What?

Many people eat meat on a daily basis. We have come to think of that as one of the advances of a rich age. Meat is so affordable that we rarely look for alternatives in which it plays a less prominent role, but as a result we are depriving ourselves of quality food. Because mass-meat isn't exactly the best meat the world has to offer.

Imagine looking upon meat as a luxury food. You wouldn't eat it every day because you'd miss the surprise of the taste. And if you'd treat yourself to meat, you would choose a marvelous piece of meat, full of flavour and with fewer health risks attached.

This quality meat is called organic meat. It is grown on animals that are treated fairly, without the use of hormones or genetically modified fodder. These calmly raised animals taste better, as die-hard meat lovers confirm. The meat may be more expensive, but it is perhaps better to buy something of high quality once in a while than eating mass-meat on a daily basis.

On the days that you skip meat you can pick from a vast range of possibilities, thanks to vegetarians who have thought about it for ages. To give an example, a lot of the exotic food from India is vegetarian: a curry from vegetables, with rice and a dairy product, Indian bread and pulses form an excellent food that fulfills all your needs. If you make a pasta sauce it is not such a sacrifice to leave out the meat. If you want something that looks like meat, you can find a large variety of products in your own supermarket, where there is much more to choose from than the old-fashioned soy burgers that vegetarians used to eat.

Why?

We risk diseases by eating a lot of meat. The risk of heart diseases is increased by it, let alone the animal diseases that could pass on to mankind. Chicken is full of bacteria that force you to be ultra-hygienic when handling it. Diseases like Foot and Mouth Disease have been known to farmers for long, but it is due to our modern treatment of livestock, dragging animals around a lot, that makes those diseases into epidemics. The massiveness of the meat industry disadvantages itself -- and us.

Our metabolism runs a lot better on plant food than on animal food. Many vitamins from meat and dairy products cannot be taken in by our digestive track, while it does work for plant-originated vitamins. Unfortunately, labels about added vitamins do not have to mention this, so a healty-sounding drink with supplements may not always be very effective in passing its health on to you.

Furthermore, meat is highly inefficient, and producing it yields large quantities of CO₂. Eventually, all Eerth's energy comes from the Sun. Plants use sunlight to produce the sugars from which it grows. Animals need to eat plants throughout their lives to grow. For 1 kilo of meat it needs about 7 kilo of vegetable fodder. This fodder is usually not grown in Europe; we import lots of it from poor countries. By eating a kilo of vegetables instead of a kilo of meat, there can be a surplus of 6 kilo of vegetables in poor countries, where it is needed most.

Finally, a hidden problem of meat is that a lot of water is needed to grow the vegetable fodder. A kilo of beef takes 100.000 litres of water; a kilo of chicken takes 3.500 litres. There are increasing concerns over the availability of fresh water in poor countries, but when we buy fodder for our meat industry we rarely compensate for the lack of water that this causes.

When you reduce your weekly meat consumption with one kilo (50% beef and 50% chicken) and eat a kilo of vegetables instead, you are donating 30 kilo of vegetables and 5.000 litres of water to poor countries, on a weekly basis. Your sacrifice yields enough food and water for 4 inhabitants of those countries to live according to Western standards -- let alone how many can be fed properly according to what they are used to.

Eating less meat is excellent development aid.

How?

If you want to eat meat without the problems attached to it, choose organic meat. It is made with care for the environment and it is more friendly to animals. There are no chemical additives and it contains more nutrients. It is produced on a smaller scale. To get labelled as an organic product, its entire production path must be organic; often, organic meat is fed with locally grown fodder. Since it goes outside the standard production lines, it is less prone to mass infection.

The modern meat replacements in the links below are perfectly suitable to combine with potaties and vegetables; but it can be pretty cool to do a vegetarian barbecue. Try to look at food without meat as a chance to vary, rather than as a need to restrain yourself.

You can eat without meat as often or rarely as you like. We eat so much meat in our Western diet that we are not quickly in loss of vital nutrients unless we completely go vegetarian. To tickle the fantasy of cooks, we now turn to a list of tips that may help people with their minds firmly set on meat.

Chicken

is easily replaced with Quorn -- as confirmed by chicken-lovers.

Gravy

can be made from double-strong vegetable stock with a quarter of Japanese soy sauce (shoya, of the brand Kikkoman). This is also the basic formula for instant gravy, and it is called a better combination with potatoes than gravy from meat.

Pork

is extremely fat. Muslims are not allowed to eat it, probably for reasons of health. It is the least healthy meat that we tend to eat.

Beef

is not easy to replace. Its flavour does not seem to occur in plant form. Still, it is a challange to try meat replacements; not with the intention of getting the same sensation as from beef, but to have something complement a savory or harty dish. A few ideas to tickly your fantasy:

• beef tomato, sliced thickly, baked for a minute with salt and pepper, and perhaps some basil
• deep fried cheese, after adding two layers of egg and bread crumbs
• hard-boiled egg
• vegetarian meat replacement products

Burgers

can be replaced with other soft matter, like falafel, or similar replacements based on chick peas. Some of the store-sold vegetable burgers or balls are inspired on falafel.

Bacon

is another meat that is hard to replace. Of course it is possible to smoke vegetables; in addition, some farms produce smoked cheese.

Proteins

can be obtained from pulses; complement them with grains (bread or rice) and a dairy product to form a complete meal. Poor folk in India for example, live on a diet of split peas, rice or bread, and butter milk. This is a healthy basis on which you can very. Take split peas from a can, bake them in a pan with some garam massala and some oil. An excellent condiment for a harty rice-based meal.

Egg whites (another name for proteins) can also be gotten from soy products. Plain soy cake isn't a popular meat replacement; it stems from Buddhist monestry diets. Soy of itself is not very tasty but it does take on the flavours of a sauce into which it is processed. It is very soft. Many people prefer the fermented form tempeh, especially after marinating it in soy sauce and herbs. Many modern meat replacements are based on soy, and tend to have a very good taste. Soy has the advantage that it reduces the amount of cholestrol in one's blood, which is how it helps to avoid heart diseases.

Texture

of meat is considered pleasant by many meat lovers. Meat simply gives you something to chew on. Vegetables to which you can grit your teath are oyster mushrooms and ramanas. The oyster mushroom is tastier than a mushroom but processed in the same manner; ramanas is eaten as raw slices, for example in a spicy salad. The taste is reminiscent of radice, but it is more chewy.

Differently tasting but comparatively chewy are nuts, raisons and pineapple -- especially raisins are quite like meat in texture.

Where?

• Valess offers meat replacements from dairy. Although dairy is also produced massively, its problems are less serious than those of meat.
• GoodBite produces burgers and saucages based on soy, vegetables and in some cases, cheese.
• Vivera makes balls, saucages, nuggets, sateh, complete barbacue packages, stir-fry, bread meat, patees.
• Albert Heijn (in the Netherlands) offers a diversity of meat replacements. At least try Quorn en Tivall before judging about meat replacements.
• Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking, ISBN 978-0-8120-6548-0. Explains how to make a balanced, varied Indian meal without meat.
• Biologica explains (in Dutch) why BSE-problems do not occur in organic meat.
• Plants For A Future explains that our digestion track is not designed for meat.