To ask how easy it was to become vegetarian?

[Greatdays2233]

I’d love to be vegetarian but would struggle with giving up chicken How easy did other folk find the transition?

Milly - houmous and roasted veg! Mmm.

Unless you feel genuinely repulsed by the meat industry and you can look at animal products and see them as what they are and not food I don't think it will be permanent.

@Millybingbong so many good ones!

Hummus with caramelised onions and peppers

Basil, tomato, pesto and mozzarella

Peanut butter, pear and cream cheese

Pear and goats cheese

Avocado, tomato and cheese

Falafel

Enjoy!!

@ibicus I don't think that's true. My mouth absolutely waters over a juicy steak, and I can look at loads of meat products and agree that they look and smell delicious. But I don't feel any desire to eat them because the reasons I've chosen not to eat meat are more important to me. It has nothing to do with being repulsed.

Re quorn you'll get some people insisting it's created by the devil himself and that the merest taste has caused them to be hospitalized due to their organs falling out of their arses after a single bite. Ok fine I'm exaggerating but only a little.

Look, a small proportion of people find it doesn't agree with them but the majority don't have any issues with it. It's a very convenient meat substitute and adds some extra protein, bulk and texture to dishes. I wouldn't suggest eating it 5,6,7 days a week but generally it's fine! Others will disagree but it's worth trying out for yourself. The quorn mince and fillets are probably most popular as they're very easy to use in place of meat in a meal. Don't expect them to taste exactly like meat though because (as far as I can recall how meat tastes) they don't.

It’s very easy these days. I can remember having to rehydrate veggie mince from a health food shop and now the veggie section is extensive. The only real annoyances are the fact that a) you will often have only one option in some restaurants, b) you may have to deal with questioning from ‘well meaning’ friends and family, C) if you live outside the big cities it may be less easy than in London and d) at some point you will start feeling bad about the dairy industry.

I eat a lot of felafel and hummus. I’m totally off cheese though am not a vegan but that does limit a bit. The PP who said about eating chicken occasionally has a point; I don’t like labels. I say vegetarian but actually I very occasionally eat fish but try and avoid dairy. Whatever. Everyone finds their own way through!

I was 14 when I turned vegetarian, I'm nearly 52 now (so longer than I care to remember)

I only ate lamb and tinned salmon (but that stopped when we moved to a house across the road from sheep......watching the lambs and hearing the seperation puts you off) and salmon was very £££ so only rare, not a problem to give up.

Easier now with labelling on everything. And soya milk, its an aquired taste but you get used to it if you want to give up dairy.

@BeanCalledPickle that's so true about dairy! I thought becoming vegetarian would make me feel better about my food choices but it actually made me feel so much worse about dairy. I now only rarely eat dairy because of it it's a never ending cycle!

Simple for me as I don’t like anything about meat, went veggie at 12.

Other people I know have transitioned slowly. They have cut out one meat type at a time until they are down to none. Quorn chicken is delicious.

I eat a fair bit of quorn when I’m busy with work. They do lots of nice freezer to oven things that require almost no effort.

I didn’t find it hard to go veggie and only occasionally miss meat. At some restaurants, the vegetarian menu is a bit lame but it’s got a lot better. If you’re taking it seriously, there is meat in all sorts of things so watch out for marshmallows and haribo.

It felt natural really. Once I realised what it was around age 8/9, when I tried to eat meat it was a chore, trying to find a bit that I liked the look of, wasn't too chewy, had no 'bits' in it. So I just gave up as it was a pain in the arse and I was squeamish.
I think I feel about eating meat, the same way someone who eats meat would feel about eating insects.

I can remember having to rehydrate veggie mince from a health food shop

Me too, BeanFeast wasn't it? Gawd it was AWFUL!! So much easier to be vegetarian these days thankfully. When I gave up meat there were virtually no substitutes available except for overpriced crap in health food shops. Forget veggie options in most restaurants, if they had one at all it was pasta with tomato sauce!

catspaws for me it was actually breastfeeding that did it. I was suddenly a bit weirded out by the fact that we drink another animals breast milk and think that’s normal?!? I now can’t face ‘pure’ dairy so don’t have milk or cheese etc, but if it’s hidden away I pretend it’s not there:)

Cats paws - all those sound amazing!

I'll make clear i am not vegetarian but I am meat free and mostly apart from the occasional time eat a vegetarian diet.

It's generally easy at home. I think it's more about seeing meals a different from meat and what goes with it. There are loads of options, just of the top of my head.
Nut cutlet
Falafel
Chickpeas
Lentils
Beans
Meat substitutes (some are rank though!)
Tofu

Eating out is easy, I can't remember the last time I was out somewhere and there wasn't something on the menu I could eat (although some places it might be a boring option) except KFC that dp wanted to go to recently where the only thing I could have was the corn on the cob but I had some fries too.

@Greatdays2233 can't beat a good sandwich! Enjoy

Me and dh found it pretty easy, we did it gradually by building up a bank of really nice recipes and finding out what we liked. We use substitutes from Quorn and Linda McCartney range. We are not mad on all of them but some of them are lovely.

You can still get beanfeast - I use it for bolognese and shepherdess pie The fake mince I remember from the grim days of the 80s came in a massive white sack that you could only buy from hippy dippy whole food shops and weighed about 10kg. It was like wood shavings, which probably would have tasted better.

I'm so well trained in veggieness that I take notes on what's on the menu in local pubs/restaurants so I can let my dad know if it's goats cheese/aubergine/risotto free!

I hadn't eaten red meat for around 6 months but was still eating fish and very occasionally chicken. On New Year's Day a couple of years ago, I made and was about to eat the traditional steak pie with my family. First mouthful, I couldn't and spat it out.
No meat or meat products since. DS and DH will happily eat veggie meals like chilli, lasagne and curry using lentils and chickpeas but they eat meat too.
I don't eat or drink soya as it doesn't agree with me at all.
I don't miss meat one bit, nor milk and cheese as it's about not exploiting and killing these beautiful animals for me.
I'm fortunate to have a big garden, greenhouses etc so growing veg to eat is a hobby too.
There's masses of tasty, easy vegetarian recipes available online and great recipe books, magazines etc.

I'm another who found it very easy but again I don't like meat and never did. In the early 90s when I went veggie it was mushroom stroganoff or nothing when you went out and sosmix as a substitute at home! It's much easier now...

I cook loads of curries, stews and pasta dishes, with some nut roasts. After 27 years there's no way I could go back.

I did it very easily aged 11 and have now been veggie for twelve years although in recent years it’s been harder as my OH is coeliac so finding a veggie gluten free meal we’ll both like is a bloody nightmare

I found it quite easy. I switched about 9 years ago and only ate chicken before that. My parents were never keen on red meat and I always hated fish so it was just giving up chicken tikka and McDonald’s chicken nuggets that I found hard. But I did it, and ate lots of quorn to make up for it. After about six months I couldn’t imagine ever eating meat again, something switched in my brain and made the thought repulsive to me. I now see meat as completely uneatable and could never eat it again.

I became a vegetarian mainly because I felt It made sense, I barely ate meat and a lot of my family were veggies. There was the ethical side too, which makes me want to go vegan but that would involve a complete lifestyle change I’m not sure I could handle at the moment. We will see.

I stopped eating meat about a week ago and have found it quite easy so far. I'm wondering if I need to take any supplements as I'm not getting the protein from meat anymore. I'm very new to all of this.

love we really don’t need that much protein. Do you like peanut butter? That’s a good source. I generally think that if you eat a decent variety of food featuring different coloured food you should be ok. I’d suggest making friends with the chickpea. In the form of felafel or in curry’s etc. No one needs meat. You will be totally fine:)

Love.

You can get your protein from other things like beans and pulses.
You also need to check that your getting the healthy oils that normally come from fish from elsewhere.

I think there is one vitamin or mineral that only comes from meat and I don't think there is a supplement but I can't remember what it is or even if I'm right! so do your research.