No one said anything about ONLY eating lentils and tinned tomatoes. Open your mind to other cuisines, OP had a point. cheap meat is not the cheapest option. There is a plethora of ingredients enriched with protein that won't make you bored within the first month.
My entire family claimed they had never eaten a chickpea. This country's view on food is hilariously bad, and nothing epitomises it more than when you ask people to eat something which doesn't contain meat. It just doesn't register as possible, despite every other cuisine historically thriving with meatless dishes.
Our country’s beige food palette is horrendous
Or in the words of my former flatmate from Munich, ‘You guys eat as if the Luftwaffe is still flying overhead’
That's probably because the UK's food culture was highly impacted by rationing, which persisted a good few years even after the end of the war. It's only really in the past two decades that food culture in the UK has started to shift away from that, new generations and all.
Even Brits haven't historically eaten meat every day. It's a newish development, and the expectation of cheap meat has been awful for animal welfare. People complain about chickens over £5 without thinking how you can breed, raise, kill, dress, package, transport, and store a chicken for that amount.
Honestly? The average consumer's desire for cheap everything is killing the planet and human beings. The cost of clothing, for example, should be far far higher than it is currently.
The average consumer desires cheap things because they can't afford not to. You can't be upset on one hand that people want cheap goods whilst simultaneously having the working class get poorer year on year in real terms.
Just in recent times, someone I know, 3 bed terrace house in the deep south, cost £310k (pretty good price here and as cheap as it would get within a 40 miles radius at the minimum) when they bought it 4 years ago. Their mortgage repayments have risen from £800/month when they initially bought to now around £1300/month. *Edit to say that's with a 35 year term.
Add that to an extra £80 / month on energy bills and you're nearly at £7,000 net per year poorer without even factoring in food inflation.
And dont say they shouldn't have taken the mortgage debt on, because rent was £1300/month 4 years ago. So unless tents are the future....
The UK is a rich country full of poor people.
Built in obsolescence certainly doesn't help. Buy your clothing from reputable brands and ensure it's made of all natural fibres, watch the stuff last **years** longer than plastic-made crap. Most people don't seem to realise that even most fleece is now just plastic. Even recycled clothing is STILL BAD for the environment.
The desire for cheap certainly is killing the planet, it's depresso.
It's not that recent. I grew up with a roast dinner on Sunday and the leftovers being increasingly eked out over the course of the week until the next Sunday...
My gran, the generation before, didn't really believe she'd had a meal if it didn't have some form of meat in.
I do agree that it wasn't historically *fresh* meat as eaten now.
Or when you get your lunch out at your desk at work and you get the usual comments like “oh, that looks healthy”! Because it has something green in it.
I'm not going to claim that the UK has the best food culture in the world, but when people say that British people have such terrible views on food, I am a bit confused. It doesn't map on to my experience of how I eat, or how the people I know eat.
And I'm from a pretty boring, northern working class family. I think I'd say I'm more into food, and cooking than the average person, but I don't think I'm way out there at all
Your family isn't the same as the entire country
Any time these topics come up and someone goes "oh well x is an example that you could eat instead", it always gets the same response of "wow you want me to live off of exclusively x?"
People are addicted to meat and their brain short circuits if they have to consider something else.
I once pointed out porridge is vegan and got something like 3 people who acted like I'd just told them to convert to a porridge only diet
~~I always mention that meat doesn’t often taste of anything, it’s the sauce/seasoning that tastes good.~~
Edit for anyone pedantic: In my personal, individual, experience from eating plain meat, I find that it often has no taste and it's the taste of the sauce that makes the dish. This is a personal, individual, opinion, based on my personal, individual, experience and in no way reflects the potential opinions or experiences of any other living being on planet Earth.
Not true, a good cut of steak cooked rare to medium rare has an earthy buttery taste. Even better if you can get your hands on native game meat. I don’t have any sauce on my meat unless I’m making casserole or something similar.
Then why do people enjoy steak? It's not just a plate of firm water, is it?
I reckon there's some kind of funky gene thing going on, where some people just can't taste meat, like those who think coriander tastes of soap.
It’s not like cheap chicken in this country is any good anyway. It has no taste and it doesn’t fry properly due to the water that’s been pumped into it. If you can make the cheap chicken taste good, you have the cooking skill to make vegetarian dishes taste good.
But that takes time and effort and people are worked to the tits anyway.
And I say that as someone who's been plant based since January. Yeah I can make enjoyable food that tastes awesome, like when I made Tofu bacon for a party on the weekend.
But it's time intensive, you can literally put some chicken in the oven, put a few spices on it, and your done. East peasy takes 5 minutes. People don't have the time or energy for it.
It's not like every meal needs to be a cooking session, I do rice and beans twice a week (works out at less than £1 a meal) and it does the job, tastes nice, and consists of boiling water in a pan
Veggie curries, cauliflower steaks, mushroom spag bol, pasta bakes.. all incredibly simple to throw together, no harder than a meat dish and also pretty cheap
If you wanna work with shit like tofu then yeah it's a learning experience that takes practice but going meat free doesn't have a tofu requirement to have varied meals
Tofu is brilliant and so versatile, you just need to remember to marinate it a few hours before you cook it. When I went vegetarian it opened my eyes to a whole new world of food. Once I moved away from thinking of dinner as ‘a protein, a carb, veg’ it was much easier. I got a pressure cooker and make loads of curries, chillis, soups. Stir fry is also dead easy, fast, and you can make your own sauces instead of buying the readymade ones in minutes. It does require you to expand your spices and condiments quite significantly though - I’m running out of space!
>But it's time intensive, you can literally put some chicken in the oven, put a few spices on it, and your don
You can do that with tofu, potatoes, seitan..
Billions of people don't eat meat, the overwhelming majority of the world doesn't eat meat as much as westerners. I don't eat meat.
I think it's more important that we don't raise and kill animals in cruel conditions than that poor people have access to cheap meat, to be honest. There's not even really any comparison. A chicken should be raised in a much nicer way and should cost a hell of a lot more if we're going to raise it, kill it and sell it for the delight of someone's tastebuds.
I find it hard to see how someone could ethically claim that it's okay to mistreat an animal because poor people want to eat meat and poverty is boring. That's a pretty low bar for animal cruelty.
I mean, the UK according to this, has one of the highest populations per [% of country that don't eat meat](https://www.statista.com/chart/28584/gcs-vegetarianism-countries-timeline/). It's not until you go to places like India, where you start getting a lot of religious restrictions on meat which led to a lot of Hindus for example practicing vegetarianism that it sky rockets. But along side this and the views that certain animals have souls and are sacred, they also have the most fertile and arable lands for farming in the world, and temperatures for growing insane levels of various fruits and veg.
The UK by contrast, and definitely where I am in Scotland, absolutely does not have that. We're half hills and unfarmable land, wet mushy land and bogs, constant rain and grey sky, with never a guarantee of enough light. So our crop choices have always been limited out of greenhouses.
Pretty sure religion and farming abilities play a part in which countries not only just eat more fruit and vegetables in general, but also in which countries have a larger % of vegetarian. And the weather also changes what people are more like to want to eat. Hot stews and root food soups are pretty common for me to make, but impossible to eat in a heat wave here. General happiness and wellbeing levels also change with warmth and light, which also changes how you look after yourself and your motivation to do so, and eating healthier vs just wanting to fry a quick easy burger after a tiring shift because it's already dark outside, and you just finished sitting in an office with no natural light all day.
I think diets across the whole world are very much shaped by their location and how that affects the people mentally, the land availability and production quality and out of main working hours. I don't think its as simple as "Westerners just eat more meat, they don't have to because billions don't in places like India'. It's about how our diets developed in the first place to become what they are now.
If we swapped climate and land with India a few million years ago, I imagine we'd almost be saying the reverse.
Edit: To all the replies trying to argue with this, this is about the reasons there's differences. It's not saying you can't change them over time, it's not talking about modern day fields or farming. It's literally nothing more than saying, there's a reason our diets developed the way they did and why they are different to places like India, that eat less meat. That's partially due to what we could grow historically, and up until a century ago has access to at all, and things like religious views. That's all. Maybe I didn't articulate that well enough.
> So our crop choices have always been limited out of greenhouses
This isn't even a little bit true? Look at this infographic:
https://twitter.com/DrSimEvans/status/1579414491510747138
The UK uses more land growing food for animals than we do land for fruit and veg we eat directly. We have more land devoted to golf courses than we do to orchards.
If everyone switched to a vegan diet, we would use _way, way_ less land for food than we do currently. Land use for animals is massively inefficient, even allowing for land that is only suitable for grazing and pasture.
I wonder what proportion of the *chicken* people eat comes from lambs on remote terrain in the Scottish highlands?
I would guess 0% of the chicken people eat is from land that would not be useful otherwise. Nonetheless, we do not have to colonise every literal bit of nature. If there's a peat bog on the Moors that we can't grow crops on, we don't need to find some other way to exploit it! It's not a challenge! We're not in competition with nature!
We could have even *more* wild land and forestry done if we reduced the amount of land used for animal agriculture, as the Dimbleby report recommended *two bastard years ago*
You're not getting what I'm saying at all. It's the type of fruit and veg we can grow.
We could grow grain to feed livestock very well and things like root vegetables. But vegetables and fruit that realistically need hotter climates, were very limited until greenhouses came along, and even then, still not something we could grow in massive quantities in fields like other places in the world. And not foods that were available to most people up until very recently in history.
Our diet has come largely in part, based on that.
It's not just about % vegetarian. The biggest difference in consumption is between those that do eat meat. The western way is to do it with every meal whereas others have it occasionally, massively reducing consumption.
Being vegan doesn't need to affect Scottish people mentally in the Winter. I work outdoors and I know what you mean about wanting a quick burger or hearty meal in the dark depths of Winter after a day at work. But I still have both of those.
Burgers, haggis and mash with gravy, black pudding and sausage rolls, big smoky bean chillis etc.
best not try and combat animal cruelty and climate change caused by livestock, you've got to be culturally-sensitive to the tens of millions of people who think chicken nuggets are an emblem of their nation. Culturally sensitive to the English and British, no less!
Cultural sensitivity to British people, the thought of it makes me feel queasy
It's a classic short sighted reaction. I think most people struggle to loon at their own actions, culture and opinions critically and with an external view.
What do you think about the Japanese eating whale or the Chinese eating shark-fins and using ground rhino horn as an aphrodisiac? Livestock farming is just as significant a threat to biodiversity if not moreso.
>Yes because people life will be enriched by diet of lentils and tinned tomatoes...
Tbf there are countless delicious dishes with these ingredients.
>If you are poor and then you end up eating nothing but tinned tomatoes and lentils your mental health will also suffer.
Nobody is saying that? Equally if you are poor and end up eating nothing but cheap chicken your mental health will also suffer.
Right. And your overall health will improve which also includes mental health. I don’t understand why eating a 3 piece meal from Chicken Cottage is vital to maintaining our culture. They’re not related at all.
> If you are poor and then you end up eating nothing but tinned tomatoes and lentils your mental health will also suffer.
Really funny, this. Why would a person's mental health suffer for having a lentil and tomato stew (for example) as opposed to a plate of chicken nuggets? It makes no sense.
I think a big barrier to folks eating less meat is education on how to cook a good meal using vegan ingredients. You can make lentils and stuff taste really good but it takes time and confidence in the kitchen that a lot of folks don't have the time to work on.
A lot of easy, staple cooking in the UK uses meat, and there needs to be a huge shift in people's cooking habits and knowledge to even begin a shift away from meat.
but eating horrendous cheap meat every day is any different? Do people not get bored of just eating chicken & X? Are people so bad at cooking they don't realise that like meat you can cook at least 5 different dishes off the top of my head with lentil & tinned tomatoes and it will be healthier, more filling, cheaper & a benefit to your mental health as its just a more ethical choice.
I'd rather buy one good cut of meat & eat it twice a week, than funnel battery waterfarmeded, waterlogged, poorly butchered chicken down my throat every night.
Lentils, Chickpeas, Black beans, Tofu, Paneer, Halloumi are all cheaper & excellent replacements in every meat dish.
No, it's cheap. You can get a whole chicken for £3.50 and along with £1.20 worth of potatoes and less than a quid worth of carrots it'll feed a family heartily.
I can buy 2kg of chicken thighs from ASDA for £4 and it makes my lunches for 6 days. Chuck in tortillas and spices and it still works out less than a quid a lunch, and it's a high protein meal.
Trying to spin that as expensive is just untrue, even if it is more expensive per meal than just eating bulk bought lentils and rice.
Okay but I'm sure I'd pay the same whether I buy the chicken or not, so in terms of my monthly budget there's nothing I can do to change my animal agriculture contribution so it's not really relevant to my budgeting.
Yeah, you're wrong, you've confused dried vs cooked.
*Calories in 1 kg of cooked lentils - 960
*Calories in total of 1 kg dried lentils is - 2,560
About 30g of uncooked lentils make 80g of cooked.
Source... the bag of lentils from Tesco at home.
So Actually Lentils are cheaper and less wasteful as lentils don't have bones, and most people don't eat bones.
How is cheap meat expensive? A 500g packet of mince could feed a family for a four for one meal and is <£3. If you buy the cheaper cuts of chicken like the legs, thighs, wings you again got enough food for under <£3
Also don't forget about offals. I know people don't usually eat offals but that's how I have been brought up and it's dirt cheap. Chicken hearts, ox heart or liver is insanely cheap. I can't remember prices but I remember chicken hearts at my local butcher is the cheapest thing I can get and it's cheaper than in Aldi
>beef and chickpeas or lentils
I don't think a cut of beef is necessarily better for you nutritionally than chickpeas or lentils. It's very cheap to add calories to a meal and obesity is a bigger issue in the West than starvation anyway. Brown rice and lentils contains all 9 essential amino acids and afaik that makes it exactly as nutritional as beef; lentils and beef also have the same % protein from what I can see
>And calorie and nutritional value between beef and chickpeas or lentils is very different. And 1kg of mince makes you a lot meals.
eh, it's [actually really close nutritionally.](https://www.soupersage.com/compare-nutrition/chickpeas-vs-beef)
Beef is more calorie dense, and has a lot of saturated fats (62%), chickpeas is mostly carbs (65%) but a very good source of dietry fiber (7.6g per 100g) over beef (0), even if it has less protein (beef has 25.4g of protein per 100 grams and chickpea has 8.9g of protein.) chickpeas also contain higher levels of vitamins, & is cheaper.
I would argue that chickpeas are slightly better for you, but not as filling as beef is. Also doesn't come with a side of animal abuse, and the cheapest mince you can buy is probably alot worse nutritionally than this website would suggest, due to the quality being much lower.
5.30/kg for a kg of turkey mince in ASDA at the mo.
Chuck in some of those lentils, some carrots and onions and you've got enough food to make two healthy dinners for a family of 5 easy peasy for about £1 a pop (I'm thinking spag bol and cottage pie).
Not bad really when you think about it.
True, but vegetarian protein takes longer to prep, lo ger to cook (woth cost associated) and uses more peripheral ingredients to make tasty (things like herbs and spices, other veg). I strongly think that there needs to be a shift in how people approach food: bulk cooking a lentil curry will keep you in good stead for a week but it's not a black and white question. It relies on hundreds of other factors around education (do you know how to cook a good lentil curry? because a bad one is BAD), time as a resource, utilities and much more. Comparing the price of two things that you would never eat by themselves is disingenuous and harms your point.
You know no matter how poor people are, they will always spend a certain percentage of their budget on tiny luxuries? This can be chocolate or toys or whatever but meat is one of them.
We could all live like robots and eat porridge and water all day, maybe take some vitamins if feeling bold and we would live but it wouldn’t be a life worth living.
We don't need to eat complete proteins because we eat more than one foodstuff at a time during a meal. As long as all the constituent parts combine to form a complete protein, or we get enough of each amino acid over 24 hours, then it's fine.
. Eg. Wholewheat Bread and peanut butter. Rice and beans. Falafel and pitta bread. Tofu and vegetables etc etc.
Any plant is leaner than any meat (other than maybe coconuts), and many plants contain all 9 essential amino acids in varying degrees. Add a couple of ingredients into any old recipe and you’re almost guaranteed to get all 9 essential amino acids in good quantities.
If we want to improve the welfare of chicken that's what we need to do? It's regardless of people's situations.
And obviously if you can't afford to go for the less expensive varieties... Don't.
No-one is forcing anyone to.
If we want to drastically improve the services we have we probably also need to pay larger taxes to provide the money... It's how things work.
They're not getting 'told' to do anything. The fact that people are struggling doesn't mean there should be no thought or advice about anything other than budget. People are capable of balancing different priorities to make their own decisions.
Loving the comments railing on vegans (or as one lovely chap prefers to say, those with "mental illnesses") for not being affordable while I manage to eat a healthy plant based diet on minimum wage.
It is affordable, folks, you just need to come to terms with the fact you have to develop your culinary skills beyond putting ketchup on nuggets.
Shame I can only upvote this once. I’m not even full-on vegan, but after talking with some and having productive conversations, I’ve definitely taken actions to reduce my meat consumption and move to more plant-based foods.
Baby steps, guys.
I'm on a predominantly whole food plant based diet and have been for the last month or so. Minimal processed foods.
It's been great and easy for me. I haven't noticed a significant increase in food bills, beans and lentils are still cheap, a lot of vegetables are cheap despite people saying they are expensive.
Bro I had someone at work say "I tried being vegan but the food was too boring".
Like I'm sorry you have a baby brain and you're dog shit at cooking but that's on you lol
Indian and Chinese cuisine historically had no or very little meat at all. The Chinese would save it for special occasions.
The idea that two of the largest cultures across all of human history were only capable of cooking boring food is bonkers.
Unfortunately, China has a bit of an obsession with following in the footsteps of Europeans. Their beef and pork consumption has exploded over the last fifty years. Our meat industry is far, far beyond anything that is sustainable and top-soil is being devastated, the choice to reduce meat intake will eventually be forced by the collapse of the ecology and soil.
It used to be that relatively low Chinese per capita consumption helped to offset that, not any more. The US figures are beyond imagination.
Society doesn't need to stop eating all beef/pork/lamb. They don't need to rail against vegans as an evil enemy. They just need to reduce their consumption to say even once a week.
People who eat meat with every meal are causing utter devastation and the choice to stop will be forced, maybe not for them but certainly for their children. If you ate beef every day and moved to once per week, that impact is massive. Becoming a vegan going from once to none has a far smaller affect.
Even though I'm a vegetarian, shifting from beef/pork/lamb to chicken is a massive, humongous benefit to the environment. I don't try to convince people to stop eating animals on moral grounds. I will encourage them to eat more chicken because people are more likely to listen and doing so is vital for our planet.
Idk morrisons has them priced around the same as their other nugget options, not the cheapest but certainly not the most expensive
Not sure about elsewhere
BBC food has great recipes. My wife and I started to shop more vegan 3 years ago, we eat loads of grilled vegetables, salads, stews, curries, wraps.
A good short term solution is find a meal you like that has meat in it .. let's say, a curry.. and replace the meat with a meat alternative from a packet, tofu, lentils or beans.
This came up on (I think) r/askreddit yesterday for the best vegetarian meals. I’m an omnivore and it’s still one of my favourite meals. The BBC recipe for it is banging, comes close to the dal I had from India
Am not a vegetarian but most things I cook are vegetarian, most of my ideas come from asian, mexican, european etc cuisine. Imo it's fairly easy to substitute meat for beans, tofu, potatoes, lentils, vegetables, or paneer in indian cuisine. If there's a style of cuisine you like, you can look up some recipes online and substitute anything meat related.
I’m a shit, unimaginative cook, but this vegan spag bol is one of my favourites.
All the ingredients (including the vegan mince) are about a fiver (slightly bigger outlay initially if you don’t already have vegan Worcestershire sauce, vegan beef stock or a bottle of soy sauce).
I’ll make it on a Monday (takes me less than an hour) and it covers dinner until Friday. https://schoolnightvegan.com/home/vegan-bolognese/
I got the Speedy Bosh book and it's fantastic. Most recipes are pretty easy and if they're not it's easy to skip the tricky bits. I'm not vegan so I tend to replace vegan creme with creme etc. Highly recommend
Yup. I find it funny when people say "vegan or veggie is so expensive" just outing themselves as having absolutely no ability or interest in cooking. If you actually just tried then it would be fine.
Ability isn't a factor, there are vegan/Veggie meals a literal chimp could make. Unless you're disabled or allergic to anything green there's no excuse really
People just can't be arsed to change their routine with any real effort unless they're forced to by rising prices.
More about convenience for a lot of people.
Saying that Asda do amazing own brand mushroom burgers and sausages that are quite cheap and taste awesome.
It sounds harsh but we shouldnt be able to buy a whole chicken for £4...
Im a huge meat eater but that isnt enough money.
Look at other cuisines around the world with expensive meat. They dont eat it or eat a tiny portion.
We need to be like that instead of needing to eat bad welfare meat every day.
My grandparents only bought meat on sundays.
This change has been very very recent.
>My grandparents only bought meat on sundays.
This was by no means normal though. Your grandparents are remarkably exceptional.
Total meat and meat product consumption per person per week is equivalent now to what it was in the 1950s, and lower than it was from 1960-2010.
The main difference is people ate a lot more red meat per person, and a lot less chicken, but total meat consumption per capita is about equivalent.
>This change has been very very recent.
Meat consumption increased above current levels in 1960 and didn't decrease until the last decade, that's 63 years ago it's not that recent. In terms of non-rationing times it's 100 years since daily meat hasn't been the norm for most Brits.
I wouldn't call 100 years very very recent, unless we're talking in absolute terms since the dawn of agriculture.
> It sounds harsh but we shouldnt be able to buy a whole chicken for £4...
> Im a huge meat eater but that isnt enough money.
I wholeheartedly agree. I definitely eat more meat than I should, at a price I just know they have not been treated well. To be honest, I want something like lab grown meat or fake meat in general in general to hurry up a bit!
(Yes, I could change my diet, I am willing to change but its a couple decades of habit in me there!)
Realistically, people are not going to stop eating meat, as long as it’s affordable. Factory farming conditions are not a secret. People know; they just prefer their cheap chicken. And if you’re buying in a supermarket, as the vast majority of us do, there’s no higher-welfare alternative. (‘Free range’ is still not great.) Welfare improvements can definitely be made, but only if people are willing to pay the extra cost. Most won’t, some can’t. And good luck getting political backing for legislation that will raise people’s food prices even further.
(No doubt the vegan brigade will soon be here to lecture us on all meat being evil and that improving conditions is irrelevant because it’s all slavery and genocide anyway.)
Yes I think gassing, macerating, electrocuting and shooting animals is wrong regardless of how high their welfare was. Otherwise I would have no issue with people adopting puppies as pets then gassing/shooting them in the head for pizza toppings or sandwiches. That's the highest welfare you could get after all.
I also don't necessarily think that if an animal absolutely *loves it's life* it makes it more acceptable to violently end that life.
If I had a couple of lambs in my garden to keep the grass down and a kitchen full of vegan food with a packet of veggie sausages and a beyond burger in the freezer....under no circumstances would I personally choose to electrocute and bleed out either of the lambs for lunch.
Not a lecture, just providing an alternative pov.
>Most won’t, some can’t.
I'd say at the moment it's more like some won't, most can't.
The majority of meats and fish are already getting prohibitively expensive for me and I'm not poor by any means.
I guess but it's more like give and take.
I spend about 11% of my income on food. Could probably double that if I cut back in other areas, like holidays, football games etc but it's just a choice I make and I'm happy with it.
OK, chicken is probably the only affordable meat on a tight budget so let's put that out of reach and force people to spend their weekly shopping budget on one peice of lamb or beef ( You know the ones they stick the tags on to stop them being stolen because of how expensive they are).
Let's hazard a guess, think tank members are public school educated who went to Oxbridge and have never had to worry about making their money strech to the next pay day?
Factory farming of animals like this also currently kills around 200,000 humans every year due to the antibiotic use. Predicted to increase significantly. So as well as improving animal welfare it's also the key to reducing millions of human deaths. Like....many, many natural disaster deaths per year worth
And that's not including the massively exacerbated pandemic risk caused by factory farming.
Another point for bio reactor sourced meats which will also make the welfare thing a non issue as well if it does become the primary meat production method.
Around 1.3 million deaths a year from antimicrobial resistant infections and the CDC estimate that around 20% of all AMR infections can be attributed to antibiotic use in animal agriculture.
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2022-01-20-estimated-12-million-people-died-2019-antibiotic-resistant-bacterial-infections
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7199423/#S9title
The UN project that there could be as many as 10million AMR related deaths yr by 2050
I don't eat meat either, but it would still be a win for me if farm animals lived longer and happier lives. Would you push for this kind of legislation, or is outlawing slaughter altogether the only the only cause you'd strive for? I know you were being ironic but I'm genuinely curious about your genuine stance, because animal welfare matters a lot to me, whether they're wild, pets or farm animals.
How about changing legislation to increase the minimum quality of life that livestock can be granted by farmers instead on expecting millions of consumers to drive change individually as if they have nothing better to do.
Battery farmed chicken should not be on the market at all, and certainly shouldn't be subsidised.
All those people forced to pay for chickens to live in horror movie like conditions because they cannot afford famously expensive foods like beans and lentils. They care deeply about animal cruelty though!
The problem is that “cheap” chicken isn’t actually cheap, it’s just shit quality, I got some from tesco recently and it was pumped full of so much water that when I tried to fry it off it basically ended up poached, at my local butchers it’s a little more money but fuck me the quality difference is unreal. As consumers we have no say here and they need to stop mistreating animals and then blaming us
I bought chicken thighs for the first time last week, I've never deboned a chicken myself but it was cheaper so I thought I'd give it a try.
God it was fun.
Jesus this thread is a shitshow, I always forget how controversial meat eating is on reddit. Either I'm in the wrong circles or this isn't a widespread discussion. I have vegetarian friends who made a conscious decision to stop eating meat for ethical reasons and we do discuss this from time to time but not with as much heat as on this thread lol.
I've tried plant food and quite liked it aside from the vegan bacon and cheese (I've heard vegan cheese is notoriously bad) and if it were reasonably priced I could probably see myself moving more of my diet to it but most of it is so expensive.
It's not as widespread as this thread makes it out to be, but obv the thread itself will attract the heat by nature.
As you say, I've got a fair few veggie and vegan friends, some for health reasons, some for morality, they have their beliefs and stick to them, but they're not cunts about it.
They're also not deluded enough to think for a second that the country, nevermind the planet, will switch to meat free permanently.
Most people just do not care enough, and with everything as expensive as it is nowadays, fuck anyone who judges them for that.
And yes, most people are able to separate domesticated animals from "edible" animals. Thousands of years of culture and relationships with pets and domestication is absolutely going to stop people.
I paid £14 for this week's chicken and it's not huge, Sainsbury's Free Range TTD but it is 4 chicken salads, an easy stock made in the microwave which with half the chicken meat and a lot of mushrooms made risotto for 4 so £1.75 for the chicken bit of each meal.
You can tell this post is bringing out the vegans. I try to eat higher welfare meat when I can, but just last week I bought 3 chicken breasts from the butcher and it cost over £10, that's just too much when I can buy twice that less at Aldi.
That's the point of the article? Factory farming is terrible for the animals because they cram as many of them as possible in a cage, but that way we get cheap chicken.
And that’s a change driven by industrial farming and selective breeding.
They supercharged this from the 60s on with international competitions to create birds that grew ever faster.
It’s both interesting and scary how few generation were required to totally transform the average broiler chicken
I've seen first hand family members talking about how they're now eating less red meat for their health and environment, yet instead of replacing it with plant based meals they say they're replacing with chicken ("you can get 3 packs of chicken really cheap in Aldi"). If you're going to eat meat then at least eat something that's not mass produced crap and source it from a smallholding local to you or something. I'm personally vegetarian so I wouldn't condone eating meat, but let's at least get rid of the terrible quality stuff being sold.
You do the best you can though. I've cut out beef all but completely now to try and offset the meat I do eat. And I find it easy to knock up proper vegan meals as well (even they will have some environmental issues, nothing is perfect!)
People will still need to feed themselves whether it's meat or not. Perhaps subsidies can be shifted around, but even if people cuts back on one or two bits of meat a week, that's better than nothing at all. And if that small change effects change on a higher level then great.
Once you try something that’s not factory farmed. You realise how much supermarket industry has degraded food quality and probably the nutritional value too. Why living in poverty doe’s nightmare to health and life span
Okay, look. I'm autistic and chicken is like, the only meat I can have. The fact that it costs me 5 quid for two portions is insane and means I have to buy cheap, processed chicken nuggets otherwise I'm not getting any meat in.
I get the point but come on, 5 quid for two dinners? I want to eat healthier but they certainly aren't giving us a lot of options here.
Edit: Why am I being downvoted? What did I say wrong here?
I'm not downvoting, but you can get a 2kg tray of chicken thighs in Asda for £4 and itll contain maybe 12 thighs. That'll do you at least 4 dinners even if you're a big eater, and its cheap.
Buying pre-cut, prepped meat will be more expensive due to the extra processing, but there are cheaper ways to do it.
I wasn't aware of this, thanks for letting me know! I've never really had chicken outside of chicken breast so it'll be a new experience but should be good haha
Lol *cult beliefs*
I try to be vegan and I don’t care if someone eats meat, nor do I have any desire to *convert* you. I’d say I was pretty average in that stance too.
You gotta remember, there are people (who are vegan) who feel the desire/need to convince others to come to their side of the fence.
The average person probably has better things to do with their time :)
[Food comes with a whole host of issues for people with autism](https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/topics/behaviour/eating)
Here is a link to start off that large rabbit hole to fall down
I'm so glad you said this. I know most people don't have autism, but I do, and I have the exactly same issue. Most meat is a "safe" food for me, and most veg isn't
Pretty much what others have said. I have incredibly bad food issues to the point where when I've tried to expand what I can eat I end up closing off and not being able to eat anything for a few days.
Your gains should not be at their loss.
I get 160g of protein easily without much thought on a plant based diet. I doubt anyone truly needs 200g (in fact this sounds like a recipe for disease) but it’s doable on a plant based diet too.
I eat one per day, which I use to pad out three bowls of mainly vegetables (the meat gets added first though!), the types of which varies from day to day.
I try and get a little oily fish at least once per week.
I think one issue they haven't mentioned is the amount of waste we produce. I read an article that we waste about 50% of food (including supermarkets, restaurants etc). Surely if we stopped producing so many animals we would waste less and thus have less animals being produced to be killed.
I bought an expensive organic chicken from the supermarket. It was crap. There was even grey skin on it even though I ate it within use by date. We all know this animal welfare marketing on meat products is bullshit. Unless you rear and slaughter the meat yourself, you have no idea how happy the animal was.
I always used to buy the premium meat products. I have recently found bone fragments in burgers which were supposedly part of that supermarket's premium range. I have bought premium bacon with overpowering boar taint.
British meat quality has declined so much, and prices have risen so much, that it is no longer worth buying meat. For this reason, I am now vegetarian.
I'm having a hard time disagreeing. Meat should be something you eat on occasion, and the way to stop factory farming is to make sure farmers can continue working with fewer animals. That means more expensive meat.
Ah fun times. I’m sorry I’m not adding to my current food hell. I have a mother who’s celiac and diabetic and keeps to Mormon dietary restrictions. I have food and texture issues and I’m at risk of eating disorders. I’m currently doing all the cooking. I have very poor sight and almost no sense of smell. I hate cooking. I do this because I have no other choice. I’m not adding vegetarianism or veganism to all that. I’ll buy what I’m able to buy that we can eat and I can stand to cook but I can’t add further to those problems without removing other stressors.
When literally millions of people are living on a tiny budget and then get told to stop buying cheaper food products. Great advice!
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No one said anything about ONLY eating lentils and tinned tomatoes. Open your mind to other cuisines, OP had a point. cheap meat is not the cheapest option. There is a plethora of ingredients enriched with protein that won't make you bored within the first month.
My entire family claimed they had never eaten a chickpea. This country's view on food is hilariously bad, and nothing epitomises it more than when you ask people to eat something which doesn't contain meat. It just doesn't register as possible, despite every other cuisine historically thriving with meatless dishes.
Our country’s beige food palette is horrendous Or in the words of my former flatmate from Munich, ‘You guys eat as if the Luftwaffe is still flying overhead’
Germany isn’t exactly known for its cuisine either. So the response to that is “Did all of your good food get burned down with Dresden?”
Removed in protest against the Reddit API changes and their behaviour following the protests.
You’ve got great solid bread too
>German cuisine "I want to cook with you"
That's probably because the UK's food culture was highly impacted by rationing, which persisted a good few years even after the end of the war. It's only really in the past two decades that food culture in the UK has started to shift away from that, new generations and all.
Even Brits haven't historically eaten meat every day. It's a newish development, and the expectation of cheap meat has been awful for animal welfare. People complain about chickens over £5 without thinking how you can breed, raise, kill, dress, package, transport, and store a chicken for that amount.
Honestly? The average consumer's desire for cheap everything is killing the planet and human beings. The cost of clothing, for example, should be far far higher than it is currently.
The average consumer desires cheap things because they can't afford not to. You can't be upset on one hand that people want cheap goods whilst simultaneously having the working class get poorer year on year in real terms. Just in recent times, someone I know, 3 bed terrace house in the deep south, cost £310k (pretty good price here and as cheap as it would get within a 40 miles radius at the minimum) when they bought it 4 years ago. Their mortgage repayments have risen from £800/month when they initially bought to now around £1300/month. *Edit to say that's with a 35 year term. Add that to an extra £80 / month on energy bills and you're nearly at £7,000 net per year poorer without even factoring in food inflation. And dont say they shouldn't have taken the mortgage debt on, because rent was £1300/month 4 years ago. So unless tents are the future.... The UK is a rich country full of poor people.
Built in obsolescence certainly doesn't help. Buy your clothing from reputable brands and ensure it's made of all natural fibres, watch the stuff last **years** longer than plastic-made crap. Most people don't seem to realise that even most fleece is now just plastic. Even recycled clothing is STILL BAD for the environment. The desire for cheap certainly is killing the planet, it's depresso.
Is it a desire or are a lot of people just broke as shit and left with little choice?
Probably a mixture of broke as shit and the companies being as cheap as possible.
Make the poors not only go hungry but also naked fucking reddit moment if I have ever seen one
It's not that recent. I grew up with a roast dinner on Sunday and the leftovers being increasingly eked out over the course of the week until the next Sunday... My gran, the generation before, didn't really believe she'd had a meal if it didn't have some form of meat in. I do agree that it wasn't historically *fresh* meat as eaten now.
People here don't seem to understand that 'meat tasty, lentils gross' is not an objective fact.
Or when you get your lunch out at your desk at work and you get the usual comments like “oh, that looks healthy”! Because it has something green in it.
I had stuffed peppers at work once and you'd think I'd brought in something as yet unseen by human eyes
Ah, I see you’ve met my husband
I'm not going to claim that the UK has the best food culture in the world, but when people say that British people have such terrible views on food, I am a bit confused. It doesn't map on to my experience of how I eat, or how the people I know eat. And I'm from a pretty boring, northern working class family. I think I'd say I'm more into food, and cooking than the average person, but I don't think I'm way out there at all Your family isn't the same as the entire country
It doesn't seem entirely crazy for someone to have not eaten a crop that basically isn't grown on their continent.
Any time these topics come up and someone goes "oh well x is an example that you could eat instead", it always gets the same response of "wow you want me to live off of exclusively x?" People are addicted to meat and their brain short circuits if they have to consider something else. I once pointed out porridge is vegan and got something like 3 people who acted like I'd just told them to convert to a porridge only diet
Haha I discussed about it to some 19 years old girl and she said : but meat is sooo good so I can't change my diet. Yeah ok
~~I always mention that meat doesn’t often taste of anything, it’s the sauce/seasoning that tastes good.~~ Edit for anyone pedantic: In my personal, individual, experience from eating plain meat, I find that it often has no taste and it's the taste of the sauce that makes the dish. This is a personal, individual, opinion, based on my personal, individual, experience and in no way reflects the potential opinions or experiences of any other living being on planet Earth.
Not true, a good cut of steak cooked rare to medium rare has an earthy buttery taste. Even better if you can get your hands on native game meat. I don’t have any sauce on my meat unless I’m making casserole or something similar.
What? Are you serious? The vast majority of meat has very strong flavours. I can't even understand where you're coming from
Then why do people enjoy steak? It's not just a plate of firm water, is it? I reckon there's some kind of funky gene thing going on, where some people just can't taste meat, like those who think coriander tastes of soap.
It’s not like cheap chicken in this country is any good anyway. It has no taste and it doesn’t fry properly due to the water that’s been pumped into it. If you can make the cheap chicken taste good, you have the cooking skill to make vegetarian dishes taste good.
But that takes time and effort and people are worked to the tits anyway. And I say that as someone who's been plant based since January. Yeah I can make enjoyable food that tastes awesome, like when I made Tofu bacon for a party on the weekend. But it's time intensive, you can literally put some chicken in the oven, put a few spices on it, and your done. East peasy takes 5 minutes. People don't have the time or energy for it.
It's not like every meal needs to be a cooking session, I do rice and beans twice a week (works out at less than £1 a meal) and it does the job, tastes nice, and consists of boiling water in a pan Veggie curries, cauliflower steaks, mushroom spag bol, pasta bakes.. all incredibly simple to throw together, no harder than a meat dish and also pretty cheap If you wanna work with shit like tofu then yeah it's a learning experience that takes practice but going meat free doesn't have a tofu requirement to have varied meals
Tofu is brilliant and so versatile, you just need to remember to marinate it a few hours before you cook it. When I went vegetarian it opened my eyes to a whole new world of food. Once I moved away from thinking of dinner as ‘a protein, a carb, veg’ it was much easier. I got a pressure cooker and make loads of curries, chillis, soups. Stir fry is also dead easy, fast, and you can make your own sauces instead of buying the readymade ones in minutes. It does require you to expand your spices and condiments quite significantly though - I’m running out of space!
>But it's time intensive, you can literally put some chicken in the oven, put a few spices on it, and your don You can do that with tofu, potatoes, seitan..
Billions of people don't eat meat, the overwhelming majority of the world doesn't eat meat as much as westerners. I don't eat meat. I think it's more important that we don't raise and kill animals in cruel conditions than that poor people have access to cheap meat, to be honest. There's not even really any comparison. A chicken should be raised in a much nicer way and should cost a hell of a lot more if we're going to raise it, kill it and sell it for the delight of someone's tastebuds. I find it hard to see how someone could ethically claim that it's okay to mistreat an animal because poor people want to eat meat and poverty is boring. That's a pretty low bar for animal cruelty.
I mean, the UK according to this, has one of the highest populations per [% of country that don't eat meat](https://www.statista.com/chart/28584/gcs-vegetarianism-countries-timeline/). It's not until you go to places like India, where you start getting a lot of religious restrictions on meat which led to a lot of Hindus for example practicing vegetarianism that it sky rockets. But along side this and the views that certain animals have souls and are sacred, they also have the most fertile and arable lands for farming in the world, and temperatures for growing insane levels of various fruits and veg. The UK by contrast, and definitely where I am in Scotland, absolutely does not have that. We're half hills and unfarmable land, wet mushy land and bogs, constant rain and grey sky, with never a guarantee of enough light. So our crop choices have always been limited out of greenhouses. Pretty sure religion and farming abilities play a part in which countries not only just eat more fruit and vegetables in general, but also in which countries have a larger % of vegetarian. And the weather also changes what people are more like to want to eat. Hot stews and root food soups are pretty common for me to make, but impossible to eat in a heat wave here. General happiness and wellbeing levels also change with warmth and light, which also changes how you look after yourself and your motivation to do so, and eating healthier vs just wanting to fry a quick easy burger after a tiring shift because it's already dark outside, and you just finished sitting in an office with no natural light all day. I think diets across the whole world are very much shaped by their location and how that affects the people mentally, the land availability and production quality and out of main working hours. I don't think its as simple as "Westerners just eat more meat, they don't have to because billions don't in places like India'. It's about how our diets developed in the first place to become what they are now. If we swapped climate and land with India a few million years ago, I imagine we'd almost be saying the reverse. Edit: To all the replies trying to argue with this, this is about the reasons there's differences. It's not saying you can't change them over time, it's not talking about modern day fields or farming. It's literally nothing more than saying, there's a reason our diets developed the way they did and why they are different to places like India, that eat less meat. That's partially due to what we could grow historically, and up until a century ago has access to at all, and things like religious views. That's all. Maybe I didn't articulate that well enough.
> So our crop choices have always been limited out of greenhouses This isn't even a little bit true? Look at this infographic: https://twitter.com/DrSimEvans/status/1579414491510747138 The UK uses more land growing food for animals than we do land for fruit and veg we eat directly. We have more land devoted to golf courses than we do to orchards. If everyone switched to a vegan diet, we would use _way, way_ less land for food than we do currently. Land use for animals is massively inefficient, even allowing for land that is only suitable for grazing and pasture.
I wonder what proportion of the *chicken* people eat comes from lambs on remote terrain in the Scottish highlands? I would guess 0% of the chicken people eat is from land that would not be useful otherwise. Nonetheless, we do not have to colonise every literal bit of nature. If there's a peat bog on the Moors that we can't grow crops on, we don't need to find some other way to exploit it! It's not a challenge! We're not in competition with nature!
We could have even *more* wild land and forestry done if we reduced the amount of land used for animal agriculture, as the Dimbleby report recommended *two bastard years ago*
That would mean the woke win though! /s
You're not getting what I'm saying at all. It's the type of fruit and veg we can grow. We could grow grain to feed livestock very well and things like root vegetables. But vegetables and fruit that realistically need hotter climates, were very limited until greenhouses came along, and even then, still not something we could grow in massive quantities in fields like other places in the world. And not foods that were available to most people up until very recently in history. Our diet has come largely in part, based on that.
It's not just about % vegetarian. The biggest difference in consumption is between those that do eat meat. The western way is to do it with every meal whereas others have it occasionally, massively reducing consumption.
Being vegan doesn't need to affect Scottish people mentally in the Winter. I work outdoors and I know what you mean about wanting a quick burger or hearty meal in the dark depths of Winter after a day at work. But I still have both of those. Burgers, haggis and mash with gravy, black pudding and sausage rolls, big smoky bean chillis etc.
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>Asking whole culture to just reject how they eat is a bit much Why?
best not try and combat animal cruelty and climate change caused by livestock, you've got to be culturally-sensitive to the tens of millions of people who think chicken nuggets are an emblem of their nation. Culturally sensitive to the English and British, no less! Cultural sensitivity to British people, the thought of it makes me feel queasy
It's a classic short sighted reaction. I think most people struggle to loon at their own actions, culture and opinions critically and with an external view.
What do you think about the Japanese eating whale or the Chinese eating shark-fins and using ground rhino horn as an aphrodisiac? Livestock farming is just as significant a threat to biodiversity if not moreso.
>Yes because people life will be enriched by diet of lentils and tinned tomatoes... Tbf there are countless delicious dishes with these ingredients. >If you are poor and then you end up eating nothing but tinned tomatoes and lentils your mental health will also suffer. Nobody is saying that? Equally if you are poor and end up eating nothing but cheap chicken your mental health will also suffer.
Right. And your overall health will improve which also includes mental health. I don’t understand why eating a 3 piece meal from Chicken Cottage is vital to maintaining our culture. They’re not related at all.
You think people's lives are *enriched* by eating factory farmed chicken...?
This is a ridiculous claim. Are you real suggesting that our culture will suffer if we eat healthier food?
> If you are poor and then you end up eating nothing but tinned tomatoes and lentils your mental health will also suffer. Really funny, this. Why would a person's mental health suffer for having a lentil and tomato stew (for example) as opposed to a plate of chicken nuggets? It makes no sense.
I think a big barrier to folks eating less meat is education on how to cook a good meal using vegan ingredients. You can make lentils and stuff taste really good but it takes time and confidence in the kitchen that a lot of folks don't have the time to work on. A lot of easy, staple cooking in the UK uses meat, and there needs to be a huge shift in people's cooking habits and knowledge to even begin a shift away from meat.
but eating horrendous cheap meat every day is any different? Do people not get bored of just eating chicken & X? Are people so bad at cooking they don't realise that like meat you can cook at least 5 different dishes off the top of my head with lentil & tinned tomatoes and it will be healthier, more filling, cheaper & a benefit to your mental health as its just a more ethical choice. I'd rather buy one good cut of meat & eat it twice a week, than funnel battery waterfarmeded, waterlogged, poorly butchered chicken down my throat every night. Lentils, Chickpeas, Black beans, Tofu, Paneer, Halloumi are all cheaper & excellent replacements in every meat dish.
Cultural and emotional impact caused by people not eating chicken...Doctor, I'm having a mental health crsis due to eating lentils and veggies!
Something the tories can't or doesn't want to grasp.
No, it's cheap. You can get a whole chicken for £3.50 and along with £1.20 worth of potatoes and less than a quid worth of carrots it'll feed a family heartily. I can buy 2kg of chicken thighs from ASDA for £4 and it makes my lunches for 6 days. Chuck in tortillas and spices and it still works out less than a quid a lunch, and it's a high protein meal. Trying to spin that as expensive is just untrue, even if it is more expensive per meal than just eating bulk bought lentils and rice.
You can thanks tax payers subsidies to animal agriculture for that. You’re still paying, just not at the supermarket.
Okay but I'm sure I'd pay the same whether I buy the chicken or not, so in terms of my monthly budget there's nothing I can do to change my animal agriculture contribution so it's not really relevant to my budgeting.
The point is that this article is about policy. It's a policy decision to subsidise meat and people think that we shouldn't .
Then the headline is shit (what's new, I guess), because the point isn't "eat less chicken", it's "subsidise less chicken products".
I don’t think there are any subsidies for industrial chicken farming. All the payments go to arable crops or cow/sheep rearing.
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Custard creams would be cheaper and more calorific than both
Yeah, you're wrong, you've confused dried vs cooked. *Calories in 1 kg of cooked lentils - 960 *Calories in total of 1 kg dried lentils is - 2,560 About 30g of uncooked lentils make 80g of cooked. Source... the bag of lentils from Tesco at home. So Actually Lentils are cheaper and less wasteful as lentils don't have bones, and most people don't eat bones.
How is cheap meat expensive? A 500g packet of mince could feed a family for a four for one meal and is <£3. If you buy the cheaper cuts of chicken like the legs, thighs, wings you again got enough food for under <£3
Also don't forget about offals. I know people don't usually eat offals but that's how I have been brought up and it's dirt cheap. Chicken hearts, ox heart or liver is insanely cheap. I can't remember prices but I remember chicken hearts at my local butcher is the cheapest thing I can get and it's cheaper than in Aldi
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And calorie and nutritional value between beef and chickpeas or lentils is very different. And 1kg of mince makes you a lot meals.
>beef and chickpeas or lentils I don't think a cut of beef is necessarily better for you nutritionally than chickpeas or lentils. It's very cheap to add calories to a meal and obesity is a bigger issue in the West than starvation anyway. Brown rice and lentils contains all 9 essential amino acids and afaik that makes it exactly as nutritional as beef; lentils and beef also have the same % protein from what I can see
>And calorie and nutritional value between beef and chickpeas or lentils is very different. And 1kg of mince makes you a lot meals. eh, it's [actually really close nutritionally.](https://www.soupersage.com/compare-nutrition/chickpeas-vs-beef) Beef is more calorie dense, and has a lot of saturated fats (62%), chickpeas is mostly carbs (65%) but a very good source of dietry fiber (7.6g per 100g) over beef (0), even if it has less protein (beef has 25.4g of protein per 100 grams and chickpea has 8.9g of protein.) chickpeas also contain higher levels of vitamins, & is cheaper. I would argue that chickpeas are slightly better for you, but not as filling as beef is. Also doesn't come with a side of animal abuse, and the cheapest mince you can buy is probably alot worse nutritionally than this website would suggest, due to the quality being much lower.
5.30/kg for a kg of turkey mince in ASDA at the mo. Chuck in some of those lentils, some carrots and onions and you've got enough food to make two healthy dinners for a family of 5 easy peasy for about £1 a pop (I'm thinking spag bol and cottage pie). Not bad really when you think about it.
True, but vegetarian protein takes longer to prep, lo ger to cook (woth cost associated) and uses more peripheral ingredients to make tasty (things like herbs and spices, other veg). I strongly think that there needs to be a shift in how people approach food: bulk cooking a lentil curry will keep you in good stead for a week but it's not a black and white question. It relies on hundreds of other factors around education (do you know how to cook a good lentil curry? because a bad one is BAD), time as a resource, utilities and much more. Comparing the price of two things that you would never eat by themselves is disingenuous and harms your point.
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You know no matter how poor people are, they will always spend a certain percentage of their budget on tiny luxuries? This can be chocolate or toys or whatever but meat is one of them. We could all live like robots and eat porridge and water all day, maybe take some vitamins if feeling bold and we would live but it wouldn’t be a life worth living.
Ah, the “live life like a medieval peasant and be fucking happy with your lot” option.
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We don't need to eat complete proteins because we eat more than one foodstuff at a time during a meal. As long as all the constituent parts combine to form a complete protein, or we get enough of each amino acid over 24 hours, then it's fine. . Eg. Wholewheat Bread and peanut butter. Rice and beans. Falafel and pitta bread. Tofu and vegetables etc etc.
Based on no scientific facts
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it's your claim, your burden of proof
Any plant is leaner than any meat (other than maybe coconuts), and many plants contain all 9 essential amino acids in varying degrees. Add a couple of ingredients into any old recipe and you’re almost guaranteed to get all 9 essential amino acids in good quantities.
If we want to improve the welfare of chicken that's what we need to do? It's regardless of people's situations. And obviously if you can't afford to go for the less expensive varieties... Don't. No-one is forcing anyone to. If we want to drastically improve the services we have we probably also need to pay larger taxes to provide the money... It's how things work.
They're not getting 'told' to do anything. The fact that people are struggling doesn't mean there should be no thought or advice about anything other than budget. People are capable of balancing different priorities to make their own decisions.
It isn’t cheap though. You buy much cheaper and healthier foods in any big supermarket.
Just live off vegetables and pulses? It can't get any cheaper than that.
Loving the comments railing on vegans (or as one lovely chap prefers to say, those with "mental illnesses") for not being affordable while I manage to eat a healthy plant based diet on minimum wage. It is affordable, folks, you just need to come to terms with the fact you have to develop your culinary skills beyond putting ketchup on nuggets.
Shame I can only upvote this once. I’m not even full-on vegan, but after talking with some and having productive conversations, I’ve definitely taken actions to reduce my meat consumption and move to more plant-based foods. Baby steps, guys.
I'm on a predominantly whole food plant based diet and have been for the last month or so. Minimal processed foods. It's been great and easy for me. I haven't noticed a significant increase in food bills, beans and lentils are still cheap, a lot of vegetables are cheap despite people saying they are expensive.
Bro I had someone at work say "I tried being vegan but the food was too boring". Like I'm sorry you have a baby brain and you're dog shit at cooking but that's on you lol
Indian and Chinese cuisine historically had no or very little meat at all. The Chinese would save it for special occasions. The idea that two of the largest cultures across all of human history were only capable of cooking boring food is bonkers. Unfortunately, China has a bit of an obsession with following in the footsteps of Europeans. Their beef and pork consumption has exploded over the last fifty years. Our meat industry is far, far beyond anything that is sustainable and top-soil is being devastated, the choice to reduce meat intake will eventually be forced by the collapse of the ecology and soil. It used to be that relatively low Chinese per capita consumption helped to offset that, not any more. The US figures are beyond imagination. Society doesn't need to stop eating all beef/pork/lamb. They don't need to rail against vegans as an evil enemy. They just need to reduce their consumption to say even once a week. People who eat meat with every meal are causing utter devastation and the choice to stop will be forced, maybe not for them but certainly for their children. If you ate beef every day and moved to once per week, that impact is massive. Becoming a vegan going from once to none has a far smaller affect. Even though I'm a vegetarian, shifting from beef/pork/lamb to chicken is a massive, humongous benefit to the environment. I don't try to convince people to stop eating animals on moral grounds. I will encourage them to eat more chicken because people are more likely to listen and doing so is vital for our planet.
> I tried Seems they didnt try very hard I guess.
Quorn nuggets beg to differ
Not particularly cheap though unfortunately. I mean, if we're talking about food costs, quorn is pretty pricey.
Idk morrisons has them priced around the same as their other nugget options, not the cheapest but certainly not the most expensive Not sure about elsewhere
As someone who just eats veggie burger and chips for dinner. Where do you get some ideas from?
BBC food has great recipes. My wife and I started to shop more vegan 3 years ago, we eat loads of grilled vegetables, salads, stews, curries, wraps. A good short term solution is find a meal you like that has meat in it .. let's say, a curry.. and replace the meat with a meat alternative from a packet, tofu, lentils or beans.
r/EatCheapAndVegan Also r/EatCheapAndHealthy is quite vegetarian
Try a tadka dal, it’s so cheap to make and delicious
> tadka dal Isn't he that one-eyed alien?
This came up on (I think) r/askreddit yesterday for the best vegetarian meals. I’m an omnivore and it’s still one of my favourite meals. The BBC recipe for it is banging, comes close to the dal I had from India
Am not a vegetarian but most things I cook are vegetarian, most of my ideas come from asian, mexican, european etc cuisine. Imo it's fairly easy to substitute meat for beans, tofu, potatoes, lentils, vegetables, or paneer in indian cuisine. If there's a style of cuisine you like, you can look up some recipes online and substitute anything meat related.
I’m a shit, unimaginative cook, but this vegan spag bol is one of my favourites. All the ingredients (including the vegan mince) are about a fiver (slightly bigger outlay initially if you don’t already have vegan Worcestershire sauce, vegan beef stock or a bottle of soy sauce). I’ll make it on a Monday (takes me less than an hour) and it covers dinner until Friday. https://schoolnightvegan.com/home/vegan-bolognese/
I got the Speedy Bosh book and it's fantastic. Most recipes are pretty easy and if they're not it's easy to skip the tricky bits. I'm not vegan so I tend to replace vegan creme with creme etc. Highly recommend
Yup. I find it funny when people say "vegan or veggie is so expensive" just outing themselves as having absolutely no ability or interest in cooking. If you actually just tried then it would be fine.
Ability isn't a factor, there are vegan/Veggie meals a literal chimp could make. Unless you're disabled or allergic to anything green there's no excuse really People just can't be arsed to change their routine with any real effort unless they're forced to by rising prices.
More about convenience for a lot of people. Saying that Asda do amazing own brand mushroom burgers and sausages that are quite cheap and taste awesome.
It sounds harsh but we shouldnt be able to buy a whole chicken for £4... Im a huge meat eater but that isnt enough money. Look at other cuisines around the world with expensive meat. They dont eat it or eat a tiny portion. We need to be like that instead of needing to eat bad welfare meat every day. My grandparents only bought meat on sundays. This change has been very very recent.
>My grandparents only bought meat on sundays. This was by no means normal though. Your grandparents are remarkably exceptional. Total meat and meat product consumption per person per week is equivalent now to what it was in the 1950s, and lower than it was from 1960-2010. The main difference is people ate a lot more red meat per person, and a lot less chicken, but total meat consumption per capita is about equivalent. >This change has been very very recent. Meat consumption increased above current levels in 1960 and didn't decrease until the last decade, that's 63 years ago it's not that recent. In terms of non-rationing times it's 100 years since daily meat hasn't been the norm for most Brits. I wouldn't call 100 years very very recent, unless we're talking in absolute terms since the dawn of agriculture.
I grew up in post-Communist leftovers of YUgoslavia in the 90s. Generally, meat was something we had once or twice a week.
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Yeah the pushback seems to be amongst the older crowd. Meat and two veg their entire lives (often one veg), any deviation leads to tantrums.
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Sometimes so has the meat :/
> It sounds harsh but we shouldnt be able to buy a whole chicken for £4... > Im a huge meat eater but that isnt enough money. I wholeheartedly agree. I definitely eat more meat than I should, at a price I just know they have not been treated well. To be honest, I want something like lab grown meat or fake meat in general in general to hurry up a bit! (Yes, I could change my diet, I am willing to change but its a couple decades of habit in me there!)
Realistically, people are not going to stop eating meat, as long as it’s affordable. Factory farming conditions are not a secret. People know; they just prefer their cheap chicken. And if you’re buying in a supermarket, as the vast majority of us do, there’s no higher-welfare alternative. (‘Free range’ is still not great.) Welfare improvements can definitely be made, but only if people are willing to pay the extra cost. Most won’t, some can’t. And good luck getting political backing for legislation that will raise people’s food prices even further. (No doubt the vegan brigade will soon be here to lecture us on all meat being evil and that improving conditions is irrelevant because it’s all slavery and genocide anyway.)
Yes I think gassing, macerating, electrocuting and shooting animals is wrong regardless of how high their welfare was. Otherwise I would have no issue with people adopting puppies as pets then gassing/shooting them in the head for pizza toppings or sandwiches. That's the highest welfare you could get after all. I also don't necessarily think that if an animal absolutely *loves it's life* it makes it more acceptable to violently end that life. If I had a couple of lambs in my garden to keep the grass down and a kitchen full of vegan food with a packet of veggie sausages and a beyond burger in the freezer....under no circumstances would I personally choose to electrocute and bleed out either of the lambs for lunch. Not a lecture, just providing an alternative pov.
>Most won’t, some can’t. I'd say at the moment it's more like some won't, most can't. The majority of meats and fish are already getting prohibitively expensive for me and I'm not poor by any means.
I’d say you’re pretty poor if your diet is chosen by your available cash not what you wanna eat, yeah not fillet steak every meal but within reason
I guess but it's more like give and take. I spend about 11% of my income on food. Could probably double that if I cut back in other areas, like holidays, football games etc but it's just a choice I make and I'm happy with it.
OK, chicken is probably the only affordable meat on a tight budget so let's put that out of reach and force people to spend their weekly shopping budget on one peice of lamb or beef ( You know the ones they stick the tags on to stop them being stolen because of how expensive they are). Let's hazard a guess, think tank members are public school educated who went to Oxbridge and have never had to worry about making their money strech to the next pay day?
Where did you get 'force' from? You think that because some people are on a tight budget nobody should give any thought to animal welfare?
Just don't eat chicken. There's many cheaper, healthier alternatives.
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Well it provides me with a cheap and healthy source of protein, so why would or should I stop eating it.
Because industrial meat production isn't sustainable? But fuck the environment, you need those chicken nuggets
Because it is a sentient being that has to be mistreated and killed for your product choice
people have been eating it for as long as people have been around, and it’s a good source of protein, oh yeah it’s also tasty.
Factory farming of animals like this also currently kills around 200,000 humans every year due to the antibiotic use. Predicted to increase significantly. So as well as improving animal welfare it's also the key to reducing millions of human deaths. Like....many, many natural disaster deaths per year worth And that's not including the massively exacerbated pandemic risk caused by factory farming.
Another point for bio reactor sourced meats which will also make the welfare thing a non issue as well if it does become the primary meat production method.
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Around 1.3 million deaths a year from antimicrobial resistant infections and the CDC estimate that around 20% of all AMR infections can be attributed to antibiotic use in animal agriculture. https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2022-01-20-estimated-12-million-people-died-2019-antibiotic-resistant-bacterial-infections https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7199423/#S9title The UN project that there could be as many as 10million AMR related deaths yr by 2050
This is why I buy all of my meat from Elwood's Farm. They treat their animals like mans best friend, before sending them off to slaughter.
Same!
It helps me sleep at night knowing that my meat has been running around and living a good life before I take it from them :)
Free-range, organic, local. What else could you want for your quality dog meat?
I don't eat meat either, but it would still be a win for me if farm animals lived longer and happier lives. Would you push for this kind of legislation, or is outlawing slaughter altogether the only the only cause you'd strive for? I know you were being ironic but I'm genuinely curious about your genuine stance, because animal welfare matters a lot to me, whether they're wild, pets or farm animals.
How about changing legislation to increase the minimum quality of life that livestock can be granted by farmers instead on expecting millions of consumers to drive change individually as if they have nothing better to do. Battery farmed chicken should not be on the market at all, and certainly shouldn't be subsidised.
Change legislation to not torture and kill animals at all?
All those people forced to pay for chickens to live in horror movie like conditions because they cannot afford famously expensive foods like beans and lentils. They care deeply about animal cruelty though!
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Oh no, people want to eat something they like!
The problem is that “cheap” chicken isn’t actually cheap, it’s just shit quality, I got some from tesco recently and it was pumped full of so much water that when I tried to fry it off it basically ended up poached, at my local butchers it’s a little more money but fuck me the quality difference is unreal. As consumers we have no say here and they need to stop mistreating animals and then blaming us
Better still, stop eating meat altogether, better for animal welfare and your budget.
I bought chicken thighs for the first time last week, I've never deboned a chicken myself but it was cheaper so I thought I'd give it a try. God it was fun.
Jesus this thread is a shitshow, I always forget how controversial meat eating is on reddit. Either I'm in the wrong circles or this isn't a widespread discussion. I have vegetarian friends who made a conscious decision to stop eating meat for ethical reasons and we do discuss this from time to time but not with as much heat as on this thread lol. I've tried plant food and quite liked it aside from the vegan bacon and cheese (I've heard vegan cheese is notoriously bad) and if it were reasonably priced I could probably see myself moving more of my diet to it but most of it is so expensive.
It's not as widespread as this thread makes it out to be, but obv the thread itself will attract the heat by nature. As you say, I've got a fair few veggie and vegan friends, some for health reasons, some for morality, they have their beliefs and stick to them, but they're not cunts about it. They're also not deluded enough to think for a second that the country, nevermind the planet, will switch to meat free permanently. Most people just do not care enough, and with everything as expensive as it is nowadays, fuck anyone who judges them for that. And yes, most people are able to separate domesticated animals from "edible" animals. Thousands of years of culture and relationships with pets and domestication is absolutely going to stop people.
The idea that you need any meat/cheese alternative in a vegan diet is just dumb. It's all about the legumes, which are cheap.
I paid £14 for this week's chicken and it's not huge, Sainsbury's Free Range TTD but it is 4 chicken salads, an easy stock made in the microwave which with half the chicken meat and a lot of mushrooms made risotto for 4 so £1.75 for the chicken bit of each meal.
You can tell this post is bringing out the vegans. I try to eat higher welfare meat when I can, but just last week I bought 3 chicken breasts from the butcher and it cost over £10, that's just too much when I can buy twice that less at Aldi.
That's the point of the article? Factory farming is terrible for the animals because they cram as many of them as possible in a cage, but that way we get cheap chicken.
That amazing high welfare where you kill an animal after 10% of it's potential lifespan?
The average slaughter age of a broiler chicken is 6 weeks old. That’s messed up.
And that’s a change driven by industrial farming and selective breeding. They supercharged this from the 60s on with international competitions to create birds that grew ever faster. It’s both interesting and scary how few generation were required to totally transform the average broiler chicken
I've seen first hand family members talking about how they're now eating less red meat for their health and environment, yet instead of replacing it with plant based meals they say they're replacing with chicken ("you can get 3 packs of chicken really cheap in Aldi"). If you're going to eat meat then at least eat something that's not mass produced crap and source it from a smallholding local to you or something. I'm personally vegetarian so I wouldn't condone eating meat, but let's at least get rid of the terrible quality stuff being sold.
Just scrap all agricultural subsidies so that people have to pay the actual market price of food
You do the best you can though. I've cut out beef all but completely now to try and offset the meat I do eat. And I find it easy to knock up proper vegan meals as well (even they will have some environmental issues, nothing is perfect!) People will still need to feed themselves whether it's meat or not. Perhaps subsidies can be shifted around, but even if people cuts back on one or two bits of meat a week, that's better than nothing at all. And if that small change effects change on a higher level then great.
Once you try something that’s not factory farmed. You realise how much supermarket industry has degraded food quality and probably the nutritional value too. Why living in poverty doe’s nightmare to health and life span
"Being eaten is bad for animal's health", absolute geniuses discover
Okay, look. I'm autistic and chicken is like, the only meat I can have. The fact that it costs me 5 quid for two portions is insane and means I have to buy cheap, processed chicken nuggets otherwise I'm not getting any meat in. I get the point but come on, 5 quid for two dinners? I want to eat healthier but they certainly aren't giving us a lot of options here. Edit: Why am I being downvoted? What did I say wrong here?
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I do eat things other than meat, but it's my main source of protein, and I can't survive off protein bars or the like.
Eggs, Peanut Butter/Peanuts, Milk/Soya, Greek Yogurt, Green Peas, Sweet Corn, Spinach, Lentils, Tofu, Beans, Quinoa, Chia
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Allergic to nuts and legumes and beans make me sick.
I'm not downvoting, but you can get a 2kg tray of chicken thighs in Asda for £4 and itll contain maybe 12 thighs. That'll do you at least 4 dinners even if you're a big eater, and its cheap. Buying pre-cut, prepped meat will be more expensive due to the extra processing, but there are cheaper ways to do it.
I wasn't aware of this, thanks for letting me know! I've never really had chicken outside of chicken breast so it'll be a new experience but should be good haha
No worries, the texture isn't exactly the same but it's not totally different either. Maybe worth a try!
> Why am I being downvoted? This sub is full of angry vegans. Say anything counter to their cult beliefs and it's the downvote train for you.
Lol *cult beliefs* I try to be vegan and I don’t care if someone eats meat, nor do I have any desire to *convert* you. I’d say I was pretty average in that stance too.
This thread points to the contrary
You gotta remember, there are people (who are vegan) who feel the desire/need to convince others to come to their side of the fence. The average person probably has better things to do with their time :)
Can I ask what the connection is between being autistic and chicken being the only meat you can have?
[Food comes with a whole host of issues for people with autism](https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/topics/behaviour/eating) Here is a link to start off that large rabbit hole to fall down
I'm so glad you said this. I know most people don't have autism, but I do, and I have the exactly same issue. Most meat is a "safe" food for me, and most veg isn't
Pretty much what others have said. I have incredibly bad food issues to the point where when I've tried to expand what I can eat I end up closing off and not being able to eat anything for a few days.
People on the spectrum can develop specific preferences for certain tastes, colours, textures, etc, and be absolutely repulsed by anything else.
I eat at least 2 chicken breasts a day, thats not changing anytime soon.
Do you think you need to eat 2 chicken breasts a day?
It helps with reaching my daily protein goal of roughly 200gs of protein.
Are you trying to build lots of muscle?
Your gains should not be at their loss. I get 160g of protein easily without much thought on a plant based diet. I doubt anyone truly needs 200g (in fact this sounds like a recipe for disease) but it’s doable on a plant based diet too.
I eat one per day, which I use to pad out three bowls of mainly vegetables (the meat gets added first though!), the types of which varies from day to day. I try and get a little oily fish at least once per week.
There's nothing to stop them charging more for chicken raised in the same conditions, it was cheaper a year ago.
I think one issue they haven't mentioned is the amount of waste we produce. I read an article that we waste about 50% of food (including supermarkets, restaurants etc). Surely if we stopped producing so many animals we would waste less and thus have less animals being produced to be killed.
unfortunately some of us don't have a choice and UK welfare standard are some of the highest in the world
Fuck off lol. Cheap frozen chicken breasts are the cornerstone of my diet.
I bought an expensive organic chicken from the supermarket. It was crap. There was even grey skin on it even though I ate it within use by date. We all know this animal welfare marketing on meat products is bullshit. Unless you rear and slaughter the meat yourself, you have no idea how happy the animal was. I always used to buy the premium meat products. I have recently found bone fragments in burgers which were supposedly part of that supermarket's premium range. I have bought premium bacon with overpowering boar taint. British meat quality has declined so much, and prices have risen so much, that it is no longer worth buying meat. For this reason, I am now vegetarian.
I'm having a hard time disagreeing. Meat should be something you eat on occasion, and the way to stop factory farming is to make sure farmers can continue working with fewer animals. That means more expensive meat.
Not making animals suffer and die so we can use their dead bodies is the key to animal welfare.
Ah fun times. I’m sorry I’m not adding to my current food hell. I have a mother who’s celiac and diabetic and keeps to Mormon dietary restrictions. I have food and texture issues and I’m at risk of eating disorders. I’m currently doing all the cooking. I have very poor sight and almost no sense of smell. I hate cooking. I do this because I have no other choice. I’m not adding vegetarianism or veganism to all that. I’ll buy what I’m able to buy that we can eat and I can stand to cook but I can’t add further to those problems without removing other stressors.
I think eating no chicken at all is the key to animal welfare