h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Eat Elks? You're making me cry.

17 century - middle ages? Still doesn't seem quite right though. And just who cared about measuring the overall diet of a nation back then?

Why are we still discussing this under 'not drinking?' Oh well.

I don't eat meat cos I don't like it. I much prefer a tasty Quorn burger or a nice stir-fry with lumps of quorn in it.

I draw the line at not eating vertebrates. I haply eat prawns etc. I eat meat every now and again, when I feel like it. Sometimes I can forget that what I have in my mouth is the scorched carcass of a once living thing, normally I can't. I don't drink either.

However, on the other hand, but from a certain point of view, alternatively, if we were to approach the matter from a different angle...

Moving swiftly on, I'd just like to mention that hitler was vegetarian so that nobody else does it and clogs up the forum with complaints. Actually, no, maybe i shouldn't mention that. Oh bugger it, it's done.

Tofu is okay if prepared just right. This, however, is a rarity.

I do like it in hot & sour soup...

My favourite cervine is elk - baked slowly over an open fire while drinking copious amounts of beer

I don't agree with that. Stop making it look as if I eat tofu. It makes my girlfriend fart like the wind so I'm not going to touch it.

Do you drive a Mercedes 'A' class by any chance, PP&L?
Just wondering 'cos it failed the infamous 'Elk Test', so maybe you're trying to stay safe by eating them all before you end up hitting one

It says somewhere near the top about Hitler being vegie.

You're beginning to give be a bad taste in my mouth, Pink Panther. I heard Panther was quite a delicacy.

Sorry about that Elk.

Elk must be the king of "Road Kill" though. We don't have them running wild in NZ. Most of our road kill are possums and cats with the occasional bird being hit, usually not by Mercedes, more likely something from Japan.

Recently a law was passed in NZ requiring you to stop and check out any animal hit by your car. If the animal is injured you have to take it to a vet. If dead you have to bury it.

Buried road kill will then be eaten by worms which presumably are not vegetarians.

That's why I admire NZ as one of the only three free countries in the world (NZ, Britain and Canada). It has its head screwed on right.

Admission: I've only ever seen an Elk in a zoo. Keep it quiet though. We don't have wild elk in GB.

Worms are saprophytes.

Isn't there a swedish tree fungus called swedish elk disease?

Hey something is going on at:
http://www.h2g2.com/P130852
Join in on the FUN RUN and excersise your brain, you don't even have to leave your seat.

Cheers for the spam, vegiman.

Dunno about that fungal disease, sounds cool though. Sorry that I left Aus out of my resonable countries list.

Whoops! Big booboo. In those old days when you were going to die before your 40th birthday, people ate way less neat than they do now. Meat requires more resources to raise, and the food supply was much lower, so people mostly ate vegetables and grains. If you were rather well off, you ate meat in your stew about once a week.

There is still that fashion of lactose-intolerance, but it isn't very fashionable. It's quite real. I only knew one person with it, but, I'll just say you didn't want to be in the same room with Pablo after a double-cheese pizza and some yoghurt.

As a vegetarian of about 6 years Quorn has caused me no end of problems. The trouble is, tasty as it is, Quorn makes me violently ill about 1 hour after eating the smallest amount. It usually lasts about 18 hours and then I'm fine. One other vegetarian I know says it gives her stomach cramps and she won't eat it but I have met no-one else.
I actually e-mailed Quorn to ask about this and they were really helpful. They pointed out what it might be (i.e. the particular myco-protein from which quorn is made) and sent me a fiver as compensation (which I hadn't asked for!).
I am still bit worried however about eating similar things in case they have the same effect. Does anyone out there have any useful info?

*phew*

Ok, let me first admit that I haven't read *all* of these threads..I read for 20 minutes and then I dropped out. Anyhow, I just felt like commenting on the talks about Norway and vegeterians.

I am myself a girl who lives in Norway - actually in Bergen which was specificly mentioned. I've been a vegeterian for 3-4 years out of my your 16 year old life, and during all this time I've lived in Bergen.

Yes, fresh vegetables isn't #1 priority in Norway it seems like, you know, it's kinda cold here during large parts of the year. But I survive pretty fine with what's in the stores though. Being a vegetarian IS on the other hand, very difficult in Noreway. Very many restaurants don't have anything for vegetariants, but I mean, if there's appropriate service they mix a good dish for you. And just for the record vegeterians aren't always the most healthy persons. I eat pizza, burgers and hotdogs myself - only vegeterian pizza, and soya-burger and soya-hotdogs. But usually about fastfood like the two latter there, it's not particularly what the dish is called that's unhealthy, it's what you have on/in the hotdog/burger and along with this. You know, fast food.

On the informational part, statistics say that there actually are 60.000 vegeterians in Norway. I don't know where all of those hide, because I don't get to meet other vegs *too* often, but I guess it's true. I was also a member of the Norwegian Vegeterianism Society, but that was a .org in which was run on entirely voulenteerly basis in Oslo, and that went pretty dead because of lack of those who had time for this..sadly

Oh, and btw, the reason I became a veg is because I am an animal protector. Yes, in the beginning (hey, I was about 13 - teenager at it's best, what do you expect) I was very into animalprotecting. Now I'm kindof retired with this case, but I still have my menings, just not that provoking feeling anymore. I'm sick and tired of having to protect myself as a veg from one type of people who gets really provoced when they get to know I am a vegeterian. I don't eat meat simply because I don't need it. And I can't say I fancy killing, so I don't get why I should kill when I don't need to. I can sacrifice the taste of a good beef for that. That's just me and my life, I don't force others to to the same. I mean, the world's a cruel place, and though I mean it's wrong to kill for the taste (no, I don't believe in all of those who tells me I need meat. And I don't care if my grandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandfather did, he wouldn't now), I cannot change everybody's opinion or force them to mean the same thing as me.

I'm pretty tired of arguing about it actually. But I wish that more people could accept it when I order something veggy and not somethings that's dead.
(And don't come with the plan theory again, pleeze.)


Ok, I'll rest my case now..it was mainly of the information that Norway has got veggies and that not all no-don't-kill-the-animal-veggies are of the arguing kind

.. as for those 'We kill whales for fun"-tshirts, I never understood them.. Do they mean that in a provoking way, or is it ironic in an animalprotecting way? Gee, bad slogan when you can't even figure what the persons who wears this tshirt means...

Elk update. Apprently wild wapiti (American elk) are rumoured to run wild in the mountainous, underpopulated, southern parts of NZ. Last confirmed sighting in the 60s. Probably by someone drunk on Mountain Dew.

Beyond those motivated by a "be nice to animals" or
"animals just taste gross to me" are people like me.
Before I became a vegetarian, I found nothing wrong with
the taste of meat or the thought of where it came from.
What led me to give it up was the knowledge that the
resources (water, land, soil, labor and time) that go into
ONE filet mignon could alternately have been used to feed
something like TEN hungry people a meal of rice, beans
and vegetables.

So I eat no meat because I am uncomfortable with the social
and environmental costs of producing it. So many great
progressive thinkers and leaders of history and of today were
vegetarians: Plato, Gandhi, Thich Naht Hanh, etc. And Jesus,
while he DID create fish, said that eating bread was better than
eating meat.