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Serious me believes we do need to adjust our diet. We need to eat slightly less meat, much less carbs, and more vegetables. This needs to happen from a base level though, and would require monumental change in soceity.

What I don't believe is that we should all go vegan, that's just silly.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Actually, we kinda do..

Which ironically makes meat more humane if thats true. Processed animals get rendered senseless before they are killed and they're definitely dead by the time we're eating them, and so incapable of continuing to feel pain. Most plants are consumed while still very much alive.

Anyway, humans are carnivores too. If its evil to eat animals, than every single carnivore is also evil. At least humans have the decency to kill the animals we eat quickly with a minimal amount of suffering, even in meat packing plants animals are stunned to minimize pain. As opposed to things like Wolves who tear their prey apart and will even begin eating it before its completely dead. Just watch any old National Geographic wildlife special, getting eaten by lions or wolves is about the worst way to go. The thousands of chickens, cows, pigs, etc... who humans eat every day are relatively lucky as far as the animal kingdom is concerned. They don't live the stressful live of having to scrounge for food while constantly jumping at every shadow, only to have their life end with their throat crushed by some predator's jaws/get mauled or even worse die of starvation/disease.

Farm raised animals are safe, given all the food they need, and a quick and painless death. Compared to a wild animal, that is heavenly.

Humans are not carnivores. If we were, we would be just about the worst carnivores nature has ever come up with. We can barely digest raw meat at all with our digestive tract.

I'm thinking about trying it this year, just as an experiment. At the very least, I'm going vegetarian and not going for any meals that are strictly dairy-based (like, cheese or egg focused). I'm definitely not going to be scanning every package in the grocery store and looking for trace amounts of egg or milk, because that extra layer of effort and disappointment is what has generally kept me from trying veganism seriously thusfar. "Oh this packaged salad looks yummy - gak, dressing has dairy in it"

I've found that in my journey of being raised in a profoundly obese and unhealthy american family and slowly learning how to be a functioning healthy adult, that if I go hard on something for about a month, I retain some of it when I naturally lose interest later and I'm able to establish a healthy habit. I stand about half the time now at my work after a month of 8-hour standing, I do cardio any time I want to play video games on my consoles after my "I'm only allowed to play this nintendo switch I got if I'm on the exercise bike" policy even though I'm not going an hour and a half every day anymore, and I still use the weightlifting gym at work 3-4 days a week even though I'm no longer coming in at 5AM to lift for an hour every workday.

So I'll give it a shot. But I'll proabably ditch it if i find most of the things I like to eat are just fried.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
One month. Nothing to lose.

Bacon isn't a character trait.

It is if you are a Javelina!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Excommunicatus wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Thanks for the tip. I’ll have to see if those are available at my local Ralph’s. Is the processed jackfruit the meat kind or the bubblegum kind, ripe or unripe?

Would you be so kind as to describe some of the easier and/or cheaper vegan meals one can make with fairly common ingredients? I’d like to give some a try.

My go-to is dried beans. Get yourself a pressure cooker and rehydrate beans. You can make burgers, curry, chili, pasta, wraps, salads...

Here's a link to 25 "budget" recipes from Auntie Beeb.

EDIT - You want young green jackfruit, in brine.

I miss Mom's red beans and rice, and pinto beans.

We can't digest raw meat because we've been cooking it so long, that's the same reason we don't have the huge caveman Jaws or teeth anymore

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
We can't digest raw meat because we've been cooking it so long, that's the same reason we don't have the huge caveman Jaws or teeth anymore

Says You!

Know multiple vegetarians and vegans through Genghis Connie. Hearing the tales of one of her friends trying to find food in a diner in West Texas was hilarious. Usually she brings food with her on trips but ran out. The tale of finding a vegetarians soup...delicious!

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
We can't digest raw meat because we've been cooking it so long, that's the same reason we don't have the huge caveman Jaws or teeth anymore

And that means you stop being a.....

Put it this way: Is a panda a carnivore? Those things are fething bears. They've still got the bear jaws and the bear teeth. They have direct ancestral cousins in Polar Bears who are, in fact, still 100% meat-eating carnivores. They are a HELL of a lot closer to it than humans are.

As a person who eats and enjoys meat, the anti-vegan "but it's evolution" argument holds zero water. Humans evolved to be able to eat some meat, sure, there's an evolutionary advantage to being able to consume something as nutrient-rich as meat and fish. But they also evolved to not HAVE to eat meat, because meat tended to be a much more occasional part of most paleolithic humans' diet than other foods that don't try to run away from you or eat you back.

We definitely evolved to like the taste of meat, for the same reasons we evolved to like the taste of ripe, sweet fruits and pretty much anything else that's nutritionally dense. But you might as well argue that rabbits and panda bears are "carnivores" because they had much more recent fully carnivorous evolutionary ancestors.

Also, I don't think I've ever in my life been in a place where there were more people being preachy vegans than there were people being preachy about complaining about preachy vegans. And I live in one of the most hippy-dippy places in the US, so you'd think if there were all these annoying preachy vegans running around calling folks murderers for having a cheeseburger I'd see them.

Well, time to quadruple my meat & cheese intake to make up the vegan-curious January shortfall.

 Riquende wrote:
Well, time to quadruple my meat & cheese intake to make up the vegan-curious January shortfall.

I encourage everyone who gets offended by the existence of people who choose to be vegan to do this. Make up your own thing for it! How about Quaduary! Baconuary! it'll be great fun, do it.

Now I suddenly find it horrifying that plants really do scream in agony as we pick, pluck, slice and dice them. I love to cook and my favorite gadget of all time is my garlic squisher .. those poor little cloves, getting their skin ripped off and then their plump little bodies get pushed through teeny holes, then their bloody bits get dropped in white hot olive oil. Poor, poor garlic.

the_scotsman wrote:
How about Quaduary! Baconuary! it'll be great fun, do it.

Well-Fedbruary...

Going back to the ag-types, where does sheep farming, and other similar types, fit into the argument and comparisons? I expect that it classes as free-range, where the sheep (or whatever) are taken to a hillside and left to roam for most of the year. That land cannot be used to grow crops, and mowing it for the grass is a huge waste of effort.
You get wool off them, too. And, that's just sheep.

I know that I eat too much meat, but I generally don't eat most of the alternatives. Cheese is out for me. I'll look at the vegan options, but it's probably not going to happen.

 Skinnereal wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
How about Quaduary! Baconuary! it'll be great fun, do it.

Well-Fedbruary...

Going back to the ag-types, where does sheep farming, and other similar types, fit into the argument and comparisons? I expect that it classes as free-range, where the sheep (or whatever) are taken to a hillside and left to roam for most of the year. That land cannot be used to grow crops, and mowing it for the grass is a huge waste of effort.
You get wool off them, too. And, that's just sheep.

I know that I eat too much meat, but I generally don't eat most of the alternatives. Cheese is out for me. I'll look at the vegan options, but it's probably not going to happen.

IMO, most vegan alternatives to things are just way worse than vegan things that aren't trying to be a meat thing. I guess impossible burgers are pretty yummy, but I think I'd like them a whole lot better if I liked my burgers medium or well done.

Fried tofu? love that stuff. crispy on the outside, soft and juicy on the inside, huge fan. Tofu that is artificially flavored to try and be meat? Tastes like ass.

Similar with veggie burgers. The best veggie burgers are the black bean ones and the sweet potato ones because they've got actual flavor to them, they're not just throwing whatever vegetables we've got into various blenders to try and replicate the texture of ground beef.

The one vegetarian alternative food I do make use of for a very specific purpose is actually seitan fake bacon, and it's because it has the ability to utterly disintegrate into a dish and evenly permeate the flavor of smoky bacon throughout it, much better than actual bacon does. If you make bacon mashed potatoes with real bacon, you get mashed potatoes with chunks of bacon in it and it only tastes like bacon where those little chunks are. If you use the seitan stuff, the whole mashed potato dish tastes like delicious bacon the whole way through.

I use this a lot with soups and stews, where if you put in real bacon it loses 100% of the appeal of bacon and becomes a nasty soggy stringy chewy thing. Whatever essence d'bacon they put in the seitan stuff is just very good, and probably incredibly bad for you.

I live in cattle country and work in ag and 90% of the cattle you see grazing on the hills are cow-calf operations. Those calves are going to be weened at eight months, shipped to a feedlot, and stuffed with soy and corn for the second half of their lives. No it’s not an optimal use of marginal land, not since everybody eats it seven days a week.

Jack fruit’s a weird one it’s not part of normal cuisine really, and I don’t eat meat alternatives. I eat normal food. Broccoli and sweet potatoes, red lentils with ginger, red lentils with carrots tomato celery and barley. A fast meal is whole grain pasta frozen spinach nutritional yeast and olives with garlic and seasoning, no oil no salt.

I cook kind of old world style so I usually have duxelles on hand, that’s a mushroom mince with some cooking wine etc. I put that on a sandwich with mashed up white beans and some jam.

I get 130 G protein a day before any shakes etc on gym days.

I feed the kids these black bean and beet brownies. A tiny bite sized one is about 4g protein.

3 C cooked beans
1/2 C cocoa powder
1 C quick / rolled oats
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 C corn / maple syrup / honey etc
1/2 C oil
4 tsp vanilla extract
4 tsp baking powder
1 C puréed beet + applesauce. You have to roast or steam the beet before you purée it.

Blend it hard

3/4 C white flour
1 C chocolate chips

350 for 20 min.

Someday sure, there could be a catastrophe that destroys interstate shipping and I won’t have access to large scale mechanized agriculture. I’ll have to go into the mountains to shoot something every year. That hasn’t happened, I live in an industrial society, and I’m not going to eat giant piles of meat.

I’m not vegan. I’m a firefighter so I wear a leather helmet, and it’s cold here so I put my kids and myself in wool socks. I eat plant based so I feel young and live longer to make sure that cafeterias and company picnics have plant foods as normal parts of meals and so I can keep meat packing plants and feed lots from opening. Land uses like that have to be democratically determined and putting them anywhere are not good decisions.

 Just Tony wrote:

The human body is not designed to live on a purely vegetarian diet, which is why you see so many supplements in a vegan's diet. I will stick with balanced meals and I'll be pretty okay..

False.

B12 is the only supplement I use and the only one necessary.

On the subject of dried beans. What's your favorites? I've struggled to get dried beans to turn out right for a while and just discovered that there is such a thing as beans that are too old.

I've tried the quick soaks and an over night soak. But I am wondering should I soak them longer or maybe a lot longer?

I usually do at least 24hrs if a pressure cooker isn't available.

An Instant Pot takes about twenty minutes.

 Excommunicatus wrote:

Why take part in Veganuary? Well, why not?
There are so many reasons people decide to try vegan.

For most, a love of animals is the catalyst. Some people want to feel better about themselves and the impact they make on the world. Others would like to set themselves a challenge, and many combine Veganuary with their ‘New Year’s Resolutions’ and see trying vegan as the healthiest start to the year. Whatever your reason, we’re here to support you.

So try vegan for a month and discover a whole new world of taste and flavour. We guarantee that, by the end of the month, you’ll feel fantastic!

https://veganuary.com/

Try it for a month. There really is no downside.

Maybe you can explain why you try to make your vegetables taste and texture like meat?

the_scotsman wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
We can't digest raw meat because we've been cooking it so long, that's the same reason we don't have the huge caveman Jaws or teeth anymore

And that means you stop being a.....

Put it this way: Is a panda a carnivore? Those things are fething bears. They've still got the bear jaws and the bear teeth. They have direct ancestral cousins in Polar Bears who are, in fact, still 100% meat-eating carnivores. They are a HELL of a lot closer to it than humans are.

As a person who eats and enjoys meat, the anti-vegan "but it's evolution" argument holds zero water. Humans evolved to be able to eat some meat, sure, there's an evolutionary advantage to being able to consume something as nutrient-rich as meat and fish. But they also evolved to not HAVE to eat meat, because meat tended to be a much more occasional part of most paleolithic humans' diet than other foods that don't try to run away from you or eat you back.

We definitely evolved to like the taste of meat, for the same reasons we evolved to like the taste of ripe, sweet fruits and pretty much anything else that's nutritionally dense. But you might as well argue that rabbits and panda bears are "carnivores" because they had much more recent fully carnivorous evolutionary ancestors.

Also, I don't think I've ever in my life been in a place where there were more people being preachy vegans than there were people being preachy about complaining about preachy vegans. And I live in one of the most hippy-dippy places in the US, so you'd think if there were all these annoying preachy vegans running around calling folks murderers for having a cheeseburger I'd see them.

Seems like you blew that up a little more than was necessary.. All I did was answer someones point..

 Excommunicatus wrote:
I usually do at least 24hrs if a pressure cooker isn't available.

An Instant Pot takes about twenty minutes.

Yes, overnight soak works well. Then boil it for a long long time.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
I usually do at least 24hrs if a pressure cooker isn't available.

An Instant Pot takes about twenty minutes.

Thank you. I'll try a 24 hour soak. We have a pressure caner but not sure that's the same thing as a pressure cooker. I had been looking at an instant pot I may get one.
We homestead and I want to put in pinto beans, black eyed peas and some others this next year.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Riquende wrote:
Well, time to quadruple my meat & cheese intake to make up the vegan-curious January shortfall.

I encourage everyone who gets offended by the existence of people who choose to be vegan to do this. Make up your own thing for it! How about Quaduary! Baconuary! it'll be great fun, do it.

Bring back BBQuary!

 warhead01 wrote:
On the subject of dried beans. What's your favorites? I've struggled to get dried beans to turn out right for a while and just discovered that there is such a thing as beans that are too old.

I've tried the quick soaks and an over night soak. But I am wondering should I soak them longer or maybe a lot longer?

Lentils, hands down. Precisely because they don't require the whole soaking thing. lentil based soup is best soup, you can put anything in that base and make it tasty.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 DrGiggles wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Riquende wrote:
Well, time to quadruple my meat & cheese intake to make up the vegan-curious January shortfall.

I encourage everyone who gets offended by the existence of people who choose to be vegan to do this. Make up your own thing for it! How about Quaduary! Baconuary! it'll be great fun, do it.

Bring back BBQuary!

From a practicality standpoint, that sounds very, uh. cold, if you live where I live.

Was vegeterian for nearly a year. Was struggling to keep up with demands of work life/gym training balance. Always hungry, always thinking about getting more nutrients /supplaments in... Long story short, a year into being vegeterian went vegan. This lasted for two weeks and basicaly ended up with a mini mental breakdown as I felt so malnurished and hungry despite chowing down all the beans, avocados vegetables and supplaments which were bland AF I boiled a couple of eggs and had them with a salad.

I have never before or since cried from the simple sensation of putting food in my mouth and my body rejoiced at proper nutirents. Boiled eggs my mans... boiled eggs.. The blandest animal product in existance.

Realised how idiotic it was as it made zero impact on the enviormnet and a lot of impact on ym wellbeing. Went out and ate 2 cheeseburgers and a kebba and have not looked back since.

Good luck to ya'll though. I hope you do it better than me.
My 2 pence.

 lixulana wrote:

 Excommunicatus wrote:

Why take part in Veganuary? Well, why not?
There are so many reasons people decide to try vegan.

For most, a love of animals is the catalyst. Some people want to feel better about themselves and the impact they make on the world. Others would like to set themselves a challenge, and many combine Veganuary with their ‘New Year’s Resolutions’ and see trying vegan as the healthiest start to the year. Whatever your reason, we’re here to support you.

So try vegan for a month and discover a whole new world of taste and flavour. We guarantee that, by the end of the month, you’ll feel fantastic!

https://veganuary.com/

Try it for a month. There really is no downside.

Maybe you can explain why you try to make your vegetables taste and texture like meat?

I don't.

Maybe you can explain why it's relevant.

I'll be the first to say that most people eat too much meat. Maybe 1/3 of my meals involve some form of meat/egg/fish. Meat is expensive and you don't need a lot of it. It is, however, an easier road to full nutrition than any sort of vegetarianism/veganism, which require a lot of education and effort to pull off. Most of the attempted vegetarians I've known gave up trying after a couple of months or years and most of them were fairly miserable about the whole ordeal of trying to be a vegetarian in an omnivore's world.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Excommunicatus wrote:
I usually do at least 24hrs if a pressure cooker isn't available.

An Instant Pot takes about twenty minutes.

Yes, overnight soak works well. Then boil it for a long long time.

Don’t forget to skim the foamy stuff off the top so you don’t get nasty gas.

 John Prins wrote:
I'll be the first to say that most people eat too much meat. Maybe 1/3 of my meals involve some form of meat/egg/fish. Meat is expensive and you don't need a lot of it. It is, however, an easier road to full nutrition than any sort of vegetarianism/veganism, which require a lot of education and effort to pull off. Most of the attempted vegetarians I've known gave up trying after a couple of months or years and most of them were fairly miserable about the whole ordeal of trying to be a vegetarian in an omnivore's world.

That it does. And I do think it'd be better if people could just reduce meat consumption to a more sensible level to where they get the vitamins they need out of it without consuming so much deceptively calorie dense food.

But having studied my own habits, a small change is one I'm likely to forget about after a few weeks, but if I instead spend a few weeks making a big change, I then correct to the small change I was aiming for after that period.

I was raised in an incredibly unhealthy household. I never did any sports until high school, when I was finally making some of my own decisions and I joined a football team, and pretty much every meal was processed, usually frozen, and almost all meat and carbs. The culture of revulsion surrounding eating a vegetable-based meal was a tough one to break, even after I'd realized how stupid it was when I left home for college and started eating not even healthily, just on a budget where I couldn't afford cheeseburgers and potato chips every night and I started losing weight while my parents ate themselves to death.

I think it's one part fear of the food being flavorless/not filling, and one part just..not knowing how to cook a meal that's only or even mostly vegetables. I think most americans try to come up with stuff and they're like

OK, Salad.

1) Salads

hmmm.

1 - Salad
2 -

Ok I'll just brainstorm:

-Salad
-
-
-

.....

And salads are fine, but they have basically no seasoning, get old extremely fast, and if you swap from eating a certain amount of meat to a certain amount of salad without checking how many calories you're taking in you're liable to drop from 3000 calories per day to like 1200 and your digestive tract will jump up into your throat and strangle you until you eat more food.

the_scotsman wrote:

 John Prins wrote:
I'll be the first to say that most people eat too much meat. Maybe 1/3 of my meals involve some form of meat/egg/fish. Meat is expensive and you don't need a lot of it. It is, however, an easier road to full nutrition than any sort of vegetarianism/veganism, which require a lot of education and effort to pull off. Most of the attempted vegetarians I've known gave up trying after a couple of months or years and most of them were fairly miserable about the whole ordeal of trying to be a vegetarian in an omnivore's world.

That it does. And I do think it'd be better if people could just reduce meat consumption to a more sensible level to where they get the vitamins they need out of it without consuming so much deceptively calorie dense food.

But having studied my own habits, a small change is one I'm likely to forget about after a few weeks, but if I instead spend a few weeks making a big change, I then correct to the small change I was aiming for after that period.

I was raised in an incredibly unhealthy household. I never did any sports until high school, when I was finally making some of my own decisions and I joined a football team, and pretty much every meal was processed, usually frozen, and almost all meat and carbs. The culture of revulsion surrounding eating a vegetable-based meal was a tough one to break, even after I'd realized how stupid it was when I left home for college and started eating not even healthily, just on a budget where I couldn't afford cheeseburgers and potato chips every night and I started losing weight while my parents ate themselves to death.

I think it's one part fear of the food being flavorless/not filling, and one part just..not knowing how to cook a meal that's only or even mostly vegetables. I think most americans try to come up with stuff and they're like

OK, Salad.

1) Salads

hmmm.

1 - Salad
2 -

Ok I'll just brainstorm:

-Salad
-
-
-

.....

And salads are fine, but they have basically no seasoning, get old extremely fast, and if you swap from eating a certain amount of meat to a certain amount of salad without checking how many calories you're taking in you're liable to drop from 3000 calories per day to like 1200 and your digestive tract will jump up into your throat and strangle you until you eat more food.

I think this is a cultural thing, particularly for most Caucasian families, where you guys aren't taught how to actually cook vegetables right or in a way that's both healthy and tasty, I grew up hearing the usual tale of gross broccoli and other veggies but given that I was basically raised off of always having vegetables as one of the main dishes (usually bak choi, choi sum, broccoli or nappa) I never understood why there was a stigma around eating them. It wasn't until I went to a friend's house that I saw either how their dishes were completely vacant in veggies or they basically ate undercooked (or uncooked!) veggies and relying on dips and drowning it sauces to make it palatable. It's mind boggling that so many people don't know how to stir fry or boil veggies effectively as part of a home cooked meal.

I had a visceral negative reaction when you said "boiled". My mother (who learned from her mother, a post-WW2 1950s housewife who followed the "Domestic Science" philosophy of ease-of-digestion cooking) basically boiled every vegetable we ever ate, and never seasoned anything that was cooked.

That meant the meats, which were generally prepackaged and frozen, had whatever spices it had in the package so it at least tasted like something, but any piece of vegetable matter was limp, drained of all color and flavor by the boiling, and tasted like either the salt you put on it or nothing.

Yeah, the american cultural aversion to spinach, broccoli, brussels sprouts and several other veggies can be pretty much traced back to that post-apocalyptic hell philosophy pushed by 1950s food processing companies. Combine that with having never properly calorie-counted, leading to the first couple attempts at dieting getting stymied by accidentally trying to chop my daily calorie intake down to 1/3, I had a few issues with vegetables until I did a lot of research and learned to actually cook.

the_scotsman wrote:

Spoiler:

 Grimskul wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 John Prins wrote:
I'll be the first to say that most people eat too much meat. Maybe 1/3 of my meals involve some form of meat/egg/fish. Meat is expensive and you don't need a lot of it. It is, however, an easier road to full nutrition than any sort of vegetarianism/veganism, which require a lot of education and effort to pull off. Most of the attempted vegetarians I've known gave up trying after a couple of months or years and most of them were fairly miserable about the whole ordeal of trying to be a vegetarian in an omnivore's world.

That it does. And I do think it'd be better if people could just reduce meat consumption to a more sensible level to where they get the vitamins they need out of it without consuming so much deceptively calorie dense food.

But having studied my own habits, a small change is one I'm likely to forget about after a few weeks, but if I instead spend a few weeks making a big change, I then correct to the small change I was aiming for after that period.

I was raised in an incredibly unhealthy household. I never did any sports until high school, when I was finally making some of my own decisions and I joined a football team, and pretty much every meal was processed, usually frozen, and almost all meat and carbs. The culture of revulsion surrounding eating a vegetable-based meal was a tough one to break, even after I'd realized how stupid it was when I left home for college and started eating not even healthily, just on a budget where I couldn't afford cheeseburgers and potato chips every night and I started losing weight while my parents ate themselves to death.

I think it's one part fear of the food being flavorless/not filling, and one part just..not knowing how to cook a meal that's only or even mostly vegetables. I think most americans try to come up with stuff and they're like

OK, Salad.

1) Salads

hmmm.

1 - Salad
2 -

Ok I'll just brainstorm:

-Salad
-
-
-

.....

And salads are fine, but they have basically no seasoning, get old extremely fast, and if you swap from eating a certain amount of meat to a certain amount of salad without checking how many calories you're taking in you're liable to drop from 3000 calories per day to like 1200 and your digestive tract will jump up into your throat and strangle you until you eat more food.

I think this is a cultural thing, particularly for most Caucasian families, where you guys aren't taught how to actually cook vegetables right or in a way that's both healthy and tasty, I grew up hearing the usual tale of gross broccoli and other veggies but given that I was basically raised off of always having vegetables as one of the main dishes (usually bak choi, choi sum, broccoli or nappa) I never understood why there was a stigma around eating them. It wasn't until I went to a friend's house that I saw either how their dishes were completely vacant in veggies or they basically ate undercooked (or uncooked!) veggies and relying on dips and drowning it sauces to make it palatable. It's mind boggling that so many people don't know how to stir fry or boil veggies effectively as part of a home cooked meal.

I had a visceral negative reaction when you said "boiled". My mother (who learned from her mother, a post-WW2 1950s housewife who followed the "Domestic Science" philosophy of ease-of-digestion cooking) basically boiled every vegetable we ever ate, and never seasoned anything that was cooked.

That meant the meats, which were generally prepackaged and frozen, had whatever spices it had in the package so it at least tasted like something, but any piece of vegetable matter was limp, drained of all color and flavor by the boiling, and tasted like either the salt you put on it or nothing.

Yeah, the american cultural aversion to spinach, broccoli, brussels sprouts and several other veggies can be pretty much traced back to that post-apocalyptic hell philosophy pushed by 1950s food processing companies. Combine that with having never properly calorie-counted, leading to the first couple attempts at dieting getting stymied by accidentally trying to chop my daily calorie intake down to 1/3, I had a few issues with vegetables until I did a lot of research and learned to actually cook.

Thanks for sharing that! Didn't realize that it came from companies pushing that idea of cooking in the American household, thankfully with globalization and the internet I think that trend is going away. Still makes me disappointed that home economics or the basics of healthy eating when you cook for yourself isn't ingrained for education in the current public school system. That alongside doing taxes are some of the things I hope to get my kids to learn early given that I don't think that it'll be taught competently at school anytime soon.

 Grimskul wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

Spoiler:

 Grimskul wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 John Prins wrote:
I'll be the first to say that most people eat too much meat. Maybe 1/3 of my meals involve some form of meat/egg/fish. Meat is expensive and you don't need a lot of it. It is, however, an easier road to full nutrition than any sort of vegetarianism/veganism, which require a lot of education and effort to pull off. Most of the attempted vegetarians I've known gave up trying after a couple of months or years and most of them were fairly miserable about the whole ordeal of trying to be a vegetarian in an omnivore's world.

That it does. And I do think it'd be better if people could just reduce meat consumption to a more sensible level to where they get the vitamins they need out of it without consuming so much deceptively calorie dense food.

But having studied my own habits, a small change is one I'm likely to forget about after a few weeks, but if I instead spend a few weeks making a big change, I then correct to the small change I was aiming for after that period.

I was raised in an incredibly unhealthy household. I never did any sports until high school, when I was finally making some of my own decisions and I joined a football team, and pretty much every meal was processed, usually frozen, and almost all meat and carbs. The culture of revulsion surrounding eating a vegetable-based meal was a tough one to break, even after I'd realized how stupid it was when I left home for college and started eating not even healthily, just on a budget where I couldn't afford cheeseburgers and potato chips every night and I started losing weight while my parents ate themselves to death.

I think it's one part fear of the food being flavorless/not filling, and one part just..not knowing how to cook a meal that's only or even mostly vegetables. I think most americans try to come up with stuff and they're like

OK, Salad.

1) Salads

hmmm.

1 - Salad
2 -

Ok I'll just brainstorm:

-Salad
-
-
-

.....

And salads are fine, but they have basically no seasoning, get old extremely fast, and if you swap from eating a certain amount of meat to a certain amount of salad without checking how many calories you're taking in you're liable to drop from 3000 calories per day to like 1200 and your digestive tract will jump up into your throat and strangle you until you eat more food.

I think this is a cultural thing, particularly for most Caucasian families, where you guys aren't taught how to actually cook vegetables right or in a way that's both healthy and tasty, I grew up hearing the usual tale of gross broccoli and other veggies but given that I was basically raised off of always having vegetables as one of the main dishes (usually bak choi, choi sum, broccoli or nappa) I never understood why there was a stigma around eating them. It wasn't until I went to a friend's house that I saw either how their dishes were completely vacant in veggies or they basically ate undercooked (or uncooked!) veggies and relying on dips and drowning it sauces to make it palatable. It's mind boggling that so many people don't know how to stir fry or boil veggies effectively as part of a home cooked meal.

I had a visceral negative reaction when you said "boiled". My mother (who learned from her mother, a post-WW2 1950s housewife who followed the "Domestic Science" philosophy of ease-of-digestion cooking) basically boiled every vegetable we ever ate, and never seasoned anything that was cooked.

That meant the meats, which were generally prepackaged and frozen, had whatever spices it had in the package so it at least tasted like something, but any piece of vegetable matter was limp, drained of all color and flavor by the boiling, and tasted like either the salt you put on it or nothing.

Yeah, the american cultural aversion to spinach, broccoli, brussels sprouts and several other veggies can be pretty much traced back to that post-apocalyptic hell philosophy pushed by 1950s food processing companies. Combine that with having never properly calorie-counted, leading to the first couple attempts at dieting getting stymied by accidentally trying to chop my daily calorie intake down to 1/3, I had a few issues with vegetables until I did a lot of research and learned to actually cook.

Thanks for sharing that! Didn't realize that it came from companies pushing that idea of cooking in the American household, thankfully with globalization and the internet I think that trend is going away. Still makes me disappointed that home economics or the basics of healthy eating when you cook for yourself isn't ingrained for education in the current public school system. That alongside doing taxes are some of the things I hope to get my kids to learn early given that I don't think that it'll be taught competently at school anytime soon.

If you think the internet is making it harder and not easier for companies to push misinformation on global consumers then I....admire your optimism?