How often are you eating plant based meals?
I'm not strictly talking about adherent vegan or vegetarian lifestyles, though those certainly do count towards this discussion.
I feel like there's an absolute plethora of good, different reasons to reduce animal based proteins. The big one for most people right now is obviously cost. Simple meals like meatloaf or stroganoff simply aren't worth it (to me) to make with beef when beef is $8/lb for 70/30. But lots of other reasons like the environment, animal welfare, and health consciousness exist.
As far as a lifestyle goes, it definitely feels like the winds have shifted considerably. While IRL here in the southeastern US you do still have those "I'll eat 1 steak for every vegan who cries about it" types, online, that type of talk is extremely cringe in most contexts and circles. Now I just feel like when people say they are vegan, there isn't an instant visceral reaction from everyone like there used to be. I recall not too long ago, everyone's favorite joke was "how do you know someone is vegan? Because they'll tell you!" when all that person did was decline a burger. In fact, quite the opposite seems to happen today. There's a lot of "good for you/I wish I could do that" type comments. Just seems like things are shifting culturally.
I'm not personally vegan or vegetarian, but I have drastically reduced my animal products. I make black bean burgers instead of regular burgers. I make my fried rice without any meat. I make a lot of curry that just happens to be vegan. I just bought groceries for the next 2 weeks and the total amount of animal products is 1 pound of ground pork, 1 pound of scallops, and 8oz of mozzarella cheese. That's it. Years ago I would eat animal products pretty much for every meal.
Is it just me? Or have most people reduced their consumption too? It's hard to tell because everything at the grocery store is "protein protein protein" and there's a lot of social media content of body builders eating a dozen eggs and 3 rotisserie chickens for dinner and that type of content, but I'm not sure how much of that actually exists in real life. Seems too expensive for the average person.
I only eat 2 meals a day (intermittent fasting), and I usually eat a vegetarian "lunch", but dinner will often have some meat component. I have been slowly shifting my dinners to be less meat-heavy, and trying to introduce more fish and less beef. Since both my partner and I are eating roughly 50% vegetarian, it's the same impact as one person going fully vegetarian, without either of us giving up meat. I have some vegan friends, and when we hang out, I have no problems with going vegan for a meal or a day.
I really love cheese and eggs so I'll probably never go vegan. Also, there's just a lot of animal byproducts used in everything, from white sugar to wine, that are hard to know even exist unless you're looking for it.
I also don't understand this whole protein craze. Most people are already eating too much protein, but there's an entire aisle at the local Costco dedicated to various protein bars and powders.
The protein craze is, I think in part, a marketing scheme to make consumption, spending, over eating feel like a virtuous, healthful and self improving thing. Don't eat that chocolate bar that's bad, but here have a protein bar with even more chocolate and sugar! Don't drink pop, but oh wow a protein shake! There's good whole some claims originally, I think, but these days it feels like all the dishonesty marketing also jumped onto that bandwagon.
It's mostly due to the proliferation of Ozempic and co. You lose weight on them, but without protein and exercise it's a rapid and unhealthy loss of muscle tissue not just fat.
That's awesome! I'm looking to add to my collection of vegetarian recipes if you are willing to share any.
I was vegan for about 3 years in my early 20s. Cheese and sushi were the two voids that nothing could fill. I probably will never be vegan again for that reason! But I am proud of myself for doing it for 3 years! Hopefully I can keep cutting things out one at a time to get as close as I can back to a mostly plant based diet, even if I am never religiously adherent to it like I was before.
I genuinely have never been as healthy as I was when I was vegan so I do miss it in many ways. It's not that eating meat is inherently unhealthy, but it's SO much easier to eat clean and watch your weight when you cut out butter, cheese, fatty meats, chocolates etc.
The way that Costco promotes food is interesting. And by interesting I mean shitty.
There’s a whole category of junk food that they sell in a way that implies (or states) that it’s healthy. For example:
Dark chocolate. Oooh it’s got antioxidants.
No dudes it’s just candy
Fried Kale or seaweed. Or fried vegetable crisps
Yeah these have the same nutritional merits as Cheetos.
They also have a lot of things like “line caught tuna” and I seriously doubt this has any meaning at all.
It isn’t just Costco, most places have similar marketing of junk food as health food and greenwashing. But I just notice it more at Costco. Maybe because I sometimes go to the Costco that’s in the relatively affluent part of town where they have disposable income.
And regarding protein: yeah most people eat way too much protein and the idea that you need to supplement iron or B vitamins if you don’t eat meat is largely nonsense.
I would argue dark chocolate is not just candy. I don't particularly feel guilty eating a square of my 92% chocolate between meals instead of any other snack. A little can hold off hunger for a good bit, and it does have decent nutritional benefits. Is it as good as a carrot? No, but it's much better than Cheetos.
I have, going back almost 10 years now, started on becoming more of a "flexitarian" , migrating there from being previously a staunch carnivore.
It is giving up something tasty, it is more effort and it does still feel unfamiliar having vegan meal days, but I do feel like it's becoming easier, both in my mindset and in greater (at least Canadian) society.
Examples: Five Guys Burgers have a veggie sandwich option. More restaurants mark their vegetarian and vegan options on their menus. Meal kits have vegetarian boxes. Far fewer vegan jokes heard. Some quite tasty vegan ramen options.
Hey! Another flexiterian here as well! Vegetarian diet with lots of vegan meals, and I don't buy any meat or cook it at home. However, I'm not going to throw a fit because my little niece wants to share some cookies she baked and the cookie recipe uses eggs. Or if someone invites me over for dinner and they made a buffalo chicken dip. I'll have a little bit of it.
Yeah pretty much like that: I eat vegan two days a week plus some weeks throughout the year, but if something is served to me I will adjust with mindful portions and gratitude. The goal is to do about 50% of the calendar year in vegan diet and then mostly vegetarian the rest, saving special days for eating with others, and wild animals that are killed as quickly as possible.
I'm still in the baby steps though, so I don't bring it up when I'm eating *with my family, even if we're going for all you can eat hot pot with beef and lamb. Wings I'll probably always be a fan of. But yeah I don't recall the last time I ordered / cooked steak... I don't miss ground meats anymore now that beyond products exist : I prefer it in fact.
One of the biggest pleasant surprises is how the kitchen garbage doesn't smell when there are no animal products, and the veg just goes into the compost.
I've not intentionally eaten meat in about 20 years. I do monitor and supplement iron, B12, and creatine to compensate as those are much harder to get with a strictly vegetarian diet.
During the summers, the vast majority of my food comes from either my garden or is foraged.
For example, I just finished a meal consisting of foraged chanterelle mushrooms and a salad entirely grown in my garden (lettuce, tomato, shallots, chives, dill, etc)
Oooh! I have always wanted to get into foraging. Do you forage much else other than mushrooms? I could never do foraged mushrooms because we do have several types of deadly look a like mushrooms around here, but there is plenty of fruits and veggies eat that could be found in the wild. I do love picking fresh spring onions near the creek and adding them to my meals. Sometimes I get lucky and find big patches of wild blackberries too.
It's Chantelle season here as well :D yay
I just had some amazing bruschetta that came entirely from my garden, with the exception of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and wheat flour (I used pozzano tomatoes, basil, garlic, shallots, and shishito peppers). I loooove eating straight from the garden. Wish I could forage more but sadly don't have as much time to ride out to the good areas. Too bad our growing season is literally three months :/
I'm currently waiting on my crop of green beans to come in. We trellis them along the south facing front of our house so they additionally provide shade + a bit of extra privacy. Usually sautee them with some garlic and maybe lemon zest (not from my garden, but maybe one day!)
Also please come steal some cucumbers. I harvested 2kg this morning, there's another 1kg in the fridge and there's at least 4 that i need to pick tomorrow. I'm eating half to two cucumbers every day for the last week and can barely keep up!
I don't buy meat for myself but I will cook it for others. All the meals that I make for myself are vegan or vegetarian, been doing that since gosh, almost a decade now.
Grew up eating tons of meat. My girlfriend was a pescatarian so we rarely had meat together. But we’ve both been vegan now for almost 3 years.
Happier (definitely about my food choices) and healthier than ever.
Also, the flavors you start to taste once you’re not overwhelmed by animal ingredients is mind boggling. You smell milk or meat from a mile away, and by cooking something other than “meat + X” you unlock a whole new world of flavor.
Don’t get me started on tofu - considered bland, but imo one of the greatest ingredients ever. It’s so versatile, can mimic so much, add a ton of protein to any dish. Turn it into a sauce, turn it into nuggets, turn it into kebab.
This was mostly about the food, but the ethical side starts weighing much more once you’re confronted with these topics without becoming defensive.
Absolutely agree on the flavors. My ability to cook and season my food was MASSIVELY influenced by 3 years of being vegan. I feel like so many people rely on fatty meats, cheeses, salt, or oil to do the heavy lifting when it comes to food flavor and experience. It really forced me to learn how to actually make a vegetable taste good and be a satisfying entree, rather than just exist as a side dish next to meat.
Will agree to disagree on tofu though. I can't tell you the amount of times I tried to mess with it. Firm, soft, seared, baked, fried.... Never came around to it. I do like it in small pea sized cubes in soup, and there was one restaurant near me that did an amazing deep fried tofu, but that's about it for me. Wish I liked it more! I think I'm more of a bean person when it comes to plant based proteins.
Tofu also has a ton of interesting variants out there. One I read about lately is called furu, which is tofu that has been brined and fermented and used as a sort of cheesy salty condiment to add to bland foods like rice, congee, or mantou.
My personal favorite is dougan, which is tofu that has been marinated in a spicy garlicky sauce then dried to become extra chewy; it's kind of like beef jerky in a way.
To start off I'm older than many of you, meaning my age starts with a 5.
I got a colonoscopy when my age started with a 4, barely. It was recent. The Dr. cut several polyps off my colon, one of which contained cancer. In the Dr's words "What we did was a curative procedure. The cancer had not left the polyp. You're fine... but I'll need to see you again in 3 years."
Then he said "You also have diverticulitis. It doesn't seem to be bothering you though."
I said "What's diverticulitis and how do I fix it?"
He told me to eat more fiber. I felt like a moron. I genuinely thought I ate healthy. Healthy-ish anyway. But I know now I was wrong. Less meat, more veg, more fiber. That's been my mission for the past year or so.
Brown rice, beans, oatmeal and whatever vegetables I feel like eating have been my weapon.
It's been going well. I am meatless for many/most meals every day. I have no interest in being a vegetarian/vegan I do it for my own health. I have found that high fiber meals keep me feeling full longer and, aside from being healthy, help me maintain my weight where it should be!
I'll never give up eggs/dairy so that's in there for better or worse. Most of that is eggs for fried brown rice with whatever veg is in the fridge. I like it for breakfast.
So far so good. We'll see what the Dr. says next time!
Well good for you taking doctors advice, many don't even after a big health crisis. Here's hoping you stay cancer free forever
Vegan meals? Rarely. Vegetarian? Commonly. I still eat meat, but I've limited my intake considerably, and when I do eat it, it's mostly chicken. I do really love cheese and milk products though (and eggs are in surprising number of things).
I've noticed people IRL argue about it less, from both sides. I'm guessing people are kinda tired of the constant culture wars (unless you are on one extreme or the other), so they don't wanna start a conversation that will turn into an argument. It's entirely possible that's just my social circle though, I kinda drifted apart from friends deep into the culture wars on either side, because talking to them is exhausting.
Online I still see a lot of vitriol though. I think vegans used to be the obnoxious ones, but they kinda smartened up and realized being shitty to people won't convert them. Nowadays most of the vitriol comes from the meat eaters, at least in my experience.
In my experience it’s always been the anti-vegans that were the obnoxious ones and the actual vegans just did their thing. It always seemed like a “your personal life choices are an attack on me” type response - since veganism is most often a moral choice, it’s almost inevitable that some other people will feel defensive just by being around someone who’s vegan.
Way back in the day, there were annoying vegans and vegetarians who make going out for food as a group difficult, though.
True, but that was more because of a lack of accommodation by the broader culture rather than them choosing to make it harder. I went through periods of my younger life as one of those people, and I promise you it also was annoying for me.
Every meal every day. I'm pretty open about my diet and my thoughts about what people should be eating, so I won't go too far into it other than to state that I'm on a whole food plant based diet so I generally avoid processed foods as well as added salt, sugar, or oil.
I would like to add though, that I often "cheat on my diet". On special occasions I'll eat a dessert with dairy or eggs, and on the occasion I eat out the restrictions on processed foods gets lifted.
I won't budge on meat itself though. After years without it, it's just the most gross thing I can imagine. When you are no longer accustomed to the idea of eating animal carcasses it becomes a rather gruesome image and it often also has a pretty gross scent. I didn't start this diet because of my ideas about animal welfare or ethics, but years in I am sympathetic to it.
I also just don't like cheese anymore. They just come across as squeaky sacks of grease now. Vegan cheeses are rarely great, but I generally prefer them to cow cheese, and overall prefer the absence of either.
I do wish that more people were open to eating more "vegan-like" if for no reason other than their health. I have been around a lot of people who are quite literally eating themselves to death, and many of them think that their meat meal is the healthy thing when it is either the worst part or the least bad part.
I wanted to reduce my meat consumption for a variety of reasons, so I set what I thought would be an easy to achieve goal of no more than four meals per week.
That worked really well, and pretty soon I had shifted from a mindset of meat as an everyday thing to it being part of a special meal. Meanwhile I also started enjoying and experimenting more with vegetarian meals. It got to where my standards were so high for what I wanted out of a meal that included meat that I ended up disappointed most of the time. So over a period of a few months I naturally stopped eating it almost entirely.
For the last year I’ve also reduced my consumption of other animal products to near zero using the same strategy. I describe myself as “mostly” vegan; sometimes I treat myself to a very nice cheese or fancy dessert. I don’t like wasting food though, so I’ll still eat whatever is put in front of me if not given a choice.
One resource I would love to have known about sooner is the nutrition facts daily dozen checklist: https://nutritionfacts.org/daily-dozen/. It’s an evidence based set of recommendations for foods you should aim to consume every day (and if you tick most of them off, you won’t have room left for animal products anyway)!
If you’re thinking about your diet for health reasons, that whole site is really excellent. I always thought about dietary choices in terms of things to avoid or limit, but nutrition is really all about making sure you get the things you need. And I enjoy that mindset a lot more!
At home, we’re largely vegetarian and often vegan, with occasional fish or pork sausages maybe once or twice a month. But we regularly use dairy and sometimes eggs. Been that way for many, many years - basically my whole adult life since I started feeding myself.
Restaurants are more like a treat - either while travelling or about once or twice a month. So then I eat whatever looks best, which only rarely means vegetarian since A) I feel like I’m actually pretty good at cooking vegetarian meals and get my fill that way, and B) they tend to seem overpriced given the ingredients.
We meal prep lunches to keep from having to figure out what we want, cook, and clean during lunch when the only thing we really want to do is get away from our job/responsibilities for an hour. On Thursdays we discuss what we want for lunches the next week, prep happens on Sunday. As a rule we have one week of vegetarian lunches per month. It's not always the same week of the month, sometimes it gets skipped, sometimes it happens more than once (like this month). It averages out to once per month. This week we had a creamy cannellini bean main with focaccia. Next week we're having lentils and rice.
Vegan: Pretty much never.
Vegetarian: One week per month.
I usually cook 5-6 homemade dinners every week for my partner and me, the only meat she will consume is chicken or fish, I don't really eat sea food because I was never raised eating it and can't get over the mental block (I've tried) so we just go with chicken, mostly boneless, skinless thighs. We try and do 2-3 meals a week vegetarian, but paneer will often be the protein in at least 1 of those meals. I cook a lot of Indian food so that makes vegetarian meals rather easy, paneer and chickpeas are great no-compromise replacements for meat in a curry. I have no interest in Veganism as I will not be giving up dairy and cheese, ever.
I hate processed meat substitutes, they typically don't agree with my digestion. But I love all kinds of vegetables and will happily eat vegetable-only meals; the frequency changes a lot. I just had a sautéed carrot based dinner.
I'm not currently planning on giving up meat for any extended amount of time, but I don't need a lot of it in the meal. I consume plenty of eggs, cheese (many kinds) and butter.
I'm trying to reduce my risk of heart disease (probably a bit late to that, but better late than never), so I'm eating more meals with less or no meat. Lots of days I have hummus for breakfast and oatmeal (with lots of mix-ins) for lunch, or Aldi's vegan/vegetarian pouch meals, or pasta. Still getting a lot (probably too much) dairy, but cheese is my biggest vice and I'll probably take it to the grave.
Anyway, I find it pretty easy to give up meat in lots of things. I don't even really like the texture of "real" meats (steak, grilled chicken), much preferring processed meats (bologna, deli meat, ground meats), so switching from those to veggie based subs like Beyond or Impossible is no big deal to me, or just eating more beans instead (I love a bean burrito smothered in cheese, I don't even really miss taco meats when they're not around).
All that said, I still regularly eat meat. Just less now, and the alternatives are nice, too.
Those silly pouch meals from Aldi were a lifesaver for me. It was great to have something shelf-stable to fall back to when I was sick earlier this month.
It's actually funny the Aldi pouches came up because those + cutting out beef entirely due to cost is what got me trying to go more plant based a few months ago. Love the pad thai pouches.
That’s surprising! I actually don’t care for the flavors in most of them, which is why it’s mainly emergency food for me. I can definitely do better for taco fillings, for sure.
The better option is Hormel’s “Vegitarian” chili, which is accidentally vegan by the fact that it has no dairy either. It’s basically a can of no-beef chili with some TVP added in. The beans are so nice and creamy, and it has the same nostalgic Hormel chili flavor as their regular chili.
Moving from a country where plant-based fake meat is a novelty to a country where it's a super common product costing the same as regular meat made it much easier to significantly reduce my meat consumption recently
I pretty much never eat vegan and out of habit, pretty much all my meals contain chicken. I usually do a lazy meal prep where I'll cook some chicken and then prep veggies and then mix and match them throughout the week to give me some variety. When I do visit my parents and stay with them for a few days however, most of my meals become vegetarian. Occasionally, I do have vegetarian sandwiches at home with Trader Joe's vegetarian patties. When I go out to eat, especially at Indian restaurants, I'll sometimes order the vegetarian meals instead of chicken just to switch things up. I have been introducing fish a bit more to my diet as well, usually just a simple oven baked salmon filet with rice and broccoli as a meal. My only real motivation for doing so is just to bring some variety to my diet.
I'm fortunate that the price increases in meat haven't really affected my weekly grocery budget, I went from paying ~$50/week to ~$60 for the same amount of meat and veggies. I might reduce my meat consumption and increase fish consumption in the near future but we'll see, I keep my cooking simple and easy and would just need to learn new things. I think we'll see a bigger shift towards eating more plant-based meals as the cost of meat-based protein skyrockets.
My sister moved in with me a few months ago and she only really eats chicken breast meat, and since it makes no sense to cook double the meals, there's a lot of veggie prepared things. We do both love milk and eggs and cheese, but yeah, meat is maybe a once/twice a week thing for me. I've been eyeing the vegan ground meat thing to try to use in stuffed peppers, we'll see how it goes
I've been dabbling in vegetarianism as of late. I joke with my wife that I'm the worst vegetarian in the world. I'm soft-stealing that concept from a quote that I believe can be attributed to Nikki Boes (though I know nothing about this individual, this all came from a Google search) - "The world needs more imperfect [vegetarians]" (she said "vegans," but same idea).
Like a few others in this thread, I basically choose the veg option whenever convenient when we go to restaurants, though 1. I won't inconvenience my wife or kid if there aren't any sensible options, and will opt for a meat option instead, and 2. if the only leftovers we have in the house have meat in them, I'll partake. The way I see it, if we already cooked / bought the food and it's going to go to waste, I'd rather it get eaten than wasted outright, especially because my wife and kid are not big leftovers-eaters. I don't see it as a moral victory to not eat the meat in this case, but totally understand why that might sound silly to others.
At home, I try to balance recipes with my wife. She'll choose a few omnivore recipes, I'll choose a few vegetarian recipes, and we mix and match as the week goes on. She's also been happy to experiment with making meatless versions of old favorites in our home, which has been fun to experiment with.
I will say that, especially in home cooking, I very rarely miss meat. Tofu is an excellent alternative and comes in so many forms anymore. Tempeh is surprisingly versatile and I've even been able to make convincing crumbled Italian sausage with it. But yes, as others have stated, the allure of dairy (specifically cheese) and the versatility and prominence of eggs, makes it considerably harder to jump from vegetarian to vegan IMO, so I'm not interested in making the leap yet. I do have a few vegan meals that I happily make - these vegan scrambled eggs are now on regular rotation at home. They don't really taste much like eggs (they're not one of the "egg" recipes that utilize black salt, though I've heard good things), but they scratch the same itch!
At home, we keep every Monday vegetarian - partly a religious thing for my Hindu wife - and then will have a loose balance of 1/4 red meat, 1/4 poultry, 1/4 fish and 1/4 vegetarian across lunches and dinners. Works for us, but we don't hold the 7yo to it, we're just happy he gets some some decent nutrition in with a bit of variety.
We recently went on a vegan kick for a few weeks to try it out and force us into expanding our day-to-day menu. I actually didn't mind too much, and we did get some delicious dishes out of it, but I'd never adopt veganism long-term - no way in hell I'm giving up sushi or local dairy.
My partner and I try to cook ourselves 6 days a week and eat out once a week. The home cooked meals are all vegetarian (sometimes we add goat cheese to hummus or make a fried egg sandwich) and frequently vegan (rice/barley/couscous in rice cooker, vegetables + tofu in an air fryer). Eating out though all bets are off and we typically eat meat. I don't think I've bought meat from the grocery store in several years after we finally cut out deli meat.