Help a reasonably-fit vegetarian mefite turn into an extremely-fit meat-eating mefite!

May 20, 2008 1:14 AM

I've been a vegetarian all my life, but caught the fitness bug last year. I lost around 80lbs in about a year by jogging, working out at the gym and following a strict diet. Although I feel that my vegetarian diet is supplementing me well, I'd like to try non-vegetarian food just to see if I'm missing out on anything. More inside!

Hello MeFites!
I've been a vegetarian all my life, but caught the fitness bug last year. I lost around 80lbs in about a year (from 280 to 200 currently, still a few lbs overweight at 6'1"), by jogging, working out at the gym and following a strict diet.

I'm loving every bit of my fit lifestyle and trying to find new ways to get fitter. I currently work out every evening for 1.5 hours and walk/jog for about 8kms every morning. Although I feel that my vegetarian diet is supplementing me well, I'd like to try non-vegetarian food just to see if I'm missing out on anything. My current diet includes a healthy amount of carbs and proteins and I'd love to know about non-vegetarian food which will taste reasonably nice (bonus points for finger-licking tasty stuff!) and provide me with the daily nutrients. I won't be eating fish (don't like the smell for some reason) for now, by the way.

Even though I love to cook, I won't be able to cook all this at home, and I'll probably be eating outside. I'd appreciate names of already-cooked meals which I can order wherever I go, and specific instructions to give to the cook, if any.

Thanks for reading! :)

posted by cyanide to food & drink (16 comments total)

Go to a greasy spoon and get a fry up.

Are you looking for healthy meaty treat-ies, or just tastes that you can't replicate with vegetables &c?

If so (depending on how adventurous you are) I'd go for easy tastes first - things like bacon that make most people drool) and work your way towards more unique flavours. If you're new to meat you might not want to dive straight into offal like kidneys liver or sweetbreads, but they're a fantastic thing for your future!

And give white fish a try - something with minimal flavour but melty melty texture.
posted by Cantdosleepy at 1:29 AM on May 20, 2008

"Are you looking for healthy meaty treat-ies, or just tastes that you can't replicate with vegetables &c?"
I'm looking for healthy stuff, but a little amount of tasty junk food is fine.
posted by cyanide at 2:08 AM on May 20, 2008

Your two basic options are meat that is emphatically meat, and meat that is hidden. The first comprises things like steak, fried chicken, or barbecued ribs -- things that when you eat them, there is no denying that you are eating meat-with-a-capital-m. A lot of recovering vegetarians spend a while preferring more subtle forms of meat at first -- things like soup made with chicken broth, or a stirfry with a bit of meat in it, etc -- things that are clearly not vegetarian, but still occupy a middle ground between vegie food and eating big hunks of flesh.

My suggestion is that if you are going to eat meat (with all its attendant ethical compromises), eat good meat. Don't go to McDonalds for a hamburger -- get a hamburger at a local bar and grill that is known for their super good burgers and uses local beef. Get your meat, whenever possible, from sources that are more ethical, more local, and more tasty -- if you can think of meat as encompassing a scale, buy from the end of the scale further from "big factory farming" whenever possible. The cost per pound will often be higher (though not always, surprisingly), but the "tastiness per bite" index will be much better.

So good things to order (biased by my preferences, of course):

Steaks will generaly be cooked to order (burgers too, sometimes), meaning you specify rare, medium, well-done, or an in-between point on that scale. There isn't much consistency between restaurants on doneness, so I will usually order things medium or medium-rare the first time, and adjust when ordering in the future. And a really good burger tastes better when eaten out of doors.

For a genuine "you are eating MEAT mwuahahaha" experience, steak tartar is really good. You have to get over the idea of eating raw meat and raw egg, which not everyone is on board with, but you are rewarded with a really gentle taste and texture.

Good chicken pot pie, as with (usually lamb) shepherds pie, is a wonderful thing. Not the 99-cent frozen things at the store, but something made with good pastry and fresh ingredients.

Woah -- I just looked at your profile, and saw that your location is listed as Mumbai. If so, my American-centric suggestions may not be all that helpful, when you could be out there eating some really great tandoori chicken or whatever. The basic suggestion of finding places with fresher, more local meat still applies, but what your easy and yummy options are will definitely vary. In your case, I'd start by trying every kind of street food that smells good, and work from there. And I'll leave my earlier suggestions in case you are traveling, or you have easy access to western-style food where you are living.
posted by Forktine at 2:14 AM on May 20, 2008

Congratulations on your significant weight loss! That's wonderful.

No doubt you're aware of healthy cooking methods, but it bears repeating to stay away from fried foods and stick to broiled, grilled, or baked. Your heart will thank you.
posted by netbros at 2:41 AM on May 20, 2008

If this question were the other way around I could totally understand it but I'm not sure what the problem is - go to the supermarket and pick up something that sounds tasty and give it a try. I highly recommend bacon sandwiches! (though I don't know if you can get rindless back bacon in the US? Streaky bacon is ok but its a lot fattier)
HOWEVER, if you've never eaten meat in your life, you might want to take it slow. I definitely wouldn't recommend diving into a steak, it could make you very sick (something about your body not having the enzymes to digest meat)
posted by missmagenta at 3:27 AM on May 20, 2008

Sorry for assuming you were in the US (usually non-us people specify ;) ) I have no idea when food you will have available but trying a little bit of everything can't hurt ;)
posted by missmagenta at 3:29 AM on May 20, 2008

Stay away from bacon or anything too greasy for your first round. And second.

You're in India? You want lamb. Hell, _I_ want lamb. Or you could walk around and find the first thing that smells/looks good. You'd be surprised how well your senses tell you what you really want.
posted by onedarkride at 4:19 AM on May 20, 2008

Whatever you eat, make sure you are supplementing with whey protein. It is a basic requirement for all active people. Seriously. It can help you get closer to the 1.4 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass standard...
posted by ewkpates at 4:21 AM on May 20, 2008

I wanted to come back and give a slightly different answer that is general enough to work whether you are at home or traveling.

The healthy way to eat meat is to not eat too much of it. It's basically that simple. (There are some details, like claims that bacon may cause colorectal cancer, but even with that, as long as you aren't eating it three times a day it's not something I would lose any sleep over.) There are higher- and lower-fat meat options (like chicken breast vs pork sausage), but as long as you keep the total amount eaten quite moderate, the fat percentages are not a great worry. So there are no special "healthy" meat dishes, but rather it's all unhealthy in large quantities, and fine for you in small amounts.

And the true advantage of being a meat eater is that eating becomes really easy. Because no foods are forbidden, you never need to ask "what is in that?" with anything other than idle curiosity. If it smells and looks good, you can eat it with no worries about breaking a taboo. Especially when traveling, being an omnivore is a million times easier than being a vegetarian (and take pity on those poor vegans when they travel).

When I travel, I'm usually really obviously foreign (I would not blend in on the streets of Mumbai, for example). There are a lot of disadvantages of that, but an advantage is that no one expects me to have a clue about anything. So I can go up to a street vendor and order and eat something, without having any idea what the food I am eating is called, how it should be eaten, and even what it is made from, without any problems. You may blend in a bit better than myself, but that is the same approach you may need to take if you are really starting from zero -- following your nose, pointing and asking for "some of that" even if you don't know what it is called. If I can't figure out the menu or I don't want to sound more ignorant than I already do, I point to someone's plate and ask for "what he's having." Occasionally that backfires, and I get served something really awful, but usually it works out great.

It is usually a guarantee that any kind of meat roasted on a stick will taste great (eg kebabs). So does meat cooked inside a dough wrapper (eg samosa). Fish on it's own can indeed be kind of fishy, but fish stews are really nice, as is fish that has been fried and then flavored with vinegar or lemon. Frying in grease makes everything taste better; meat fried with rice or noodles is also a guaranteed winner. Chicken (because it is small and easily segmented) works really well for eating with your hands on the street. And versions of meatballs (can be made from any kind of meat, and can be fried, steamed, or braised) are also easy to eat on the street and always taste great.
posted by Forktine at 4:32 AM on May 20, 2008

You could try Horse, its actually very nice. And, because of some unexplainable stigma that leads to low demand, often cheaper ( for a cut of equivalent quality) than some other meats.

Gordon Ramsey eats it,

"I've eaten horse", and says that it is healthy, with lots of iron and half the fat of beef and far more Omega 3 essential fatty acids. He describes horse meat as "slightly gamey" and "packed with protein"

As does Borat:

In Kazakhstan horse meat is a large part of the diet, due mainly to the nomadic roots of the population. Some of the dishes include sausages called kazy and shuzhuk made from the meat using the guts as the sausage skin, zhaya made from hip meat which is smoked and boiled, zhal made from neck fat which is smoked and boiled, karta made from a section of the rectum which is smoked and boiled, and sur-yet which is kept as dried meat.

I've tried it, no complaints from me.
posted by munchbunch at 5:26 AM on May 20, 2008

Lamb often has a gamey flavor that even some meat-eaters find off-putting, so if you've been a vegetarian all your life, I don't think that's where I'd start.

A friend who was a longtime vegetarian recently came over to the Dark Side ^TM - bacon was the gateway meat. One great thing about bacon is that after you've cooked it (in a frying pan), you have this fantastic substance left that you can use to fry other things (potatoes, eggs, mushrooms), so even if you're feeling eh about eating the bacon itself, you can still partake of its goodness.

But if you're actually in Mumbai, I don't know about bacon availability. How about if you try out a dish that you might normally have as a veggie dish, but with chicken?
posted by rtha at 5:40 AM on May 20, 2008

What is really tasty is good seitan. You are probably familiar with it, but going to an excellent Chinese or Vietnamese restaurant, where they are artists with wheat gluten might cure your meaty cravings and keep you a vegetarian. Tell me about your eating plan to lose the weight!
posted by parmanparman at 6:32 AM on May 20, 2008

Since you're in Mumbai I shall just recommend the things that I really loved when I came to Mumbai for trips. Kababs are great. Go get yourself a shawarma -- I loved the ones from the stands around Colaba. For Indian food try out butter chicken. Chinese food outlets should be able to get you a good chilli chicken or pepper chicken. Basically just go to all the restaurants you would normally go to and try out their chicken and mutton dishes. From experience with other Indian vegetarian friends, don't try beef or bacon to begin with. Apart from religious taboos you may have against it, I find that Indian vegetarians who haven't eaten these growing up really don't like the taste of red meat all that much. Mutton and chicken are your safest bets.
posted by peacheater at 7:29 AM on May 20, 2008

I'm surprised to not see this advice yet: ease into it. I have not made the transition myself, but a family member went from being a vegetarian to being a meat-eater, and your stomach is not happy for a little bit. So, yeah, that first suggestion about the greasy spoon diner (or the bacon sandwich recommendation) is not the way you want to go right off the bat.
posted by WCityMike at 7:53 AM on May 20, 2008

Why not fish?

Fish is a great meat, with lots of healthy omega-3 fatty acids. I disagree with other posters that meat and fat is bad for you, but nobody can argue with fish.

You will probably see your performance increase when you start eating real animal protein.
posted by schroedinger at 11:17 AM on May 20, 2008

Whohah, Mumbai? *scratches reindeer off the reccomendations list*
I was a vegetarian for only a few years and must warn you, meat after a long absence, can really mess with your tummy. So, take it easy at first. :) The little bits in lots of sauces will be a nice way in.

Chicken is great, the white breast-meat is fantastic any way you cook it and some people really like gong all animal-aaarrrr as they eat drumsticks, but I had to work my way back up to that.
I've eaten all kinds of meat, reindeer is my favorite, horse is very nice too, alligator is a chewy cross between pork and a lizard. Rattlesnakes are dry. Steak, as in cow has many a nice piece (forget that if you're a Hindu, obviously - and actually I don't even know where you'd get a decent steak in Mumbai), but I wouldn't do a hamburger if your goal is to taste meat. I wouldn't do bacon either. The tastiest piece of the pig, in my humble opinion is the filet.
I'm not the worlds biggest fan of goat, and seriously I've only ever liked lamb if was prepared in an Indian dish (they can taste a wooly in the wrong season, or perhaps that was just my brain playing tricks on me as I had played with that particular lamb earlier in the day - since then I avoid lamb.)

I could give you an encyclopedia of fish and shellfish that are great, but will respect that you'd rather not try it. Perhaps you can come back to ask that later ;) as fish and shellfish are really a whole new world of fantastic flavours and consistencies.
posted by dabitch at 2:37 PM on May 20, 2008