I haven't seen fake cheese that tastes good yet. A good tip is not to try to make vegan food taste like non vegan. Just enjoy the vegan foods as they are.
PS I'm trying the whole "give up beef" thing plus "be vegan one day of the week".
A good tip is not to try to make vegan food taste like non vegan. Just enjoy the vegan foods as they are.
As a non vegan/vegetarian, I agree fully. By trying to replicate something else, the result often appears like a worse alternative.
I enjoy plenty of vegetarian and vegan foods, but don't try and tell me that a plant based burger tastes the same as a normal burger, that just ruins the experience.
Play to your own strengths and don't pretend to be something you are not, by doing that you reduce the stigma of vegan and vegetarian labels becoming associated with lower quality.
The concept of being vegetarian one day a week sounds like a brilliant idea, not sure that I would go the entire way to vegan across a full day, but a few vegan meals in a week wouldn't be so hard.
While I understand your argument and fully agree that there are plenty of normal vegan dishes that hold there own, this point always comes from the non vegans đ
Meat tastes good, and going vegan often means giving up favourite dishes that you grew up with. Having the mock alternatives means that when you do get that itch, you can still kind of scratch it. I also dont think it is fair to write them all of as inferior, there are some pretty incredible options these days.
No, having a mock alternative doesn't sceatch the itch, it just reinforces how much better the real version of that thing was. While I haven't tried them all, I have tried a lot due to recommendations by friends and every one has been like comparing turkey bacon to regular bacon. No, it isn't even close.
I enjoy a lot of dishes that are vegetarian or vegan because they play to the strengths of their ingredients without pretending to be something else. Replicating the format is fine, many kinds of dishes share similar formats, but trying to compare it to something specific is a bad idea. I have had some vegsn sausages thst were great for example, but they are their own thing snd not comparable to beef, pork, or combination sausages and there is such a wide variety of meat sausages there is no need to compare it to anything specific. It can be its own thing!
a big part is the perception of what you're used to, I rarely eat meat nowadays and when I do it tends to be game.
My burger patties have gotten to a point where I prefer them to any meat alternative, I'm not saying they're the same. Outside of serving the same purpose in a burger, but it's pretty wild I scoff at minced red deer meat now - It just doesn't carry the same umfph
don't try and tell me a plant based burger tastes the same as a normal burger
Go to burger king. Get a regular whopper and an impossible whopper. They are literally indistinguishable. Well, until an hour later when the impossible whopper gives you a ton of gas lol.
That's a straight up case of dumping enough crap on top of each patty that you can't tell what the hell you are eating anyway.
Try cooking each patty with nothing more than a bit of salt and eat them plain with nothing else, not even a bun, and then tell me you can't taste the difference.
Non vegetarian here. A vegan friend served me some vegan burger and I was absolutely shocked at how good it was. Did it taste exactly like beef? No. However it hit most of the spots to sate a craving I may have for one. The vegan cheese pretty much perfectly emulated american "cheese", which I don't personally use, but on a burger has a specific place. I have also introduce TVP into my normal diet. If you cook it right it can act as a very good alternative to crumbled ground beef. My friend makes a vegan chili dip that, if not told, almost everyone just assumes contains beef.
Other vegan cheeses I have tried are awful, even some expensive ones. My best friend doesn't process animal protein, so was basically forced into eating vegan style. We have made some recipes from chefs online, mostly using various types of mushrooms, that are to emulate steak, that have been very good.
giving up beef alone should be commended, just for environmental/climate reasons.
Yes, but the post is about veganism, which is the ethical principle that itâs wrong to exploit animals. Cows enslaved for milk are in most cases worse off than those enslaved for their flesh as they are repeatedly impregnated, have their children killed, and are still slaughtered at a fraction of their lifespan just like the flesh cows.
I've never cut beef out entirely but it is surprisingly easy to dramatically reduce how much one uses. Nearly everything that's good with beef is also good with other meats. I also found doing meatless Mondays to be a great way to experiment with vegetarian/vegan dishes without feeling like I was missing out on anything and then I could take that knowledge into other days
I think a big problem is a lot of people are not confident in their ability to cook. They maybe know how to make a couple of their favorite childhood dishes and a couple things they picked up along the way, maybe. It's hard to replace a burger with a portabello if you don't know how to critically approach cooking temps and times so it ends up awful, or trying to cook a passable ratatouille and not knowing how to use a knife or having any spices in the cupboard
The "spreads" are good, maybe the fake feta, but generally agree that dsiya is basically only good if you're early days and struggling, or if your friends insist on making a regular pizza and don't know how to make that interesting without cheese so here's some daiya idk, I guess it's edible.
As a non-German living in Germany. Abendbrot goes hard. Like I didn't expect it to be so enjoyable, but it's tasty, easy, and cheap. I know it's traditional to include cold cuts, but I usually just use cheeses and veggies. Fucking tasty
Someone who cuts most meat out of their diet is closer to a vegetarian than they are to the average diet. But saying they are vegetarian most of the time is going to upset a lot of people.
See, this is why the label exists, so we can say "I decided to cut my meat eating down to ecologically sustainable levels and support animal cruelty as little as possible while acknowledging that it's a hard, nearly impossible thing to do on a budget to go even fully vegetarian, much less the reality that there's so many many things going wrong in the world and not everyone can care about everything," only with one word because the vegan dorks will cry about you being vegetarian too anyways.
Especially funny because while there are other things vegetarians will eat that vegans won't (Other dairy, eggs), cheese is actually physically addictive because the same protein that makes it curdle breaks down through digestion into a substance that acts like dopamine. It really is the "one ring" of veganism and often the last / hardest thing to give up when one goes vegan.
*(GASGĂL) They were once men; healthy men. Then Tongue the Deceiver gave to them nine rounds of Cheese. Blinded by their hunger, they took them without question, one by one falling into gassness. Now they are slaves to his will. They are the GasgĂ»l: Fartwraiths, neither living nor dead. At all times they feel the presence of the Cheese, drawn to the power of the lactose. They will never stop farting. *
Fun fact, cheese is not always vegetarian. It can (quite often) contain animal rennet (from the inside of a young cow stomage, the cow needs to die for this)
As a person who check all cheese in the supermarket for this. The current state (EU/NL) is almost 60%, 60% of the cheese in our supermarket is without murdering baby cows. Which I up from last year, and it has been trending up for a while.
I have no clue how other countries are doing, my guess us worse. Some france people still label 'Fish' as 'Vegan'
That number moves much closer to 0% if you start counting the baby cows killed in order to keep their mothers perpetually lactating, rather than just those whose bodies were used as a direct ingredient.
A cow will be impregnated 6-8 times during her life on a typical dairy farm, before she is killed af half her natural lifespan to be replaced by a younger cow. One of those baby cows will be raised as that replacement cow, the rest will be killed shortly after birth.
Killing baby cows is an inherent part of cow-milk production.
It's highly market-senstive what happens to them, but I have previously worked on dairy farms in NZ and AU, and in both countries, calves(except replacement heifers) that get raised at all are a rounding error, maybe a handful per farm that are kept for personal slaughter and consumption.
If the bobby-calf (aka veal) market is paying well enough, then they are shipped off for slaughter at ~4 days old. If the market doesnt pay well enough to justify 4 days of rearing costs, then they are killed immediately and sold for their skins.
A cows natural life span is 20ish years. They're kept perpetually pregnant for years until their bodies give out, then they're slaughtered at around 5 years old.
cows don't naturally live to 20 years. they can live that long if they are well fed and watered and protected from disease, predators, and the environment. that's an artificial life span.
I'm not bringing any moral value, just the note that synthetic remnet is cheaper then real one, another commenter said that about 60% of cheeses use it,i thought it would be much more.
I would really like to be the case more often. I'm a cheese eating vegetarian and I have to look on the ingredients every time I buy cheese.
Some brands will even switch from animal to microbial rennet and viceversa within the same product without warning.
Rennet makes this a much more complicated decision for vegetarians. Like, if I know that the cheese was made with bacteria-derived enzymes, then that's cool, but it's really hard to know and trusting random cheese is just like still eating beef sometimes, so even though I'm vegetarian I end up being so picky about cheese that I hardly eat it anyway.
Spoiler: milk cows get murdered as well.
A milk cow is productive for about 5 years, after which they usually get slaughtered for pet food.
In that time, they need to have about 3 calves, to continue producing "good returns" amount of milk daily. Two of those calves are not needed to replace the cow, so they get - guess what? - slaughtered and processed to pet food.
Stupid me grew up next to a milk farm and didn't realize that until way later than I care to admit.
Also, I still eat cheese (reduced amounts) and that's a moral dilemma for me.
That ethical problem could be solved (well, not if you are "fully" vegan, and view even keeping pets and livestock, unacceptable), by doing good small-scale production. Factory farming producing the inhuman conditions, is needed to make the operations economically sustainable, in the way it is build into capitalist systems. But if you would keep the cows well, milk products could be made quite ethically... Now of course the costs needed to do that would make milk extremely expensive, and small-scale could not replace the massive demand, so people would have to consume way less anyway.
But if you would keep the cows well, milk products could be made quite ethicallyâŠ
Could be - but that would also mean taking milk away from the calves for a while. Not sure how much milk a cow would be able to continue to give and what the quality would be after the calf has had enough to outgrow infancy.
Now eggs however, those could be absolutely produced without animal suffering. Just be willing to pay more for the eggs so that hens can live free range in natural environments, and still get to continue living when they produce less or even no more eggs until they die from natural causes.
I don't see a big ethical problem with snatching an unfertilised egg, considering that hens are able to lay like one egg a day. They won't miss it if you take away a bunch of them and let them breed out the odd one.
Could be - but that would also mean taking milk away from the calves for a while. Not sure how much milk a cow would be able to continue to give and what the quality would be after the calf has had enough to outgrow infancy.
This is doable, especially with the cows, that have been bred to produce milk. You do not even need to separate the mom and calf, for more than a moment, to milk, so we do know it is possible. You just get less milk, than by taking the calf away, so it is not profitable in comparison. There are other problems though, like they should be able to feed mostly by pasture grazing, which takes a lot of land, and if you do not kill some of the cows and bulls for food, you will have way too many... etc.
And with eggs - yes. The EU standards for "bio" eggs are already better (very far from perfect though), so it might be possible to do profitably even. A big ethical problem with factory farming chickens right now, though, is the process of mass producing the egg-laying chickens themselves. Hens are kept, but the male chicks might be just thrown into a shredder. Even if all of them were raised, a lot of the cocks would have to be killed, since there would be carnage otherwise, as you cannot keep them together, and you have to have multiple hens more than cocks in a flock. This also applies if you keep chickens in your backyard, so there are always excess cocks being given away, that nobody wants, and many end up as food.
Poor roosters. I believe the best solution for that would be the "in ovo" gender detection. One article here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003257912300425X - in an ethical egg production scenario, the quoted machine learning could actually be viable: the false positive roosters are simply lucky, and get raised to adulthood / live a happy life ;)
If the reason for false positives is not self-enforcing through genetics, they could even be the normal "fathers of the next generation".
Assuming, of course, the false positive rate can be lowered enough.
Re: milk - I have to say, for drinking, if you find a good brand, oat milk can be very tasty - I personally even think it tastes better in coffee / cappuccino than regular milk. And cheese - I just happen to have bought this hour for the first time a delicious vegan "Brie" variant: https://vanozza.de/en/produkte.html#brie-pfeffer
I am positively surprised, after the last couple of tries I no longer thought I would see the day - but this one is actually yummy!
For oat milk: tastewise best is Oatly Barista, but Oatly is in bed with investors from fascistan, so I go for the second best option which is also delicious: Lidl house brand vemondo, barista drink. Important: it must be the one produced by GrĂžnvang (https://gronvang.dk/?lang=en) - the one by Green & White from Vlissingen/NL tastes bland / watery in comparison.
Oh, I hope they make breakthroughs with the "in ovo" system, that sounds really promising.
And good tips for the oat milks and cheese! I usually just buy one cheap store brand, that is made here in Finland, since I like the really bland taste of it, lol. The least chemically tasting I have found! I also have one vegan cheese I like, but it too, is sold only locally...
I am aware and I do make every effort to reduce and remove dairy (and eggs) from my diet, but I recognize that I fall short of what I would consider vegan. Like if I'm at a party and am offered cake I'm probably going to eat it even though there's probably egg in it, but I'm not going to order an egg-based dish, same with dairy if we're having pizza or something. As I get older I'm increasingly lactose intolerant anyway, so I have additional incentive to avoid it.
The important thing is that you make a conscious effort to improve. I am the same. I eat cheese and occasionally eggs - rarely even meat, but I try to overall consume very little animal products.
Absolutely. For me it's all about harm reduction so as long as I am trying to improve, I can still fall short sometimes without having a crisis of conscience.
It depends a bit om where you are and what kind of cheese. For instance in the EU, Parmigiano Reggiano always has calf rennet, otherwise it's not allowed to have that name. Nowadays a lot of cheeses in the Netherlands do specify it on the ingredients list though.
I actually went about it the other way. After seeing how bad dairy cows have it in the daily (I have in-laws who are dairy farmers) compared to cows raised for their flesh, I tried giving up just cheese, because it's the one thing I told myself I could never do. I remember specifically saying to a lactose intolerant person that I would kill myself if I couldn't eat cheese lol.
I can't imagine eating cheese now, just the smell grossed me out. Like I was cleaning a plastic case that held cheddar (my partner's) and I swear I couldn't get the stink out of my fingers for hours. Even cow milk which I used to think was neural and creamy smells and tastes funky and cheesy.
Anyway, that's all to illustrates how malleable tastes are. I think it must have been so hard to quit, because I remember what I said and did, but not how I felt. It's like the urge just faded away. Like it was a temptation one moment, and then the next I forgot what I ever liked about it.
Anyway from there reducing and eliminating other products was easy, since I'd already fought the animal product boss battle.
Dairy is the most challenging thing to give up. There are good alternatives - particularly when they're made of nuts and seeds that have been fermented traditionally - but they're good in their own way, don't expect them to be the same.
The stuff made out of almost pure coconut oil is universally disappointing, and coconut is arguably not vegan given the environmental footprint and resulting animal endangerment.
I mean, Daiyo is an example of the artificial-basically-mostly-coconut-oil cheeze I mentioned previously. Most stuff that you can find in the average grocery store is going to suck. Have you tried anything along the lines of, say, this almost award-winning plant-based cheese? Stuff like that is way better, but again, unique. Don't expect it to be the same, although things may be changing soon since people have figured out how to get one of the key dairy proteins from non-animal sources.
There's also homemade stuff, which varies. It's pretty easy to make super creamy mac and cheese with plant-based sources only, for instance.
One of my close friends went vegan right around the pandemic beginning, when everything first started shutting down. Our local bar shut down the day of St Patrick's day so we invited him over to our place instead for shitty beer with green food dye (it was 3 of us total and we worked in close proximity daily, AND we were very pro-mask)
He used it as an opportunity to introduce us to a vegan version of the cheesy spinach and artichoke dip from like Applebees/Chilis/insert old people restaurant here, but it was made with cashews.
It took him an hour but OH MY LAWD my husband and I still talk about that dip to this day as non-vegans. Better than anything we've ordered at a restaurant. We tell everyone about that shit.
I cut way back on cheese because of the salt, also it's expensive and high in calories. I could easily go through a large block (or even two--8000 calories!) of sharp cheddar in a week, and that was too much.
This is why I gave up red meat, and processed meat:
Hereâs something you may not realize: The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classifies red meat as a Group 2A carcinogen, which is described as âprobably carcinogenic to humans.â Carcinogens are substances with cancer-causing potential.
A review of studies on the relationship between red meat and cancer found that eating high levels of red meat is associated with a higher risk of:
Breast cancer
Colorectal cancer
Uterine cancer
Hepatocellular carcinoma
Lung cancer
Thatâs not all: Processed meats are categorized as level 1 carcinogens. This puts them in the same category as cigarettes and asbestos and means theyâre known to increase your risk of cancer.
It was hot when I first bit it, hot as a glede, and my mouth was scorched, so that I doubt if ever again I shall be free of the pain of it. Yet even as I write it is cooled, and it seemeth to shrink, though it loseth neither its beauty nor its shape.... But for my part I will risk no hurt to this thing: of all the works of ranching the only fair. It is precious to me, though I buy it with great pain.
My eggs are sourced from a dozen of the most spoiled hens I've ever seen. They have a half acre of bugs, grass, and weeds to run around in. They are more pets than livestock.
I mean the critique of cheese (honey and eggs, too) is that they, like all foods, are statistically near always sourced from factory farming methods that are harmful to all involved. The only difference is that wheat isn't sentient enough for ethical consideration. I'm glad your chickens are treated well. I'm glad you ethically source your eggs. Being "one of the good ones" isn't a defense though; we still need to end factory farming as it exists today.
Im doing what I can to avoid factory farmed food, because for all the talk of ending factory farming I have yet to see any progress outside of angry internet comments. Im going for harm reduction in my own life.
133 Comments
terranoid@lemmy.cafe · 75 pts · 1d
There are better fake cheeses these days. It's easier to give it up than it ever was. And tons of pizzerias now offer vegan cheese pizzas.
But honestly giving up beef alone should be commended, just for environmental/climate reasons.
hOrni@lemmy.world · 65 pts · 1d
I haven't seen fake cheese that tastes good yet. A good tip is not to try to make vegan food taste like non vegan. Just enjoy the vegan foods as they are.
PS I'm trying the whole "give up beef" thing plus "be vegan one day of the week".
stoy@lemmy.zip · 32 pts · 1d
As a non vegan/vegetarian, I agree fully. By trying to replicate something else, the result often appears like a worse alternative.
I enjoy plenty of vegetarian and vegan foods, but don't try and tell me that a plant based burger tastes the same as a normal burger, that just ruins the experience.
Play to your own strengths and don't pretend to be something you are not, by doing that you reduce the stigma of vegan and vegetarian labels becoming associated with lower quality.
The concept of being vegetarian one day a week sounds like a brilliant idea, not sure that I would go the entire way to vegan across a full day, but a few vegan meals in a week wouldn't be so hard.
jackod@lemmy.nz · 15 pts · 23h
While I understand your argument and fully agree that there are plenty of normal vegan dishes that hold there own, this point always comes from the non vegans đ
Meat tastes good, and going vegan often means giving up favourite dishes that you grew up with. Having the mock alternatives means that when you do get that itch, you can still kind of scratch it. I also dont think it is fair to write them all of as inferior, there are some pretty incredible options these days.
snooggums@piefed.world · 6 pts · 18h
No, having a mock alternative doesn't sceatch the itch, it just reinforces how much better the real version of that thing was. While I haven't tried them all, I have tried a lot due to recommendations by friends and every one has been like comparing turkey bacon to regular bacon. No, it isn't even close.
I enjoy a lot of dishes that are vegetarian or vegan because they play to the strengths of their ingredients without pretending to be something else. Replicating the format is fine, many kinds of dishes share similar formats, but trying to compare it to something specific is a bad idea. I have had some vegsn sausages thst were great for example, but they are their own thing snd not comparable to beef, pork, or combination sausages and there is such a wide variety of meat sausages there is no need to compare it to anything specific. It can be its own thing!
BlaestEgnen@feddit.dk · 2 pts · 17h
a big part is the perception of what you're used to, I rarely eat meat nowadays and when I do it tends to be game.
My burger patties have gotten to a point where I prefer them to any meat alternative, I'm not saying they're the same. Outside of serving the same purpose in a burger, but it's pretty wild I scoff at minced red deer meat now - It just doesn't carry the same umfph
I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 20h
Go to burger king. Get a regular whopper and an impossible whopper. They are literally indistinguishable. Well, until an hour later when the impossible whopper gives you a ton of gas lol.
Bluewing@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 19h
That's a straight up case of dumping enough crap on top of each patty that you can't tell what the hell you are eating anyway.
Try cooking each patty with nothing more than a bit of salt and eat them plain with nothing else, not even a bun, and then tell me you can't taste the difference.
I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 19h
But then that wouldn't be a burger...
Bluewing@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 18h
If you need to hide the taste with all that crap, can it really taste good?
I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 18h
All that crap? You mean buns?
rayf@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 1d
Exactly. I really dislike the taste of beef patty. But i tried a patty looking vegan product. It gave me the same bad taste.
Jiggle_Physics@quokk.au · 9 pts · 1d
Non vegetarian here. A vegan friend served me some vegan burger and I was absolutely shocked at how good it was. Did it taste exactly like beef? No. However it hit most of the spots to sate a craving I may have for one. The vegan cheese pretty much perfectly emulated american "cheese", which I don't personally use, but on a burger has a specific place. I have also introduce TVP into my normal diet. If you cook it right it can act as a very good alternative to crumbled ground beef. My friend makes a vegan chili dip that, if not told, almost everyone just assumes contains beef.
Other vegan cheeses I have tried are awful, even some expensive ones. My best friend doesn't process animal protein, so was basically forced into eating vegan style. We have made some recipes from chefs online, mostly using various types of mushrooms, that are to emulate steak, that have been very good.
lookingforanALFpolycule@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 1d
Yes, but the post is about veganism, which is the ethical principle that itâs wrong to exploit animals. Cows enslaved for milk are in most cases worse off than those enslaved for their flesh as they are repeatedly impregnated, have their children killed, and are still slaughtered at a fraction of their lifespan just like the flesh cows.
arrow74@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 21h
There are certainly some vegans that do it for environmental reasons. Usually a bit of both though, but not all.
hans@feddit.org · 2 pts · 22h
most dairy calves are brought to full weight before slaughter, and the life span of a dairy cow is about 5 years.
ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zip · 8 pts · 1d
I've never cut beef out entirely but it is surprisingly easy to dramatically reduce how much one uses. Nearly everything that's good with beef is also good with other meats. I also found doing meatless Mondays to be a great way to experiment with vegetarian/vegan dishes without feeling like I was missing out on anything and then I could take that knowledge into other days
I think a big problem is a lot of people are not confident in their ability to cook. They maybe know how to make a couple of their favorite childhood dishes and a couple things they picked up along the way, maybe. It's hard to replace a burger with a portabello if you don't know how to critically approach cooking temps and times so it ends up awful, or trying to cook a passable ratatouille and not knowing how to use a knife or having any spices in the cupboard
JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl · 8 pts · 23h
Also, here in Belgium, vegan Gouda is literally cheaper per kilo than actual, cheap Gouda.
TheMinions@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 21h
My child has dairy allergies.
The fake cheeses are just okay at best.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 17h
The "spreads" are good, maybe the fake feta, but generally agree that dsiya is basically only good if you're early days and struggling, or if your friends insist on making a regular pizza and don't know how to make that interesting without cheese so here's some daiya idk, I guess it's edible.
Funkt4st1c@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 19h
Daiya smells like dirty socks, especially when heated
My wife is allergic to dairy and it throws me off every time
remon@ani.social · 4 pts · 19h
I mean, plenty of actual cheese is supposed to smell like dirty socks!
zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 18h
Yeah, Daiya is terrible. My wife and one of my kids can;t eat dairy. Violife seems to be one of the better shredded !cheeses, but only when melted.
TheMinions@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 16h
We basically only use Chao cheese (not to be confused with Sonic) for the kid these days.
Itâs alright. There is also a decent shredded alternative.
StaticFalconar@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1d
So I dont have to be a level 8 vegan to not be a POS?
protist@retrofed.com · 7 pts · 21h
Despite what a vocal minority on here would have you feel, no, you do not. Every small, positive change should be celebrated
imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 1d
We got a vegan Margherita for us 3hrn my vegan friend was visiting. Couldn't notice a difference to a normal cheese pizza.
arrow74@lemmy.zip · 0 pts · 21h
Trump's mystery meat has made me pause eating beef. Replacing it with mostly pork and chicken
terranoid@lemmy.cafe · 1 pts · 7h
https://www.newsweek.com/pork-recall-8-states-highest-warning-issued-listeria-concerns-12410954
Be careful with pork
ComfortableRaspberry@feddit.org · 44 pts · 1d
I mean: being vegan in anything but cheese is also already something.
webghost0101@sopuli.xyz · 26 pts · 1d
Just skipping a meal with meat where you would usually have one is already a big step for the individual.
grranibal@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 22h
KĂ€sespatzel đ€€đ€€đ€€
arrow74@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 21h
As a non-German living in Germany. Abendbrot goes hard. Like I didn't expect it to be so enjoyable, but it's tasty, easy, and cheap. I know it's traditional to include cold cuts, but I usually just use cheeses and veggies. Fucking tasty
grranibal@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 18h
Your comment made me (a non-German who lived in Germany for a while this year) feel sad for not giving Abendbrot a chance
remon@ani.social · 2 pts · 22h
Kann man Speck rein machen!
ComradePenguin@lemmy.ml · 35 pts · 18h
Something is better than nothing. "I could never be a vegetarian/vegan because of bacon" "Ok, then eat vegetarian AND also eat bacon then?"
Little1Lost@gehirneimer.de · 8 pts · 17h
flexitarian is the way to go first: my understanding is thats its more controlled, not everyday (maybe even only to special occations) eating of meat
mult@sh.itjust.works · 7 pts · 17h
IS IT????
I thought flexitarian was someone who can perform very flexible oral sex. đ€Ż
Boe@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 12h
Flexual intercourse?
MrShankles@reddthat.com · 2 pts · 11h
đ” When I get that feeling, I need flexual healingđ”
Doomsider@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 13h
No, I think that is a yoga cunnilingist or a pilates fellator.
kuiskaaja@lemmy.ml · 0 pts · 12h
just because you don't always eat meat, doesn't mean you need to pick a label for it
flexitarian is a ridiculous term, essentially everyone eats vegetarian or vegan foods sometimes
Omegamanthethird@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 12h
Someone who cuts most meat out of their diet is closer to a vegetarian than they are to the average diet. But saying they are vegetarian most of the time is going to upset a lot of people.
kuiskaaja@lemmy.ml · 0 pts · 12h
they're still just an omnivore...
CrimeIsLegalNow@ani.social · 3 pts · 9h
See, this is why the label exists, so we can say "I decided to cut my meat eating down to ecologically sustainable levels and support animal cruelty as little as possible while acknowledging that it's a hard, nearly impossible thing to do on a budget to go even fully vegetarian, much less the reality that there's so many many things going wrong in the world and not everyone can care about everything," only with one word because the vegan dorks will cry about you being vegetarian too anyways.
GorGor@startrek.website · 4 pts · 12h
if I dont have a label and a flag how can I tell everyone all aspects of myself as the main character in life?
beejboytyson@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 17h
Right? Anything is better then nothing
infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net · 33 pts · 1d
Especially funny because while there are other things vegetarians will eat that vegans won't (Other dairy, eggs), cheese is actually physically addictive because the same protein that makes it curdle breaks down through digestion into a substance that acts like dopamine. It really is the "one ring" of veganism and often the last / hardest thing to give up when one goes vegan.
bl4ckp1xx13@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 18 pts · 1d
wait so when i go to the fridge at 3am for cheese im basically literally eating happiness?
infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net · 3 pts · 18h
You're taking a hit!
AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net · 1 pts · 6h
Literally a mild opiate. The hypothesis is that it's an evolutionary adaptation to ensure babies will reliably crave their mother's milk.
bl4ckp1xx13@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 1h
makes sense, thank you!
MattW03@lemmy.ca · 33 pts · 1d
*(GASGĂL) They were once men; healthy men. Then Tongue the Deceiver gave to them nine rounds of Cheese. Blinded by their hunger, they took them without question, one by one falling into gassness. Now they are slaves to his will. They are the GasgĂ»l: Fartwraiths, neither living nor dead. At all times they feel the presence of the Cheese, drawn to the power of the lactose. They will never stop farting. *
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 17h
One Whey to rule them all, One Curd to find them, One Stink to bring them all, and in Aroma blind them
JelleWho@lemmy.world · 28 pts · 1d
Fun fact, cheese is not always vegetarian. It can (quite often) contain animal rennet (from the inside of a young cow stomage, the cow needs to die for this)
ThunderComplex@lemmy.today · 16 pts · 21h
Unless, of course, we're talking about the German LeberkÀse (liver cheese), which, naturally, isn't cheese and doesn't contain liver.
IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 1d
i think most of the industry uses synthetic remnet.
JelleWho@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 1d
As a person who check all cheese in the supermarket for this. The current state (EU/NL) is almost 60%, 60% of the cheese in our supermarket is without murdering baby cows. Which I up from last year, and it has been trending up for a while.
I have no clue how other countries are doing, my guess us worse. Some france people still label 'Fish' as 'Vegan'
this_jury_is_hung@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 23h
That number moves much closer to 0% if you start counting the baby cows killed in order to keep their mothers perpetually lactating, rather than just those whose bodies were used as a direct ingredient.
A cow will be impregnated 6-8 times during her life on a typical dairy farm, before she is killed af half her natural lifespan to be replaced by a younger cow. One of those baby cows will be raised as that replacement cow, the rest will be killed shortly after birth.
Killing baby cows is an inherent part of cow-milk production.
hans@feddit.org · 5 pts · 21h
most dairy calves are brought to full weight before slaughter.
davepleasebehave@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 20h
a man who has never eaten veal.
hans@feddit.org · 5 pts · 19h
hardly any dairy calves end up as veal.
::: spoiler the math https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/DataFiles/48685/milkcowsandprod.xlsx?v=1413.4
https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/livestock-meat-domestic-data/resource/257788c4-e153-4712-abf3-f2f339bbefec
4.722204129486094
:::
this_jury_is_hung@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 10h
It's highly market-senstive what happens to them, but I have previously worked on dairy farms in NZ and AU, and in both countries, calves(except replacement heifers) that get raised at all are a rounding error, maybe a handful per farm that are kept for personal slaughter and consumption.
If the bobby-calf (aka veal) market is paying well enough, then they are shipped off for slaughter at ~4 days old. If the market doesnt pay well enough to justify 4 days of rearing costs, then they are killed immediately and sold for their skins.
hans@feddit.org · 1 pts · 7h
i present the math below
hans@feddit.org · 1 pts · 21h
a dairy cows life span is like 5 years
toomanypancakes@crazypeople.online · 3 pts · 19h
A cows natural life span is 20ish years. They're kept perpetually pregnant for years until their bodies give out, then they're slaughtered at around 5 years old.
hans@feddit.org · 3 pts · 19h
cows don't naturally live to 20 years. they can live that long if they are well fed and watered and protected from disease, predators, and the environment. that's an artificial life span.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 17h
ours were closer to twelve but go off the documentary you watched once
hans@feddit.org · 1 pts · 17h
https://albertamilk.com/ask-dairy-farmer/how-long-does-the-average-dairy-cow-live/
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 17h
you are correct all of our cattle were born seven years old
parlaptie@feddit.org · 4 pts · 1d
That would be huge news if true but it doesn't sound like you have a source
IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 19h
I'm not bringing any moral value, just the note that synthetic remnet is cheaper then real one, another commenter said that about 60% of cheeses use it,i thought it would be much more.
Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 17h
I think many French protected cheeses are not allowed to, but I'm not sure about that
ulterno@programming.dev · 11 pts · 23h
Usage of animal rennet requires disclosure on the packaging, in my country, thanks to a majority of religions being against meat and stuff.
sanzky@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 18h
I would really like to be the case more often. I'm a cheese eating vegetarian and I have to look on the ingredients every time I buy cheese. Some brands will even switch from animal to microbial rennet and viceversa within the same product without warning.
yermaw@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 21h
What fresh hell is this?
AeonFelis@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 19h
Cast it into the fire! Grill it!
capt_wolf@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 19h
Great, now I want halloumi...
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 13h
Listen, I'm going to cast it into the fire, sure.
But then it's going to get all goopy and crispy and I'm going to pull it back out again to eat it.
Stolas@lemmy.ca · 19 pts · 18h
I've never tried to convince anyone to take up veganism. Instead I avoid bringing it up at all cost because people get weird about it.
TipRing@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 1d
Rennet makes this a much more complicated decision for vegetarians. Like, if I know that the cheese was made with bacteria-derived enzymes, then that's cool, but it's really hard to know and trusting random cheese is just like still eating beef sometimes, so even though I'm vegetarian I end up being so picky about cheese that I hardly eat it anyway.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 1d
Spoiler: milk cows get murdered as well. A milk cow is productive for about 5 years, after which they usually get slaughtered for pet food. In that time, they need to have about 3 calves, to continue producing "good returns" amount of milk daily. Two of those calves are not needed to replace the cow, so they get - guess what? - slaughtered and processed to pet food.
Stupid me grew up next to a milk farm and didn't realize that until way later than I care to admit.
Also, I still eat cheese (reduced amounts) and that's a moral dilemma for me.
kolmaskommentoija@sopuli.xyz · 3 pts · 20h
That ethical problem could be solved (well, not if you are "fully" vegan, and view even keeping pets and livestock, unacceptable), by doing good small-scale production. Factory farming producing the inhuman conditions, is needed to make the operations economically sustainable, in the way it is build into capitalist systems. But if you would keep the cows well, milk products could be made quite ethically... Now of course the costs needed to do that would make milk extremely expensive, and small-scale could not replace the massive demand, so people would have to consume way less anyway.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 19h
Could be - but that would also mean taking milk away from the calves for a while. Not sure how much milk a cow would be able to continue to give and what the quality would be after the calf has had enough to outgrow infancy.
Now eggs however, those could be absolutely produced without animal suffering. Just be willing to pay more for the eggs so that hens can live free range in natural environments, and still get to continue living when they produce less or even no more eggs until they die from natural causes.
I don't see a big ethical problem with snatching an unfertilised egg, considering that hens are able to lay like one egg a day. They won't miss it if you take away a bunch of them and let them breed out the odd one.
kolmaskommentoija@sopuli.xyz · 3 pts · 17h
This is doable, especially with the cows, that have been bred to produce milk. You do not even need to separate the mom and calf, for more than a moment, to milk, so we do know it is possible. You just get less milk, than by taking the calf away, so it is not profitable in comparison. There are other problems though, like they should be able to feed mostly by pasture grazing, which takes a lot of land, and if you do not kill some of the cows and bulls for food, you will have way too many... etc.
And with eggs - yes. The EU standards for "bio" eggs are already better (very far from perfect though), so it might be possible to do profitably even. A big ethical problem with factory farming chickens right now, though, is the process of mass producing the egg-laying chickens themselves. Hens are kept, but the male chicks might be just thrown into a shredder. Even if all of them were raised, a lot of the cocks would have to be killed, since there would be carnage otherwise, as you cannot keep them together, and you have to have multiple hens more than cocks in a flock. This also applies if you keep chickens in your backyard, so there are always excess cocks being given away, that nobody wants, and many end up as food.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 16h
Poor roosters. I believe the best solution for that would be the "in ovo" gender detection. One article here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003257912300425X - in an ethical egg production scenario, the quoted machine learning could actually be viable: the false positive roosters are simply lucky, and get raised to adulthood / live a happy life ;) If the reason for false positives is not self-enforcing through genetics, they could even be the normal "fathers of the next generation".
Assuming, of course, the false positive rate can be lowered enough.
Re: milk - I have to say, for drinking, if you find a good brand, oat milk can be very tasty - I personally even think it tastes better in coffee / cappuccino than regular milk. And cheese - I just happen to have bought this hour for the first time a delicious vegan "Brie" variant: https://vanozza.de/en/produkte.html#brie-pfeffer I am positively surprised, after the last couple of tries I no longer thought I would see the day - but this one is actually yummy!
For oat milk: tastewise best is Oatly Barista, but Oatly is in bed with investors from fascistan, so I go for the second best option which is also delicious: Lidl house brand vemondo, barista drink. Important: it must be the one produced by GrĂžnvang (https://gronvang.dk/?lang=en) - the one by Green & White from Vlissingen/NL tastes bland / watery in comparison.
kolmaskommentoija@sopuli.xyz · 2 pts · 15h
Oh, I hope they make breakthroughs with the "in ovo" system, that sounds really promising.
And good tips for the oat milks and cheese! I usually just buy one cheap store brand, that is made here in Finland, since I like the really bland taste of it, lol. The least chemically tasting I have found! I also have one vegan cheese I like, but it too, is sold only locally...
TipRing@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 16h
I am aware and I do make every effort to reduce and remove dairy (and eggs) from my diet, but I recognize that I fall short of what I would consider vegan. Like if I'm at a party and am offered cake I'm probably going to eat it even though there's probably egg in it, but I'm not going to order an egg-based dish, same with dairy if we're having pizza or something. As I get older I'm increasingly lactose intolerant anyway, so I have additional incentive to avoid it.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 16h
The important thing is that you make a conscious effort to improve. I am the same. I eat cheese and occasionally eggs - rarely even meat, but I try to overall consume very little animal products.
TipRing@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 16h
Absolutely. For me it's all about harm reduction so as long as I am trying to improve, I can still fall short sometimes without having a crisis of conscience.
RobotToaster@mander.xyz · 14 pts · 1d
I had to look up what that is.
If it's any help, according to wiki 90% of cheese is made with artificial enzymes, because it's cheaper.
trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 1d
It depends a bit om where you are and what kind of cheese. For instance in the EU, Parmigiano Reggiano always has calf rennet, otherwise it's not allowed to have that name. Nowadays a lot of cheeses in the Netherlands do specify it on the ingredients list though.
onion_trial@europe.pub · 11 pts · 21h
I feel like this creates some sort of hostility between two groups which usually head into the same direction and respect each other
remon@ani.social · 32 pts · 21h
DmMacniel@feddit.org · 7 pts · 20h
You vegans sure a contentious people.
Triasha@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 20h
You just made an enemy for life!
pega_sus@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 19h
Then there's me, a pesce-pollotarian. Because not everywhere has fish.
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 18h
As with politics, purity culture leads to being ineffective.
Coalitions are important if you want to get anything done.
yermaw@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 21h
No unity. No strength. No true scotsman.
Fight, fuckos, Fight!
Aedaz_@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 21h
I feel like itâs just a silly joke.
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today · 11 pts · 19h
Could always source ethical human milk...and other cheeses.
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 18h
My Hu-cow sub consents.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 13h
Imagining this overlayed on a man with a big smile on his face.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net · 10 pts · 17h
I actually went about it the other way. After seeing how bad dairy cows have it in the daily (I have in-laws who are dairy farmers) compared to cows raised for their flesh, I tried giving up just cheese, because it's the one thing I told myself I could never do. I remember specifically saying to a lactose intolerant person that I would kill myself if I couldn't eat cheese lol.
I can't imagine eating cheese now, just the smell grossed me out. Like I was cleaning a plastic case that held cheddar (my partner's) and I swear I couldn't get the stink out of my fingers for hours. Even cow milk which I used to think was neural and creamy smells and tastes funky and cheesy.
Anyway, that's all to illustrates how malleable tastes are. I think it must have been so hard to quit, because I remember what I said and did, but not how I felt. It's like the urge just faded away. Like it was a temptation one moment, and then the next I forgot what I ever liked about it.
Anyway from there reducing and eliminating other products was easy, since I'd already fought the animal product boss battle.
AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net · 8 pts · 12h
Dairy is the most challenging thing to give up. There are good alternatives - particularly when they're made of nuts and seeds that have been fermented traditionally - but they're good in their own way, don't expect them to be the same.
The stuff made out of almost pure coconut oil is universally disappointing, and coconut is arguably not vegan given the environmental footprint and resulting animal endangerment.
VitoRobles@lemmy.today · 5 pts · 12h
From my experience, there is no good Vegan cheese. Daiyo cheese is awful.
AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 9h
I mean, Daiyo is an example of the artificial-basically-mostly-coconut-oil cheeze I mentioned previously. Most stuff that you can find in the average grocery store is going to suck. Have you tried anything along the lines of, say, this almost award-winning plant-based cheese? Stuff like that is way better, but again, unique. Don't expect it to be the same, although things may be changing soon since people have figured out how to get one of the key dairy proteins from non-animal sources.
There's also homemade stuff, which varies. It's pretty easy to make super creamy mac and cheese with plant-based sources only, for instance.
Alienz8mypopcorn@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 8h
One of my close friends went vegan right around the pandemic beginning, when everything first started shutting down. Our local bar shut down the day of St Patrick's day so we invited him over to our place instead for shitty beer with green food dye (it was 3 of us total and we worked in close proximity daily, AND we were very pro-mask)
He used it as an opportunity to introduce us to a vegan version of the cheesy spinach and artichoke dip from like Applebees/Chilis/insert old people restaurant here, but it was made with cashews.
It took him an hour but OH MY LAWD my husband and I still talk about that dip to this day as non-vegans. Better than anything we've ordered at a restaurant. We tell everyone about that shit.
AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net · 3 pts · 7h
Damn that sounds tasty. People hate plant-based food, until they try good plant-based food.
CrimeIsLegalNow@ani.social · 1 pts · 9h
I've had some good vegan cheese, and I've had bad real cheese, but only one of them cost 3.50 for a pound
DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 17h
I cut way back on cheese because of the salt, also it's expensive and high in calories. I could easily go through a large block (or even two--8000 calories!) of sharp cheddar in a week, and that was too much.
This is why I gave up red meat, and processed meat:
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/is-red-meat-bad-for-you
arctanthrope@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1d
It was hot when I first bit it, hot as a glede, and my mouth was scorched, so that I doubt if ever again I shall be free of the pain of it. Yet even as I write it is cooled, and it seemeth to shrink, though it loseth neither its beauty nor its shape.... But for my part I will risk no hurt to this thing: of all the works of ranching the only fair. It is precious to me, though I buy it with great pain.
CADmonkey@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 17h
I like eggs. And baking.
My eggs are sourced from a dozen of the most spoiled hens I've ever seen. They have a half acre of bugs, grass, and weeds to run around in. They are more pets than livestock.
Garbagio@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 17h
I mean the critique of cheese (honey and eggs, too) is that they, like all foods, are statistically near always sourced from factory farming methods that are harmful to all involved. The only difference is that wheat isn't sentient enough for ethical consideration. I'm glad your chickens are treated well. I'm glad you ethically source your eggs. Being "one of the good ones" isn't a defense though; we still need to end factory farming as it exists today.
CADmonkey@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 16h
Im doing what I can to avoid factory farmed food, because for all the talk of ending factory farming I have yet to see any progress outside of angry internet comments. Im going for harm reduction in my own life.
joyjoy@piefed.social · 2 pts · 13h
POV: you're lactose intolerant
myyass@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 12h
Could be worse, I can't eat lentils or wheat. I mean I can eat wheat but I don't like to clean my toilet everyday. And lentils make me throw up.
Obnomus@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 17h
Whats the difference between vegans and vegetarians?
ayyy@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 17h
Dairy and eggs. Aka animal products that donât involve flesh.
âŠunless youâre Catholic in which case you make up bullshit to spread your religion and call beavers and fish vegetarian forâŠreasons.
Monstrosity@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 13h
I know you don't care but the fish thing has to do w symbolism not ethical constraint. Just fyi
mult@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 17h
Vegetarians consume dairy products. Vegans don't.
glitchdx@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 17h
one is a diet, the other is a religion.
Obnomus@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 18m
Kekw
beejboytyson@lemmy.world · -6 pts · 18h
If you're a vegan do this and partake in society, you are brain rotted.
FatVegan@leminal.space · 7 pts · 18h
That's almost a real sentence
grrgyle@slrpnk.net · 1 pts · 17h
Can you translate?