The Vegan Thread

Red rice with a sauce made from tomatoes and balsamic vinegar, pasta (without egg) cooked with homemade pesto (and no parmesan cheese), and for starters you could have (cornflour) tortillas with salsa made of avocados, onions, chillis, tomatoes and coriander. Of course, you wouldn't be able to have cheese in the tortillas, so you can replace that with something else.

Great recipe suggestions, jujimufu!

I am not a vegan myself, and I am trying to be a vegetarian but I am a very bad one! I really like meat, and I don't think there is any reason to not eat meat as long as it is done so in an ethical manner.

Well, many vegetarians and vegans believe that killing animals is wrong, which is one of the reasons why they refrain from eating meat. If you believe this, you are unlikely to think that it is possible to produce meat in an 'ethical' manner. (It is, of course, possible to eat carrion, such as roadkill, but that's arguably not a very important counter-example).

I also believe that vegetarians and vegans have the same effect in the meat-producing industry as people who just don't like meat: which is none. If you want to change the industry, then boycott the ones who do bad business and support those who do good business, and all in all just limit your meat input to as little as possible,

As long as there remains the same number of meat-eaters and the same amount of business done around animal parts, of course there will be no effect. The idea, of course, is that with more vegetarians and vegans around the number of meat-eaters and meat-related business will decline. Whether that's happening is something I don't know, and that I suspect would be difficult to show. The basic idea, however, is completely sound.

but I believe being fanatic about anything is very stupid and in the past has lead to the world wars, the crusades, slavery, witch hunting and destroying invaluable ancient relics such as writings, paintings and statues. Hitler was a vegetarian too, so BE CAREFUL! :P

Well, it's hard to tell at what point you move from being serious to being facetious, as the smiley/tongue-in-cheekey suggests. You probably know that there's a bit of a debate about whether Hitler really was a vegetarian. I also think that you're not going to find a lot of 'fanatic' vegans on here. As for the implication that veganism is a form of 'fanaticism', about which it seems to me you are serious, it just isn't. It's just a perfectly normal and highly enjoyable lifestyle without any apparent drawbacks, unlike one that involves meat consumption. But do correct me if I read you wrongly.

Catching up on this thread has made me hungry.