Introductions - Why Vegetarian?

[Chris Tinney]

How fun! Welcome.

Just thought I'd say hi and introduce myself.
Im the founder of VegHaven :)
This is me :)~

I'm traveling for the next year on The Peace Tour..

I'm Vegan for for both health and ethical reasons.
My intention in starting VegHaven was to create a Social Network that makes a difference!

Thanks for coming and please jump in and tell us about yourself :)

What made you become Vegetarian?

How did you find your way here?

We can't wait to learn more about you!

Namaste,
Chris

[Nutmeg]

Peace,

I am meatless for the love of animals. I really need to go Vegan, but I love pizza. One day, one day, I will be a Vegan.

[Colin]

hey yeah.. a good rule that I learned early on was that roots, stalks, and flowers combine to make a protein as well. so carrots + asparagus or broccoli work to form a protein and so on.

[Anita Karenina]

I think to be vegan is the opposite of putting weight on. Make sure you buy wholewheat pasta. I buy everything wholewheat and wholemeal, it tastes better and it is healthier. I do not eat pasta often because i go for other things like buckwheat, bulgar, cous cous, millet, quinoa. They taste lovely and you can invent recipes. You can even buy brown rice. I always bake with wohlemeal flour (bread, cakes, biscuits). And use tones of seeds. Olive oil is bst for cooking and dressing and healthier too.
Contact me if you want help...
Anita

[Brittany Abstract]

I have the carb problem too. I just love pasta! The trick is to make sure that you get enough protein to balance out the carbs. When I make spaghetti I mix "fake ground beef" with the sauce, things like that, you just have to ask around and get creative. Morning Star Farms and Boca both make really good ground beef substitutes. You can get that and a substitute for just about any kind of meat at Publix or Sweetbay or any other big chain grocery stores.

Good luck!

[Alex]

I remember as far back as when I was 8 years old looking at a slice of bologna or ham and thinking "Ew, this is kind of gross. I can't believe I'm eating this." But I was raised on such a meat centered diet, I could not imagine how one could possibly give up meat. So I would just shrug my shoulders and make my bologna sandwich.

Fast forward to age 22, I'm traveling with a bunch of friends down in North Carolina. We stopped at this gas station and got hot dogs for lunch. They were gross looking chunks of I don't know what that looked like they'd been sitting on the warmer for three days. Then my friend put this onion relish stuff on his that looked like, well, I don't want to be specific, but suffice it to say, something really gross. That led me to look at my hot dog and examine it and question the very idea of hot dogs (bad idea if you want to enjoy your hot dog). "What the hell is this thing I'm putting in my body anyway?" That was it for hot dogs. I threw it in the garbage and never looked back. (To this day I won't even touch tofu dogs).
Then I gradually gave up meat a little bit at a time: first hot dogs, then hamburgers, then all red meat, then eventually the white meat too. I couldn't fully give it up until the following summer when I moved across the country from my parents and they're 95% meat diet. That was ten years ago and I haven't even been tempted to go back. At first it was just a feeling. It just "felt" wrong. It wasn't until later that I actually found solid factual reasons to back up my feelings. But I wrote a blog about those on my myspace page.

[Dronlim Iotic]

Do you eat chease or drink milk or consume dairy. Do you call yourself vegetarian beacause you think veganism is vegetarian because I think there the same thing there are are just different levels of vegetarianism and vegan is one of them but your not vegan if you eat cheese so it is it's own thing. Just like you can't be vegetarian if you eat meat. I stopped drinking melikand eating cheese when I was seventeen because milk has white blood cells in it from the cows blood and not only that alot of the time pus and steroids or artificial stimulants given to them by farmers. Or Do you drink organic milk?

[Chris Tinney]

Vegans dont eat anything that comes from animals.
They usually dont wear anything that comes from animals.
No leather, fur, etc
No milk, cheese, honey etc.
:)

[Anita Karenina]

And they DO NOT buy products that are tested on animals. This is extremely important. So make sure your detergents, cosmetics and on and on are not tested on animals.

And for some new vegans, check all your groceries and other products for things like lactose, lanolin, beeswax ......some things have different names but they are misguided, so have a look through the internet for animal by-products....it is hard to be 100% vegan because of this, but many additives can be avoided...

I avoid them all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They are cruel.

[pradtf]

it is hard to be 100% vegan, but that shouldn't stop you and you can come very close. especially regarding diet, clothing and many other things it is not difficult these days.

animal by-products are used in all kinds of things. for instance, photographic film is apparently produced by 3 companies in the world and they all use gelatin, while tires and some plastics contains stearic acid.

when donald watson coined the term 'vegan' in 1944, he really had a great idea. don't use and exploit animals.

we can do a lot to follow this idea by choosing not to be consumers of animal products especially where it counts: for example, refusing to purchase meat and dairy will help to end not only the slaughterhouse industry, but also its by-products like gelatin and stearic acid.

we have a very simple approach. we don't buy anything that has animal products in them unless there just isn't an alternative. we stopped purchasing film and paper for photography - digital is a better alternative anyway. unfortunately, there isn't a tire without stearic acid as far as we know yet, so we did buy bicycle tires a few years ago.

whenever possible we buy used (at thrift shops or privately). this way we feel we are at least not contributing to an economy gone mad.

in any case, as anita says, reading labels is a really good idea not only so that you know what you're getting but it also helps establish the who that is getting them.

in friendship,
prad

[Aimee]

My Top 5 Reasons for Becoming a Vegan

At the age of 10, it dawned on me that the slimy looking chicken leg on my plate came from a living, breathing, thinking and feeling animal. I’m not sure why it even took me 10 years to figure that out, but I’m glad that I did sooner than later. My parents thought I was going through a phase. Well, 23 years later, I guess it’s pretty safe to assume that it’s not a phase.

So for about 20 years, I was a vegetarian. I consumed dairy because *I thought* that was the only place where I could get enough protein. Then, one day, while at a KFC protest, a fellow animal activist asked me if I had ever considered becoming a vegan. I told her that I had thought about it, but didn’t really make the decision to become one because it wasn’t as if I was harming or killing any animals by consuming dairy. She recommended that I check out www.milksucks.com, which reveals the truth about the dairy industry. After reading the startling and eye-opening information there and watching one of the videos on the site, I immediately turned into a vegan and will never ever go back.

I am often asked why I am a vegan. There’s lots of reasons, but here are my top 5:

#1 I love animals. Not just cats and dogs - all animals. Someone once said if slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would become a vegan. I agree. In order to fuel the demand of the general public, factory farms were invented. These are industrialized warehouses where thousands of animals are contained, then pumped with steroids, antibiotics and growth hormones so that they will grow quickly, and and not die from the diseases that run rampant through the confined quarters. Most never breathe fresh air or are allowed to stretch their legs or even turn around. I was horrified to learn that in some slaughterhouses, employees actually receive awards for killing the most animals in the shortest period of time. As a result, animals are rushed through the assembly line killing machine and experience sheer pain and terror that is beyond calculation...all for the sake of the almighty dollar.

Did you know?
In a 72 year lifetime, the average human carnivore consumes 11 cattle, 3 lambs and sheep, 23 pigs, 45 turkeys, 1,100 chickens and 862 pounds of fish.

#2 I care about the environment. Not sure why Al Gore failed to focus on this aspect in “An Inconvenient Truth.” But, by being a vegan, I’m helping to reduce the effects of global warming. Global warming occurs as a result of carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels. Three times more fossil fuels must be burned to support a carnivorous diet than a vegan one. Global warming also occurs as a result of deforestation, which is primarily driven by meat consumption. Nearly 260 million acres of trees in the U.S. have been cleared for crops that are used to feed animals that are killed for human consumption.

Did you know?
Each year, nearly 1,000 species are eliminated due to the destruction of tropical rainforests for meat grazing, and the rate is growing yearly.

#3) Help end world hunger. Check out these statistics: It takes nearly 20 pounds of grain to produce only 1 pound of meat. If Americans reduced their meat intake by a mere 10%, 100 million people could be adequately fed using the freed up land for crops. One child dies of malnutrition every 2.3 seconds. Twenty percent of the corn grown in the U.S. is eaten by people, whereas 80% of the corn and 95% of the oats are eaten by livestock.

Did you know? An acre of land can produce 40,000 pounds of potatoes, but only 250 pounds of beef.

#4) I don’t want to get cancer. People who eat meat have a higher likelihood of contracting cancer than those who follow a vegan diet. This is because meat has an acidic effect on the body. When the body is in an acidic state, rather than an alkaline state, cancer and other insidious diseases may result.

Did you know?
The risk of contracting breast cancer is 3.8 times greater for women who eat meat daily compared to less than once a week. The risk of fatal ovarian cancer is three times greater for women who eat eggs 3 or more times a week as compared with less than once a week. The risk of fatal prostate cancer is 3.6 times greater for men who consume meat, cheese, eggs and milk daily as compared with sparingly or not at all.

#5) Who wants to eat diseased animals? Animals that are raised in the U.S for meat in are diseased. Large amounts of antibiotics are fed to livestock to control common diseases like staphylococci. However, the bacteria are becoming immune to the antibiotics. Therefore, the antibiotics and the bacteria that are they are intended to destroy remain in the meat that ends up on the plate of a meat eater.

Did you know? Of all antibiotics used in the U.S., 55% are fed to livestock. The European Economic Community banned the importation of U.S. meat because they didn’t want to expose consumers to this serious health hazard.

[ktsmurf]

Right on. While I went vegetarian before I found that kind of info out, those have become the major talking points for me when someone wants to discuss the reasoning behind a vegetarian diet. It's also the kind of stuff that I throw out off-hand in discussions about the environment and food in general. I know that by slowly building the reasons up for other people, they come to the decision of their own accord, rather than being pushed into it by a single instance, which some people just aren't receptive to. Even my parents, who are still committed omnivores, eat way less animal produce than they used to.

I have so much gratitude for those who leaflet, but I personally try to convert by being a healthy, happy, well-informed example for others. Plus, I'm an awesome cook, and nothing beats the power of good food in any attempt to sway people's minds.

[Chris Tinney]

Right on!! Be the change!