Easy On The Meat

I'm trying to become a vegetarian, I've stopped eating all processed meat now, I just looked at it one day and thought urrgh this just tastes spongey, I think chicken will be hard for me to cut out completely but I think I will treat myself to a whole free range one once in a while and make sure I make the most of it and make broth with the left overs and stock and things. I think meat is okay once in a while but I feel so much healthier not eating processed crap every day.

:O i just cant be vegeterian cus i love chicken and fish too much :S but imma go easy on them..ayee imma eat more vegies now :)

not eating meat is like hard!!!!!!!!!! but am doing ma best LOLERZZZZZZ

This will really raise the moans: I hunt and fish, I eat what I hunt and fish. I know where my meat comes from, And it's organic and seasonal. I waste nothing. My dog gets the organs, trim, And brown rice ground up with her food. BTW: You CAN eat fruit and veg out of season, Are you willing to can it when it IS in season. Root veggies are easy to keep in a cool dark place. If you're willing to think ahead and DO THE WORK, You wont want for much.

Er, what part of this video didn't some folks get? This was about eatinfg seasonally, and easy on the meat - it was not a vegetarian/vegan manifesto! I have cut way back on meat consumption in recent years for health reasons, but will always be an omnivore - it is how humans were designed. However, by adopting the Jefferson style of eating - veggies and fruits IN SEASON - and using small amounts of meat more as flavoring that substantial parts of a meal - I am eating healthy. By cutting back the amount of meat I use I can afford to buy locally raised beef, pork, chicken, goat (yes - surprisingly good for you!) or other meat that is not adding to climate change pollution and is healthier by not being factory raised. It takes a little getting used to after a life raised on pre-made frozen burgers, plastic-bagged chickens etc, but the taste is so much better, and used sparingly I am helping both the environment AND my neighbors. ;-)

so if you are finding the vegetarian diet hard you just need to get your hands on some good recipes, and also a brilliant way of making sure that all of the veg you are using is pesticide free, and has no air mile is to grow it your self. you may be thin king "hummm, lots of people have told me this but how can I grow the essentials like onions easily?" well if you make your self a raised bed out of some recycled wood (try your near by dump, or a skip along side the road.) planks, and home made compost it is very easy to grow spring onions, and they self seed so they stay around for the whole year! a good recipe with them in is cannelloni. make it with any ngredients that you want really as long ad it has some eggs and either ricotta or something like that. and it is really easy to make your own pasta. (I never have to use a pasta maker!)

deforestation is bad re climate change, and one of main causes of this is demand for red meat, beef defintiely worse than pork, chicken or fish in this respect. Good reading re carbon costings of different lifestyle choices is 'How bad are bananas?' by Mike Berners- Lee. (BTW bananas aren't too bad because ship rather than air-freighted.)

Used my home grown purple broccoli to make a vegetarian cheese and broccoli souffle ( a first for me) at the weekend for me and my girlfriend :) Yumm yumm oh! and yes home grown spuds too and sprinkle of parsley, what could be better...

Just in response to Tamsin - I can't help but point out that, in a strange way, you are making the point against yourself. You say that, if we didn't eat livestock, they would just "be there, doing nothing". On a small scale, that would be true - there are always going to be isolated populations of wild pigs, sheep and cows in various parts of the world. But, as you yourself pointed out, most livestock is bred purely for human consumption. Thus if there was no demand for meat, the animals would not be here - which in turn would lower emissions from the animals themselves and from the farming processes. So the idea that we'd be overrun by farm animals is nothing but ludicrous. I'm a meat-eater myself and totally agree with the idea that removing meat entirely from your diet is not particularly healthy - and yes, human beings are a natural part of the carnivorous food chain. But I think the suggestion being made by this site is not that we should all go vegetarian, it's that we don't need to eat so much meat. There is plenty of historical and anthropological evidence to show that human beings evolved with a varied diet in which meat played a vital but, in terms of volume consumed, small part. You don't need to eat meat two or three times a day to be healthy. I'm not a nutritionist, but from what I've read even a couple of servings of meat each week is sufficient (assuming that you get protein and fat from other foodstuffs). And, honestly, if everyone in the world only ate meat twice a week - and if people made an effort to eat all parts of the animal carcasses, rather than wasting huge amounts of food just to get at the prime cuts - then yes, there would be a beneficial ecological effect.

Woah Stephanie! You can't say eating animals is wrong. If we didn't we would have too many on the planet. What else are they there for? It's like how we breed horses to ride them. Without eating cows, pigs, sheep, chickens etc, they would just be there doing nothing, over-populating like the rest of us. And anyway, if lions can eat gazelles, or birds can eat snails, why can't we eat meat? It's part of the food chain. So get your facts right before you start telling people what's wrong and right.