ps marmite is lovely. Why not try it spread on your slippers?

I'm 25 and I have never eaten meat and I have never been anemic.

Never ever?

Even not when you were a child?

Try a Cheeseburger tomorrow, you don't know what you missed.

I have a well balanced vegan diet and it is inexpensive and easily done. You can take supplements, but with a varied diet needs can be met. B12 is added to products like soya milk and cereal.

My hair and nails are in perfect condition!

Mmm, yum. No offence to vegetarians but cheese burgers - flippin gorgeous. Jouri, may I congratulate you on being a man of taste. You can even get them on a budget: Rustlers burgers are a quid each in ASDA and Tesco and you can get 4 Snacksters cheese burgers for £1.29 in your local Netto. And then, it's just 80 seconds to heaven.

hmm, budget meat. But at what cost...

Well, there's no point worrying about the multidimensional consequences of meat production because I'm not sure budget meat will be 'budget' for long As a fellow listener of the excellent BBC Radio 4 programmes, I've been led to believe that meat will be a pricey way of getting protein into one's diet in the future; there's just not enough land and they fart too much. I've tried being a vegetarian in the past, during my more reflective and ethical times, but it doesn't agree with my constitution. It'll be my wallet that has the final say though...

True. I just wish society would wean itself from the teat of dairy and meat production sooner.

There is of course the perfect budget protein, and its healthy besides! TROUT!!!!!!!!! Another healthy meat is bison--very very low fat and very healthy. Too much red meat is bad for us in all sorts of ways, apparently! Protein can be found in plant products, and in nuts, and in soya products. Soya bacon is better than the real stuff ( though its not cheap, and not really part of a student's budget). Eggs are a good protein, though too many apparently cause other health problems...eat low on the food chain, its best for everyone!

http://www.britishtrout.co.uk/Recipes/Trout%20burgers.htm

Trout Burgers! British Trout Burgers at that! ;P

http://www.britishtrout.co.uk/Recipes/highlandberrykebabs.htm

Highland Berry Trout Kebabs--magic!

Thanks everyone. I don't eat dairy just cos I don't like it, but sometimes worry that I'm storing up osteoperosis for the future. I do like soya but was last week told by a professor of cancer drug development that soya is one of the worst things women can eat, which worried me a bit. I've since looked at some literature, and it seems pretty mixed: some say soy compounds are cancer-preventative, and some that they are linked with increased cancer. What to believe?!

"Soya bacon is better than the real stuff"

A brit would never say that. I could not live without bacon sandwiches, they are the best thing about british food. Got to be sliced white bloomer, with smoked bacon from the butchers, and loads of tommy k....heaven! Mmmmmm.......bacon!

In regards to soy, if it really were responsible for increased risks of cancer then we would expect the populations of south east asia to show higher rates of cancer than Europe and North America - since they eat a larger amount of soy, and lower amount of diary. Since studies don't show this - in fact rates of cancer are lower, the conclusion is clear.

Well, not necessarily. Correlation is not causation. It may be that the rate of hormonal cancer is lower in South East Asia becuase of genetic factors, not dietary. They have an increased rate of oesophagal and stomach cancers compared to the West.

This is from one review article:

"...the often quoted “Japanese Phenomenon”, the fact that breast cancer occurs to a lesser extent in Japanese women. When administered to isoflavone “inexperienced” (i.e those who have never eaten much soy before - Juno) women at the time of menopause, the phytoestrogens appear to share the same effects as estrogen used in classical preparations for hormone replacement therapy, i.e. they may stimulate the proliferation of endometrial and mammary gland tissue with at present unknown and unpredictable risk to these organs."