I have been browsing Jamie Oliver’s veg recipes (Vegetarian recipes from Jamie's book Veg | Jamie Oliver recipes | Jamie Oliver) and thinking I could almost be vegan–but for cheese.
What’s the one thing you’d miss if you were vegan - or vegetarian?
1 Like
Meat 
5 Likes
Pork in any shape or form!
1 Like
Haha… I’ll go a bit further, I’d miss steak, roast chicken, a decent hamburger and sausages (although I’ve yet to find French sausages I couldn’t live without).
If they can make fake meat in the lab that tastes as good as the real stuff then I’d happily eat it instead.
I can give turkey a miss but will eat it if I must, I missed out cheese, eggs, milk & cream 
. But highly processed fake meat and other things I’ll never eat, got a nasty feeling that in the not too distant future many more health problems will rear their ugly heads due to this industry 
4 Likes
Yep, highly-processed anything seems to be linked to health problems
OH doesn’t eat meat, so most of our meals are vegetarian, many are vegan and then we have days we eat fish (and the special days when he has a tuna steak and I have a lamb one). Since we eat a lot of middle and far eastern food vegan meals are quite easy.
It is the dairy products I would struggle with. Have many vegan friends, including now a lovely german couple who have stayed in our gîte several times and now arrive with a box of German vegan goods for us. But none of the facsimile goods whether oat milk or tempeh really do it for me. And vegan cheese is just disgusting to me.
So I am a bit like daughter who is 75% vegan - and eats dairy at weekends.
2 Likes
Off the top of my head:-
Duck and lamb in any form, veal (might manage without beef) traditionally farmed pork (don’t eat the other sort), boudin noir, cod, haddock, sardines tuna, scallops (unfortunately have become dangerously allergic to oysters). Butter, lait cru cheese and there’s probably more.
Oh yes, nearly forgot eggs!
All consumed in moderation, avoiding industrially famed or processed food and trying to eat local.
I’d make a very unhappy vegan
1 Like
Vegan is very different to Vegetarian… imagine being both.
I think I’d be walking around naked and very, very hungry… 
Too awful to contemplate…
4 Likes
I miss nothing whatsoever. I’ve been vegetarian for about 50 years and have never missed or had a yearning for any flesh based products at all.
7 Likes
He’s a pescetarian then. I’ve quite a few pals in our local café who are pistakearians.
2 Likes
I eat a few vegans does that count?
3 Likes
I’m really not a fan of vegetables as the main ingredient, so I would miss meat in general. I did eat vegetarian in India, but to go vegan would be a whole other level, and I reckon my health would go along with all animal products.
3 Likes
Do vegans have to give up oral sex?
My wife has been vegetarian for about 20 years, and -almost by osmosis- I’ve got so used and hugely appreciative of a vegetarian diet that I couldn’t now go back to eating meat/fish. The only thing that I miss is any real choice in restaurants (here in Normandy). There are rarely any vegetarian dishes on offer, other than perhaps a cheese based dish, but I always thought that would probably be the case so am not at all fussed. There is probably little market for it here, so I wouldn’t expect restaurants to offer much that is vegetarian. That may change, and may possibly be different elsewhere in France. It does mean we rarely eat out, but the huge compensation is the wonderful vegetarian cooking produced by my wife.
As an aside, slightly oddly, the weekly menu of the local primary school (online) regularly counts fish - as a vegetarian dish!
4 Likes
Do you remember the massive fuss when the idea of their being one vegetarian meal A WEEK in schools was introduced?
I have no problem with people eating meat, it’s just the quantities!! A little less would be good for hearts, the planet and people’s purses.
(Some good vegetarian places in Paris now)
2 Likes
I’d miss eggs, and some milk products. And honey and leather and silk and so on.
2 Likes
I couldn’t be vegan, but I could be vegetarian if I could find simple to obtain and easy to make food. I am a bachelor now as far as eating goes and I hate cooking, so the easiest is the way to go for me.
I would miss cheese, I eat a lot of it, it is my most expensive purchase at the butcher’s. I eat scrambled eggs once in a while, but not often and could avoid them if pushed.
My son was a vegetarian from a very young age, following the example of his much older step-brother and, because it was on moral grounds rather than health, I felt rather proud of him. One day we decided to test him after seeing how fast my favourite McVitie’s Chocolate Digestives were disappearing. We told him that they contained animal fat and he ceased immediately. I was so impressed at his resolve and felt guilty enough to own up straight away. Little did I know that some years later I would find out that they really do contain animal fat. 
I did once challenge him about eating fish, which he did, because on moral grounds that is worse than eating red meat, given that they are suffocated to death, only the lucky few get a tap on the head.
In later years he got married and was tempted away from his stance.
1 Like
They can still talk about it
1 Like
Think about Italien food. A lot of the daily staple meals are vegetarian, and pretty quick and simple to make. A can of sardines and one of tomatoes chucked in a pan and cooked for a while, then popped on top of pasta. Frying an onion and garlic first adds to the dish, but ok without if one can’t be bothered. And some grated parmesan over the top.