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Vegan community thread - Give Peas a Chance

anaron

Member
Can the topic extend to vegan friendly care products? I think that could be potentially, largely beneficial to everyone regardless of their diet.
 

EmiPrime

Member
Reposting for new page:

I don't personally care, I just foresaw that the thread would be derailed by people unhappy with the title. Also, see my post above, I know more health/religious vegans than moral vegans which is why the title was weird to me.

Oh well, title changed, let's move on.

I have a question related to health veganism. What's the best way to go about finding out if a restaurant offers vegan options if their website doesn't state nutritonal information and you can't be sure if certain dishes contain animal products?

No such thing really as a "health" vegan. Either you abstain from all animal products (clothes, shoes, cosmetics as well as food) or you're not a vegan.

As for restaurants, phone and email ahead of time.

Happy Cow is a good site too with reviews, maps and a smartphone app.
 
Nobody's had the Morning Star burgers :-/ ?
I don't think they're vegan, so there might not be much experience with them in here. They have cheese of some sort to keep it all together. They're pretty good vegetarian burgers, though! About the same taste as most others. I believe Boca's plain burgers and "chicken" patties are vegan.

Also for an easy way to determine what's vegan, look at the bold "CONTAINS: MILK, EGG" etc. near the bottom of the ingredients. It's meant for allergy sufferers, but it helps to quickly figure out what's vegan, too.
 

dude

dude
Can the topic extend to vegan friendly care products? I think that could be potentially, largely beneficial to everyone regardless of their diet.
Sure. while the OP focuses on diet, all vegan topics are welcome as far as I'm concerned.
 

Famassu

Member
I have a question related to health veganism. What's the best way to go about finding out if a restaurant offers vegan options if their website doesn't state nutritonal information and you can't be sure if certain dishes contain animal products?
Asking the is probably the quickest way ("is this vegan?/do you have any vegan dishes?/what does this dish contain?"), or if you know a forum that might now about it (say, a local vegan community forum), you could try asking them if they have any knowledge about it if you don't dare asking the restaurant cooks/waitresses yourself. Sometimes they can even make some dish vegan-compatible even if normally it includes, say, cow milk if you just ask them to
 
Ah ok, my mistake. I'm not vegan/vegetarian but my wife got some of them today and I thought I'd ask here for some opinions. Thanks :)
 

anaron

Member
Sure, while the OP focuses on diet, all vegan topics are welcome as far as I'm concerned.
Awesome. :)

I'm not vegan myself, (enormously supportive of the cause though) but I try to do the best I can in other aspects of a cruelty free lifestyle and any further tips/information would be fantastic for anyone else in a related position.
 

nynt9

Member
Reposting for new page:



No such thing really as a "health" vegan. Either you abstain from all animal products (clothes, shoes, cosmetics as well as food) or you're not a vegan.

I know several people who have food intolerances, be it dairy or other animal products, and as a result went "fuck it" and decided to go vegan. I think the distinction is a minor semantic one.
 

EmiPrime

Member
I know several people who have food intolerances, be it dairy or other animal products, and as a result went "fuck it" and decided to go vegan. I think the distinction is a minor semantic one.

And a needlessly confusing one. There aren't different categories of vegans, you're either one or you're not and you can't divorce ethics from veganism. It's not just a diet.
 

T-Matt

Member
This is arguably a separate issue from most vegan issues. Domestication of bees can be good to bees on an individual level, but we're approaching a very real food crisis because bees aren't pollinating food on the level we need them to, and some of theories as to why point towards our domestication of them.

Some vegans consume honey and some don't - I tend to think of it as a separate issue.



I personally consider them a vegan food, at least from an ethical perspective. I'd try them, but I don't like most seafood.

With my job we went to visit a local honey producer in Ohio and it was really interesting. He definitely had a lot to say about the issue and a big problem is the pesticides used on crops. I'm am not an expert, and don't debate the issue, but I personally have no issue with honey especially seeing how this business was run.
 

Famassu

Member
It's funny. Something like 5 years ago I was one of those people who'd be all "dat kebab-salami-ham pizza omnomnomnomnomnom :3 :3 :3" (not bacon, though, always hated bacon, tastes like shit, vegan bacon is so much better) and could never even imagine becoming a vegetarian let alone a vegan. But here we are, me thinking about trying to go completely without any animal products. I'm still a vegetarian, though probably something like 80-90% of the foods I buy & cook are completely vegan (and most of the rest have maybe 2-3dl of cow milk, eggs I mostly only use when I make my delicious, delicious chocolate cake, though the next time I do it I'll try it without eggs). At this point I'm almost there, but I'm not sure if I want to become the kind of strict vegan who'll complain from even the pettiest things involving meat like if someone brings meat-including food to my house. I might do it so that I won't buy or cook any animal product including food myself, but if someone offers me food that has been made with milk or has a bit of cheese in it, I'll allow myself to eat it. So a vegan in my everyday life, but can stretch the rules to dip into vegetarianism for sanity's sake in more or less special circumstances.
 
cool thread. I've thought about going vegan (diet-wise) for a bit, mostly cuz I think it's good to reset the diet from time to time and try new things.
 

EmiPrime

Member
It's funny. Something like 5 years ago I was one of those people who'd be all "dat kebab-salami-ham pizza omnomnomnomnomnom :3 :3 :3" (not bacon, though, always hated bacon, tastes like shit, vegan bacon is so much better) and could never even imagine becoming a vegetarian let alone a vegan. But here we are, me thinking about trying to go completely without any animal products. I'm still a vegetarian, though probably something like 80-90% of the foods I buy & cook are completely vegan (and most of the rest have maybe 2-3dl of cow milk, eggs I mostly only use when I make my delicious, delicious chocolate cake, though the next time I do it I'll try it without eggs). At this point I'm almost there, but I'm not sure if I want to become the kind of strict vegan who'll complain from even the pettiest things involving meat like if someone brings meat-including food to my house. I might do it so that I won't buy or cook any animal product including food myself, but if someone offers me food that has been made with milk or has a bit of cheese in it, I'll allow myself to eat it. So a vegan in my everyday life, but can stretch the rules to dip into vegetarianism for sanity's sake in more or less special circumstances.

I don't want to be the vegan police but you're not a vegan if you do these things. It's not something you can just drop when you find it a bit inconvenient or fancy a bit of cheese.

Do what you can by all means but I think you've got the wrong end of the stick as regards veganism.
 
Famassu, do you know someone IRL who does that thing about complaining about meat in the house? I feel you're creating a very false impression for yourself of what a vegan is.
 
I don't want to be the vegan police but you're not a vegan if you do these things. It's not something you can just drop when you find it a bit inconvenient or fancy a bit of cheese.

Do what you can by all means but I think you've got the wrong end of the stick as regards veganism.

I see no problem with it myself, every little helps. Christ it's nice to hear when my meat eating friends eat quorn once in a blue moon. You can't really call yourself a vegan if you do that though just like 'vegetarians' who eat fish...oh and the ones that eat chicken are the best haha oh dear.
 

dude

dude
It's funny. Something like 5 years ago I was one of those people who'd be all "dat kebab-salami-ham pizza omnomnomnomnomnom :3 :3 :3" (not bacon, though, always hated bacon, tastes like shit, vegan bacon is so much better) and could never even imagine becoming a vegetarian let alone a vegan. But here we are, me thinking about trying to go completely without any animal products. I'm still a vegetarian, though probably something like 80-90% of the foods I buy & cook are completely vegan (and most of the rest have maybe 2-3dl of cow milk, eggs I mostly only use when I make my delicious, delicious chocolate cake, though the next time I do it I'll try it without eggs). At this point I'm almost there, but I'm not sure if I want to become the kind of strict vegan who'll complain from even the pettiest things involving meat like if someone brings meat-including food to my house. I might do it so that I won't buy or cook any animal product including food myself, but if someone offers me food that has been made with milk or has a bit of cheese in it, I'll allow myself to eat it. So a vegan in my everyday life, but can stretch the rules to dip into vegetarianism for sanity's sake in more or less special circumstances.
Basically the same for me. I used to be the definition of omnivore. I'd eat anything - I've eaten ostrich, insects and snails (all of which were delicious BTW.) Hell, I even had Foie Gras once...
Now I don't even feel the need to cheat on veganism anymore. And it's been so gradual too, I've slowly cut back on animal products and foods, until about 90% of all I've been eating was vegan, so one day I just decided to "come out" and told my family and friends I'm vegan. I did start off with an agreement with my mom that will eat vegetarian when I come visit so that I can eat there. I think it's good to go into it as slowly as you feel comfortable. Thanks to that, I think it was really easy to me to make the 100% transition, to the point that now I don't even feel tempted when someone brings a cake to work. Once you go in slowly, you can very easily an comfortably set your own boundaries when you're ready for them.

As for meat in the house - I live with two meat-eating flatmates. So I don't think that has to be a problem.

I don't want to be the vegan police but you're not a vegan if you do these things. It's not something you can just drop when you find it a bit inconvenient or fancy a bit of cheese.

Do what you can by all means but I think you've got the wrong end of the stick as regards veganism.

Well, most vegans "cheat" every once in a while. It's hard when you're constantly surrounded by non-vegan food. Or when a friends bakes a cake, and you know it will be super awkward when you say you can't eat it. It takes time to get to the point you are past that. For me it did, anyway. I still called myself vegan while I was going through that process, because I felt that saying I was "vegan" rather than a "sympathizer" or "trying it out" was giving me more purpose and made me feel worse when I did cheat, until eventually I stopped.
 

Lautaro

Member
Well, for example, soy is one of the most popular ways of replacing protein from one's diet (though far from the only one) but soy is also used to feed animals. The thing is, it would be much better if that soy went directly to humans instead of the inefficient animal meat production chain, where most of it is used by the animals' metabolism & released as heat and such and never gets to humans. Currently, it's estimated that well over 50% (I've read estimates as high as ~70%) of arable land is used for grazing and producing food to livestock. If all cattle etc. just died overnight, we'd simply have a huge surplus of food that could feed all of mankind and then some (though, of course not all of that is necessarily fit for human consumption).

I haven't checked too many sources for this, so someone may correct me if these are just vegan propaganda, but producing 1kg of beef for human consumption requires, like, 40x more land than producing 1kg of soy for human consumption. Producing beef also uses 20x times more water than soy production (causing water depletion, desertification and destruction of arable land) and causes a lot more CO2 omissions (which can, indirectly, affect the amount of arable land & food production capacity in the long run through simple phenomena like climate change).

When a person stops eating meat, it means that he/she uses, at best (for some vegetarian/vegan foods), as much as 45x less land for producing his/her animal protein replacing products. If everyone needs that much SMALLER land areas for their food production, how would it ever turn out that you'd actually be using more land? I mean, if you just keep putting -40, -40, -40, -40, -40, -40, -40, -40 of land use etc. etc. for every person who switches eating 1kg of beef to 1kg of soy, I personally don't understand what kind of math would EVER make the sum of that positive (as in, how it would ever lead to veganism being more destructive for the environment than eating meat).

People should already be eating a lot of vegetables so it's not like that would need to change too much or cause huge environmental problems even if the amount of vegetables consumed would increase a ton, not when compared to producing meat + a lot of vegetables already go to waste because not enough people buy them, so maybe the amount of vegetables going to waste would decrease and as such we'd be using land more efficiently.

Vegans & vegetarians will just mostly be replacing the protein intake lost from animal products by plant kingdom products (and might have to increase their spinach eating for dat iron etc.). Otherwise their diets remain mostly the same. So if producing that protein takes way, waaaaaaay less land, in what scenario would the amount of arable land required to feed humans actually increase instead of decreasing a hell of a lot?


If visuals help. Imagine this is the amount of land that goes to meat production

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this would be the amount of land that goes to producing the meat-replacing amount of soy directly to a human

||

For every human that goes from eating beef to eating soy, the food production effect would go from the upper situation of needing a fuckton of land to only needing the "||" amount of land.

Another bad thing about meat production is... a lot or even most of it goes to waste. Some is thrown away already in farms to artificially keep up the price of meat, a lot goes to waste in stores as they can't sell a lot of the meat before it can't be sold anymore and quite a lot goes to waste in the homes of meat-eating people when people buy more meat than they eat and have to throw rotten/spoiled meat out of their fridges.

Thanks for taking the question seriously (I mean, is not like I was asking "what about plants feelings?" for people to get defensive).

Another (superserious) question: do vegans really have superpowers?

Scott+Pilgrim+5.gif
 
I went from vegetarian to wheat-free vegan in December and I've been feeling great, it can just annoying have to think about what i'm going to make for meals sometimes.
 

EmiPrime

Member
Well, most vegans "cheat" every once in a while. It's hard when you're constantly surrounded by non-vegan food. Or when a friends bakes a cake, and you know it will be super awkward when you say you can't eat it. It takes time to get to the point you are past that. For me it did, anyway. I still called myself vegan while I was going through that process, because I felt that saying I was "vegan" rather than a "sympathizer" or "trying it out" was giving me more purpose and made me feel worse when I did cheat, until eventually I stopped.

I can't speak for anyone else but I don't cheat. I am okay with being a bit awkward. ;)

When starting out, sure but that's a transitionary period.
 

dude

dude
I can't speak for anyone else but I don't cheat. I am okay with being a bit awkward. ;)

When starting out, sure but that's a transitionary period.

The question is how long the transition period is... I personally think you should take your time and go in slowly. That way it's easier to stand by the boundaries you set for yourself. Even if that means going "90% vegan" for a while.
 

Famassu

Member
I don't want to be the vegan police but you're not a vegan if you do these things. It's not something you can just drop when you find it a bit inconvenient or fancy a bit of cheese.

Do what you can by all means but I think you've got the wrong end of the stick as regards veganism.
I'm personally not as strict with definitions like that. You might define a vegan as someone who will never ever never ever touch anything animal-based ever again and a vegetarian as someone who's never willing to touch a chicken etc. ever again. I think someone can be a vegetarian, like, 99,9% of the time and maybe having something like chicken when visiting a grandma who doesn't know how to do vegetarian/vegan food doesn't mean he/she stops being a vegetarian. Same goes for veganism. You can define it as someone who will never toucn animal products no matter the situation, but that's the most extreme form of veganism and there can be vegans who aren't quite as strict with it. It's unrealistic to expect that you aren't put into a situation where there isn't some little thing wrong and avoiding it seems sillier/more illogical than just letting it go for that one time. I personally feel like I could consider myself a vegan if I live like a vegan in my oersonal life, yet can bend the rules for a special occasion.

And I wasn't talking about "fancying a bit of cheese", I was talking about situations where, say, maybe someone has sprinkled a bit of parmesan in your food, forgetting/not knowing you are a vegan and me allowing myself to eat that food that someone has seen effort to make for me and would possibly go to waste if I didn't eat it. It would be moronic to throw that food away so you might as well eat it. Or maybe someone has made vegan food for you before and has put something that includes some animal product or the other in it without acknowledging it, and you only find out about it when you're already half-way through the meal. At that point it's all the same to finish the food and it would frankly be stupid not to eat it.

But hey, I'm in it more for the ecological POV (meat production is perhaps the biggest & worst humanmade environmental catastrophe excluding the big CC) than "I don't want to kill/hurt animals" reasons, though if me eating ecologically means no animal has to be hurt, that's a huge plus. I see throwing food away as a much bigger sin than bending your principles in some not-everyday situations. I consider myself a vegetarian even though I occasionally (quite rarely) eat fish (only fish that a friend or a relative has fished, never buy it from the store and avoid Norwegian salmon, tuna etc. completely) and this one time I had to eat chicken because that was the best option available at the time.
 

EmiPrime

Member
I'm personally not as strict with definitions like that. You might define a vegan as someone who will never ever never ever touch anything animal-based ever again and a vegetarian as someone who's never willing to touch a chicken etc. ever again. I think someone can be a vegetarian, like, 99,9% of the time and maybe having something like chicken when visiting a grandma who doesn't know how to do vegetarian/vegan food doesn't mean he/she stops being a vegetarian. Same goes for veganism. You can define it as someone who will never toucn animal products no matter the situation, but that's the most extreme form of veganism and there can be vegans who aren't quite as strict with it. It's unrealistic to expect that you aren't put into a situation where there isn't some little thing wrong and avoiding it seems sillier/more illogical than just letting it go for that one time. I personally feel like I could consider myself a vegan if I live like a vegan in my oersonal life, yet can bend the rules for a special occasion.

And I wasn't talking about "fancying a bit of cheese", I was talking about situations where, say, maybe someone has sprinkled a bit of parmesan in your food, forgetting/not knowing you are a vegan and me allowing myself to eat that food that someone has seen effort to make for me and would possibly go to waste if I didn't eat it. It would be moronic to throw that food away so you might as well eat it. Or maybe someone has made vegan food for you before and has put something that includes some animal product or the other in it without acknowledging it, and you only find out about it when you're already half-way through the meal. At that point it's all the same to finish the food and it would frankly be stupid not to eat it.

But hey, I'm in it more for the ecological POV (meat production is perhaps the biggest & worst humanmade environmental catastrophe excluding the big CC) than "I don't want to kill/hurt animals" reasons, though if me eating ecologically means no animal has to be hurt, that's a huge plus. I see throwing food away as a much bigger sin than bending your principles in some not-everyday situations. I consider myself a vegetarian even though I occasionally (quite rarely) eat fish (only fish that a friend or a relative has fished, never buy it from the store and avoid Norwegian salmon, tuna etc. completely) and this one time I had to eat chicken because that was the best option available at the time.

There is no such thing as "extreme" veganism. Just veganism.

You can't just redefine things around your lifestyle. Vegan has a specific meaning, that is no animal products. It's much more of a philosophy than it is a diet. Same with vegetarian; no meat. You calling yourself vegan or vegetarian then doing things that directly contradict these things out of convenience is dishonest. If you can't be bothered to explain clearly to your friends and family your dietary needs and help out in the kitchen so it's not a burden on them that's on you. Plenty of veg*ns manage this just fine, I have been doing it for a good 12 years.

If you want to dramatically reduce your meat/dairy/eggs consumption then great, good for you but you're not a vegan if you're bending what it really means when it's inconvenient to you.
 

Paracelsus

Member
Are lupini beans de facto good replacements for meat or there's a catch, like "no, you gotta pair them with this and that".
 

Dead Man

Member
I love some good vegan food, I just couldn't do it as a lifestyle. Some friends are on again off again vegans, full time vegetarians, and their food is always awesome. Don't think I could ever not be an omnivore though.

Well if we're gonna get into, I think eating meat is cruel. Actually I don't think the act of eating meat is cruel, personally if you go out and hunt your own meat, kill it etc and eat it fine. I think the meat industry is cruel and wasteful.

On a lighter note, apparently this stuff has made it to the UK, I checked out the ingredients and

Too bad about the palm oil in it :/
 

EmiPrime

Member
So when you became a vegan what did you do with your down, wool, feather, and leather items?

Sell, trade, give away to friends or charity or use until they need to be replaced then get vegan replacements.

It's up to the person and what they are comfortable with and what they are financially able to do. The product has been made and bought so the harm has been done already.

I think I needed new shoes at the time anyway so it was pretty effortless.
 

dude

dude
So when you became a vegan what did you do with your down, wool, feather, and leather items?

I only had leather items, and I donated them.
I did use them until they got worn out though, because I think it's better to maximize their use before buying more and creating more waste.
 

dude

dude
So, a couple of days ago I discovered the wonders of spirulina shakes. spirulina is a bit expensive, but I found out it's pretty much worth it. That thing it mad good for you, especially protein-wise.
 

Bitmap Frogs

Mr. Community
While not a vegan, I eat a lot of vegan-y stuff since I'm mediterranean. Here's a delicious recipe for you!

Espinachs with pine nuts and raisins.

It works best with frozen espinachs that come in square blocks.

Soak the raisins in cognag and heat them in the microwave for like half a minute. Let them soak while you cook the dish.

Boil the spinachs, after that rinse them to ensure they do not carry any water.

Take a pan, add olive oil and heat up but not too much. Once you reach a proper temperature drop a skinned clove of garlic for 1-2 rations, if you're making a large amount drop more cloves. With a gentle heat, move around the clove(s) of garlic so that the olive oil takes the flavor of garlic. Once the cloves start to brown, add in the spinachs and raise the temperature of the fire a bit. Stirr a few times, then add the pine nuts and the raisins. Keep stirring until the ingredients have soaked up the olive oil.

Serve.

Things to take into account: temperature of oil and amount are critical. If the oil is too hot ingredients won't mix the flavors, rather they'll just brown and fry. If there's too much oil the ingredients won't soak it all and oily spinachs taste bad and no matter how much you try you won't be able to rinse it all.

Variations: if you don't like garlic, you can replace it with minced onion. If you aren't fond of alcohol, you can soak the raisins in water instead, but be sure to rinse and dry them well before throwing them into the pan.

Spices and salt according to your tastes.

Enjoy!
 

The_Poet

Banned
Just curious if you got the thread title from this bridge I used to drive through every day in London:

peas.jpg


Made me laugh!
 

dude

dude
Just curious if you got the thread title from this bridge I used to drive through every day in London:

peas.jpg


Made me laugh!
Nope, I read it somewhere on the internet... Can't even remember where. Just thought it would be cute and harmless.

I love pine nuts. Shame they are so expensive. :(
Pine nuts are amazing in salads. Also, can make some amazing pine nut butter with them, but they're so expensive I can never justify using so much of them :(

And that recipe looks very good Bitmap Frogs, I might try it today if I have some pine nuts left. Thanks!
 

Collete

Member
Bout time this thread was created for Vegans!

Although I'm not necessarily a vegan, more of a lacto-ovo vegetarian, but I still appreciate all the information from vegans.
Is it ok if I still hang around here though?
 

itsinmyveins

Gets to pilot the crappy patrol labors
I was a vegetarian for nearly two years when I was younger way back, but I've recently started to move to a vegetarian diet again.

I like meat a lot.

Hamburgers. Steaks. Gah, my mouth starts watering just at the thought of it, but I thought I should at least do a bare minimum of "good" so I've decided to eat vegetarian mostly, but leaving room to allow myself a burger or so occasionally. It's better than nothing, I'm thinking. Haven't had meat for months now though, apart from maybe fish once or twice.
 
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