No longer a Vegan after 11 years

janeainsworth, I absolutely agree, bread and potatoes were the staples of the British working man and woman's diet until at least the start of WW2.

In fact even in quite comfortable families meat was rationed and the purpose of the Yorkshire pudding, eaten before not with the meat course, was to curb people's appetite for meat.

I remember reading a 19th century novel, one by Charlotte Bronte I think, where the squire of a small villages admonished his son who wanted to skip the earlier courses to get to the meat ' No ball (Yorkshire pudding or suet pudding) without soup and no meat without ball.' In other words no one got meat until they had eaten their soup and their portion of 'ball' so that their appetite had been blunted and they wera already beginning to feel full.so that they would eat less meat.

Shropshirelass I doubt very much that our grandparents ate a low-carb diet.
Most of them would not have been able to afford large quantities of meat and would have derived a lot of their protein from bread.
If they were engaged in heavy manual labour outside or inside the home, they would have needed the calories derived from the carbohydrate element of their diet.

I understand that vegans usually become short of iron for blood and vit B12 (folate) also prevents anaemia.

You dd very well though as most vegans hsve problems after a couple of years.

The reason we haven't got bellies like a gorillas is that, unlike them, we have shorter guts for meat digestion not the lengthy guts needed by vegetarian animals.

Good luck and don't feel guilty - we shortened our guts millions of years ago, in order to have enough blood to grow bigger brains.

Happy New Year

Me neither!

Wow. Didn’t know all that. Thank you.

I still don’t want to think about it too much though?

All human waste can be be and is used as fertiliser and has been for many years. The sewage treatment plant can’t tell the difference between vegan poo, carnivore poo and omnivore poo so they recycle it all together and then spread it on the fields to nurture our crops.
I watched a TV program about it and here’s a link to read if you want.
sustainablefoodtrust.org/articles/human-manure-closing-the-nutrient-loop/

In the Rhanna series by Christine Marion Fraser, which I read many years ago, one man used his own poo on his rhubarb. No one really fancied it once they found out, but if vegans want to macerate their poo and put it on their veggies, go for it!

The problem with vegan or vegetarian is that the body doesn’t get the right nutrients, we were not meant to eat in this way and cannot process these types of foods. I respect anyone’s views but cannot understand them. I know lots will disagree with me, that is their prerogative. I eat low carb, no sugars, processed foods or oils and have high fat diet including dairy, meat, fish, eggs, nuts and berries, leafy greens. I cook in butter, ghee, lard, goose fat, duck fat, dripping and use olive oil too. No bread, rice, pasta, potatoes, carby veg, pulses or high sugar fruits. I am not overweight, not diabetic and feel really well. Rarely go to the doctors. This suits me and it is the way our grandparents used to eat.

vegansrock

Human waste can be used as compost( especially that from non meat eaters) . No shortage of humans.

Yes, if you use your own. Have you seen “The Martian’?

I don’t know if it can be sterilised n great quantities to prevent the spread of disease.

I just can’t fancy it, somehow?

vegansrock

Why wouldn’t horse manure be available?

I guess because horses only exist here as domestic animals for people to make use of ( except for the few wild ones on Dartmoor etc).
Sent the whole point that animals shouldn’t be used by people for their own ends?

I hate the references to the "Western World" and "Here in the West" when referring to how our meat is raised. I live in Norfolk. Free range pigs abound. On many farms now pigs are increasingly used to cleanse and manure the fields in a rotation lasting three to five years. Sheep have grazed sugar beet tops down before the beet is harvested for decades, manuring as they go. Most farms still bring their cows in for the winter, fed on silage far more than imported soya, and the deep litter is then spread on the fields. But increasingly, with careful land management, cattle are being left out most, if not all year. Also meadowland and flood plains are so very, very important to biodiversity and carbon capture. And they need grazing to maintain this. Consumer demand for free range chicken means more birds have access to the outdoors. We're fortunate here to have a good abattoir as EU regulations forced the closure of so many, but hopefully this will change and more smaller ones will open so animals have shorter travel distances.

Its a big mistake to lump UK farming into the same category as the enormous factory farming lots common in the Americas. The vast majority of our farmers have great respect for their animals and treat them well.

Horse manure needs to rest at least 6 months before it is used and then you can still get grass seeds sprouting everywhere. You can make your own liquid feed using nettle leaves or comfrey leaves. Seaweed compost can be bought to spread on the soil.. To improve soil texture rot leaves down for a couple of years.

Human waste can be used as compost( especially that from non meat eaters) . No shortage of humans.

I doubt there would be enough horses?
Like many of our modern problems, it’s a matter of scale, I think. When we come up with a new idea it’s impact is not too noticeable. When we apply it by the millions or billions we create imbalance.

Why wouldn’t horse manure be available?

We all need to live in earth ships, and have composting toilets.

Although I run three compost bins and work a three year rotation, there are still times when the soil is depleted and I have to add nutrients from an outside source. Mostly horse manure, chicken and cattle manure.

These wouldn’t be available if we were mostly vegan, so I think it would have to be chemical.

kjmpde

if you go to the centre for alternative technology in machynlleth (sorry if mis spelt) , you will see that it produces enough compost .

Thank you for the link. It’s very interesting and a place I would like to visit. We have Ryton Organic Gardens not too far away from us.

Nevertheless, although their advice on composting is very good, it still wouldn’t produce sufficient compost from the waste produced to renew the soil for multiple crops of the same type. This is why a legume heavy diet is a problem. It requires specific nutrients which compost generated within a closed circle cannot supply.

That’s because as consumers of whatever is produced we lock some nutrients within our bodies and excrete others. We only achieve equilibrium when we add our body waste ( including the ultimate decay) to the equation.

Not surprisingly we’re a bit reluctant to do that, though I do have friends who pee on their compost heaps!

You’ll see from the website that even the Centre adds extra in the form of various paper products and doesn’t claim that their compost is the only fertiliser they use.

kjmpde Snide comments about vegans will end when their public voice is no longer one of moral superiority.

Your comparison is ridiculous. Equality is a human right. Being a vegan is a lifestyle choice.

My childhood friend choose to be Vegetarian aged 21, she took a course on food science to make sure she was eating properly and she cooked from scratch everyday and rarely had any processed food, within a few years she always looked like she had had a rough night. She then went Vegan 9 years ago and quickly began to look like death warmed up, had no energy and hair falling out, at 53 she looked 103 Her Mother and he Doctor begged her to eat meat. She started eating eggs and cheese during the first lockdown before adding small amounts of meat about 6 months later. She now looks amazing, her skin glows and her hair shines, she has so much energy and now looks her age.

if you go to the centre for alternative technology in machynlleth (sorry if mis spelt) , you will see that it produces enough compost .

Soil health ?Oh dear…

i think comments against vegans is equivalent to those of years ago when women that wanted equality Some old comments can still be found referring to "bra burning". nobody states that now so hopefully snide remarks against vegans will also disappear

Razzy, as I said up thread, and Lilyflower puts so well The idea that vegans become so as the result of an ‘ethical’ choice, thus implying that non vegans are morally suspect and ethically inferior is a large part of the reason why I dislike veganism.

Veganism is just one of many thousands of different eating regimes people around the world choose for a variety of reasons.

The sooner vegans can accept that their food choices are no better or worse than the decisions of anyone else and every eating pattern can be good or bad for your health, the environment etc, depending on the choices you make within it, the sooner any hostility against vegans will disappear.

A traditional three year rotation would be much better for soul health but it would mean changing our diet somewhat to make it work.

Less demand for legumes and roots, more for brassicas. Trouble is the vegan diet is legume heavy.

veganism may be a fad for some but not for all.
i became vegetarian in the belief it would be better for animals but as male chicks in the egg industry are shredded , male calves are set to slaughter then is it?
i think to be vegan is far better