Meat Free May

I agree about the smell, Nellie. I have to stop breathing when I pass the local butcher's shop. However, the smell I found most tempting when I first gave up meat was the aroma of grilling bacon. I have heard that this is quite a common reaction. Bellasnana we are 'on the same page'!

There were two tweets that made me laugh yesterday. The first was someone saying how much they hated the smell of frying bacon; the other, soon after, was someone saying how much they hated the smell of her husband's fake bacon being fried. They put the omnivorous v vegetarian debate into a nutshell for me: it's about what one likes to eat – no more and no less. There is nothing more or less moral about being an omnivore or being a vegetarian. It's just a choice people make who have the choice in the first place. Freedom.

It's so much more than that bags but if it suits you to see it in those simplistic terms it's up to you. And I'm not claiming to be any more moral than the next person - it's not a game.

Fake bacon is disgusting, in smell, taste and everything.

Bags Your post of 8:26:25

DH has just glanced over my shoulder and asked, 'Who's Meat Free Mary?

durhamjen I am not remotely defensive, I am not and never have been a big meat eater and, as I said I eat less all the time.

To go back to the start of this thread I just think these initiatives about Meat-free Mondays and Meat free Mays are pointless and counter productive and are launched for their alliterative value. What is virtuous about avoiding one food product on one given day or month? Why not fat-free February, or Marmite free March? It is another version of encouraging people to go to great lengths to eat to a particular and personally difficult diet plan to lose weight only for them to revert to their old eating patterns and put the weight back on as soon as the diet is over. The answer to weight loss is to think and make long term changes in behaviour and eating patterns on a gradual basis and the same applies to consuming less meat.

The purpose of those behind these initiatives is to get people to think more about what they eat, its provenance, and global effects. I just do not think that advocating that individuals make major changes to their eating patterns for a short period is productive, if those who start the challenge succeed or if they don't, once the month is ended they are more likely to binge on meat and eat more for some period than cut it out completely.

It is the slow continuous grind that works not the flash in the pan.

I agree this is about freedom of choice. But equally every choice we make has consequences, so for me, it's also about understanding what those consequences are and making an informed choice.

For example, it takes around 3x more energy, 3x more water and 4x more land to produce your food if you eat meat & dairy compared to if you don't. And a recent medical study showed you could be 4x as likely to die from cancer or diabetes if you eat lots of meat & dairy.

No-one's telling people to stop eating meat & dairy. But I think it's quite right for doctors and environmental groups like Friends of the Earth to tell people what the impacts are. If people then choose to carry on eating meat & dairy, that's entirely up to them, but at least they've made an informed choice.

And for what it's worth, since I learned about the impacts, I've decided to eat less meat & dairy because I value my health and I want to keep the climate safe and the planet healthy for our children and grandchildren.

thatbags- I do believe you know there is a lot more to it than that- I've been trying to work out whether your comment was just naïve or disingenuous, not sure.

I am not a vegetarian, but try to eat less and better quality (as in better husbandry, feeds, local slaughter, etc)- but some of my friends have become vegatarian not because of a question of taste- but because they have studied the facts about the amount of cereal needed to provide meat protein instead of other protein and other environmental FACTS- despite the fact they love meat- and it was a hard choice for them- not some cuckoo land choice.

Ooops alia, our posts crossed.

Not naive or disingenuous. It's what I actually think. There is no moral superiority in food choices. That does not mean I think all food production methods are good, nor does it mean I don't make specific choices for specific reasons where I can, where I think it matters. It just means I'm sick of people pretending/trying to convince us that vegetarianism is superior, morally, biologically or any way at all, to omnivorousness. It isn't. It's different. That's all.

And I DO NOT think meat-eating is damaging the planet. As someone else pointed out, where animals are grazed is usually quite different land (less fertile, often hilly, higher in altitude and therefore often colder, and so on) from where plant crops are grown. You can't convert most grazing land into cereal crop land 'just like that'.

Follow some sheep or cattle farmers on Twitter and you'll get the idea. @HerdyShepherd and @AmandaOwens8 are good ones to start with. They are not doing anything wrong and neither are the people who eat the meat they produce.

No thanks. I waste enough time on GN as it is. And incidentally I do believe the evidence that climate change is due to a large extent to human activity along with 98% of climate scientists and no I'm not going to back that up with a link as any 7- year old is capable of getting the evidence for themselves.

alia I want my grandchildren to know what cows, sheep, chickens and pigs are but apparently I don't have the right to choose! I want them to be able to sing 'Old MacDonald had a Farm' as they cycle past the fields.

Deb ?? You seem very angry with vegetarians for some reason . As well as believing they have far more influence than is actually the case. What on earth bothers you so much?

It does seem to me that a lot of the "masses of grain, water and energy to produce meat" lobby is actually talking mostly about intensively reared beef. What about lamb grazing on slopes on which nothing else would grow, rabbit, and game, to name but a few sources of meat? Where we live, the cattle graze on the grass and eat the fodder the farmers grow. There really is a difference between mass production and sustainable agriculture and I think it needs to be recognised.

I have been ridiculed for not eating meat especially 48 years ago when I became a vegetarian at age fourteen. I didn't know any vegetarians or vegans in those days. Things have gradually changed and there are many of us now. Most people are very aware that saturated fats (solid at room temperature) from meat and dairy cause blocked arteries.

I have mentioned previously I was annoyed when a friend said I should give up dairy because it is cruel. I ate a lot of cheese and wondered what I could replace it with. A few years later I barely eat it and don't miss it at all. I don't even like it, it's really what you get used to.

Actually, Faye there is now a lot of doubt in the scientific community about the links between saturated fats and heart disease.
I eat good organic meat, olive oil and butter and I wouldn't touch processed spreads with added chemicals.

Agree with you Mamie

Me too Mamie

And me.

For years we were told not to eat fat, now they say eat it. I think the difference between good fat and bad fat is that the bad fat remains solid when you eat it. fat.com/differences-between-good-fat-and-bad-fat

Excellent posts mamie - nothing I can add to them at all. I also live in a farming community so I am very fortunate to be able to buy locally.

thatbags, the problem is that most meat doesn't come from animals grazing on less fertile, hilly areas, but from intensively reared livestock, which depend on the kind of imported feeds such as GM soy that are destroying forests and poisoning communities in places like South America. And even grazing animals have their environmental impacts - for example, if sheep didn't graze grassy uplands, there would be more vegetation on the hills which would absorb more water and reduce the risk of flooding.

DebnCreme, I think you misunderstood me - my whole point was that you do have the right to make an informed choice. And no-one's suggesting that we stop farming animals altogether, just that we do it as sustainably as possible, so as your grandchildren cycle past singing "Old MacDonald" they can see cows, sheep, chickens and pigs rather than a series of industrial facilities.

Mamie, you're right, if you do choose local, sustainably farmed meat, that's clearly going to have less of an impact than intensively reared beef or chicken. But you say the cattle near you still need fodder, so wouldn't it be more efficient (although perhaps less financially viable) for the farmers to grow crops for us to eat directly than it is to grow fodder to feed to the cattle so we can eat them or drink their milk?

Well alia, it would be a bold person who tried to deprive the French of their Camembert! But the answer to your question is no, the land is being used as the lush Normandy grassland has been used for centuries. The fields are tiny, the farms are very small and the farming families have been there for generations. We have to put up with the fields of oil-seed rape for a few weeks in spring, but there just isn't room for cereal farming on a large scale. Hunting (and eating) small game is an important part of the management of the land, as it has been since the Revolution.
All my neighbours have chickens for eggs and for the pot, there are some beehives, people harvest nettles, dandelions and wild fruit. Animals graze under the trees that produce the cider. You could survive on what is around you for a very long time and the people would still know how to do that. They will tell you proudly that they are peasants.
(We are quite proud of our contribution in showing them how to grow potatoes under straw).
It is a different world from the world of "the food industry".
I think the real problem is that people have lost touch with the growing cycle and the first world is dominated by big agriculture, over-consumption and the horrible world of highly-processed convenience foods. We can't turn the clock back, but we can do our bit to grow our own and encourage the small producers and sustainable farming.

Same here Mamie- but we both know, I am sure, that it is not the reality for most people in the UK who buy meat under cellophane in large supermarkets and have most of the time no idea of how it was produced or where, and the distance it was transported, etc, etc, etc. We both are very lucky.

Hence my comment earlier about our choice to eat less but locally produced good quality meat. If you get 2 large chickens for a fiver at Tescos, it does not take Einstein to work out that husbandry, etc, is not likely to have been top notch. But I totally understand why families under financial pressure choose to buy them. However is it not tragic to learn that the second chicken is often thrown away, as not used in time, not cooked to freeze or freeze to cook later- like many of the BOGOF type offers which people just can't resist, but do not have time or inclination to plant their use before it goes off.

However (and as said, I am not vegetarian) with a significant proportion of people on this planet starving- with large % of their land producing fodder for our meat industries in the First World, it is hard to dispute that land could be more efficiently (from food and protein pint of view) used. Of course uplands areas like mine are totally unsuitable for growing crops.

Mind you, I've rarely heard a vegetarian complain about the large % of landuse to produce hops for beer or vines for wine ;)

Good point in your last sentence, jura . The acreages of wine producing areas worldwide must be vast.