We are both doing really well on a no-dairy no-meat diet (except when travelling, when it’s clearly impossible) diet, for nearly 2 years now. For me, weight down and staying, BP way down, PSA coming back down after years of rising, free PSA % going well up (good), lipids great with just 10mg statin. And there are no downsides to it.
Peter wrote:
(except when travelling, when it’s clearly impossible)
Although I do consume dairy, I have been vegetarian for forty four years, and have travelled continuously and widely, including to some pretty interesting places (deep Amazon, polar regions, Soviet Central Asia, Central Africa, Brazil, China etc) and I have managed never to have to eat meat. I am sure that the same would go for dairy had I wanted.
Ironically, until about ten years ago, the two most difficult places (more difficult that the Amazon or Soviet Tajikistan) were France and Germany. France because they just didn’t get it, and Germany because they used to put Schinken or Speck in where we would use salt. However, they have sorted themselves out now and there is a veggie/vegan option everywhere.
So I would say that it is quite possible to travel anywhere and, for sure, remain veggie and, from what I can tell, vegan as well.
Actually my feeling is that dropping dairy makes a much bigger difference than dropping meat – if your meat consumption was never excessive.
One problem is that meat consumption is very high in many populations (in kg!)
For example we used to eat fish a few times a week, and that is what I end up doing on holidays (simply because one cannot get decent “substantial” veg e.g. sweet potatoes; one cannot live on lettuce lettuce lettuce which is what “salad” means in most commercial catering) and this limited use doesn’t seem to have an adverse long term effect.
And dropping dairy is actually easy. Oat and soya milk are really viable alternatives which taste different to cow milk but not in any objective “better or worse” way, after a few days… You can also make really good cheese (we went on a course on this) although making the meltable cheese which can be poured onto a pizza is not possible without using a ton (about 50% by volume) of oil and that’s not good for your arteries either, even olive oil.
Hardest for me is Spain 
Peter wrote:
Hardest for me is Spain
Ah yes, just come back from a week in Zaragoza. Torreznos, longaniza, chorizo, callos, madejicas, croquetas de jamón, washed down with too much wine – not really the healthiest of weeks :-)
Good job the weather this week has relented and I should have clocked up 160km of cycle commuting by the end of this week…
Hmmm….
I have never had a problem with Tapas. Lots of bean, rice and potato based stuff.
Hmmm, next time you’re in Mallorca i’ll make you a ‘coca de verdura’ essentially a pizza without cheese. Vegetarian and even vegan restaurants are gaining ground here, admittedly mostly in metropolitan areas.
On a side note, I heard someone on the radio the other day making the case that veganism (and, I think, by implication, vegetarianism) is bad for overall meat consumption, because they are absolute.
It’s quite easy to get someone to only eat meat if, for example, there is no alternative, or where not to do so would be rude or inconvenient, and so on, but to get them to make a commitment to never eat meat is more difficult. This supports @Peter’s view above.
I must say I try to avoid labels for the same reason, though it does become very hard; just as I wrote “vegetarian” a few posts up, it’s only for ease of not having to say “I am someone who chooses not to eat meat in any circumstances.” I never drink alcohol either, but I never call myself a teetotaller. It’s all to do with the baggage that goes along with the labels.
Sure; you google on e.g.
meat consumption dropping
you get a fair number of reports supporting this – in some countries.
And that’s a good thing, for the health service workload (the bulk of which is directly caused by poor health which is largely caused by poor diet and other lifestyle choices) and that’s before you look at stuff like the way animals are treated before they are killed, etc.
And, yeah, labels like “vegan” (which I am definitely not – I call myself “mostly plant based”) bring out associations with all sorts of dodgy groups.
Total avoidance of meat and dairy is virtually impossible if you ever eat “out” i.e. commercial catering. I can’t remember the name of yesterday’s restaurant at Cherbourg but as far as I could tell they were completely uninterested in discussing a “salad”
Peter wrote:
Total avoidance of meat and dairy is virtually impossible
There’s really no reason for total avoidance; at least it doesn’t have anything with keeping you healthy. Healthy diet is not easy to define and definitely not everything works for everybody. Whatever we think and believe, looking at how our digestion tract evolved shows us what kind of food we humans are supposed to eat at this point in our evolution. Thinking that dairy is bad can be easily denied by the fact that some of the longest living people in the world are in Caucasus region and have their diet heavily based on dairy products. And there are more examples like that for different types of food. It’s complex topic and I’m not sure there’s simple and universally healthy diet for everybody not considering genetic differences that cause differences in our abilities to digest different types of food.
Interesting article and results from an extensive research medical study and just published in the NYTimes about Low-Carb High-Fat diets: https://nyti.ms/2Dn0USH
Talks about low-fat diets, calorie counting, etc.
