Eat less meat but.......

Simply add a bit of sugar(half a tsp) when cooking the beans and your problem will be sorted.

Good advice MOnica. I have problems with beans but can eat small quantities of tinned chickpeas or green lentils whic have been thoroughly rinsed. The substance that causes many of us to have problems with beans leaches out into the liquid in the tin so keeping the portion small and rinsing well generally works. I use them to bulk out meat dishes but you can also find good vegetarian recipes that don’t use beans if you Google “Low FODMAP vegetarian recipes”.

Eglantine21, I'm not a fan of supplements either. I've been vegetarian for 50 odd years and have never needed them. Therefore it's not a problem for you. One of my daughters is vegan and takes B12 but that's because she doesn't have any animal products at all.

I don't think it's a for or against/anti discussion, rather a choice of options about diet. Obviously, people eating far less meat would reduce the environmental problems dramatically.

Umm, this wasn’t intended as a vegan/anti vegan thread.

More about my own personal problem with beans and pulses?

I’ve got no intention of going vegan. But why the B12 supplement.? At what point in the balance of meat vs no meat would you need it?

I really don’t like the supplement industry.

It takes 15 pounds of plant-based material to make 1 pound of meat. Do not tell me that deforestation is being assisted by people going veggie!
Secondly 'it's quite hard to have a balanced vegan diet'? Really? NHS website says B12 supplement (and make sure you're getting enough iron (green veg?) And calcium)
If you don't want to give up meat and fish - fine. But putting other people iff by perpetuating myths is indefensible

vegansci.com/2017/03/12/animals-account-for-85-of-uk-food-land-footprint/

pinkquartz, you said:

'The planet is also in danger from deforestation to clear land to grow crops to make veggie/vegan foods.......it is not a simple issue of stop eating meat.'

That's wrong, it's the crops grown to feed animals for meat that are the problem. We'd need less land to feed more people if they were vegan.

MOnica and tidy, the 'peasant' food I remember as 'student food' from my younger days. People would cook something filling, either vegetarian or with a tiny bit of meat in it.

Certainly substitute any rare or expensive ingredient for something more common and cheaper

Substitute the word 'ingredient' with 'people' and you have a recipe for a quiet life.

When I get a new recipe, the first thing I do is run my eye down the ingredients and remove or replace any exotic ingredient that I do not want to buy for one recipe only or cannot buy in Waitrose.

Last weekend I had a recipe for Chinese style duck which included maltose paste(?) and something similar. I had heard of neither. I decided that the purpose of the two igredients was to make a sweet paste to rub into the ducks skin and I just replaced them both with Hoisin Sauce, which is a sweet Chinese relish, a jar of which was in my kitchen cupboard. The duck tasted delicious.

I used to think this kind of substitution was a guilty secret I should never admit to then about 10 days ago I read a column in a newspaper by a columnist who did exactly the same thing and started the article 'When I get a recipe with exotic ingredients, I do what everybody else does, I ignore half and replace the rest with ingredients already in my kitchen cupboard' or words to that effect.

Recipes are merely serving suggestions. Do with them what you will. Certainly substitute any rare or expensive ingredient for something more common and cheaper.

tidyskatemum - you don't need all the ingredients for Ottolenghi recipes and as merlot says, spices last for ages. Use them in your more 'ordinary ' cooking - a bit of chilli/garlic/herb/s and spices add a lot to most food.

Do you mean 'use by' date, tidyskatemum?

I have to confess I don't even look at the dates on jars of spices. I probably have some that are years old.

I have an Ottolenghi cookbook with lots of delicious recipes but everything in it is such hard work. You need a million ingredients, a day to chop everything and then have enough to keep two of you you going for a week even when you make half quantities. And you end up having to throw most of the spices away after you fail to use them by the sell by date.

MOnica, your diet sounds excellent. It's similar to the one I grew up with. We had the classic small amount of roast meat with lots of veg for Sunday lunch (and a delicious pudding, apple/rhubarb/blackberry crumble) then Monday small amounts of the roast in a large stew full of whatever veg was in season, by Tuesday the meat was being transformed into a potato onion and meat pie plus cabbage or whatever came in from the garden if we had a veg garden or the market if we didn't
In the 1970's when my first child was born and money was very tight, I followed a similar line. Because we were young hippies, we supplemented this with brown rice and tomato sauces of various kinds, with beans/pulses added for protein.

I'm still a fan of what a friend whose father was a chef referred to as 'peasant food'. I have a veggie chilli cooking at the moment, we'll have some brown rice and brown bread for those who are greedy (whoops, mean hungry) or who don't like rice.
Like MOnica, we've always eaten 4 or so non meat meals a week. It was a huge relief when the children left home, to know they could make something tasty out of left overs/or fridge bottoms teas.

Cutting down how much meat you eat doesn't mean cutting it out. I still use all my usual casserole and stew recipes but I add lots of chopped vegetables to them so that a 1lb of meat with the vegetables will feed 8. This cuts the average meat portion from 4oz to 2 oz. I sometimes add beans and I add lentils to mince.

We do also eat a lot of non-meat meals - but we always have.

Thanks everyone. The giving your gut bacteria time to adjust makes sense and perhaps a supplement to help it on its way, though generally I don’t agree with supplements. I tend to think if you need a supplement there’s actually something lacking in your diet! But it might need a kick start.

I’m not intending to become vegan, just to alter the balance of what I eat. Definitely couldn’t give up on ?.

I’ll persevere? (and stock up on toilet paper?)

Yes, a gradual change would be sensible. The bacteria in your intestines vary depending on your diet so give them a chance to adapt. I make my own kefir daily (a two minute procedure) and have never felt healthier!

It took me about 3 months to get used to a vegan diet. You don’t need huge amounts of beans on the plate. If making a butternut squash casserole add a few chickpeas and bulk up with carrots, tomatoes, mushrooms, eat with rice or baked potatoes. Try crispy fried tofu or a nut based dish instead of the beans. Most deforestation is to grow soya to feed pigs in China, not for humans to eat.

Hmm not sure about that pinkquartz. The animals eat mainly plants if they're allowed to.

The old irritating question asked of veggies springs to mind: "What would you eat if you were stranded on an island with just animals?" The answer being: "I would eat what the animals eat"

I certainly agree that a surfeit of beans/legumes is indigestible.

I can only eat lentils occasionally and not in the same meal as beans, chickpeas or green beans. or I fart a lot
I can't believe there are as many intolerances as people make out though. It's not a problem in countries short of food.

well after 30 years as a vegan/veggie I was persuaded to put meat back in my diet.
A couple of years later I stopped my usual bean and veg soups and casseroles and I stopped having so many tummy pains and gas
Seems beans are hard to digest.
Seaweed cooked with the beans can help but my stomach was so relieved when I stopped beans I will never go back though I will eat lentils and chickpeas.

The planet is also in danger from deforestation to clear land to grow crops to make veggie/vegan foods.......it is not a simple issue of stop eating meat.

Oh EV ^ a meal of crisp bacon pieces mashed potato and savoy cabbage with the bacon fat poured over the potatoes^ a woman after my heart! I’m definitely coming to live next door to you (in The hope you invite me in to share).

Jillybird
I developed an intolerance to broccoli (which I love, incidentally). Who'd have thought such a nutritious food could make me so ill. It was like I had swallowed knives and forks! Agony. (Apparently there's an enzyme in it to which I'm reacting).

When I was being seen by the Senior Allergy Consultant in the hospital, I told him about my reactions to broccoli and cauliflower (both in the Mustard Food Family) and he said it's an allergy/intolerance that is surprisingly common. I can't tolerate any veg in that food family, which unfortunately covers a lot of the green veg we eat in the UK.

I'm on a blood thinner but don't eat any differently than I ever did. The consultant said if I've always eaten turmeric, lots of greens, spinach and a bit of cranberry - keep it up, so I do.

Just go easy on the amounts as you get older. In fact as you age your body tells you your limits, though saying that I can still eat the same amount of mushy peas with a good lamb dinner as I did years ago without any unwelcome " effects ". Peas of the soaked variety and not the frozen soaked ones.

I'm limited to the amount of green leaf veg anyway because of taking warfarin. I love cabbage too and enjoy a meal of crisp bacon pieces mashed potato and savoy cabbage with the bacon fat poured over the potatoes. Delicious.
I have to have such meals 2 days on the run because of the amount, but the 2nd day it's a fry-up.

I've reduced my meat intake in favour of more fish. I don't do much frying either so I'm not much of a drain on the environment-------I don't think.

Message withdrawn at poster's request.