What to do with people that refuse to eat vegetables?

[jeff84]

veggies are great, but there has to be something with fat and protein in every meal or I don't feel satisfied. doesn't have to be meat, beans and dairy products can work. most veggies while they might have plenty of vitamins and minerals contain very few calories, and the ones they do have are only carbs.

[MOFishin]

What are they expecting you to serve for sides? I would think chicken with veggies for sides would be sufficient for just about anyone. I have a brother who is very picky. The only vegetables (or any non-meat) that I can think of him eating is potatoes and sweet corn. But these people sound even harder to please if they have to have beef all day

[digitS']

This has been a fun thread for me to follow. Both because of my own preferences and the preferences revealed by others . I'm sorry about your visitors, Gary. It cannot be much fun to have them there at the table with such hard-&-fast notions.

It's a little difficult for me to think that a high meat diet can be a very healthy one. Still, we know that it isn't just an invention of modern affluence by looking at the diets of people such as some of the native Americans in Central America who ate almost entirely a plant-based diet and people like the Inuit of northernmost North America who had a nearly 100% diet of flesh.

Yes, I understand the idea that meat satisfies hunger ... although I'd suggest that this might be mostly a psychological issue. I grew up on a farm with cattle. We had beef 3 times a day, often. I remember searching through the freezer hoping to find a package of fish or chicken as an alternative meal suggestion. We may have had little money but there was a herd of as many as 40 cows, always fresh milk and a steer ready to go to the packing company.

I tried a near-vegetarian diet for a time, as a young adult. My mother was sympathetic and helpful but I found it nearly impossible after 3 or 4 years to continue being very insistent with visits to my family. By the way, Dad has always tended to just eat what is set before him, altho he obviously is very much oriented to eating beef. He was 99 in February.

Still, I think there is great value in having an abundance of vegetables in my own diet. I'm not much of a salad eater but appreciate discovering stir-fry at a young age and making good use of that method to really increase my happy consumption of vegetables.

Steve

[john gault]

Diet and health is not such an easy issue as some make it out to be. Look at the Maasai tribe, they consume tons of saturated fat, yet don't suffer from the same problems we do here in the west. The answer is still not fully understood, but I believe two factors are predominate. 1) physical activity. 2) Quantity of food eaten per day.

http://sciencenordic.com/maasai-keep-he ... h-fat-diet

Excerpt:

"The Maasai are a very special people who live primarily from farming and livestock activities in Kenya and Tanzania. They have mystified researchers for years.

To a large extent, the Maasai live on the milk from their cattle, which means their diet is as full of fats as the diet of people living in the West. Unlike Westerners, however, the Maasai do not have many problems related to lifestyle diseases.

Health researchers around the world have therefore been greatly interested in these East Africans since cardio-vascular and other lifestyle diseases started to become a great problem in the west in the 1960s and 1970s.

To date, scientists have only studied the Maasai’s physical activities using questionnaires.

But now Danish researchers are the first to have taken objective measurements of the level of physical activities of the Maasai."

[john gault]

Speaking of carbs, which a lot of people claim are bad for you, look at the list of foods many don't normally consider carb-intensive, but they are; I love carbs, since I ride a bike as my primary form of transportation and it's why I'm such a fan of potatoes.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/8-things-peo ... 11901.html

[applestar]

I kind of chuckle at the dietary recommendations that read like one size fits all. Not pointing fingers here but in a very broad sense. Particularly specialized diets for specific purposes that seem to disregard individuals, you know what I mean?

I'm not a scientist, but it seems to me that there is a lot to be said for heritage and genetic predisposition, which was touched in the discussion. If your ancestors lived for generations in isolated region eating and exercising a certain way, I imagine that might have had some effect in the physical predisposition of that came generations later. Maybe some day, your personal devices can prick your finger and performs DNA analysis and tell you what's the best dietary and exercise regimen are.

I think it IS important to separate and not confuse habit/dogma and conditioned cravings from what your body really needs to eat. I think it's capable of telling you that you need more calcium without waiting for your teeth to fall out or your bones to crumble. I don't always eat what is considered "healthy" but I try to listen and when I feel like I need a fruit/veg smoothie oh and add some nuts in it, that's what I have. And if I feel like I have to have some animal protein -- nuts or beans will not do --but all I can get is a Big Mac at that moment... I will eat it, even if I would prefer to be making something innovative and balanced with fresh ingredients -- meats as well as vegetables.

[digitS']

"innovative and balanced with fresh ingredients"

Maybe that was what I was craving as a kid.

I mean, 3 times a day for months off the same Hereford? The local packing company would cure and smoke our meat. So, we had the "traditional breakfast meats" of sausage and bacon, only it was beef. Mom was a pretty good cook, as long as it wasn't vegetables . Still, I had little interest.

In conversations with people from "3rd world" countries, I've learned that some think that all American meat tastes about the same. That's because of the common livestock feeds of corn and soy. I'm not enuf of a culinary expert to know ...

Gardening is especially important to me because of both freshness and diversity. I'm a snob but see it as forgivable. After all, my diet comes close to that of a peasant ... And, I do eat out of the common soopermarket thru much of the year - mostly because of DW's aversion to canned fruits and veggies while living at a good distance from a 12 month growing season.

Steve