We’re not anti-meat, however. We treat ourselves to steak once in a great while. We love burgers, just not too often. Being French-Canadian, loving pork is in my blood (just kidding), and we eat chicken. We also try for fish or seafood once a week. And even when we’re being vegetarian, we’re lacto-ovo–dairy products and eggs included.

If someone can make a vegetarian or vegan diet work for them, and they feel good on it, that’s great. You have to understand about nutrition to make those diets work properly, especially vegan. And vegan requires that you be really into soy, which has its own downsides (e.g., phyto-estrogens, and much soy is GMO). Non-meat-eaters often have to take at least some vitamins as well, especially B12, which is hard to get except in meat.

One of the most recent arguments against eating meat is that it takes much more energy to produce than other kinds of protein. Meat production is resource-intensive.

As for our ancestral proclivities, human beings are omnivores. Our teeth seem to be best suited to eating nuts and fruits, but they work for meat, and we can digest meat. Keep in mind that carnivores eat meat raw, including organs and bone marrow, and that’s where they get vitamins and other nutrients that cooked muscle meat doesn’t have.

One final word: no one likes nutrition nazis.

as for me, i like my cheese burger once in a while! but i am trying to eat less meat and more veggies. and eat a lot less red meat.

and dammit, you caught me on that third vegetarian!

Jani

Ashley: Actually Moby is vegan, not vegetarian.

Anyway, back on topic. My diet growing up was pretty much the same as yours, meat and some veg (which aside from spuds I ignored). Over the last few years Ive gradually found myself eating more food that while not exactly a salad, doesn’t contain any meat.

When cooking for myself the last few months I tended to cook a lot of cicken based dishes, simply because it was very flexable, which is great till you figure out why its so damn flexable. Chicken tastes like nothing, which is why all the bland crap on the planet tastes like chicken. So why not switch something else in its place and not have the bad karma

So far, aside from meat free burgers (UK – ASDA’s own – better than beef!). I’ve bee far from impressed by meat substitutes and look alikes. My suprise is that it only took a week fo me to start trying new foods that would never have been on the menu before AND finding them to be better than I could have hoped for.

Over the last couple of years my body has become a focus and as I’ve changed and grown I’ve started to care more about how I look after it. Getting healthy is something thats more and more important.

I do miss meat sometimes, but not as much as I thought I would.