One of the thorniest problems of the 21st century is how to get people to eat less meat. A new poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that most U.S. adults said they eat meat at least several times a week.
What good is it going to do for 1-10% of the world population to give up meat? The rich can burn fossil fuels like they’re a moderate sized nation, but there’s only so much meat a person can eat. Considering that a large portion of global emissions come from eating meat, especially red meat, this is something that actually does make sense for the average person to do. Even more so when you consider the non-climate change advantages of mass reduction in meat eating, like freeing up the amount of land dedicated to raising meat animals or feed for meat animals.
found that most U.S. adults said they eat meat at least several times a week.
There are 21 meals in a typical week. "Several" is defined as more than two. So you could eat vegetarian for 85% of your meals and still be part of this metric.
I switched to only eating chicken at home and reduced my portion size per meal. So I only eat about 6 oz (sorry metric people) of chicken/day and at the same time I bumped my vegetable consumption to 3 cups/day. It's still plenty to retain muscle from light workouts and I feel great. All that said, I still eat other types of meat at restaurants, but it's way less than I used to eat.
I've been eating way less meat recently. I want to go fully vegan, but it's tough when Im forced to live with family members who refuse to adjust their habits.
I can't afford to buy all the fancy meat alternatives so I have to make small steps. PBJ instead of a ham and cheese sandwich. Avocado on sourdough instead of bacon and eggs etc
One meat alternative that's pretty affordable (and much better tasting and healthier than most TVP I've tried) is Butler Soy Curls. If you buy them in bulk from their website, it comes out to around $3.24 per pound of rehydrated soy meat for the 18-pack of individual bags (The big 12lb bag is an even better deal, coming in at around $2.43 per lb of rehydrated meat). If you rehydrate it with a vegan bullion cube, it tastes genuinely excellent, and the texture is incredibly meat like.
I also found Impossible burgers at costco for $6lb (which was quite a bit more than real meat patties, but so much less than they are any other store), and those were delicious, to the point that I prefer them to real meat.
Chickpeas can also work as a ground meat substitute for things like tacos and chili.
Take it easy. Every vegan meal counts, and if you push too hard you might just give up entirely. You have to integrate the changes into your lifestyle, and that takes time. Try and become steady with a certain amount of plant-based food, add slowly. It should be fun and experimentation not work.
this article reads like a high school seniors persuasive essay. it's a gish gallop through half a dozen poorly supported arguments to go vegan. I was hoping it was.... news. from the ap.
what would such a news story say under this headline? how about "recent policy changes and ad campaigns have been shown to reduce emissions in the agriculture sector."
not only does it not say this, it is filled paragraph after paragraph with unrelated nonsense to the headline.
Give up on beef and dairy if you want to start small, just reducing our use of cattle would probably help the most compared to other animals. Just working to replace those two in your diet will still take some time & commitment, but you can at least lean on other meats until you’ve gotten that part of your diet down.
Yeah, I'm trying to reduce my meat intake. Mostly for moral reasons. It's hard though, almost every dish I love uses meat and I don't like any of the alternatives besides just beans.
I've been vegetarian for close to 20 years and started in the deep south, so I was used to basically every meal revolving around meat. It's definitely a big adjustment to cut out 100%.
Honestly you can get by really well just replacing meat with beans/chickpeas/etc. If you're really dying for more variety check out TVP (textured vegetable protein). It's just tofu that's been crumbled and dehydrated. Since it's been dehydrated it will absolutely suck up the flavor of anything you soak it in, and the texture in a soup/stew/curry/etc is very unnoticeable.
Check your store's Hispanic aisle or your local Hispanic grocery store to get it a bit cheaper. If you don't like size then soy curls are basically the same thing but larger.