AIBU to think there’s no justification for eating meat and dairy any more?

[AnnoyingVegan]

People are educated now. People know that eating meat and dairy is disastrous for the planet. People know it’s causing an unprecedented climate crisis. People know it causes untold cruelty to animals.

So why are people still doing it? There is a vegan substitute for virtually every meat and dairy product you can think of. What is going on here?

The number of people I’ve seen on social media breaking their hearts over Australia shooting wild camels and horses because they drink too much water while still eating beef blows my mind.

I can’t bring myself to eat quorn or soy products. There’s just something extremely weird about it to me.

I’m seeing a lot of jackfruit on the shelves recently- in tins.
How on earth is eating fruit from Malaysia good on our carbon footprint?

What about avocados? They’re not friendly on your carbon footprint either.

If we didn't eat beef and drink milk we wouldn't have cows except for a few rare breeds kept for exhibition purposes.

I eat very little meat - no red meat, some free range chicken/turkey and fish. But I am going to continue eating cheese and drinking milk.

Vegan alternatives are very expensive and I am not at all convinced that it is better for the planet to import alternatives from all over the world when you can buy eggs from down the road.

Free range alternatives are expensive too. I didn't realise how expensive free range (not even organic) chickens are, until Sainsburys ran out of them and DH bought a normal one instead. £2.70! Compared with about £11. In fact perhaps I should be commenting on how cheap the normal ones are. It didn't taste that great and we won't be repeating that mistake despite the massive difference in price.

It's perfectly possible to make lots of great veggie and vegan meals but sometimes only a roast chicken dinner will do.

And I need milk in my coffee, it's horrible without. Although I do have a couple of cartons of Oatly Barista to try.

What about avocados? They’re not friendly on your carbon footprint either

No, I like them and eat them on occasion but feel more guilty about eating them than I do about drinking UK milk.

@LynetteScavo
Well put. The irony of course is that many people would actually feel happier in their own lives if they drove less, had a better diet, and bought less stuff. All which would benefit the environment massively. But we are not rational creatures neither individually or collectively.

I have lachanophobia so i’d be totally screwed personally. My kids are autistic - they eat fruit and veg and are dairy and egg free due to allergies, but they have a limited diet so we would struggle. Some of the kids with ASD I know would be in major trouble as they eat so few foods as it is.

It’s also bloody expensive to eat a vegan diet compared to not - even down to things like substitute milks, we spend a fortune on oat milk and dairy free alternatives.

It’s the same with bananas. We can’t grow them here, it’s too cold.
Pineapples.
Kiwis
Passion fruit
Papaya
Lychee
Mango
Pomegranate
Oranges

• very much all popular upon the vegan/ veggie accounts I follow online (I am a meat eater but I do enjoy the style of food of a few accounts and I just sub fake meat for real).

Urgh bloody vegans. Holier than thou, telling us that what we were designed to eat is not what we should eat.
Nope not having it....

@BlaueLagune
Vegan alternatives are very expensive ...
You don’t need “alternatives”, but you do need a basic level of meal prep/cooking ability which unfortunately in the days of long work hours and reliance on processed food many lack. From my experience someone who is a half decent cook and likes to be a bit creative now and then will have a ball eating a vegetarian diet, while people who always stick to the meat, 2 veg formula will struggle somewhat. Which isn’t to say they can’t do it but it will always feel like they’re “missing out”. I’m 38 and have been vegetarian the past three years with my wife (having done it when I was a teenager, using endless meat substitutes) and I’ve never eaten better in my life and not a meat “substitute” in sight.

I used to think it was too expensive. Its actually so much cheaper!

I think the western diet/food culture doesn’t translate as well to vegetarianism as some Asian cuisines. There’s absolutely endless vegetarian stuff you can do with noodles or rice as the staple. Though of course the same is true of pasta. If you miss the consistency/texture of meat in the sauce , that can easily be mimicked via, for example, mushrooms or , tofu, or quinoa, or many other possibilities
. It just takes a bit of knowhow and, ideally, a food processor of some kind (we have one of those cool pull string manual ones off Amazon which does the job damn well for about 12 quid - saves an absolute age in cutting vegetables).

Because I already can't eat gluten. If I take meat and diary out my diet, I'll be living off potatoes.

Where there is information there are informed choices available.
These choices mean people like you op can choose to live your life in a vegan/vegetarian way. That's fine your choice is accepted and respected by me what is not fine is when i choose to stay put and eat meat and you don't accept and respect my choice.
Normally I don't mind what choices folk make but on this occasion to you specifically op stop being a narrow minded dictator and accept that people can make the choice themselves, why? Free will. Stop ramming it down people's throats yes the i fos there should they decide to change their mind.

Info not ifos!

My justification is simple: Being vegetarian or vegan would kill me.
On the one hand, I like the idea of being vegan. On the other, I quite like being alive. For me, and others, there isn't a happy medium that allows us to go vegan or even just vegetarian without at the very least putting our health/lives at risk.
So, vegans who want everyone to copy them, are we just to die off so you can get your vegan utopia? Why is it OK for people to die for your beliefs? Do we not have an equal right to life as the animals you claim to love (which humans are animals)?

Do people with health conditions get a “pass” from the “Unsolicited Advice Cults” or are they just collateral damage?

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/vegans-could-be-bad-for-environment-say-scientists-k55s7ckb2

We should all eat less meat as someone said up thread.

I disagree, I think we need to change the type of meat we eat.

When was the last time you ate offal? There should be a move towards eating all of an animal.

The only supermarket I can remember seeing lamb's heart is Morrisons, I do see some liver for sale and lambs kidneys but not much else.

If/when you do buy offal it is really cheap, I make chicken liver pate, the tubs of livers are £0.50. I don't think I've seen tripe for sale outside the dog food isle.

I know it is impractical to buy and use a whole animal but maybe we should be all eating more of the animal.

|And I do know not everyone likes offal, personally I cannot stand tripe but I think we should try to eat more of an animal.

Because vegan diet is no more sustainable that a meat based system. It's true that intensive systems and intensive agriculture is inherently bad for our planet, but that isn't in any way exclusive to livestock rearing.

The almond and avocado industries are some of the most water hungry systems in agriculture - almond milk is absolutely not a sustainable milk alternative and it boils my piss that it is promoted as the saviour of the clampit carnivore.

Fucking "Veganuary" and the coop are pushing greens which are out of season in the UK and therefore hold literally tens of thousands of air miles to get to your plate.

You want to save the planet? Eat grains, pulses and veg when they are in season in this country. Buy only high welfare meat which has been fed on a low input grass system and reared locally. Stop supporting an industry that involves flying vegetables half way around the globe for your convenience. The carbon footprint on my herd of Lincoln red is significantly less than that if your South American vegan diet and ecologically, they were reared without mass deforestation so it's a win win.

People know that eating meat and dairy is disastrous for the planet. Right there with overpopulation, which seems to have escaped you.

I don't eat meat because - looks around tentatively - I don't like the taste of it. Family and friends do and they're welcome to it. I do like fish (does that make me Bloodgill rather than Bloodmouth? ) and have no plans to stop buying good quality organic milk and eggs.

The vegan's friend the almond is a water-hog which isn't good news in dry California. Margarine? Mmmm, iffy oils that have been processed with nickel catalysts, who wouldn't want that. Rain forests being burnt for soya crops ... enough said.

This is a really extreme suggestion! If everyone in the world stopped eating milk and dairy there wouldn't be enough space to grow sufficient plant-based food for us all!

Plus habitats would drastically change. No more rolling green hills in the Lake District, which are kept that way by grazing sheep. Those places would be overgrown with bracken and eventually turn to woodland. Same for much of Yorkshire and Wales. All the flat land would need to be converted to plant-based food growth to compensate for all the reduction in food production in the hills ..... massive, and not necessarily welcome, change.

Meat vs vegan isn't as simple as carbon footprint. Biodiversity, conservation, economic, social, and other impacts build a much more complex picture, and moderation is almost certain to be the more balanced answer than a simple one or the other choice between meat and vegan.

Eating less meat and more plant-based foods is a good thing. Eating exclusively one over the other, less good.

But "vegan" - is it even a useful definition?

• steak, not vegan
• honey, not vegan
• figs, not vegan,
• almonds, probably not vegan
• organic vegetables, considered by some as not vegan

A good rule of thumb is to pay less attention to anyone who talks about "vegan" and pay more attention to people that talk about "low carbon" and "plant-based".

Vegetable growing takes huge amounts of water - so that has to be pencilled into the calculation. Ok in the UK but look at California. Oh, i see that's been said. The rio grande has little water by the time it reaches Mexico - all used in Calif for fruit and veg..
Also wall to wall plastic tunnels - is that really teh way to go?

YANBU.

Did you know that 96% of the mammal biomass on the planet is either humans or the animals we keep to feed humans?

Those animals (and us) are having an untold effect on the planet. And as for the bonkers claim upthread that cows would become extinct if we didn't eat them ... what do you think is happening to the other 4% of mammals still clinging onto life?!

I want to eat real food not substitute crap that has goodness knows what in it that has all manner of unknown chemicals and crap in it, that will be produced in factories, comes in packaging and is transported around the world. And how is that good for our bodies? If you want to be vegan then just eat veg and pulses dont eat processed crap.

How does that compare to local farmers and butchers who use local produce that doesn't travel far from farms that rear their animals ethically and their fruit and veg is organic and use no plastic packaging?

I feel no guilt about eating meat or dairy. Nor the very few airlines trips I've had in my life that have enhanced my life and experience of the world. I do feel bad about the amount of packaging that is used when not necessary on food that doesn't need to be wrapped.

The only vegetables I like are potatoes, peas, carrots and sweetcorn. I eat a lot of chicken, fish and beef. I don't like any fruit. I don't like noodles. I can have rice I suppose.

I'd either starve or kill myself through sheer boredom.

Monday - rice with peas
Tuesday - rice with sweetcorn
Wednesday - carrot soup
Thursday - rice with potatoes (that sounds yummy)
Friday - rice with carrots
Saturday - carrot soup
Sunday - rice with peas, sweetcorn, carrots and potatoes.

Or, as I think overpopulation is actually the biggest factor in us fucking over this planet, how about I carry on eating what I like and not having any children? Oh, that's good, because I chose not to have any. I've also hardly ever flown. I have to have a car because the public transport rurally is shit, but I have a little car that does 56 mpg and is zero road tax for low emissions. Oh, and I recycle heavily.

I will take no lectures from vegans on what I should eat UNLESS they have chosen not to have children either. Then I might.