What I've learnt in 10 years as a vegetarian:
Context: i started being vegetarian at a pretty young age (think preteen), because my family decided to try vegetarianism for a few weeks to see how it would work. Spoiler, it worked great. This year marks my tenth year being a vegetarian, so here's stuff i learnt that might (or might not) be new to most of you who eat meat!
Meat. STINKs. it stinks like NOTHING else on earth and i find it incredibly hard to describe. I am quite sensitive to a lot of smells, noises and sounds, so this might not be everyone's experience but meat has such a specific sweetly strong sticky smell that just doesn't go away, not by cooking or storing it differently or anything. It stinks like hell and i feel like a lot of people don't realise it (presumably based off the way they handle it and how much they eat)
Most vegetarians that I've met don't judge others for their choices. Infact, most of the judgement I've personally experienced has come from extremely avid meat eaters who want to interrogate everything about my being vegetarian ("but why don't you eat it, you need it to stay healthy, humans need meat, this is why you're weak and skinny, but there's nutrients you can't get any other way, but how do you get your protein... and everything along those lines). This is obviously not everybody's experience and i know that most people who eat meat are not at all like that, but a few are. and it's extremely annoying.
You can have a whole, healthy and complete diet without meat. In the last ten years I've seen more people realise that but I've also seen people go down weird propagandaist rabbit holes and fully believe that meat is the only thing that can keep them alive and healthy.
That being said, I do eat fish. A lot of my family doesn't, mostly cus my mother has (understandable) moral qualms with it and doesn't buy it and I respect that so i usually don't either. I do love the taste of a lot of fish and since i have a lot of sensory issues surrounding other things, i like to keep that option open for myself should I need it.
This might be a very important one: I do not care whether you eat meat or not. Morally I have decided for myself not to do it and i prefer being around it as little as possible due to sensory issues. But if you eat meat because you can't stand some other foods or because you can't afford being vegetarian or because you simply want to - Do whatever you want. I don't care, just don't be like the idiots mentioned above in 2.
Meat replacements are actually really nice a lot of times but you do have to try around a bit. Tofu is great, very versatile and honestly delicious, most soy products taste great, and should you desire to, you can replace most things in recipes with bought meat replacements.
However. You donтАЩt need meat replacements to be vegetarian. Right now I'm seeing a rise in whole food vegetarian or vegan diets and i think it's great (if it doesn't spiral into "the government is feeding us poison). They can be more expensive but do work very well, which leads to my next point.
Being vegetarian or going vegetarian makes you much more creative with your food. You find combinations, recipes and ideas you never would have thought to do before, and more importantly, you find other uses for things you had already thought you knew the whole use of! (Favourite examples of this are aubergines which I've been getting into lately, they are great for salads or for using as dipper like things, and onions. fucking love onions, they're so versatile)
I mentioned it in another post before: the amount of meat the average person eats is unhealthy. it is not healthy to be eating meat every day, least of all large amounts. (most european countries advise you don't eat more than 300-400g of i think red meat? I don't really know the differences between all those types of meat but I do know that most people are way over the good amount.
Yeah that's all for now, have fun!
(https://knowledge4policy.ec.europa.eu/health-promotion-knowledge-gateway/food-based-dietary-guidelines-europe-table-8_en <- reference for point 9)
