looking for help to develop

[Quasien]

Hey,
My name is Norbert, I was born in Budapest, Hungary and moved to Finland when I was 19 - now 24.
Religion wise, I was raised without much interaction with faith, although I am baptized. In my teenage years I picked up a strong anti-religious world view, that I still have in a refined way - I am interacting with Christians to widen my understanding and trying to convince agnostics, when given the chance.
Self development is the core of my life and so I have always been concerned about meat eating among other things. However the only steps I took to the direction of vegetarianism is that I am trying to eat cheese and other dairy products instead of meat when I can - it's something and my concerns about animal labor are not too strong. (I am aware of the definitions of vegan, vegetarian etc.)
My goal would be to minimize my meat consumption, eliminating highly conscious animals from my diet. My dream would be to consume proper red meat that was grown without contact to a nervous system and thereby also economic. I mean hail science!
However until that would become possible I still have some issues I can't see the solution for:
1) Meat is my favorite drug after catharsis.
2) All the vegans/vegetarians I personally know are sickly, constantly ill and really weak. I am not over exaggerating.
3) As a student, I have limited monetary capacity to support my 190 cm tall self. All my vega friends are small and yet they couldn't manage to properly nourish themselves, so how could I?
4) I would not want to waste particularly much energy on organizing my diet. Life is short, I want to spend it learning. I am lazy that way.
5) I live in a culinary desert, even finding "normal" food in good quality is hard in restaurants and shops. (I moved from a city to the middle of taiga, so I feel the difference)

This should be enough for starting. Greetings to all and please help me! Thank you!

[Cirion Spellbinder]

Welcome Norbert!
I am not qualified to respond to all of your concerns, but I will do my best to address those which I can!

1) Meat is my favorite drug after catharsis.

I am not quite sure what you mean by this statement. Please elaborate.

A drug is, in the broadest of terms, is a chemical substance that has known biological effects on humans or other animals. Foods are generally excluded from this definition, in spite of their physiological effects on animal species.

If we assume this to be the definition of drugs, we can then conclude that neither meat nor catharsis are drugs as foods are excluded from the category and dramatic art techniques are not substances and therefore also excluded.

2) All the vegans/vegetarians I personally know are sickly, constantly ill and really weak. I am not over exaggerating.

That's strange. They most likely have poorly planned diets. There's a notable amount of pseudoscientific woo diets in the vegan community, so I would not be surprised if poor dietary planning is the problem. All the vegans here seem to be healthy and active. If you need help planning, the community would gladly help you!

3) As a student, I have limited monetary capacity to support my 190 cm tall self. All my vega friends are small and yet they couldn't manage to properly nourish themselves, so how could I?

Vegan diets are cheaper than carnist diets. Meat generally costs more than vegetables and fruits. Keep in mind that vegan diets do not require more expensive items such as tofu or mock meats.

4) I would not want to waste particularly much energy on organizing my diet. Life is short, I want to spend it learning. I am lazy that way.

As said previously, we can help you out with this! Spending some time to plan a healthy diet will likely extend your short life anyways.

5) I live in a culinary desert, even finding "normal" food in good quality is hard in restaurants and shops. (I moved from a city to the middle of taiga, so I feel the difference

This is where I need some help from other forum members. As an uncultured and entitled citizen of the USA, I am completely oblivious to this sort of issue and can't give meaningful advice on how to solve it.

[brimstoneSalad]

Hi Quasien,

Cheese and dairy aren't a great source of protein, since they are mostly fat (and they're the worst kind of fat).
I suggest you work on replacing meat with beans and legumes, which are high in protein. This is the primary mistake most vegans make -- they try to replace meat with fruit, rice and lettuce, but these are not good protein sources (the former two have almost no protein in them relative to calories, and the latter is very bulky and hard to eat enough of to get a good amount of protein).

My goal would be to minimize my meat consumption, eliminating highly conscious animals from my diet. My dream would be to consume proper red meat that was grown without contact to a nervous system and thereby also economic. I mean hail science!

That's a great goal. Lab grown meat isn't too far off. In the mean time, perhaps you can choose the least sentient animals, like oysters, to eat.
Oysters, being sessile and lacking meaningful brain structures, are probably not sentient. If you feel like you need animal protein for some reason, that's a good option.

Beans, however, are healthier. You just have to make sure to supplement on B-12, since beans don't have that in them.

However until that would become possible I still have some issues I can't see the solution for:
1) Meat is my favorite drug after catharsis.

Like any drug, cravings for meat subside. It's like quitting smoking. For some people, it's more useful to do it gradually. Or, perhaps you could eat oysters instead, and that could satisfy the craving.

2) All the vegans/vegetarians I personally know are sickly, constantly ill and really weak. I am not over exaggerating.

Please invite them to this forum to share their diets. They are probably eating incorrectly. As I said, it's a common mistake for uneducated vegans who know nothing of nutrition to eat large amounts of fruit, or even rice (a very very low nutrient food) to replace meat, or attempt to eat small amounts of poor vegetables like lettuce.

This is largely to blame on a quack doctor named McDougall who promotes something called "the starch solution". It's unscientific dogma.

Replacing meat with beans is easy, since beans are high in protein. Replacing meat with lettuce is almost impossible for most people, since you have to eat over 4 kilograms of it to get all of your protein (can you imagine eating 4 kg of lettuce? Most people can't do it. That's why we should eat beans again where 700g will provide all the protein you need).

3) As a student, I have limited monetary capacity to support my 190 cm tall self. All my vega friends are small and yet they couldn't manage to properly nourish themselves, so how could I?

It's a good question, and it comes down to the fact that they're doing it wrong. Beans are cheap everywhere in the world, and that should be the basis of your diet to replace meat. Vegetables and fruit are expensive, and they're low in protein so it's hard to replace meat with those. This is why your friends are malnourished.

4) I would not want to waste particularly much energy on organizing my diet. Life is short, I want to spend it learning. I am lazy that way.

Right. With beans it's much easier, since they're packed with protein, vitamins, minerals, etc.
Then you just need to eat some veggies for extra nutrition and minerals like calcium, and some trace vitamins like Vitamin K. Collards or mustard greens are the best, broccoli is pretty good too.

Fruit is terrible. I recommend people to treat it like junk food, and only eat it occasionally (one or two a day for vitamin C, or preferably a hand full of berries since berries are healthier than most fruit). You'll see many vegans foolishly eating 30 bananas a day; it's a terrible diet.

The only supplement you have to take is B-12. But if you're in an environment that isn't very sunny, or it's winter and you don't get much sun, you should also take vitamin D.
If you don't eat meany veggies, you may need to supplement calcium.

5) I live in a culinary desert, even finding "normal" food in good quality is hard in restaurants and shops. (I moved from a city to the middle of taiga, so I feel the difference)

You don't need anything special. Beans are usually easy to find. And if you get them dry, you can even order them online if there's no grocery store near by. Vitamins you can order online if you need (not expensive), but you should be able to find one near by.

B-12 shouldn't cost more than $10 a year.

What's your budget for food? It's pretty easy to eat for around $3 a day.

[TheVeganAtheist]

Hi Norbert, welcome to the forum. I would suggest starting up a thread for your concerns in the appropriate section of the forum.