How to become vegan if you enjoy dairy and a bit of meat but want to give them up on principle?

[malificent7]

I used to be vegan 25 years ago before it became trendy. Unfortunately it was tough back then , i gad no support from family/ friends/ society and I was tunnel vision resulting in an eating disorder.
I would like to ve vegan again due to climate change and I genuinely like my veg but i don't want to become they typical vegan bore again and i like meat and dairy. Sounds a bit stupid but id like to give it another go...any tips?

@TowandaForever - thanks for the tip! Will try it. Proper builders tea (not black) is probably the thing I'd struggle the most without 😋

I don't need to be told what to eat or to follow guidelines. I follow the results on my glucometer thanks. If I spike, I avoid that food and grains spike me, as do bananas and even beans if I eat too many.

I’ve been veggie for years, I’d love to be vegan for animal welfare but when I tried I really struggled 😬

@Idontbelieveit14 what did you struggle with? Maybe we can offer some suggestions and help.

how is it appalling advice when it’s based on peer reviewed science

Apologies, I don't have enough time to look for lots of links, but a quick search brought back this. Research from Sweden. Vegans and vegetarians appear to be more likely to develop diabetes type 2 due to lack of vitamin A.

www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/health/vegetarians-vegans-more-likely-develop-115014

And this only covers how prone one can be to develop diabetes type 2, it doesn't explain the impact of trying to obtain enough nutrients once you are type 2 and restrict animal products. How many lentils would you have to consume to obtain what you would from liver, eggs or fish, for instance? You would need to eat a lot of carbs, which is a no-no for a diabetic.

Why don't you just have it less often, then less often than that and see where your comfort level is?

Trust me many of us vegans aren't bores
It has honesrly never been easier to go vegan. There is such a range at the moment.
For cheese, Apple wood, Mexicana and violife are your best bets. They are all great. Apple wood especially melts brilliantly.
For milk, I use oat. All I really use it for is coffee.
Chocolate - you have a full Galaxy vegan range, most good quality dark chocolates are vegan and you have Hotel Chocolat for something fancy.
Meats - there's literally a full range in every supermarket of different meats.
Are you good at cooking? Since going vegan my cooking skills have got to be the best they've ever been because I've properly learned how to make nice meals, your likes of chickpeas, lentils, pulses, legumes are super cheap and you can make a lovely filling meal very easily.
More than happy to try my best to answer any other questions

@dunkaccino

Oh don't be so silly. How can you possibly try to say that a vegan child has less environmental impact than the child never existing? This level of bigoted stupidity is why I'm not reading anything more on this thread.

This

I’ve never heard of anyone having a vitamin a deficiency in the developed world @mustlovegin although I know it is a problem in certain developing countries (not due to veganism). There are many ways to get it other than meat and eggs, eg any of the many yellow/red/orange fruit and veg…

You keep saying how not eating meat is bad for health but you don’t say why. Why would a meat free diet be bad for children’s health

About ten years ago I went through a period of not eating a lot of meat as, ironically, I don't like it very much. I did eat healthily though, so not overweight or too much processed food. Gradually my labs started to deteriorate, iron through the floor, B12 was low, hormones out of whack, etc. I started taking good quality supplements (off the top of my head Floradix, calcium citrate, etc), not the bog standard low absorption ones often added to vegan food (ferrous sulphate, calcium carbonate, etc). My deficiencies worsened. It was only after I started adding more nutrient-dense animal products (I looked at nutrient content per 100 grams - liver, red meat, sea food, hard cheese) that my labs started to improve. I wouldn't subject my children or family to this, it would be harmful.

Some people do well on a vegan diet+supplements, but many don't. That's why the 'guidance' is flawed when it states that everyone should do well on a vegan diet. IMO it's irresponsible to make a statement like that. I can only assume there are massive lobby groups pushing for veganism, climate change, etc and not many scientists (at least in the UK) dare to speak up and go against the tide.

These threads do rile me up, especially when some start to preach 'just consume less of X, Y, Z' - well, many simply can't or we would be unhealthy. And I'm also upset that so many in the UK appear to be silly enough to starve themselves and their children when billions around the world are trying to get access to more animal products to improve their diets.

And OP, just one other thing. You mentioned you have taken Japan as an example. You haven't said whether you are Japanese, but bear in mind that genetics can be different. Caffeine, for instance impacts hormones differently depending on race.

I wouldn't attempt to eat what an Innu or Maori eats and believe it would impact me similarly. I would probably read the research and then monitor my own labs. Make sure you do this if you want to go down the vegan route

@mustlovegin but we aren’t starving ourselves I’ve been vegan well over a decade and my blood tests a year ago were all good, I’ve always been a healthy weight etc. That’s anecdotal but so is your experience. I know many long term vegans with no health issues. Saying “it would be harmful” isn’t actually evidenced and you base that assumption only on anecdata.

The British Dietic Association aren’t lobbying for veganism. Actually if you want to know who is lobbying a lot it’s the animal agriculture industry, against veganism.

The vitamin A thing, the news article (which isn’t the actual study) only says that vegetarians and vegans could be more likely to develop diabetes but in fact a) it’s perfectly possible to have enough vitamin A from plants (beta carotene which converts to vit A in the body) and b) the other studies show that vegetarians and vegans are in fact less likely to get diabetes. So you haven’t proven anything.

And further it may be beta carotene, from plants, which is a protective factor for diabetes med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2013/01/beta-carotene-may-protect-people-with-common-genetic-risk-factor-for-type-2-diabetes-researchers-find.html

This is a very controversial topic but I believe that a vegan diet is definitely good for the environment but I also believe humans are meant to be omnivores. I find that I need at least a little bit of animal protein to feel healthy so most of my diet is vegan but I do have some eggs and a bit of dairy (but also plant milks).

kikisparks my anecdata and your anecdata just prove that we are all different and that generalisations are harmful, yes. The problem starts when someone says 'we should all be doing X'

Source your meat & dairy from organic, regenerative, carbon positive farmers.
That's a good ethical position to take.
Look up things like pasture for life, grass-fed beef & dairy, farm wilder, farms who do carbon audits, calf at foot dairy etc.
To support a transition to a sustainable food system we need to put our money where our mouth is.

Hi OP. I think the easiest way to go vegetarian is, to put it bluntly, to think about abbatoirs. How did that animal feel in its last few seconds? The mountains of wasted dead animals every year. As someone once said to me - “do you want your body to be a morgue?” The meat industry and those involved in it areas the shame of humanity and once you’ve seen it for what it is, there’s no going back.

As for veganism, just start slowly. Anything is better than nothing. Replace your usual milk order with some almond / oat / soya milk. See which you like best in coffee or tea. Make it an almond latte at Starbucks. Buy the Alpro yogurts - their delicious! So is vegan chocolate. Basically, lots of little changes add up to a lot. Anything is better than nothing.

Now in the supermarkets the dairy alternative aisle is as long as the dairy. Personally, I don’t go for meat substitute products, but plenty do - as evidenced in the ever-increasing variety of meat alternative products.

Imagine if all the meat eaters just ate meat once a week. Imagine the millions of animals that wouldn’t be bred simply for slaughter as a result.

Even if you just replace one pint of milk a week with an alternative, it’s sending the right message to a very unpleasant industry. It all adds up.

I do love animals but im not doing this from a purely animal rights viewpoint although I do believe that intensive farming of animals is abhorent.
However one vegan friend told me it was absolutely bad to eat meat. I told her that if I was starving I would have no problem hunting and killing prey. I am a hunter at heart. However, i dont like the thought of battery farming or cows being electrocuted or more importantly the ecosystem collapsing so i will bear that in mind.

I bought some applewood. " cheese"...excited to try it out!

Your body as a morgue thing is just an emotive metaphor...meat eaters may say that the dearh of one being gives another being life....but now i'm getting philosophical!

Death*

Most vegans like the taste of meat and dairy! We just choose the animals over our taste buds.
I cut out dairy first, I've read it's addictive and it was definitely easier to do it like that and then cut out meat, for me.
I did have to learn a new way of cooking and it took me about three months to feel on top of it but that was four years ago and it's even easier now with so many vegan options in shops and restaurants.
Join some Facebook groups like vegan UK to get help and advice on recipes etc, and just take it a step at a time - I started with food then toiletries and then other things. It can feel overwhelming otherwise.

Trust me many of us vegans aren't bores
I agree, but many are. As it is a lifestyle choice there's no need to hold forth at the dinner table and make others feel uncomfortable. There's no need to banish omnivores from your kitchen to a 'cupboard' where non-vegan products are permitted. My born-again vegan sister does both of these and we've fallen out over it. Her diet is not as healthy as mine as she appears to live on highly-processed gunk shaped to look and smell like the 'real thing' that goes in the microwave. Yes, of course not all vegans are bores but there are plenty of sanctimonious ones around! I wish the OP well - her approach sounds a good one - and I've picked up some tips on here on how to make some easy changes to my diet.

@Ihaventgottimeforthis that’s not the climate solution:

www.tabledebates.org/node/12335

This report finds that better management of grass-fed livestock, while worthwhile in and of itself, does not offer a significant solution to climate change as only under very specific conditions can they help sequester carbon. This sequestering of carbon is even then small, time-limited, reversible and substantially outweighed by the greenhouse gas emissions these grazing animals generate. The report concludes that although there can be other benefits to grazing livestock - solving climate change isn’t one of them.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.independent.ie/business/farming/forestry-enviro/blow-for-grass-fed-beef-as-new-report-suggests-its-part-of-the-climate-problem-not-solution-36209259.html

But at an aggregate level the emissions generated by these grazing systems still outweigh the removals and even assuming improvements in productivity, they simply cannot supply us with all the animal protein we currently eat. They are even less able to provide us with the quantities of meat and milk that our growing and increasingly more affluent population apparently wants to consume. Significant expansion in overall numbers would cause catastrophic land use change and other environmental damage. This is especially the case if one adopts a very ‘pure’ definition of a grazing system, the sort that grazing advocates tend to portray, where livestock are reared year-round on grass that is not fertilised with mineral fertilisers, receiving no additional nutritional supplementation, and at stocking densities that support environmental goals.

link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-020-02673-x

“Grazing systems emit greenhouse gases, which can, under specific agro-ecological conditions, be partly or entirely offset by soil carbon sequestration. However, any sequestration is time-limited, reversible, and at a global level outweighed by emissions from grazing systems. Thus, grazing systems are globally a net contributor to climate change.”

I always said I might do vegetarian but never vegan, as I couldn't give up cheese (though I have done veganuary for several years). Recently, I started a whole foods, plant-based diet (to benefit my health as well as environmental reasons). It is also called starch solution or high carb low fat online, and it is SO much easier than I expected. Baked a load of potatoes and steam/microwave some veg plus add an oil free sauce. I have this for breakfast and lunch most days, and now I can't see why I ever cooked low carb. My energy levels are better now, and weirdly, it has fixed my lifelong anaemia, although my DH said going vegan would make it worse.

I am plant based.The more you know the less you like those industries and the longer you don't consume it the less likely you are.First time I ate cheese after a long break I actually hated it.Slighltly sour taste and it leaves fatty residue in your mouth...its all about what you are used to