BootsnAll Travel Community

Has anyone been inspired to become vegetarian while abroad?

Are you kidding? Some of the best meat/fish dishes I've ever had were overseas.

I just eat chicken now, but on the road, I'll try anything.

I have eaten several vegetarians. I do not know if this has made me healthier, however If you do not eat meat, you do not have a balanced diet (unless you pop vitamin pills, of course) ... do not use travel as an excuse to get all artsy on the rest of us ... not interesting!!!!

AaA

Nope. Travel is actually one of the few times it can get trying to be vegetarian. At home I know where to go for good food, but on the road you don't often have that luxury and trying to explain it to a waitress who's language you don't speak can lead to interesting dishes. There's still plenty of delicious foods to try on the road, but sometimes you can feel a little bit sorry for yourself too (like in a tapas bar, the olives are great but those other dishes can look really tempting too, then you find out they stuff the olives with anchovies and you can't even eat those anymore...).

quote:

I have eaten several vegetarians.

Elis, you'd better watch out.

For my part, no (but then I'm not a vegetarian). Traveling in India made me realize that I probably could be a vegetarian there, though.

India is definitely a good place to eat veg. Even many packaged products are marked as veg so you know that they don't contain animal products.

I don't call myself a "real" vegetarian, but aside from fish once a week or so, I generally avoid meat. It started as a health thing when I went to India - it seems like you are more likely to get ill eating meat than eating veg - and for a couple of other practical reasons. Now I feel like if I can get by and stay relatively healhty without eating much meat then I will continue it. I've had a few periods in the past where I tried to stop eating meat but the longest stretch is now.

Not sure what will happen if I end up travelling somewhere where it's not so easy to avoid meat!

I've been a vegetarian for about five years and find that it's most difficult to manage when I'm traveling. It doesn't matter where I go from the Caribbean to Europe to Asia, everyone looks at me like I'm crazy! My real objection to eating meat is the huge factory farms of the modern age with the associated overcrowding, hormone use and inhumane conditions. If I were in a rural area where someone raises and then butchers happy , free chickens, then I might eat meat from time to time. Maybe!

KaimiK, Ditto.

In the US I eaten a vegetarian diet with the exception of fish for more than 10 years. I won't eat anything raised on a factory farm, including farm raised fish. I only buy organic free range eggs and cheese, although I do let the free range requirement slide when eating out. I'm sure 99% of the cheese and eggs I eat a resturants came from factory farms. Overseas however I'll eat anything local, although I still generally avoid meat, I don't shun it.

I was going to ask about this. I don't eat any meat except for fish. I was wondering how much trouble I'd have maintaining such a diet while abroad on a RTW trip. Honestly, I figured in some places it would be easier, as I think of meat as being more expensive and thus harder to come by in poorer countries. But that thinking is probably totally wrong.

That being said, I don't have strong objections to chucking the veggie diet, as I'm veggie for health reasons, not moral. In the U.S. it helps me prevent putting on weight. That probably won't be a problem while hoofing it overseas.

I have been vegetarian for eight years and do it for the little fluffy animals ----I am not a a PETA nut or anything but animal welfare (particularly in the US) is my primary motivator; being vegetarian also means all my food is Halal.

Now this far in my life I've only traveled to England in 04 and spent six months in India last year. Obviously in those two places I had no problem being vegetarian---except in Goa where I passed up so much seafood. I doubt my pending time in Oz will be rough either.

However, sometime in early 07 I plan on embarking to Japan to...and naturally it looks like there is a 90% chance I'll resume eating seafood. Tasty it probably will be, but I am not looking forward to it due to moral convictions

hmmm, just once! When I was in India, I got used to vegetarian food and wantd to have only that..when I came back to my original country, i felt very much drawn to vegetables.

but am a non-veg!!