The Vegan Thread

Probably a pint of milk a day including take outs from coffee shops etc.

So if I save 7 pints a week that's great but if eating approx 250g cheese per week = 1.25 litres which = 3 pints then I've only reduced my overall dairy by 70%. And then there's the yoghurt factor.

UK cow's milk is typically 12-13% solids, (fat, protein, trace elements), Cheddar Cheese is 60-70% solids, but I don't know if the young cheese absorbs any water when it is washed.
5:1 looks plausible.

Aha. Sorry for misunderstanding your question :)
Danish dairy industry’s own numbers are that it takes 10 liters of milk to produce 1 kg of cheese, so 10:1.
I’m pretty sure that number goes up the firmer the cheese, ie Parmesan.
It doesn’t say anything about yoghurt.

I too started out from a climate perspective, then came health and then animal rights. I support you in your efforts.
Though, once you start to look into the health thing your reduce your consumption so fast it’s easy to cut it out completely. ;)

https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/dairy/

My girlfriend “could never give up on cheese” so we agreed not to buy it, and she could have it when she was eating out. A few weeks in she didn’t crave it anymore and now she rarely eats it (only when served).
My best advice (I know you are not asking for it) is to find substitutes that you can tolerate. Try a soy yoghurt, see if it works for you. Try a plant milk and see what works on your cereal or in the coffee. Change habits and routines. Have porridge instead of yoghurt? Drink black coffee instead of flat white?

I've not had milk or eggs (or meat/fish) for over a year. Black tea/coffee is great, will drink an oatmilk flat white on occasion.

Cheese and yoghurt are the next to go.

🙌🏼 Well, you’re well on your way then. :)
My kids love the alpro blueberry one.

Also, more vegan propaganda to pull you over towards the dark side
https://m.soundcloud.com/richroll/rrp296
Rich roll podcasts are my favorite.

Someone way back in this thread recommended Darjeeling as a good tea without milk.
They were right. Get on it.

have a try of the coconut collaborative yoghurt, it's very good, nice a creamy, not too sweet

cheese - some bute island ones are ok - it was my last thing to go, thought it would be hard but just stopped and i'm not bothered now at all.

Good quality chai is good without milk. In a pot - of course.

Yeah chai is my tea of choice all day. I also like it with a splash of coconut/rice milk (Coconut Dream is my preferred brand).

I don't have specific papers to hand and I frankly can't be bothered to trawl through introductions to find the right ones, but it's perhaps worth pointing out that it's better for the environment to give up cheese/milk/yoghurt than it is to give up chicken/eggs. Beef is of course by far the worst source of protein by a long way.

This data is just grouped into "dairy" rather than splitting between cheese, milk and yoghurt but illustrates the point

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/greenhouse-gas-emissions-per-gram-of-protein-by-food-type

Edit: I also found this random article:

...rank different protein sources in terms of their life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions per four-ounce serving. Beef, as you’d expect, is bad — No. 2 on the list in terms of climate impact, surpassed only by lamb. But the No. 3 offender is cheese, ranking worse than pork and chicken ounce for ounce, and substantially worse than other dairy products like milk and yogurt.

What makes cheese so bad? “Cheese has a high carbon footprint because it takes a lot of milk to produce a pound of cheese — 10 pounds of milk, on average, go into producing a pound of hard cheese,” says report author Kari Hamerschlag, senior analyst at EWG. “You’re producing the milk from a dairy cow that is emitting large quantities of methane, which has a global-warming impact 25 times higher than carbon. And then you have the methane and nitrous oxide that are also generated from the cow’s manure. And then all of the grains that go into feeding the cows, which range from corn to alfalfa and other forage, and there’s a footprint associated with that.”

...

Are greenhouse gas emissions lower for cheeses made from goat or sheep milk? Nope. Finnish researchers reported in 2008 that goat cheeses are roughly similar to cow cheeses in terms of emissions, while sheep cheeses are worse because sheep emit more methane per unit of milk produced.

Hard cheeses take a lot of milk (10:1 milk to cheese by weight), so you will want to avoid those. Soft cheese takes less milk. I don't know about yoghurt but it doesn't take a lot of time to make so I expect that the ratio of milk to yoghurt is much lower (near enough 1:1 perhaps) as evaporation/shrinkage/whatever isn't really a significant part of the production process.

Ultimately the best thing to do would probably be to eat legumes, grains, nuts, etc. first, then eggs, chicken, pork, milk and yoghurt, soft cheese, hard cheese, beef in order of decreasing frequency, sourcing things locally as often as you can. I feel like the climate impact of eggs from locally-kept chickens is going to be very minimal and the ethical concerns aren't too great if the chickens are healthy and well-kept and effectively treated like pets. To the point where they're probably better for the environment than beans/rice that have been transported by plane.

Edit: forgot about sea food. Absolutely no idea where that falls on the scale but if I had to make a complete guess I would say that local line-caught fish is probably still better than pork, cheese, beef etc. though it raises questions about ethics. Other seafood is probably the same.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2018/apr/30/is-it-wrong-for-a-vegan-to-give-a-crying-child-non-vegan-ice-cream

What's the collective noun for Twitter posters? I suggest "An idiot of Tweeters"

Does ANY light rather than heat ever come out of any Twitter exchanges? It just seems like the most pointless, combative place to engage in any sort of debate.

There's a saying: don't read the comments -
this is pretty much Twitter sorted for me..

Not just ethics about killers by the fish, but ethics about killing the oceans.
Farmed fish is horrible to the environment, at 6kg of wild fish used to farm 1 kg of salmon.

Line grown clam farming is a plus to the environment as they clean the water they are in, so to the best of my knowledge that is a sustainable source of animal protein. But I ’m open to be proven wrong.

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thanks @frankenbike and others. interestingly I probably am consuming more milk via cheese than i ever did directly. Which suggests to me that cheese has to be removed from the diet next.

Stumbled across Essential Vegan (6 Calvert Ave), after dropping off stepchild at Richmix in Shoreditch, yesterday..food was deelish we sampled quite a bit, out of intrigue to compare Brazilian with Colombian dishes we know. I’m not even vegan, just great to find new spots for my youngest daughter who is vegan and to meet up and try something different. I guess her diet choice should not be limiting more adventurous..
Jackfruit coxinhas I think they are called were ace (although deep fried) also their vegan cheese balls baked not fried.

They're very good. I can recommend the cookbook. Easy and varied recipes that work well.

In case you feel the need to tell the world:

https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2018/may/11/should-vegan-rise-podcast-contribute

I have a feeling this is going to be a very successful line of products:

http://fatgayvegan.com/2018/05/11/new-vegan-pizza-pockets-in-london/

I might try one at the market later.

Because cooking is best :)
Olive loaf and mini buns, sort of pasty things with sweet and reg potato plus mushroom and kidney beans. Apologies for the instagram styling.

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Hmmmmmmmmmmmm

The Red Lion / Santa Maria combo in Ealing,

http://www.redlionealing.co.uk/

http://www.santamariapizzeria.com/

the fall-back venue for Thurday night Wests Beers,
owned by the forum's own @metrocammell,
now offers 4 vegan pizzas.

https://www.lfgss.com/comments/14240197/

UK screening of Dominion, aka 'Earthlings 2', has the same 18 age restriction as Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Have to be an adult to see where food comes from!

For francophones

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY2QSCGvmVk

What do you folks eat as snacks when out touring or bikepacking or hiking or whatnot? I was just off in the Highlands this weekend and the best I could come up with was bourbons, nuts and dried fruit, which was a bit uninspiring. Fruit's no good really as it inevitably gets squished if I'm out for more than one night.

It's no fun walking/riding for hours and then going in your bag to find only the dried fruit and nuts remaining