Are you a vegetarian??

Monique

The same in the Netherlands, pregnant women are advised to avoid eating predatory fish and fish caught from rivers due to negative health effects (e.g. high mercury and PCBs).

ThomasT

Not a vegetarian. Love meat. Eat it at least three times a day usually. Grew up eating roast beef, pork and chicken, lots of potatoes and bread, and an occasional fruit and vegetable. Today my diet is mostly roast beef or beef stews with potatoes, carrots and onions. I also like broccoli which I keep and eat a lot of. Once a week I make falafel (with garbanzos, fresh herbs, garlic, onions, flour and seasoning; and tzatziki sause (with Greek yogurt, cucumber, onion, garlic, lemon and seasoning). And there's the tuna or chicken salad (it's fun to get creative with herbs and seasonings with these) sandwiches with tomato, and the eggs-grits-sausages-biscuits-bacon-potatoes-jams-yogurt breakfasts (and lots of butter).

I'm 64, only slightly overweight, with a usually normal blood pressure, and feel good, so apparently proportionately lots of fruits and vegetables isn't necessary. Of course it's possible that I would feel even better if I did eat lots of fruits and vegetables and less meat, but, as a believer in the "if it isn't broken don't mess with it" credo, I don't want to tinker with a 'diet' that allows me to eat anything I feel like eating.

Did I mention pizza -- smothered in several different meats, peppers, onions, gobs of cheese? Or "coney islands" -- beef hot dogs smothered in Greek chili, mustard, relish, onions and shredded cheddar cheese?

Whoops, I just realized this isn't the Food thread. If you'll excuse me ... I'm hungry again for more meat ... just finished second breakfast (thank you Hobbits) about 30 minutes ago.

As an aside, considering the moral conundrum that some people associate with eating meat, I wonder if the carrot beings on The Thing's planet might be having similar discussions in "Are you a carnivore??" threads.

Curious3141

Vegetarian. Lacto-ovo. But have been off the ovo for a few months.

Gytax

I don't see the point of going against nature.
I am not a vegetarian.

S_Happens

I definitely eat meat. It makes up the vast majority of my diet.

Most of the beef I eat these days is already packaged up, but I've participated in the butchering of a few pigs and cattle. I've killed and eaten many other game species. We always have some venison (whitetail deer or axis) in the freezer. I used to be an avid duck and goose hunter, but that tapered off when I started working as much as possible in preparation for going back to school.

I also live on the gulf coast, so fishing is easy and accessible. Up until I got married and bought a house, we always had fresh fish around. We haven't caught and boiled any blue crab in quite a while, but we still buy live crawfish to boil a few times a year.

I also eat lots of vegetables and fresh fruit, but they make up a smaller portion of my diet.

Drakkith

But that's when it tastes the best!

Evo

Drakkith

I understand Evo. I'd have a hard time killing my cats if it came down to that.

rollcast

I must concur, freshly caught trout or mackerel are some of the nicest things you'll ever taste. No need to go over board or use any spices, just salt pepper and flour, whack them in a hot pan with butter and serve with crusty bread.

PAllen

I concur, but never did it myself. I only experience this traveling:

1) Row boat comes in to tiny Carribean island, blows conch shell announcing fish, get chunk of red snapper caught within the hour.

2) At a small middle eastern village, our group of friends is invited to join a feast. We see live poultry being carried to a shed. They are killed and plucked while we chat and drink turkish coffee. Cooked over a fire. Never had better chicken in my life.

Moonbear

That's about as good as the person I met from Louisiana who did research with crayfish. The project involved only females, but they couldn't buy just females, so their lab had very well-fed grad students with lots of crawfish boils of the males.

turbo

Not only did Gerry and his pals get all of the unused parts of the lobsters, but they made their own "vodka" out of research-grade ethanol with a little citric acid to add a bit of sourness.

Moonbear

You have to be careful with that. A lot of research grade alcohol is "denatured" alcohol, which means it has a small percentage of methanol or isopropanol added to keep it from being drunk. The pure stuff is basically the same as Everclear, which is dreadful!

turbo

The stuff that we had in the pulp mill lab was denatured with methanol, ethyl acetate, and even aviation gasoline. The university had real ethanol. Gerry was a little "out there" but he wasn't suicidal.

richart2012

Hi
I used Pure Vegan B12 spray.There is also a cheaper version that does not advertise vegan but says so on the label called Pure Advantage B12. The ingredients are identical.

Moonbear

That's not B12, it's a methylated form of it. Lots of "health food" shops sell these scammy products as supplements for vegans, but they aren't bioavailable forms. There is no bioavailable form in plants. Some supplements of cobalamin are produced from bacterial sources, and can be used, but there are far more scams out there than legitimate products.

Humans evolved to require a diet that includes some animal products. It doesn't need to be daily, and it doesn't need to be meat, but it does need to be an animal product of some sort...raiding the chicken house for a few sterile eggs now and then is fine. There's no sane reason to deny a person all animal products. But, instead of eatingna few animal products, they'd rather support an industry that manufactures synthetic vitamins, packages them up in plastic bottles, and ships them over long distances, and may not even be a usable form of the vitamin.

Ivan Seeking

I eat everything [less breads and high carb foods] but keep the red meat to a minimum. And while I am on a low-carb diet, which by definition means relatively high fat and protein, I have probably eaten more fresh fruits and vegetables over the last year than in the previous ten [no kidding!]. Now, as long as I keep my party platter handy, I tend to eat vegetables like candy.

People here might be interested in learning more about former President Clinton's diet. He is on an extreme vegetarian diet that doesn't even allow processed plant oils. Even fish oil is forbidden. I saw the author of the diet interviewed. He claims that no one who has gone on this diet has ever had a heart attack; that some people have gone on this diet were in dire need of corrective heart surgery, but the disease was reversed through diet. He claims that while genetics plays a role, all heart disease is preventable and 100% attributable to food. A striking claim to say the least! And he claims to have the research to back it up. I've been meaning to learn more about this but hadn't gotten around to it yet.