Hey guys! Hoping somebody on here can help me. Recently have been wanting to become
A vegetarian for ethical reasons and was wondering how hard it is to stop eating meat and make the transition? Any advice/words of wisdom would be appreciated? Just don't really know where to start as I know some products are not suitable for vegetarians eg muller light. Thanks for the help xx
Oooh welcome to a veggie world, it's fab and has so much variety!
I've been an ethical veggie for only about 8 years so I can remember the transition pretty well still. I bought in plenty of quorn, lentils, chickpeas, etc and started cooking mainly veggie recipes whilst using up the meat that was left in the house. Once it was gone I didn't buy any more, carried on cooking veggie and tbh didn't miss the meat at all! I still don't, I do miss haribo however (they contain gelatine).
Treat yourself to a good veggie or vegan cook book or two, the SW green day book is good as Crunchy mentioned and I can also recommend Appetite for Reduction which is a low fat, mainly SW friendly vegan cookbook and also Hugh F-W's Veg Everyday which is fantastic, although needs a bit of SW-ising at times! There's a mountain of good recipes here
http://www.channel4.com/4food/recipes/vegetarian too although some would need tweaking to make them SW friendly too. Have a read through the Vegetarian Society website, they have tonnes of info on diet and nutrition and recipes too.
Mullers are out as you say but activia and shape delights are fine - although in the case of shape delights strawberry flavour is not veggie as it contains cochineal. Look out for cochineal in anything with an artificial red/pink colour as it's still used quite a lot unfortunately, check the ingredients.
If you drink, check the websites for your fave wines and beers to make sure they are suitable for veggies as a lot of manufacturers use isenglass (derived from fish swim bladder!) in the brewing process. My general rule of thumb is the cheaper the beer, the less likely it is to be veggie, carling and fosters are both unsuitable for example.
Be prepared for people asking if you eat fish or offering you fish as a veggie option! No idea where this comes from lol but there are some funny ideas about vegetarianism out there
Main thing - have fun with it! Experiment and learn to love cooking a different way - there are so many creative things you can do and you don't even need to use meat replacements if you don't want to. Good luck! x