Veganuary

Mogsmaw Norah I understand your confusion, there seems to be two types of vegans. Those, like yourself who have chosen a lifestyle where they consume no animal products. You eat meals based on plants, seeds and grains. It’s a healthy way to eat with a variety of wholesome often home cooked meals. There are huge amounts of meals that are suitable for vegetarians and your type of “ old school vegan”.

Thank you.

For us a life choice, health, fat, chemicals, additives - we easily control by changing our old recipes a bit. I make the best burgers in the world with beans, veg, nuts, spices, bread crumbs - what's not to love!

Most fellow vegans I know make their meals from scratch. They are so much tastier than processed food. I think many omnis forget that bacon is processed, chicken is often pumped with water and so on. I think veganuary is a great idea but maybe a step too far for many, so perhaps vegetarianuary would be better for many. It’s much healthier either way than eating red and processed meats.

About 30 years ago, we took a vegan teenager with us on a self catering holiday in France.
She prepared all her own meals from scratch-no pretence of making stuff taste like meat and no sanctimonious chat about what a good person or how much healthier she was for being vegan.
I still cook some of the veggies the way she did, just because they taste good. However I, like most omnivores, prefer healthy variety, without the need to convince others that I’m right.

I get why meat eaters want to continue to eat meat - they are used to it and like it so naturally will defend their choices. I stopped eating meat 60 years ago and have no desire to eat anything that resembles dead flesh. I avoid over processed food if at all possible. The fake meat is an attempt by manufacturers to make a profit by appealing to those meat eaters who want to cut down but still want familiarity. It’s evident people can live healthily without meat. It’s a choice - if people really knew what went on in the dairy and meat industry a lot more would cut down which is a good thing for the animals and the planet. Veganuary is worth a go - For anyone who want to try it!

Well said vegansrock

I am glad that being vegan or vegetarian is so much more normal than it was even 20 years ago.

I volunteer in a community café and take orders for drinks and light meals. There is always a vegan soup and cakes available as well as every kind of milk alternative. Some customers are surprised that we also sell meat products but these are carefully sourced from local organic farmers. Everyone is welcome!

Brian Bilston nails it yet again

Exactly, Vegansrock. I never get anaemic and rarely get ill in spite of my disabilities. Blood tests always come back with good results. My cousin is in his 80’s and has been vegan for over 40 years. He’s out walking his dogs on Dartmoor most days and is very active. I simply can’t eat a diet that causes so much suffering to living creatures, but that’s me. I appreciate many don’t care and will continue to follow an omni diet. It’s their personal choice.

Each to their own. Vegetarians and vegans are doing an important, wonderful job of making more people think about what they eat and where it comes from.

I do eat meat. And enjoy it. From a local butcher using local meat grazed out most of the year on biodiverse marshes and fields and slaughtered locally (very fortunate to have a local slaughter house - which I have been in and learnt about keeping animals calm and not killed in sight of each other. Adrenaline, they said, makes meat tough.) The animals have a good life and their death is much quicker than for a lot of humans. I don't eat fish if I can help it as it's not killed outright.

I don't like sausages or burgers. I am very garlic intolerant and have to be careful of all alliums. Quorn also makes me sick, and I'd love to know why. So, I'm an omnivore. I don't eat much meat, but I'll stick as I am. If being vegan/vegetarian suits your digestion and health, go for it. But it's not for everyone.

I’m not vegan. I’m not even vegetarian now, although I was for decades and my husband still is.

What I don’t understand is why so many people say they don’t understand why those who are vegan (or vegetarian) like meat substitutes. What’s difficult about it? If you like the taste of something you will want to eat it, and if you have decided for your own reasons (which you are not obliged to defend) that you are not going to eat animal products you may well seek out alternatives to the food you have eaten since childhood, and which humans are primed to want in their diet.

A sausage or a burger is a just recipe anyway - animals don’t come with them attached. Forming ingredients into convenient shapes is how cookery works, and I can see nothing wrong with the concept of ’vegan sausages’. The prawns sound disgusting, but so are the real things IMO - food is literally a matter of taste. Making a pie is just a way to get food on the plate, whether the filling is steak or mushrooms (or both), just as a burger is a convenient way to fill a bread roll, whether is is made of meat or lentils.

Do people really not understand that, or is it faux perplexity?

Lets be clear there is poor quality over processed food available whether you are vegan, vegetarian or omnivore, and if we are to permit the vegans on this thread, I might say on this site, to react, like a Victorian spinster seeing a piano leg, to the idea that fake bacon, chicken, pork sausages or cheese ever enters their home, let alone passes their lips, They in their turn need to accept that being an omnivore, does not mean cheap chicken pumped up with water, or beef from food lots in the USA, with huge emissions.

We omnivores can be just as prone to having the vapours at anyone suggesting that we would eat meat that doesn't meet the highest welfare and environmental standards.

The meat I buy is all raise entirely on organic pasture all year roune, supplemented wih hay grown on the farm or bought in from an accredited supplier. This method of rearing lifestock, as people like James Rebank and the Knepp estate in Sussex have shown, can be environmentally neutral and even contribute to carbon sequestering.

I am more than ready to accept that all the vegans on GN occupy the moral high and ground have never touched, still less eaten a piece of non-dairy cheese or meat, but they in their turn must play fair with us omnivores, by accepting that we too have high standards and only eat meat raised to the highest environemtal and welfare standards.

The alternative is that they have to accept that however pure they are, an awful lot of other vegans do hoover up these over processed fake animal foods, otherwise why are the supermarkets full of them? And us purist omnivores will accept that many omnivores eat meat withotu ever thinking about how it was reared.

Where is all this 'fake food'?

I don't recall much 'fake food' ( for meat eaters or vegans) in the shops. One-offs we've tried we didn't like (cheese, 'hamburgers', quorn). Perhaps I shop incorrectly because I prefer to be home?

It’s interesting that some are saying that they only eat organically raised animals etc. But most omnis don’t, by a long chalk. Most animals suffer horribly because of the demand for cheap meat.

I believe that, in the UK at least, animal welfare is considered far more than it was when I stopped eating meat 35 years ago. The campaign goes on Gillycats

Doodledog, I absolutely understand why some vegans like meat substitutes and “burger” and “sausage” are just shapes.
My problem is when only meat substitutes is considered vegan, one of my young colleagues ranted that a vegetarian restaurant had nothing for vegans as it had no plant based meat substitutes.
It’s like a previous contributor said about a cafe only offering vegan cheese, probably because they felt they had to appease the “vegan woke”. Not everybody wants it and real choice is being eroded for the majority of us who just put up.
My husband and I go to A Play, A Pie and A Pint. You had a meat pie or a veg flan or bake. Now it a vegan sausage roll.
I hate sausages, the look, the texture the smell, I think they are revolting. So I get nothing.
I long for the days when you could get a decent bean or veg burger. These are disappearing replaced by the dreaded plant based ultra processed, according to my colleague “real vegan food” the stuff with the green V

‘If we are to permit vegans….’ - really? Just who would have the say so of this? So we would be banned for voicing our opinions? Funny, I thought GN was a forum for doing just that.

I would describe as fake food, food pretending to be what it isn't. You see them all round the supermarkets some product pretending to be bacon with no bacon in it. A daily paper, I cannot remember which did a survey of the best 'turkey' joints for vegans and vegetarians. There was not a shred of turkey in any of them.

Sausages, burgers etc are different, it descibes a way of preparing food. I absolutely love beanburgers, I am less keen on burgers made from meat. But now, as others have commented, burgers are made from some extruded over-processed substance textured and flavoured to taste like beef. Some even have beetroot huice in them so they go pink and extrude a pink substance that looks like blood when they are cooked to be 'rare'.

Most snack goods are what I would describe as fake foods, not crisps, although I saw a description of how Pringles were made today. No wonder I never liked them.

I will have to come back to this as I need to go out now for an appointment.

Nope we won’t be doing it. Each to their own of course, will be carrying on eating the way we have done for few years everything in moderation that includes white meat only plenty of fish too and fresh fruit veg

Plenty of ‘fake’ food in the shops Norah and in restaurants, particularly some with their vegetarian and vegan menu offerings.

The book to read is by one of the van Tullikens^ Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food … and Why Can’t We Stop? ^. That makess clear what fake food is.

How sad that a nice, positive OP has led (as always) to a criticism of veganism. So much for live and let live

Agreed, nightowl. Food is food - I don't see how it can be 'fake' unless it pretends to be something it's not, which vegan food doesn't. If it did, vegans wouldn't buy it ).

Doodledog You should read van Tulliken's book or other similar literature about the extent that many food stuffs are refined down and chemically treated to be products that are devoid of the vitamins, fibre and trace elements that are so essential for nutrition and then reformed witht the addtion of chemicals of all kinds that have not before been in the food chain before to ensure that every supermarket loaf is absolutely identical to evey other. the evidence is there that these types of product contribute to obesity, diabetes and other ills that so many people have. These foods are not the foodstuffs grown in the field. They are the result of industrial manipulation and unutritional.

More generally, no one has suggested there is anything wrong with veganism, but some vegans make claims for the diet of vegans as a group that are not correct.

Whatever your dietary choices the fact remains that there is a lot of food available, which is over processed and, long-term, damaging to your health - and this applies as much to food that vegans can and do eat, including products marketed directly at them, as to the food other people eat.

There are some proselytising vegans on GN, who do not eat these overprocessed foods and try to pretend that the overprocessed food is either not there or not eaten by 'true' vegans, but these same people are insistent in seeing all omnivores as a group eating meat raised in ways that is highin emissions and its footprint on the world,and ignoring the group who only buy meat that is environemntally beneficial.

They cannot have it both ways, claim the moral high ground for a select group of vegans with the highest ethicals standard and then compare themselves with omnivores as a group, leaving out all vegans who do not reach their high standards.

If we are talking about generalities, and groups consisting of all those who describe themselves as vegans or omnivores. then many in both groups eat a lot of over processed foods

I applaud you for giving a different eating plan a go watermeadow and I am sure you will last the month.

Can anyone who eats a pure or mostly vegetarian diet tell me if weight loss is an extra benefit as long as you keep to reasonable portions?
I would dearly miss fish so not sure I can give that up….

Doodledog

Agreed, nightowl. Food is food - I don't see how it can be 'fake' unless it pretends to be something it's not, which vegan food doesn't. If it did, vegans wouldn't buy it ).

There must be items in shops with designation 'vegan' that are over processed foods nobody (omnivore or vegan) should be eating?

Crisps, store biscuits, and snacks!!

Jars of ready foods, tins of soups, packets of I've no idea, baked products with chemicals and enhancers. All easily avoided by shopping veg and fruit, pulses, flours, rices - unadulterated foods. I haven't the patience to look round at items I'm not preparing, oblivious, however on GN I've heard/read of 'fake vegan food' -- I just don't search for any.

We cook meat, several times a month, as we have daughters and families who eat animal products. I've a good butcher, easy to source decent meat apart from pork. Iberian pork seems to import only to city shops. I easily found lovely Norwegian salmon (for coulibiac) by calling round for wild not farmed.

I am not advocating a diet of UP foods😀. I am saying that people enjoying the convenience of burger shapes, or the flavour of bacon seems to me easy to understand. I don’t understand those who find this beyond their comprehension. If other people want to eat a vegan diet that’s up to them, and it is their choice as to whether they do this by supplementing fruit and vegetables with ‘vegan steak’ or not.

Preachy vegans are annoying, I agree; but so is anyone who thinks they have a right to comment on what other people eat.

The OP was just looking for support in her attempt at Veganuary, not lectures on ‘fake’ food.

On a less contentious note- I didn’t know you could freeze eggs. Do you beat them first and use them in omelettes or quiches, or is there another way?