World Vegetarian Day
Published 1 October 2020
Happy World Vegetarian Day
This blog isn’t about facts and figures, it’s a story about being vegetarian.
Hi I’m Susie, and I’ve been vegetarian for 14 years (except for the odd slip up where people have dished me up a chicken pakora instead of a vege one, and it took my mouth longer to figure that out than it did for my appetite to swallow a mouthful). I kind of stumbled across being vegetarian after attending a week-long Students Against Driving Drunk (SADD) youth leaders camp at Living Springs in Christchurch where I choose the vegetarian menu and loved it. Feeling confident, I went on to make all those yummy and simple meals at home.
As a vegetarian I am often asked “why are you vegetarian”? Which I find odd. I can honestly say hand on heart that I’ve never asked a meat-eater – why they eat meat.
The simple answer is that I don’t like the taste of meat, which I guess makes it easy for me. My parents will tell you that despite their best efforts to get me to eat meat – I’d always find a way around it. These days, I still don’t like the taste of meat, but my motivations behind being vegetarian have changed. I do it because it is one way I can lower my carbon footprint, not add to deforestation, increase methane levels, or increase water used to grow crops for animal feed.
Here at Sustainability Trust living more sustainably is in our DNA, so this World Vege day we are a hosting a shared lunch where anyone can bring along their favourite vege or vegan dish to share.
This is one of my favourite recipes, tweaked to perfection.
+ Carrot Nut Loaf
You can check out some of teams favourite and yummy easy-as recipes below.
It’s ok if you don’t feel like cooking a vegetarian meal on World Vege Day, but maybe one day you might just want to change up your repertoire with these failsafe recipes, or maybe its time for meatless Mondays. Whatever the reason we hope you enjoy the experience
Believe me, I am not perfect, In fact, I think being vegetarian offsets some of my other not very sustainable behaviours – but what I do know is that if everyone makes small changes, then big things can happen.
Link to facts and figures from http://www.vegetarian.org.nz/
Animal agriculture is responsible for 18 % of greenhouse gas emissions, more than the combined exhaust from all transportation (FAO, 2006)
The leading causes of rain-forest destruction are livestock and feed-crops (FAO, 2006)
For every 1 kg of fish caught, up to 5 kg of unintended marine species are caught and discarded as by-kill.
Search for Vege/Vegan Restaurants near you - https://www.happycow.net/
New Zealand Vegetarian Information - http://www.vegetarian.org.nz/