Vegetarian diets

[Jeremy]

Ok so I've bitten the bullet and am making my best effort to become a vegetarian, or at least a defacto vegetarian. I've made the decision for moral reasons based on the environmental consequences of eating meat. In many ways this makes the change harder because I'm actually trying to eat products that have very low environmental impacts - so it's nothing against eating meat specifically, it's just one of the many products I've identified as having a very high environmental cost. I would still definitely eat meat if it came from a low environmental cost source - such as the wallaby burgers/sausages we eat sometimes. On the other hand, crops like soy and maize are pretty dubious and I'm not really comfortable eating much food that is grown outside of Tasmania.

Anyway it's a big struggle for me, considering I've eaten meat my entire life and so I was hoping that people could give me some advice on good unpackaged unprocessed vegetarian food ideas. I'm basically trying to adopt a hippy diet I guess, while continuing to play footy, drink beer and wash regularly. Actually it may become increasingly difficult to do those things as well. Beer is accounts for my highest amount of emissions from any single product

[Frank_Sinatra]

I'm not familiar with what is produced locally for you. Eating locally produced food (whether vegetarian or not) is a great way for anyone to reduce their environmental footprint. So I guess the following suggestions will be pretty broad.

Beans and legumes (lentils are great), whole grains... those are going to be your staples. Browse the closest 'health food' store or grocery with a good selection of the above, and experiment until you find some that you like and are comfortable preparing (on a practical level, some foods just take a longer time to prepare).

Then of course on top of that you have your fruits and vegetables, and that's just a matter of finding a store near you that sells local/organic produce.

There are lots of vegetarian cookbooks and websites with recipes out there, for gourmet recipes or very simple recipes. I have a Linda McCarthy cookbook (more gourmet than is practical for me) and a '5 ingredient vegetarian cookbook' by Nava Atlas (IIRC). A Google search for vegetarian recipes will get you started if you haven't done that yet.

The cookbooks/websites are handy for different sauces, spices, prep methods etc., so your meals don't get too bland or similar.

Other than that, my big suggestion would be don't try to push yourself all the way to your ultimate goal too quickly. For instance, some processed or prepackaged foods might be a necessary compromise in the first few months - soy might not be ideal but it can be made into very useful products for vegetarians. And then you go guiltless

[max]

What about Fish / seafood / Poultry / Eggs?

I'm just curious. I know nothing about vegetarian diets.

[PoisonTaffy]

Increase the amount of fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds you consume. Try to diversify and not just stick to a chosen few types. Eating a large variety of plant based foods will ensure a good diet.

[Iron Clad Ben]

First off congrats, glad to see you are taking some steps in an awesome direction for yourself and the planet. Vegetarianism is a great way to reduce your carbon footprint (aside from planting hundreds of trees), even moreso than ceasing to drive a car.

One thing that I live by now is to eat a salad for 1 meal every day. I make a big bowl of salad at the beginning of the week and seal it up and put it in the fridge. Then I just eat some of it every day. As other people mentioned, varying your veggies is a great way to insure proper nutrition. The salad thing can be some prep work up front (20 minutes or so) but then you have food for the whole week, so it's a great time saver. For added nutritional bonus sprinkle flaxseed on top.

Riley from Montana turned me on to homemade oatmeal. All it is, is boiling chopped or rolled oats. The process takes about 45 minutes (you can do other things while it's simmering the cooking part is low maintaince). He then adds brown sugar and honey for flavor. If you want to go with the more veg friendly option, just add agave nectar. It tastes exactly the same as honey, and it's 100% plant based. Agave is the fruit that tequila is made from. Oats + agave nectar simple and delicious. Throw in some chopped fruit for a bonus.

Another thing I enjoy:
Sandwich with avacado, jalapeno, brown mustard and rice-cheese. mmmm

[Wasabi]

Lentils rock!

edit: I'm also a huge fan of granola. You can do so much with granola (cereal - hot and cold, trail-mix, bars, etc) and you can add whatever you want in them. Flax seed, cranberries and peanuts/peanut butter is my personal favorite combo, but you're free to add whatever else you have available.

Oh, and if you want to get oatmeal, get the steel cut variety. It takes longer to prepare than regular oatmeal, but the flavor and consistency is undeniably better. You can mix this with regular oatmeal and granola for an awesome hot cereal!

[Jeremy]

Thanks for the advice everybody . I've been going ok, although on Thursday night I was at an art exhibition and completely forgot that I was a vegetarian. It wasn't until much later that I realised I shouldn't have eaten the meat there . I think it would be more accurate to say that I'm cutting down on my meat intake, rather than that I'm a vegetarian, given that I seem to forgot so much. Although actually the only meat I've eaten since Wednesday is some sausage rolls at the art thing and a grilled octopus kebab last night. I think eating wild fish (or in this case molluscs) is ok (depending on the source) since they're part of the carbon cycle and almost all the ingredients were local (although I'm not sure about the octopus).

I should mention that I am studying the carbon cycle and global warming at university, as well as working at Australia's largest environmental NGO for the last 3 years, so you probably don't need to tell me about the effects of things and that kind of stuff. I also know how to use the internet pretty well. I was more looking for personal advice. Ben and Waylon's advice was most helpful

[Jeremy]

What about Fish / seafood / Poultry / Eggs?

I'm just curious. I know nothing about vegetarian diets.

It depends on how it's farmed. Of course also about why you've become a vegetarian. Chicken and fish do have much lower emissions than beef or lamb, but there are still a lot of emissions in a lot of the processes. I'd see absolutely nothing wrong with eating wild caught fish/seafood in general, but if it's been transported a long way and stored a lot, or if it's heavily packaged, I'd try and avoid it. The typical chicken farm not only has high level emissions, as well as transport and storage issues, but chickens are also usually fed on grain, so you have all the emissions of growing the chickens etc. plus you still have all the emissions of growing the grain; hence it makes a lot more sense to just eat the grain and cut out the middle man, so to speak. The same applies with dairy. Of course the emissions per kg for chicken and dairy is a lot lower than the emissions for red meat and pork, but due to the fact that plants and animals are carbon based, the important issue is how many processes are involved in the food production, rather than the emissions of plants and animals themselves. All animals and plants are basically carbon neutral. If we didn't burn any fossil fuels or deforest and clear any land, there would be no problem, no matter how much meat we ate.