.
In a real pinch, I'd even eat a feminist (if she was seasoned properly). -
@Tyche said in What do you eat?:
In a real pinch, I'd even eat a feminist (if she was seasoned properly).
I’d doubt she’d enjoy it, especially were she seasoned.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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I have nothing against eating meat and/or fruit and/or vegetables, loving just about everything, but I really just balk at the idea of eating 'fake meat'. I don't know why, but my brain just can't get wrapped around the concept.
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@TiredEwok I get that. I typically prefer to just not eat fake meat. When making tacos I will use tater tots instead of ground beef, and they add the texture and savory notes. I like a fake chicken patty sandwich from morningstar farms once in a while because they do a decent job imitating a breaded chicken patty, but the indigestion is terrible. It tends to be healthier to avoid sandwiches instead of trying to dress up big hunks of it with fake meat. I haven't had the chance to get hands on any good cheese substitutes in my area but I hear good things about numu mozzarella for pizza, which is my main exception when I do do cheese.
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Grew up on a farm, so the whole idea of animal slaughter for food is something I'm intimately familiar with. Family still own a lot of land, but a good deal of it has been turned from over used farm land into conservation preservation. Or strictly used for feed corn and soybeans. My uncle decided to invest more in ethanol.
I have a certain outlook on these things. My family hunts, I hunt. My step-dad has been a traditionalist hunter for a long time. Being a steward of the land you live on. And part of that means keeping a healthy number of, in our case deer, from overpopulation. But also, I've learned the hard way exactly what happens when you pull the trigger. You become responsible for it. Being handed the knife and told how to field dress and later butcher the kill. We don't take our meat to a processor, we do it all in the house.
I'm also one of those weirdos who was raised on raw milk because, again, was raised on a dairy farm. Granted, I wouldn't drink it now, because it'd probably mess me up. But back when I was a kid, drank it every day.
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I'm much more likely to eat meat if it was hunted/wild caught or came from a small family farm. I'm fine with the idea of eating animals, but I'm not okay with the practices of large-scale meat production and the associated environmental impacts.
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I am (99%) vegetarian. I eat vegan when I can. I did try the impossible burger, and honestly? It was so authentic i didn't really enjoy it. The taste, the texture, appearance, everything. It was a burger, a thick burger. As someone who never really enjoyed the taste of a thick hamburger patty (i liked them thin and crispy), it was TOO good a dupe.
But I too mostly don't eat meat substitutes. I don't like tofu, or seitan, and certainly don't want morningstar meat-imposters. I just eat food without meat. Beans, veggies, lentils, grains.
