SlowPlanet Forums » Food

1. 

   Pauline
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   Being a vegetarian changes your life in more ways than changing what you eat. You are forced to slow down because you have to think more about what you are eating. No more grabbing a McDonald's burger for a quick lunch. Maybe if vegetarianism becomes more accepted, and McDonald's offers veggie burgers, you will find "fast" vegetarians but for now being a vegetarian means making most of your meals, cooking from scratch, eating grains and vegetables instead of animals.

   I have been a vegetarian for over 25 years (started in my mid-20s). In the early 80s my husband and I were looking for a healthier way to eat and worked our way from Pritikin to McDougall to vegetarian and ended up at Macrobiotics.

   When vegetables are the main part of your diet, you want the best vegetables you can find so we eat organic and try to find locally grown/produced foods. Cooking dinner is one of the calmest parts of the day for me and I really enjoy preparing our meals.

   I left the traditional business world (and gave away my suits) a few years after becoming a vegetarian. For me it felt like becoming a vegetarian was the first step in making a lot of changes in my life, to live more intentionally and to slow it down.

   Posted 1 year ago #
2. 

   ruby
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   Very Very true.

   Actually we arent made to eat meat. Our teeth is not designed in a way to eat flesh, unlike the tigers, the lions and others.

   In a chat with Dr.Devi Shetty, Narayana Hrudayalaya
   (Heart Specialist) Bangalore it was asked of him

   " Qn: Is eating non-veg food (fish) good for the heart?

   ( to which he answered ) Ans: No "

   If it was good for the other organs he would have said No, not good for the heart. But I do not know about the other organs.

   Now listen to this "When a person dies, we bury it. Do we consider our bodies to be a grave yard to bury these dead animals, that we eat.

   We can simply get all the protiens, and other vitamins, minerals etc from the plants. When we cut a plant it grows back. When we cut an animal we are actually working towards the extinction of these species.

   Dont do it. Its better that ways. Think about the pain that it goes through before you eat it up.

   And probably it is because we end up killing animals that we are turning out to be violent in nature. That is probably why you have so many killings happening around you. We have probably become insensitive in nature. And we need to stop it before it eats us up.

   When you eat an animal, before it dies it has a lot of negative energy-its fear, its remorse on having killed it etc and then we eat it up and in the process end up being negative in nature ourselves.

   Realize it before it is too late!

   Posted 1 year ago #
3. 

   papernapkin
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   Nice post.

   I have been vegetarian for more than two years now (yes I am newbie) and I find it definitely helps you slow down. And once you start growing your own food it helps as well. But everything from the food you grow, the preparation, to the consumption, is 110% better.

   Posted 1 year ago #
4. 

   Pauline
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   When I first became a vegetarian it was because we had changed our diet and were only eating meat once a week. I had never been comfortable eating meat. I did not like to eat deer meat that my father got from hunting. I did not like to eat a freshly killed and plucked chicken. I started to think that if I could not go out into a field, kill an animal, skin it, cut it up, cook it and eat it, then I should not be eating meat. I was eating meat but pretending that it did not come from a dead animal.

   So, it was easy for me to stop eating meat since we had worked into it gradually, having more grain and vegetable based meals and finally just stopping the one meat meal per week.

   Our main reasons for stopping were for health (a better diet) and because the commercial meat you get in North America can be bad and is frequently produced in inhumane conditions. My husband eats fish once a week and has occasional turkey sandwiches, so is not a vegetarian.

   Interesting tidbit: Most animals that humans eat are vegetarians, because a vegetarian animal tastes better. Cows, chickens, pigs, horses. Dogs and cats eat meat and we don't eat them (well, most people don't).

   I like Deborah Madison's book "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone". She used to run Greens in San Francisco (vegetarian restaurant) and now lives in Santa Fe NM (where I live, but I don't know her).

   Posted 1 year ago #
5. 

   Pauline
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   Papernapkin: I agree, growing your own vegetables is the way to go. We don't for many reasons - we travel to Europe in the summer and do longer trips, you need a lot of water for gardens in Santa Fe, I have been consumed with work for the past few years. Congrats to you for growing your own!!

   Posted 1 year ago #
6. 

   Giulia da Urbino
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   Hi Pauline! ..the "Slow world" is a small world! ;)
   I definitely understand your reasons for becoming a vegetarian and I do agree that it helps going slow, ... but... my family have been growing organic for more than 25 years now and we also breed cows for meat, if you work for sustainability (environmental & economical) using manure is definitely the best way to grow organically (I'm not implying that it's the ONLY way, but I promise that the alternatives are tough and I wouldn't be able to provide much organic vegetables and cereals for vegetarians to eat had I decided to run a "meat free" farm).
   What I'm saying is that, luckily (for someone who loves her steak every once in a while, I'm not a great meat eater but I wouldn't easily give it up), there are also other ways (food-related) to go slow. Respecting the animals when they live and when they die (I understand that this might sound hypocrisy to some of you), respecting the soil, following the seasons and letting natural cycles rule your cycles are ways to do so.
   I hope you all will have a great slow 2009 (either vegetarian or not!)

   Posted 1 year ago #
7. 

   Pauline
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   Hi Giulia! I was hoping for a non-vegetarian to post. But it is late here, so will reply tomorrow.

   Posted 1 year ago #
8. 

   Pauline
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   I agree that you do not need to be a vegetarian to live a slow life, but I think it helps because it makes you more aware of what you eat and why. For someone who is in a "fast" lifestyle, changing your diet either to be vegan, vegetarian or to concentrate on organic and quality foods is a good first step to get you to seriously look at the way you live and decide what changes to make.

   When I became a vegetarian I was living in a city (Vancouver) and working in the high-tech industry. I was in my late 20s and had big career plans. When we changed our diet, everything else in our lives started to change. We left our jobs and the city, we traveled for several years, we ended up relocating to a smaller town. We went back to work in high-tech, but in a very different way, working from home on contract or for ourselves. This was the change that I needed (obviously, not everyone needs to live the same way). I often wonder what my life would be like now if I had stayed on the other path.

   While I do not think that everyone should be a vegetarian, I do think that many meat-eaters eat too much meat. I would like to see more part-time vegetarians, eating meat-based meals only a few times a week or using meat more as a sidedish. It would help the environment too since worldwide meat production is one of the causes of global warming.

   Posted 1 year ago #
9. 

   Giulia da Urbino
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   I definitely agree that we should all eat less meat because INTENSIVE meat production is one of the causes of global warming. On the other side intensive agriculture is not good for the environment, so I think that the point is being conscious of how the food you're eating is produced, how it gets to you, what this means to the planet. Probably canned tomatoes produced in China (using chemicals in every stage of production) and shipped to Italy (it happens!) is worse for the environment than local organic free-range chicken...
   I'm glad that being a vegetarian ment a turning point in your life!

   Posted 1 year ago #

10. veronika
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    I am vegetarian but I do not have enough knowledge about how things are grown, etc to know what is worse for the environment, but I liked to think that by not eating meat vegetarians are in some way contributing less to global warming- which is the case if intensive meat production is one of the causes of global warming! But Giulia has a good point about the canned tomatoes produced in China being likely to be worse for the environment than local chickens... so there is more to it than we think

    Posted 10 months ago #

11. kanmoorthy
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    I think there is very little data to support either way - whether (intensive) meat causes more damage to environment or vegetable growing. I remember vaguely reading somewhere that to produce a pound of meat it uses about 25000 litres of water where a pound of potato uses about 1/20 of that amount. But don't take this as factual as I just read it in some obscure media. What I am more concerned about is our general pursuit of economic successes measured in terms of monetary wealth. In the food industry, people want to sell more and more of what they produce and whether it is meat or vegetable - this is not a good proposition.

    I have been a vegetarian all my life - never tasted any kind of meat and have no clue how it tastes. People always tell me that being a vegetarian makes you weak. I don't think it is totally true. But of course you need to understand what they benchmark against. If you want to be a body builder or participate in strong man challenge, then being a vegetarian might not help. But for an average healthy life I can bet that being a vegetarian is not much different from eating meat.

    Our taste buds have been conditioned for certain food types and people who are accustomed to eating meat, would find it harder to let go. I agree with Pauline that it surely helps you slow down, which is the purpose of this community anyway. I live in Singapore and it is sort of difficult to find tasty vegetarian food. It forces me to cook and I find that experience meditative (although I wouldn't say the same about dish washing after cooking). It's helped me to differentiate, appreciate good cooking, explore a variety of foods that can be made with the same potato, tomato etc.

    Overall, I thoroughly enjoy being a vegetarian and will strongly recommend to anyone who is sitting on the fence.

    Posted 9 months ago #

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