Vegetarian stuff

[sjs]

Vegetarian dish availability in restaurants and pubs diminishing.....

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... dApp_Other

I must say if you aren't satisfied with just vegetables you then get exposed to highly processed items like fake burgers sausages and mince. The only satisfying things we have found are some sausages and some mince.

Al

I find some of the fake burgers pretty palatable, albeit highly processed. My daughters (both vegan) recommend Richmond vegan sausages. I'm surprised by that, because (in my opinion) their meaty ones are horrible.

[axel_knutt]

It's difficult to know where the balance lies in the choice between unhealthy because it's meat, and unhealthy because it's processed.

In amongst the processed foodstuffs I eat are a couple of veggie products, but they're cauli-cheese grills, and spicy bean burgers, not meat imitations. The sausages I eat are meat, and processed, but the burgers are home-made from beef mince.

[Jon in Sweden]

Overly processed food is a common trap that vegetarians and vegans fall into. Any diets that relies on ultra processed food is going to be worse than any diet where the vast majority is home cooked.

As much as anything else, I don't know how people afford to live off ready meals and other processed garbage. I have seen figures for families spending two or three times what we do on food every month, and wonder how enough they do it.

Buying good quality food in bulk and cooking it yourself is the best way for any person to live.

We are fairly lucky ourselves though in that we have four freezers, so not only can I bake bread in batches of eight, but I can also pick and freeze a couple hundred kilos of blueberries in summer to last us the whole year.

Back on the topic of vegetarianism - I really would avoid any of the fake meats as they may be supply the required macronutrients, but they do that at the expense of a lot of processing and a heavy carbon footprint.

[axel_knutt]

As much as anything else, I don't know how people afford to live off ready meals and other processed garbage. I have seen figures for families spending two or three times what we do on food every month, and wonder how enough they do it.

There are always outliers and exceptions, but the actual problem with getting people to eat healthy food is that calorie for calorie, it's far more expensive than eating processed stuff, about three times more expensive in this research from Cambridge University, and it's getting worse:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/artic ... =printable
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/pri ... oods-grows

And to make matters worse still, vegetables are very low in calories, so you have to buy a lot and eat a lot to get the same energy.

Here's some research into incentive policies, they found that simply taxing the unhealthy stuff is liable to make matters worse, and what's actually needed is a healthy food subsidy funded from a tax on unhealthy stuff.
https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/38/5/1324/663823

I eat a diet that meets all the health recommendations I can find by a good margin (verified by a spreadsheet, not just assumption), and I do it on a budget, but it's not easy. Reportedly, in some disadvantaged households up to 80% of their diet is Ultra-Processed, mine is 13%, well below the UK average of 57%. It's easy to jump to conclusions too, the vast majority of bread is classed as ultra-processed, unless you're very careful what you buy.

The overall FSA Nutrient Profile Score for my whole diet is -2.6, which is way below the threshold of 4 generally used to separate healthy from unhealthy. This is the cost per calorie plotted against the NPS for each of the items in my diet, and whilst there's a vey wide scatter, the trend is clear: healthy is more expensive.
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Using the same NPS threshold of 4 that Cambridge use, I calculate that I'm paying a 55% cost premium on the healthy stuff, but that's with the data weighted according to the quantity of each item unlike the Cambridge one, and being on a budget, I eat the cheaper stuff most.

[Jon in Sweden]

There are always outliers and exceptions, but the actual problem with getting people to eat healthy food is that calorie for calorie, it's far more expensive than eating processed stuff, about three times more expensive in this research from Cambridge University, and it's getting worse:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/artic ... =printable
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/pri ... oods-grows

And to make matters worse still, vegetables are very low in calories, so you have to buy a lot and eat a lot to get the same energy.

Here's some research into incentive policies, they found that simply taxing the unhealthy stuff is liable to make matters worse, and what's actually needed is a healthy food subsidy funded from a tax on unhealthy stuff.
https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/38/5/1324/663823

I eat a diet that meets all the health recommendations I can find by a good margin (verified by a spreadsheet, not just assumption), and I do it on a budget, but it's not easy. Reportedly, in some disadvantaged households up to 80% of their diet is Ultra-Processed, mine is 13%, well below the UK average of 57%. It's easy to jump to conclusions too, the vast majority of bread is classed as ultra-processed, unless you're very careful what you buy.

The overall FSA Nutrient Profile Score for my whole diet is -2.6, which is way below the threshold of 4 generally used to separate healthy from unhealthy. This is the cost per calorie plotted against the NPS for each of the items in my diet, and whilst there's a vey wide scatter, the trend is clear: healthy is more expensive.
.
2324 Diet Cost vs Health.png
.
Using the same NPS threshold of 4 that Cambridge use, I calculate that I'm paying a 55% cost premium on the healthy stuff, but that's with the data weighted according to the quantity of each item unlike the Cambridge one, and being on a budget, I eat the cheaper stuff most.

Really fascinating insights and contributions!

Do you think that home cooking is always more expensive though? I take your point that vegetables are more expensive, per calorie, but I'd argue that you cannot think of nutritional value purely in calorific terms (though I must admit that I used to do that).

The staples that form the bulk of the calories in a diet don't need to be expensive. For me, some of them are as follows:

* Flour - I personally eat around 2-3kg of bread a week. I bake all my bread myself, using mainly wholemeal flour that I bring back from the UK and plain and rye flour from Sweden. I bake a good loaf and usually tart it up with various seeds and extra virgin olive oil. Cost per kilo is about 60 pence (24 pence per 1000 kcal).
* Soup - I buy veg in season, as cheaply as possible and make 10-15 litres of thick, nutritious soup at a time. Lots of lentils and various beans are added. I recall that the soup was quite nutritionally complete when I worked out the values on the last batch (Thai curry, mixed veg soup with red lentils and mung beans) and cost about 90 pence a litre (£2.57 per 1000 kcal).
* Wild boar - this is one I'm quite lucky with. We have a hunter in the village from whom we buy boar in 10-20kg batches. It costs about £4/kg. Fully organic, wild. About £3.50/1000 kcal.
* Blueberries/lingon berries - totally free. Just my time to pick and clean them of twigs. Last year was a bad year, so we struggled to pick 100 litres. 2024 was excellent, so we picked about 700 litres (with the rake scoop, you can pick over 20 litres an hour) and sold most of it. Negative cost per 1000kcal.
* Stewed apple/pear - the village has a lot of apple and pear trees. Every other year, you get a great crop. 2024 was really good and I picked and stewed about 150 litres of apples. We're still eating them now. A small cost to stew them, but pretty minimal.
* Sardines - I eat a lot of sardines. 4-5 tins a week. 50 pence a tin, About £2/1000 kcal. Obviously, their value is in the omega 3, the protein and the calcium.

Other than that, we eat unprocessed dairy (Turkish yoghurt, kvarg (traditional high protein yoghurt), full fat milk, Gouda), lots of potatoes, cereals, porridge and fruits.

There is almost nothing that's ultra processed in my diet, and not much in my family's diet either.

One of the biggest obstacles for eating ultra processed food here in Sweden is that ready meals are far less common and extremely expensive. They just aren't affordable here, though I appreciate that they are much cheaper in the UK

[rjb]

My diet is very similar to Jon's. Although I like a weekly fry up but restrict it to 1 sausage, egg, chips, beans, mushrooms. A slow cooked turkey leg sustains us for several meals but for 2 days a week and the rest is frozen for later. Mrs has an ongoing oral cancer issue and now has very few teeth so relies on the blender. Home made vegetable soups and pasta with cheese are her mainstay. I'm still on the frequent baked spud (often air fried) with cheese and baked beans.
Thick full fat Turkish yoghurt, I make my own yoghurt from full fat milk. Recipe from someone on the forum. Make homemade bread too. We also have porridge most mornings and purée blackberry and apple with custard most evenings. We collect enough apples to sustain us for the whole year. This is Somerset so free apples in abundance. So not strictly vegetarian but we eat very little meat now, but have a naughy cake for a 11am treat, usually after a tandem ride.

[al_yrpal]

An Oxfordshire diet from 1912...

Born in 1942 my diet as a kid featured a lot of bread and jam. Herring, shrimps, kippers and bloaters, occasionally a bit of meat pie. We had chickens for the eggs and very occasionally one got eaten. Sweets like everything else were rationed. Fat people were a rarity because few ate to excess and we walked or cycled everywhere.

Bread, cockles and Corona came in a van to your door and when the milkman came every man in the street was poised with a shovel and bucket.

A pal here works in a kebab shop. He has some customers who have deliveries 5 times a week despite being unemployed and on benefits.

These days I eat Kimchi every day...

Al

[Jon in Sweden]

An Oxfordshire diet from 1912...

1000006956.jpg

Born in 1942 my diet as a kid featured a lot of bread and jam. Herring, shrimps, kippers and bloaters, occasionally a bit of meat pie. We had chickens for the eggs and very occasionally one got eaten. Sweets like everything else were rationed. Fat people were a rarity because few ate to excess and we walked or cycled everywhere.

Bread, cockles and Corona came in a van to your door and when the milkman came every man in the street was poised with a shovel and bucket.

A pal here works in a kebab shop. He has some customers who have deliveries 5 times a week despite being unemployed and on benefits.

These days I eat Kimchi every day...

Al

I can't say that I like the look of that 1912 diet! A lot of bread and lard!

I recall seeing a video from the early 70s, advertising the south coast of Devon. There was literally not one single fat person to be seen. And the comments section reflected that glaring contrast with modern society.

I think it would be reasonable to say that whilst much more unhealthy food exists and in greater variety than it did 50 years ago, it's actually easier to eat healthily now because you don't necessarily need to eat foods in season and there is a far greater understanding of nutrition.

The issue is that a great many people have little willpower and the Overton Window (for what constitutes a normal physique, if you'll forgive me borrowing the expression from politics) has shifted quite considerably.

Kids should be skinny. Ribs should be visible. Knees should be knobbly. These days, it's often not the case and childhood obesity is on the rise.

Where we are, we're lucky that our village school has a sports focus. My girls are currently skiing (I excused myself early to go out on the bike) and there are very, very few kids that are overweight out of the 330 at the school. I can't think of any that I'd describe as obese.

I'm not sure that I've tried Kimchi, but I really like Kefir. I'm currently waiting for a large batch of sauerkraut to come ready, though it's the first time I've made it, so I'm not exactly sure when that point is!

[MrsHJ]

Interesting thread. I stopped eating meat at 16. Quite a long time later (in my thirties on a cycle tour I think) I began eating fish again and I have to say that diet wise it’s easier to keep on top of nutrients as a pescatarian. It is absolutely possible as a vegetarian but as a lazy one maybe more tricky.

I’m also on the full fat greek yoghurt train. I’ve recently given up refined sugar (again- I hope I stick to it this time-my milk chocolate addiction is a problem) and things like chopped banana with chopped pecans and Greek yoghurt are a good sweet substitute (even better if you have an ice cream machine and throw it all in that). An alternative is the yoghurt with strawberries and pistachios which also works in the ice cream machine. Good cottage cheese (not the watery stuff) also works on crackers as a snack maybe with some sliced avocado.

I watched the “what not to eat” series on channel 4 this week and felt somewhat smug but definitely could do better and I’d be a lot happier if dropping sugar helps me lose a couple of stone. There was a really nice recipe on there with chickpeas and baked veggies with aubergines on top that I’m going to have a go at.

In terms of meat substitutes I also prefer vegetables and pulses etc to fake stuff but certainly eat the odd veggie sausage. The Waitrose ones are very nice.

Current favourite meals might include home made veggie moussaka with puy lentils (plus mushrooms and aubergine to make the filling), or red bean chilli (aubergines and kidney beans as the key ingredients) but I also eat a lot of salads incorporating nuts and seeds. Omelettes are my go to fast food. Tonight though I roasted some trout in the oven and had it with air fired butternut squash and courgettes (and some cheeky pommes dauph). I’ll probably do a roast tomorrow evening- I have a lovely mushroom wellington recipe that I batch make and freeze and then use a portion each time we do a roast.

[Morzedec]

Not 'Veggie', but 'Fruity' - it does help if one has an abundance of peach trees in the garden. Along with cherries,pears, strawberries, and three different sorts of apples.

[axel_knutt]

Do you think that home cooking is always more expensive though?

Always? Well it depends on what that means, I can cherry pick items to 'prove' the counterpoint, but that's not a complete balanced diet:
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I take your point that vegetables are more expensive, per calorie, but I'd argue that you cannot think of nutritional value purely in calorific terms (though I must admit that I used to do that).

Well, the energy you burn is what determines how much food you have to eat, and hence how much you have to pay for, so yes, it is the relevant metric. Of course, if you want a healthy balanced diet you also have to ensure it meets other criteria as well, but that's why I said it's not necessarily easy on a budget.

The staples that form the bulk of the calories in a diet don't need to be expensive. For me, some of them are as follows:

* Flour - I personally eat around 2-3kg of bread a week. I bake all my bread myself, using mainly wholemeal flour that I bring back from the UK and plain and rye flour from Sweden. I bake a good loaf and usually tart it up with various seeds and extra virgin olive oil. Cost per kilo is about 60 pence (24 pence per 1000 kcal).

Bread accounts for 23% of my total calorie intake but only 7.8% of the cost. The seeded loaf I buy at £0.58/1000kcal isn't the cheapest, but I switched to it because it's one of very few that don't count as ultra processed. Overall my diet averages £1.51/1000kcal, which is less than any of the foodstuffs you cite as economical.

* Wild boar - this is one I'm quite lucky with. We have a hunter in the village from whom we buy boar in 10-20kg batches. It costs about £4/kg. Fully organic, wild. About £3.50/1000 kcal.

In Tesco, pork is £8- £12/kg, beef £6 - £33/kg.
My homemade burgers cost £2.96/1000kcal, Tesco processed £2.09/1000kcal.

There are also significant difficulties in buying fresh fruit & veg, particularly if you live alone, which can also lead to further increase in costs. The first is food that's pre-packed in quantities you can't use before it goes off, 83% of the F&V in my local Tesco is like that, and the second is selling unripe fruit. Neither the supermarket nor the consumer want to be left holding fruit when it goes off, but if you're forced to buy more than you need or keep a stockpile waiting to ripen, it increases the likelihood of that happening. Supermarkets are pushing the risk, the cost and the waste onto the consumer.

At best it restricts the variety you can eat, at worst it leads to waste.

[Jon in Sweden]

Bread accounts for 23% of my total calorie intake but only 7.8% of the cost. The seeded loaf I buy at £0.58/1000kcal isn't the cheapest, but I switched to it because it's one of very few that don't count as ultra processed. Overall my diet averages £1.51/1000kcal, which is less than any of the foodstuffs you cite as economical.

I'm only quoting part of your last post, but it is all really interesting. It's nice to meet someone who is perhaps even more analytical about their diet than me!

Bread is, I would say, an area where you could both reduce cost and improve quality quite substantially. Given that it forms a large part of your diet, it wouldn't be unreasonable to prioritise it.

Baking bread at home is an absolute doddle. I do 8 loaves at a time (the capacity of my oven), which is about 4.7kg of flour (approx) and 200-300g various seeds. It takes 20 minutes of prep time (mixing all ingredients, kneading, putting to rise, kneading again briefly and portioning out into the tins) and costs about £4.50 all in for 7-8kg of bread.

But the issue with cooking and baking in such bulk is storage, and this is one of the aspects of food poverty that I don't think people think about.

People of low economic means usually live in poor quality housing. It could be argued that in the UK, most housing fits that description, but it's especially pronounced in this demographic.

It mainly means that you have very little space. Possibly an undercounter freezer and that's it.

It means you can't bulk cook. You can't buy things when they're cheap and store it. You can't pick fruit when it's in season and freeze it. It's really, really limiting.

We are fortunate to be in the position of having three large chest freezers and a fridge freezer, plus another full height fridge. We could have more freezers if we want to and we also have a large pantry.

So if things are heavily reduced, we buy bloody loads of it. We come to the UK once a year in the car and stock up on stuff. Sardines (for example) are 50p a tin in the UK and £1.10 here. So I buy 150 tins in the UK to do me the year. 50-70kg wholemeal flour (you can't get 100% wholemeal here), some of which I have to freeze.

Anyway, I could list many more examples, but so many houses in the UK are built with woefully inadequate kitchens and food storage, so it's no wonder there is such a market for ready (junk) meals.

I will need to work out what my diet costs, but I think it's broadly similar to yours at about £1.35-1.50 per 1000kcal. Where it gets expensive is that I average about 6000-6500kcal a day, and sometimes quite a bit more on heavy training days. Because I'm 100kg and competitive, I average 1000-1400kcal an hour on the bike. Some of that is fueled with simple sugar, but not all of it.

[al_yrpal]

We keep trying various vegetarian products but are left with 'This isnt' bangers and mince as the only nice things. Fortunately they make up into various tasty dishes. In addition anything fish or cheese based. Our butcher, just across the road does all sorts of pies, including great cheese and onion jobs.

As for bread Lidls brown sourdough loaves @ £2 take some beating. I usually pop a few in the freezer.

Al

[axel_knutt]

Bread is, I would say, an area where you could both reduce cost and improve quality quite substantially. Given that it forms a large part of your diet, it wouldn't be unreasonable to prioritise it.

I did once consider having a go at baking bread, but I don't really fancy it, and I don't have much space for storing it. I'm also interested in cutting the amount of bread I eat, but it's difficult finding an alternative with all the benefits: quick, no cooking, high fibre, high calorie, low fat.

But the issue with cooking and baking in such bulk is storage, and this is one of the aspects of food poverty that I don't think people think about.

People of low economic means usually live in poor quality housing. It could be argued that in the UK, most housing fits that description, but it's especially pronounced in this demographic.

It mainly means that you have very little space. Possibly an undercounter freezer and that's it.

The house is a good sized 3 bed semi, plenty for one, but it was built in 1947, and still has the original pokey little kitchen, unlike the neighbours'. The fridge and freezer are both under the counter, one in the pantry because there's not room in the kitchen. Three loaves and six portions of batch cooking and that's the whole top compartment full.

So if things are heavily reduced, we buy bloody loads of it. We come to the UK once a year in the car and stock up on stuff. Sardines (for example) are 50p a tin in the UK and £1.10 here. So I buy 150 tins in the UK to do me the year. 50-70kg wholemeal flour (you can't get 100% wholemeal here), some of which I have to freeze.

I don't drive any more so everything gets carried a mile home in two carrier bags, or at least it did. Nowadays I can't manage it all, so I buy the perishables once a week, and then get non-perishables online in bulk about every 40 days. Why 40 days? That's about what it takes to avoid the £5 surcharge for not meeting the £50 minimum order, and any more than 40 days will exceed their maximum limit on milk.

[Jon in Sweden]

I did once consider having a go at baking bread, but I don't really fancy it, and I don't have much space for storing it. I'm also interested in cutting the amount of bread I eat, but it's difficult finding an alternative with all the benefits: quick, no cooking, high fibre, high calorie, low fat.

Maybe it's not worth the effort if you're trying to reduce your consumption, but baking bread really is incredibly easy. This is what I do (for 8 loaves of about 850-900g each).

4.8kg flour - doesn't really matter what it is. I typically use 75% wholemeal and the remainder rye or white.
8 sachets of dry yeast
About 55g salt (I use Himalayan at the moment because I have lots, it was cheap and I like that it's pink!)
A large dash of olive oil
A bit of sugar (maybe 25g) - helps the yeast get going
Seeds - dealers choice. I use sesame, linseeds and pumpkin seeds currently. Sunflower seeds are obviously good. About 250g total.

Warm water (wants to be about 40c)

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Add some boiling water to the seeds before you start. They want to soak for 10 minutes or so.

Add the flour, salt, sugar and yeast into a large mixing bowl and mix. A whisk is good for that. Add the soaked seeds. Mix some more.

Add the warm water, little by little, mixing initially with a large spoon (or similar) and then with your hands when it gets too heavy. A good rule of thumb is that you need 2 parts flour and 1 part water. So 5kg of dry ingredients will require 2.5 litres of water.

Be careful towards the end to add the water really slowly. You don't want the mix to be too wet. A good dash of olive oil at this point helps make it easier to knead and less sticky.

Knead vigorously for 3-5 minutes. The dough shouldn't stick to your hands at all.

Cover the mixing bowl and leave somewhere warm for an hour. In the warmer months, I use my car (which sits in the sun) but anywhere above 25c works well. You can skip this stage entirely if you want a slightly denser, less risen loaf.

Knead again for a minute and divide up into equal parts and put into greased loaf tins. At this point, you can glaze the loaves if you want (I use an egg, mixed with honey and a bit of olive oil/butter). The glaze helps things like additional seeds stick, and it gives it a nice brown, crusty finish. I sprinkle a little extra salt on top (the salt content overall is still a lot lower than shop bought).

Put the tins into the oven set at 50c. Rise it for another 30-45 minutes (depending on how risen you want it) and then set to 250c for 25-30 minutes and you're done.

I hope that doesn't sound too complicated, but I've gone into fair detail so it's easy to follow. I bake a batch like this every 7-10 days. Cost is about 50-55p per loaf, but far better than anything we can buy locally, and 6 times cheaper.