eating meat?

Question

For acid reflux reasons i want to give up meat. mainly pork and beef. Is there a method i should use to reduce eating meat slowly or can i just get off meat and not have any bad gas? everytime i just stop eating meat i get BAAAD gas and it's gross. are they're any health benefits of not eating meat but eating enough protein?

Answer 1

lovelygaygirl,

If giving up meat will do it, then you'll be fine. the 'gas' idea is not entirely true, even if you've experienced it. The reason is that, while a bean-based diet does produce more gas than a meat-based one, it is not nearly as noticeable after a time.

It's the meat that causes the really offensive odor. Once you're away from meat, it'll be a lot better. not quite 'good,' now, but much better. Much less noticeable.

Now, how to do this:

Get off all meat immediately. I find it's easier to do it this way than to slowly reduce the amount that you eat. Just jump into the vegetable-based diet completely.

Get a copy of the Moosewood Collective's Low-Fat Cookbook, or Cafe Flora's new cookbook. Cafe Flora is here in Seattle, and it's a very good vegetarian restaurant. They have some very fine recipes. Or you could try an older book, Dean Ornish's "Everyday Eating With Dr. Dean Ornish," or Caldwell Esselstyn's present "Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease" (which has some 100 recipes in it).

These will get and keep you going on a non-meat diet.

I've been doing it for years, my cholesterol numbers have become very pleasing, I've lost weight--I now weigh what I did as a high school junior--and I run 20-30 miles a week.

The way to do this is to eat a mixture of protein sources. Beans, sure, but lentils, roasted soybeans, peanut butter (a little, not much. It doesn't take much), tofu pressed and baked or made into the "fighting fear of tofu" website's alfredo sauce (just add lots of basil or fresh parsley), and other such items, and you'll have plenty of protein in your diet.

We Americans eat far too much protein, really. WE can cut down and miss nothing. Some meals eat soemthing like an Italian stufato (a vegetable stew from northern Italy. Look up Nika Hazelton's garden vegetable stew, make it, and you'll never miss the meat you won't eat then). It's here:

http://www.thefoodmaven.com/diary/archives/00000219.html

And it's one of my favorites.

Another one of my favorites is "Meat and Fenberry Pie" made with Smart Ground soy protein instead of meat. It's a medieval recipe, and everyone I've given it to has loved it. It's here:

http://recipes.wuzzle.org/index.php/36/382

Use cranberries if you can. Use grapes if you can't.

Let's see, I got off meat all at once, had no problems, and I haven't eaten any for nine years,now, and as a nurse said during my last physical, most thin people she sees are frail. "You are thin but definitely not frail," she said.

No. I do work out, and it shows. Nobody ever guesses that I'm a vegetarian.

Health benefits? There are too many to name. I'm as healthy as I ever was, and healthier than I was just before I went off meat.

And I don't have much more problem with gas than I did when I ate meat. A little, but the gas is much, much less than it was years ago.

Go for it. I think you'll like it.

Answer 2

Get off of meat slowly, there are other foods that have great protien, Like penuts. As for the gas problem get some beno or gas x to help reduce the bloating.

Answer 3

i've been a vegitarian for a while --- and let me tell you --- i've never felt better --- i take a protein suppliment, and that solves that problem --- but deffenatly get off meat slowly ... it will be bad if u don't

Answer 4

dont get off of it all at once.do it gradually,so your body has a chance to adjust to the change.