Real food has a steadily diminishing percentage in the concoctions in 80% of the grocery store. The first TV dinners were real frozen foods on an airline tray. I've been reading ingredients lists (which those tv dinners didn't have!) since 2003 and they just get longer and less decipherable.

Here's the ingredients list for the fake meat which might or might not be on the thread somewhere:



I'm glad at least this tastes terrible because it is terrible.

And remember, despite with the farm lobby infused "health" people say, it's scientifically proven that making fertilizer puts 100 times more methane in the atmosphere than all the cow farts and burps.

You can believe the veggie lie, the vegans want that, and the soy and corn farmers do too, but you aren't helping the environment by doing that.

Chefs get to choose their menu!!

In a town I lived in long ago had a restaurant with a vegetarian based menu. Best veggie burgers ever. It was where college students could get an affordable meal. Protein was cheeses and eggs.

The menu selections tasty. Everything made at restaurant from scratch. Every item was fresh and wholesome. A delight to eat there.

Still miss their veggie burgers.....never found another so good.

Go eat at a chain restaurant if you want a vegetarian dish. Leave the real restaurants to make their own menus.

All those beloved vegetarian dishes were egg/dairy based. Plenty of protein, fat, and nutrients. But those went down too, under the fanatical demands of the vegan cult. Which I was inoculated against, having been a vegetarian. But the whole world fell for it... and maybe now, they can see the massive holes in every vegan argument.

Ovo-lacto vegetarianism is healthy, but for me, it wasn't enough. I seem to have a higher than average need for protein, and my body craves fat. Every time I dutifully cut down on that macro, I suffer until I go back to what my body wants.

Perhaps I'm an outlier because I have gone zero carb for months at a time, which many people find difficult. It was the oxalate dumping that followed which was the problem, and I'm thankfully addressing that with the Toxic Superfoods book. (An important note for anyone who is really cutting their carbs, then running into trouble.)

But then, I always suspected vegans were a balloon full of hot air. It seems to be devolving into something beloved of the Fat Acceptance people, who have gone off the rails. I completely agree every body deserves respect, but they deny their metabolic intake has anything to do with their clothes size, which is written by their genes and set in stone.

In the meantime, they show off treats from the vegan bakery. Somehow, these deluded folks think vegan is a magic wand that lets them eat whatever they want, as much as they want, as often as they want, because "vegan is healthy."

Their vegan is the ultra-processed kind. Which has tons of added anti-nutrients alongside the existing plant ones. This deranges their metabolism as a result. And, from a lack of B vitamins, their mind.

I know we warn newbies that "cravings" are often an excuse. I just heard a story from someone vegan explaining, "So I was really craving a tuna fish sandwich, but I'm vegan, so I ate a chickpea sandwich." But it reminded me of how so many vegans talk about their meat cravings, which is likely why they eat so much sugar. I think cravings for real food are likely useful. And instead, she got less protein and more anti-nutrients.

While vegans keep it to what they put in their mouths. The whole rest of society which undeniably rests on animal husbandry, in myriad ways? They ignore that.

They aren't principled, after all, if they aren't thinking their decision all the way down. There are sweet people going vegan "for the animals" but they don't listen to me saying the answer is humane animal husbandry. Get the corporations out and the family farms back in, I say, and they are rude to me.

They want the attention and sense of moral superiority. PETA is a scam.

I have a vegan friend.

She agrees, that if you eat eggs, milk or any other product that comes from an animal, you are not a vegetarian, but an omnivore.

Personally, I don't think a vegan (true vegetarian) diet is healthy.

I follow a low-carb, omnivorous diet, and I am going to be 77 soon and am on zero medications.

Of course, we are all different.

I have some other friends who said they ate the fake meat products as a transition food while going vegetarian, but then thought, "Why am I eating something that tastes like something I am trying to avoid?"

They flip-flop between being vegan, and lacto-ovo omnivore.

If there was one best diet for everyone there would only need to be one diet book.

Bob

Just a quick comment to point out that while what is commonly considered to be vegetarian these days is technically an omnivorous diet, they're still quite different from what the general public would consider to be omnivore (eating all animal products along with vegetation), and also different from what's considered to be vegan.


The distinction I see between what is generally called a vegan diet these days, and what is generally called a vegetarian diet is that vegetarians will eat animal products which do not harm the animal in any way:

-Hens are going to produce eggs, whether they've ever met a rooster or not. The hen can sit on an unfertilized egg forever and it'll never hatch into a chick - that egg is not viable, except as as source of food. Vegetarian/omnivores recognize that fact - that it does not harm the chicken in any way.

-A cow that has birthed a calf will produce far more milk than the calf can possibly consume. It actually helps a lactating cow if the excess is milked off, so that she doesn't develop a nasty case of mastitis. That excess milk the cow produced is not harming the cow when used as a food source for humans.


I'm not saying that the definition of vegetarian as being omnivore is not right - technically it is very right.

I just wouldn't go around referring to those in the general public who call themselves vegetarians as omnivores, because the word omnivore means something different to the general public, especially most of those in the general public who call themselves vegetarians these days. With the development of the word vegan in recent years, those who avoid any animal products at all have come up with a term to distinguish themselves those who eat mainly vegetable matter, but also eat animal products that don't harm animals. Those who eat what is generally called a vegan diet today - if they continue to use the term vegetarian to describe their diet, refusing to adopt the new-fangled term "vegan", then they should not be at all surprised if someone inadvertently serves them eggs, cheese, and other dairy products mixed into their vegetable matter, thinking that by vegetarian what they mean is "vegetarian/omnivore".

I say, what plant does that egg or cheese grow on? What vegetable does it grow on? That egg is potentially a chicken, it has all the chicken protein in it and if a rooster was allowed close by, it could very well be a chicken.

I suspect many people who claim to be lacto-ovo vegetarians, just want to be included in the vegetarian club, as if there was some kind of elite status in that.

My vegan friend agrees. Her husband is lacto-ovo, but he doesn't call himself a vegetarian.

Sorry, if you eat cheese or eggs, you aren't a vegetarian, you are just a picky eater. And that's OK. I'm a picky eater, I don't eat high-carb foods, and since I have a sensitivity to it, I don't eat foods with onions, garlic and a few other foods.

I eat a lot of animal products, but since I do eat some plant foods as well, I'm not going to call myself a carnivore. That would be as ludicrous as someone eating cheese and eggs calling themselves a vegetarian.

Perhaps we need a new name for those who don't eat meat but still eats animal protein. Vegetarian doesn't describe it.

Bob

When I was a vegetarian in the 70s, 80s, 90s, it was pretty clear what a vegetarian was - you ate dairy, eggs, honey but not meat, fish, fowl, or shellfish. This was in fact the definition upheld by the Vegetarian Society of the UK, which has been going since the late 19th century. I subscribed to a vegetarian magazine for years, and there was always a small classified ad for the Vegan Society. Most vegetarians thought vegans were extremists and were sceptical of their assertions that you could be totally healthy with zero animal intake.

They are correct. And all the lovely vegetarians I know still think that way.

Vegan is still the extremist offshoot, because there isn't any science there. It's a cult. I am extremely relieved the corporate plant-based push failed so quickly and decisively. Now perhaps all the lies they keep telling will fade.

Not surprised in the least ...

There was a paper published on the Victorian working class, living in squalor yet managing to thrive once they got past childhood epidemics. It was because they ate stuff like animal organs. Cheap, but a good food source.

When processed foods came in, right around 1900, the situation plunged into degeneracy, and look where we are now.

I still say, "What plant does an egg or piece of cheese come from?" Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral?

So someone who eats plants, eggs and dairy is just a picky eater. I understand, I'm a picky eater. I don't eat sugar and high glycemic starches.

I don't eat vegetables, but I don't consider myself a carnivore because I eat nuts and other plant foods.

I know people like to call themselves vegetarians when they eat from animal, vegetable, and mineral groups, but that's not being honest, no matter how many magazines or dictionary entries there are.

But that's just me being picky. What I and my vegan friend thinks, doesn't really matter.