To ask why you aren’t vegan

[Whereisthecoffee]

I’m not vegan , I know it’s good for the planet kinder to animals etc but it’s something I just can’t seem to get to grips with. I’ve been thinking about starting vegan January but I’m not sure. Thinking about my choices and it’s prevalence in the media has made me curious about others so tell me why aren’t you vegan? I think my main reason is convenience.

Pinkpanther

We do need animal products to be healthy. It’s an unfortunate fact.

All species in the planet have evolved to eat specific diets and humans are no different. Feed a vegetarian diet to a cat and it will get ill. We can tolerate both meat and plants but we need both to survive in a healthy way. And cut one of them out and it will catch up eventually.

I find it more worrying that you think you can bypass biology

There's no way I'm giving up milk and cheese. I eat very little meat but lots of fruit and veg. This is as far as I feel it is reasonable for me to go. That's the key point - reasonable.

We havent spent any time thriving without meat. Dairy yes, but vegetarian cultures could only arise once we had that. There has never been a vegan culture.

I'm not a big meat eater at all. The main issue me is having to check the ingredients in everything. I'm just too disorganised and lazy. I do eat quite a bit of veggie/vegan food and not a lot of meat but can't be arsed to do it properly even thought know I should.

We don't need meat and dairy to survive- think about how many thousands of people have survived for years without eating these and are thriving health wise.

Who?

NOt totally convinced that it’s automatically kinder to the planet or a human. It seems very hard to have a cheap, healthy, tasty, easy cook, low air miles, minimal processed food vegan diet . The vegans I know rely heavily on avocado and iron tablets.the amount of research I would need to do to change to a vegan diet seems huge and I have yet it be be tempted by any stunning vegan food..not one of our basic household recipes is vegan. Some could be adapted, but only by using heavilybprocessed foods such as vegan cheese.

Cos I like meat and cheese.

Meh, who cares about the animals that suffer. We wouldn't want the bugs could be harmed by a vegan diet dying would we?

Bizzylizzy what happens to your male calfs?

Urgh. I find it grim when people only care about fluffy animals. Another reason im not vegan.

I like meat cheese and eggs

ThanksForAllTheFish

We get the vegan cheese from Tesco or Saintsbury's. Not a clue what it is called but it is slices and it has a black top with white writing (something like Vita life)

It tastes like edam.

We do need animal products to be healthy. It’s an unfortunate fact

No we don't. My only non vegan food is 3 eggs I have about once every month. I doubt if I cut them out I would suddenly collapse.

MIdgebabe

I have not had an avocado in months and the last time I had/needed an iron tablet was when I ate meat.

Another thing I have noticed neither I nor my children have ever suffered from D&V.
I did when I ate meat 30+ years ago

My children tower above myself and their ddad. DD on her charts she was forecast to be 5ft 6".
She smashed through that at 14 and carried on growing
Ds was meant to be 5ft 10"
Both forecast heights were about right considering mine and DPS height.
He is 16 and 1/2 off 6ft and has not finished growing.

A good vegan diet is very varied. I actually find the majority of meat eaters are the ones that eat quite a restricted diet.

The thing that puts me off cows' milk is the fact that it doesn't just come from one cow. When you drink a glass of milk you are drinking a big mix of milk from lots of different cows. Same goes for all milk products you eat. Just the thought of that makes me feel a bit sick.

Then clearly I don’t know you, olivers,ummy in real life. I didn’t say it was impossible. I was saying I have not seen anyone do it in a way I would be happy to emulate

Perhaps you could pop up a vegan recipe that would make a good family weekday dinner as a starter point, would be useful to have a few in the reportoire ( I have one dinner party option , where I have more time, but o5herwise it’s pasta in tomatoe & garlic sauce which I can’t stand, I overdid. Tomatoe sauce as a student , so end up cooking 2 dinners)

Becuase I love eating meat!

My favourite meals are BBQ ribs, steak, roast lamb.

I don't feel any guilt in eating them either

I love meat. A nice blue steak. Yum!

Vega isn't has a huge environmental impact. I don't believe it's any better than eating meat. Plus vegan food is gross. It would be bad for my health because there just isn't enough food I could live on.

Hang on, my veggie curry is probably vegan ! That could make things easier,

I don’t use recipes as I am a shit cook.

I tend to throw a lot of chopped up veg in a pan with tomatoe sauce and chilli powder and a tin of kidney beans start it off on the stove then cover and stick in the oven for a bit of time to stew. Usually have to go out at that point and collect dp from the train.

Then do some rice.

I am pretty convinced that moving the western world to a low meat, low dairy diet would have a strongly positive carbon impact

Just reading through responses there’s so much claims from both sides of the argument it’s hard to separate fact. A lot of the vegan YouTube videos have a lot of dubious science claims in .

I don’t use recipes as I am a shit cook.

I tend to throw a lot of chopped up veg in a pan with tomatoe sauce and chilli powder and a tin of kidney beans start it off on the stove then cover and stick in the oven for a bit of time to stew. Usually have to go out at that point and collect dp from the train.

Presumably that's not the only meal in your repertoire though?!

It's really not restrictive if you put some time into researching it properly and it opens up a whole new world of food.

No, it really doesn't. I routinely eat vegetarian and vegan food, and eat in a variety of vegetarian (and in large part vegan) restaurants - large south Indian community where I live. I also eat meat. Quite why vegans thing their diet is more varied than mine is one of the great mysteries of life. They appear to believe that they are the only people awake in a world of people sleep walking through the food of the 1950s.

I like meat.
I'm lazy.
I'm greedy.

I'm not proud of those things but there you go.

In respect to out predecessors who spent 70,000 years getting to the top of the food chain.

Because bacon.

In all seriousness: because I really can't be bothered to spend a significant amount of my time fretting about my diet. Which I'd have to do if I wanted to be both a) vegan and b) healthy.

All the vegans I know well enough for me to be privy to this kind of information are either on supplements or suffering from some kind of nutritional deficiency.

One of my employees is a vegan in her mid-twenties. She's young, otherwise healthy and used to be into competitive sports in her pre-vegan days (regional championship level). I'm in my mid thirties, don't eat particularly well, don't exercise anywhere near enough and I work a 60 hour week on average. I'm also both stronger and have about twice the stamina of that woman despite us being of roughly similar height and weight.

There's no way that's healthy!

Bottom line, billions of animals are killed everyday and nobody gives a shit!