Plant based eating and veganism

merlot obviously there were wartime shortages, but still rationing gave a much healthier diet overall than before or since. There's an interesting article (amongst many!)

www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/574988/War-time-diet-good

There maybe a debate about the healthiness or otherwise of wartime diets, but to claim that the UK current diet of over 50% processed foods, lots of industrially produced meat and dairy products is the optimum diet for good health and much better than any other available is a not something many would agree with. Mediterranean countries have a healthy diet with olive oil, fresh fruit and veg, smaller portions of meat and far less reliance on ready meals, processed burgers etc. Less than 12% of food bought in Italy and Greece is processed, people in those countries aren't "starving" either.

Merlot, my mum, (90yo) says her area in S Wales was v fortunate during the war in that they always had plenty to eat. They were surrounded by farms and although there were items they couldn't get, there were adequate supplies of other things to make up for it. I'm sure the picture was much grimmer in the cities.

I agree, Geri, so much processed food just can't be good for us. And cake! Why is there so much cake around nowadays? I like cake as much as anyone but it's everywhere now and in massive slices, too.

I see Gordon Ramsay is giving veganism a try!

Gordon Ramsay will jump on any bandwagon. He once kept pigs in his back garden so he could 'know where they came from'

One was called Delia

Haha Merlot, that reminds me of the two Kune Kune pigs at Shugborough Estate in Staffordshire.
They were called Trinny and Susannah

For the lady who mentioned that this was like hard line politics and her choices ... anything can be labelled political nowadays it seems. However, when it comes to choice and life, then the poor animals that end up on people's plates never have a choice. They are tortured and mutilated in the most obscene ways, that none of us would ever wish on our worst enemies (if we indeed have any lol). We have a choice to show compassion with everything we buy and every meal we prepare and that's certainly not politics, its having empathy and showing benevolence by expanding our moral compass.

Jenpax, if you are still reading this thread, would you please indicate which spread is olive oil if possible without any palm oil?

I have given up milk because of the sort of thing that Humptydumpty wrote about. I have just begun this regime and so far discovered I like almond 'milk' and oat'milk' but not soya 'milk' ,unfortunately as the soya is cheaper.

The packaging of these veggy substitiutes is waxy Tetrapack material with a modern spout thing to seal it so you don't have to open it with a pair of scissors. I have still to investigate the price difference between the packs from the chill cabinets and those from the ordinary shelves where they stock long- life juice or cow milk .

I do know that tomato juice and orange juice off the long -life shelf are much cheaper than chilled juices but are the same product. Coop sells great tomato juice for £1 a litre!

I don't eat meat or cheese but eat fish for health reasons.
You need to take B12 supplement if you don't eat meat, it's difficult to get this without.
My other supplements are Vit D and for more than 20 yrs I've been taking Omega 3 and Glucosamine I don't know if it's because of that but I don't have any joint problems at all and I'm in my 70s.