To be bothered by DH's new "food militancy"??? He's turned vegan and gone a bit nuts really.

[MrsMushroom]

He's always been into healthy eating and working out...it's part of his personality. Fine.

But...a friend of his (big into uncovering government plots and all that...lizard people you know)

Well this friend sent DH a copy of something called The China Study which is a big expose on our food chain etc.

All this happened BEFORE the horse meat thing.

DH is now vegan. He's constantly asking me to read the report...telling me things like "When meat protein mixes with milk protein that is what causes some cancers"

And the latest is that cheap peanut butter has mold in it...which causes cancer.

So we can only buy organic.

He won't eat any processed foods...we hardly have any anway! As a family we didn't eat a lot of meat...one roast chicken a week which we got 3 meals out of...and maybe a bit of bacon.

That was it...no red meat really as we're on a small budget.

I'm frigging SICK of hearing it all!

he's now on Skype with his paranoid mate and they're discussing the evils of that fake meat...what's it called...you know soy stuff.

I cooked a chicken yestersay which I ate with the DDs...he came in from work and asked me to cover the chicken up...I suspect because he was tempted.

AIBU to be bored and a bit annoyed?

pp thanks for that link too.

Things like that and also on palm oil and other food additives are really interesting. I was going to say useful, but they're not useful considering their ubiquitiousness and people's reliance on foods containing them.

I get pissed off by the smugness of people who like to blame others for eating things with which they don't agree, rather than truthfully saying that these are the things you maybe shouldn't be eating and this is why.

Lying about the content of food is always wrong.

Lentil: It doesn't bother me too much tbh. I buy organic, I buy local and I rarely have dairy. But I have no interest in being vegan for my own personal reasons. I am not vegetarian for ethical reasons, or global reasons, or any reason but because it suits me. I would eat (good quality) meat if I wanted too but I don't. I do the best I can to source organic and local products and that's all I'll do.
& Vegan specifically said that I 'stuffed corpses into my gob' which is actually quite harsh even if it were true imo!

There is a book called nourishing traditions full of very fatty recipes based on the diets our grandparents would have had, it has loads of really interesting recipes in it, full of fatty things (just saw claigs link about the grandparents generation of food).

Personally, I think that diet is a very personal thing. Some people just could not be meat etaters, whilst some couldn't be vegan. This could be for a whole array of reasons, but at the end of the day it is personal choice.
I also think that the standards in the meat/dairy industry are scarily low, and even organic isn't amazing but for now it's the best we'll get in big shops. I don't like how we rely on the same few animals for all of our meat/dairy, we should be looking at a variety of options, not just sheep, pig and cow.

And the core issue is about someone in a relationship imposing their view, right or wrong, on the relationship.

Whenever people do that, it's not a good thing.

Claig
I believe in traditional wisdom and knowledge passed down over centuries. I believe in the natural diets of the 100 year olds on mediterranean islands, not in the "scientists" who tell us that insects are healthier than meat and that they also help us "save the planet".

I take it then you don't use the NHS? or see a gp who uses modern medicine and will tell you which foods are healthier and which foods to avoid based on government guide lines etc and the same for the medicine in hospitals being based around those same guide lines

I use doctors and the NHS for medicine, but not for advice on food.

I don't think nutrasweet, aspartame, high fructose corn syrup, transfats, soya and GM food are good for me, but I do believe that butter, eggs, bacon, red meat and red wine are.

' which foods to avoid based on government guide lines etc'

I don't care what John Gummer said about beefburgers, I make my own mind up.

campbell reply to masterjohn

I tend to agree with the former vegetarian and vegan, John Nicholson, in his book 'The Meat Fix'

'Fed up with the mantra spouted by the NHS, he began to do his own research and realised what he was missing most was. . . meat.'

YABU. The China Study is excellent and having a vegan diet is common sense. Better for health and better for the planet.

so claig you use jornos and celebs to give you advice on the food you put in your body, but wouldn't get a doctor to give you this advice

but you would go to a doctor to get medicine

seems odd that you would go to a doctor to get medicine but not advise on how to keep your body healthy

That's because I don't think doctors know much about food, they mainly follow government guidelines - the ones that used to tell us that we should avoid eating too many eggs due to cholesterol and avoid saturated fats and avoid butter and full fat milk, when the fats contain much of the vitamin content.

They don't say don't eat GM food, and the Guardian reported on how scientists will help us "save the planet" by growing meat from stem cells and telling us that insects are better for us than meat. No thanks, let the doctors eat that, I prefer free range organic meat.

Doctors of course follow guide lines on food and medicine from the government - so why would you use doctors for either food or medicine advice?

You sound as obssesive and unhinged as the OP's husband over food claig

John Nicholson has some rave revues on amazon for his book the revues seem to give him poor ratings for lack of any type of fact or research

StuntGirl, I eat what is healthy. You can eat the soya, the GM, the aspartame etc. I check the labels. You are free to be ignorant and eat what you want.

'so why would you use doctors for either food or medicine advice?'

Because I don't believe everything doctors say. I didn't take the swine flu shot, just as many doctors didn't either, even though many doctors were urged to do so.

He is very strange (sorry i know he is your DH) im a veggie, but dont bother with organic my DP is a meat eater i cant stand the smell of it but its what he wishes to eat who am i to tell him what he should eat. The only argument we have is my DC eating meat he has a problem with me tellin DS that that sausage used to be a pig

claig so what is wrong with soya? ive never actually thought about what it is. I agree with you about the aspartame i brings me out in a rash.

midas, read this excellent Guardian article that I linked to earlier on in the thread

Should we worry about soya in our food

Of course, much of the official and food industry advice is that soya is a good source of protein. Research both sides and make up your mind. If you doubt its good qualities, begin to ask yourself why it is promoted. Begin to understand the big picture which points to the reason behind it.

Speaking as a lifelong vegetarian who eats (mostly) wholefoods cooked from scratch and is still 2 stone overweight, there is some god-awful rubbish being spouted about food, health and nutrition on this thread. It really ain't that simple, folks.

The Masai have a diet derived almost exclusively from animal protein (milk and meat from their cattle), yet are very healthy and suffer from very low rates of heart disease, cancer etc.

The reason they 'suffer from very low rates of heart disease, cancer etc' is because they die years before they could normally expect to develop these diseases. The Maasai have the worst life expectancy in the modern world. Life expectancy is 45 years for women and 42 years for men. African researchers report that, historically, Maasai rarely lived beyond age 60. Adult mortality figures on the Kenyan Maasai show that they have a 50% chance of dying before the age of 59.

nothing wrong with veganism, lizard people on the other hand..?

John Nicolson, omg, omg! I wrote a long review of his book on my blog. He was (is) a zealot who has swung from one extreme to another. His book is one entire long rant (funny to read).

When he was full on Vegan (20 yrs) he would have extolled virtues of veganism in just as evangelically strong terms, especially after just 1-5 yrs as a vegan. But after 18 months of improved health from heavy meat diet he decided that was Nirvana and writes a long book to say as much (anyone see the irony?)

Nicolson makes some good points but his obvious extremist nature undermines most of it. I could say tonnes more but shall refrain.

I think I need (itch, itch) a few things inspired by that Guardian article that Claic linked to.

1. Oilseed rape is generally produced by the same process as Soy oil/soy products. (Yup, good ol' canola oil). Like Soya, oilseed rape seeds were inedible/indigestible until special varieties were developed. They rely heavily on hexanes to produce (so do almost all "vegetable oils", incidentally). So you are going to have to weigh up the merits of relative oils before condemning soya especially.

2. As article points out, in North America cottonseed oil was heavily preferred (30-60 yrs ago) until Canola took over (& maybe more latterly soya). The rumour was that because cotton was not a mainly food crop it was more heavily exposed to pesticides than other types of veg oil, I've never known if that was a fair claim. But anyway, it's not like we've moved from lovely fresh oils to something horrible; it's been horrible for a very long time.

3. Processed foods are what's affected mostly; don't forget that bread is a processed food.

4. Organic processed foods are not liable to all the same problems; the oils have to be produced by cold- or mechanical means. But I'm not sure about organic soya, I think it might have to be hexane-free methods produced, too.

Horrible, stick to olive oil as used in Mediterranean diets.

I avoid soya as much as possible due to it being bad for thyroid function, I have hypothyroidism.