What would it take for you to become vegan?

[Strivetobe]

A genuine question after a conversation some friends and I were having. They said that they'd become vegan if the ready meals and prepackaged vegan meals were cheaper. It got me thinking, are there any conditions under which you would consider veganism and if so, what are they?

Maybe we could genetically modify avocados to taste like butter

Better for the planet and your body to just not have prepackaged convenience foods. They're basically selling you mushed up carrot for £4. No.

Instead of being fully vegan, people should eat lots of veg and wholefoods, as local as poss, and cut down on animal products and processed food.

could i still have bacon?

I'm an extremely fussy eater and don't eat any of the following:

Pasta, rice, pulses, beans, chickpeas, chilli, most spices, all foreign food incl Chinese and Indian, mushrooms, garlic, aubergine, pumpkin/ squash, oats, spinach, sweet potato, milk, cream, hummus, +++.

I only buy free range meat, preferably locally grown and there's nothing on this earth that would persuade me to become vegan.

I do my bit for the environment - have no children, no car, no overseas holidays, always recycle as much as I can, buy glass bottles and jars for ketchup etc, instead of plastic squeezy bottles.

Finally I will never understand why vegetarians and vegans are so keen on replicating their food to look like meat items, eg sausages, burgers, roasting joints etc. It seems utterly bizarre.

Losing my sense of smell and taste.

I do sometimes wonder how tiring the mental gymnastics/ cognitive dissonance must be for some people to refuse an egg from a happy backyard free range chicken, or a spoonful of honey, in preference for an avocado (or any other plant) where countless caterpillars, grubs, spiders, birds, butterflies, bees, rodents etc will have been dispatched with to protect the crop.

SilverySurfer what do you eat, generally? Meat, potatoes, peas, carrots, sweetcorn and bread? I'm just being nosey - in the same way that I would ask a vegan what their weekly menu was.

I would but out ready meals, with their excess packaging and ingredients before I became vegan. In fact we eat almost no ready meals, so i wouldn't go vegan by buying ready-meals.

The chicken substitute stuff sold in plastic trays in M&S Plant Kitchen range looks like something you would expect to see sewn onto Frankenstein's monster.

Proper nice tasting vegan cheese (incl blue cheese)
Decent butter substitute
Milk substitute that tastes nice in tea (I can drink oat milk in coffee but nothing ive tried tastes even halfway palatable in tea)

If the vegan goods making people could sort those things out I'd be vegan no probs, I'm mostly veggie anyway. I'd have to think properly about shoes and wine and all the not so obvious stuff though to be a proper vegan.

If cows, goats and sheep were extinct.

I'd just be miserable without cheese. I like honey and avocados too. And seafood. Going meat free would be the (relatively) easy bit.

Vegan ready meals would not persuade me. Is this some under cover market research?

If pork was reclassified as vegan!

Chorizo! I forgot the chorizo!

if i lived on my own and was rich

why cant you eat avocados?

I can't become a British vegan b/c I don't agree with the premise that eating animals or using their body products is wrong. The only way I would change is... a lobotomy?

May as well ask why I don't become Ba'hai or a Maoist.

Could I become an American vegan (yes they have a different definition of what vegan is, it can be only about food choices). Possibly. I was often anemic when vegetarian & don't want the hassle of iron supplements. Or B12 supplements. Maybe if those supplements were combined with some other pill I needed to take daily, anyway. Also, iron pill supplements in past gave me diarrhoea. So preferably without that side-effect. On top of that, animal food products would just have to be unavailable, no choice. I am too lazy to be made to figure out if something is vegan.

and honey?

i was a vegetarian for 15 years - it is the milk and cheese i would struggle with

If I lived by myself, I’d probably be vegan.

Having huge choice of gluten free ready meals and restaurant meals.
However I suspect that a vegan diet wouldn't do IBS any good. I'm mostly veggie and even that can cause problems.

Cheaper vegetables, fruit and rice.
Also, maybe being able to make it myself?
Also knowing I can take suplimenys to substitute high protein / dairy diet.

I'm happy to eat vegan meals at others house or at events - like all things just takes some getting used to.

I love meat! I think i could do vegetarianism as I like lots of veggie options. But I couldn't give up milk chocolate and CHEESE!! Or eggs. I drink soya so milk wouldn't be an issue. Veganism is just too restrictive imo and I don't think I could ever go there.

Only if all the animals disappeared.

I am already a vegan and if you had asked me even a couple of years ago to go vegan I would have laughed in your face.

Then I realised that my tastebuds weren't more important than an animals life or wellbeing.

I now eat so much better than I did before and I would say it is saving me money too .

And yes vegans can eat avacodos .

I don't find it restrictive either tbh. Before I went vegan I pretty much ate the same meals on rotation. Now I eat so much more variety and I love trying new things

Cheese. Is. Life.