question for experienced vegetarians/vegans?

Question

okay so i am convinced that eating animals is bad, bad, bad.
i have been vegan for 2 months now, but honestly, meat tastes soooo delicious. don't judge me. give me tips how to get over it.

if humans tasted like cheesecake, i'd be eating people too. some advice to get over the craving?

Answer 1

Congratulations! You're doing good!

I don't judge you. I applaud your honesty!

I read an article recently by a psychologist who said when veggies crave meat it isn't actually the meat they crave, but the SAVORYness of that meat. If we liked meat so much, why would we cover it in plants? (herbs, tomato, yadda yadda...)

Try marinating a portobello mushroom, or a nice hunk of extra firm tofu. Then grilling it with some herbs. See if that fulfills your need.

I like Soy Vey teriyaki sauces for marinades. Sage, rosemary, basil and sundried tomato are my favorite additions.

Answer 2

Find some meat substitutes that you like. You may have to try a few before you find ones that satisfy you. Go to your local health food store or a Whole Foods Market and look for Morning Star Products in the frozen food section or Loma Linda and Worthington Foods in the canned goods section. There are other brands out there too. If you're craving cheesecake, do a google or yahoo search for tofu cheesecake. You can make a really delicious cheesecake using silken tofu that I swear, you won't be able to tell the difference between it and the stuff that uses cream cheese.

Answer 3

Meat does taste good. But so do a lot of vegetable dishes and some taste even better. I agree with a previous poster. You have to learn to cook. Take advantage of some of the delicious vegetarian ethnic dishes you can make like Middle Eastern or Indian food. And subscribe to a cooking magazine like Vegetarian Times.

I'm not a vegetarian. But I really do love a lot of vegetarian dishes and as long as I am aware of getting the right amount of healthy ingredients and protein our meals, I could care less if my meal doesn't have any meat in it.

I think vegan is a noble dietary guideline to follow but it's really strict and I personally couldn't do it. If I wanted to try one day, I guess it would need to be gradual as I familiarized myself with the ingredients that are acceptable and good tasting substitutes. If you don't cook and want follow a vegan diet my guess is it's bound to be a little disappointing.

Answer 4

Maybe you should start out as a vegetarian and NOt a vegan. That's like too extreme for starters. AND, learn how to cook. That is the only way it will get easier. If you get down techniques and recipes that are so good, you won't even miss meat. Promise. The key is FLAVOR, COLOR, TEXTURE. Play around with fresh herbs, spices, exotic vegetables, etc. You'll find it gets easy with time. In the meantime, whenever you miss meat, THINK FIRST about where it came from.

Answer 5

try making aloo tikki. it is potato fried in oil and it's from india. It is just soooooo awesome. Slice the potato not thin, and put it into bubbling hot oil and deep fry. Keep it in betweeen burger breads with a slice of cheese, tomato slices and bite into. it is awesome. Try to feel grossed out about eating animals whenever u think about meat. And don't go vegan if u r younger than 25. u wont get the required calcium. Try out some indian dishes, a lot of them are vegetarian and soooooooo good. www.sanjeevkapoor.com

Answer 6

Get soy replacement foods like soy bacon or soy burgers or vegan pepperoni. It may not be the same but if prepared with other stuff you can swear your eating meat.

Answer 7

Make traditional "meat" dishes using meat subsitutes. This past November I decided I wasn't cooking anymore meat for myself or the family. To help keep the family onboard with my plan, I have found that if I make veggie "meatloaf" and veggie burgers and veggie meatballs and stuff like that they are much less likely to complain.

Answer 8

I'm vegan. I thought meat tasted good too, but after years of not eating it, I accidentally took a bite of some food at a party that had meat in it, and I thought that something tasted really off, gone bad or something. It turned out that it was just regular old meat flavour. This has happened more than once and each time I did not like the flavour at all.

Well, according to my wife, who is from China, she says the meat in N. America is disgusting -- she says that for her (very educated on killing animals and preparing them fresh) looking at the meat here, the animals are all very sickly and no one would eat sick animals in China, and the meat in the store is usually very old, she says. Also, she says that she's never met a born and raised N. American that can cook meat or sea food properly. She's basically disgusted by the whole cooking experience in N. America due to low quality food and people who cannot cook properly. So, to me meat tastes bad now, but for her (also vegan) it only tastes bad in N. America, especially sea food, she says.

For me, I never really had cravings for meat, but I really did have needs for sweet foods after changing to a healthier diet. It took years and years until my need for sweets slowly went away.

OK, so, yeah, try to transition yourself. You can't really substitute a chunk of steak, but it's easy to take out the ground beef from something like American spaghetti sauce and put in some Yves vegetarian ground beef instead. Super easy to eat veggie or tofu hotdogs instead of real hotdogs. I would eat falafel nuggets instead of chicken nuggets, and well, I basically used lots of meat substitutes (only because my parents bought them for me; too expensive otherwise). The only meat substitute I use now on a regular basis is Taiwanese veggie ham. I really have no need for meat subs now. I’ve found other flavours.

I found that the less strongly flavoured and highly processed food I ate, the less I craved strong flavoured foods such as meat; one's taste buds will start to recognize more subtle flavours too. Foods that I previously found to be nearly flavourless (most vegetables, herbal teas, plain rice, plain oatmeal, and such), after about a year on a really good diet, were surprisingly full of flavour. I found that a real revelation. Then I discovered that organic food has at least twice the flavour of chemically grown. After that, we started gardening, and I found that fresh organic vegetables straight from the garden were twice as flavourful as the organic store-bought. So, it’s a continual gravitation towards more natural food simply because of better taste.

Answer 9

meat doesn't taste great at all.

Its just a psychological problem.

Its just because now that you have excluded it you want something you can't have.

As with any addiction, you just need to keep yourself busy and stop thinking about meat.

would you pick up a decaying rat off the floor and start eating it ? No. Well that steak is just a decaying animal.

Answer 10

I'm with the "decaying rat on the floor" guy.

I've never eaten it, and that's the thing that keeps it unappealing -- the difference between roadkill and the stuff in the supermarket is, for me, negligible at best.

I'm also leaning towards the "be vegetarian first" idea.