kuramus

I know where Estonia is, lol. Cool to have another estonian dude here. This is truly a great site and community, and an awesome forum in which you'll find heaps of information regarding both fitness and veganism. When I first joined the site, I was a lacto-vegetarian but this forum has helped me to give milk up and I must say I've never regret it. It is not only possible to be a vegan in our climatic conditions, but also recommended. Improved immunity system usually comes along when one stops breaking it down by eating unhealthy food. Welcomes!

a new and clever way of spam

i'm in.

So I'm talking in the near future when i have finished school. I'm not sure what I want to study in the university. I'm not even sure if I want to study. The most appealing idea so far is to get a job at least for a while. But I'm not ready yet to settle down here, so I'd like to travel and get a job in a foreign country. I would be most grateful if I could find a job (and a place to stay meanwhile) through you, the forum members or your friends. Or if you could refer me to where would be an appropriate place to do that. The type of work does not really matter, as long as no animals are harmed during the process. I am quite strong and endurable, so i can do physically demanding jobs like lifting things in a warehouse or similar. I have worked at a construction site and as an interior builder, so i know what a paintbrush and a belt sander is. An idea which i think would be great, is to work at an organic fruit farm. Also, I feel quite at home with computers, I can do all sorts of things from installing hard- and software to design and computer graphics (web design, corporate identity, print ads etc.). A computer designer would be an ideal job. I have worked as one and I have a quite big portfolio of designs I've already done, which you can see at request via a PM. I also have a degree in ORACLE SQL database design and programming... I speak relatively good english, a bit of german and i can understand some russian. Plus excellent estonian. I know I am almost a stranger to you, because ~40 posts at an online messageboard is next to nothing, but I'll try to acquaint myself in one sentence - a modest vegan male, with a great sense of duty and honesty. If interested, I will provide more detailed information and a CV. all comments are welcome. thanks everybody.

Can anyone tell me how much soy milk costs when compared to regular milk in your country? Because logically thinking it should be cheaper to produce it since soymilk doesn't require the soy to go through animals...

Soy milk here is 4 times more expensive than regular milk. Tofu is 2 times more expensive than cheese. But, happy days for me, just recently a factory making soy bean curds and other weird things usually made from milk was opened in Estonia, and these things cost almost the same as the milk-based ones (just a bit more expensive), which ultimately made me go vegan from lacto-vegetarian. But I agree with the previous speakers that it is mostly just an excuse.

The world went crazy a lot time ago. If it ever was normal.

i think it's sort of a defense mechanism. after all, they have a mirror at home, they can see the are overweight. and they know that eating better would help them and their health. but they don't or won't, so they ridicule the people who are doing it. makes them feel a little better about themselves, to put down the "weird vegan guy". because deep inside, they know you have a point. It's one of the worst characteristics of humans - not wanting others to be better - the lazyness of not wanting to climb up to their level but just dragging others down to theirs... i usually challenge them on it. people are conditioned to believe since birth that meat is necessary for health. but they never bother to question it. so when they say something like that, i question it, and they find out they have no answers. they have just been believing what they have been told their whole lives. the conversation usually goes something like this: you should eat some chicken soup. it'll help you. how will it help me? it has vitamins that you need to feel better. what vitamins does chicken have that i cannot get from a better vegetable source? umm... i don't know. there is none. i can get more vitamins and nutrients from a plant based food, and i eliminate the fat and cholestorol that comes along with chicken. umm.... really. yes. not to mention the fact that you are eating a rotting carcass. and have you seen where these chickens come from. have you seen the conditons they are kept in these slaughterhouses and factory farms? umm.... no... is it bad? it's terrible. really ing. but don't take my word on it. you should do some research. well, i still think chicken soup is better. I (and I guess many of you) have found it pointless to argue/have a discussion over the topic of veganism with carnivoures. It's nothing more than a waste of time because they do not want to know anything from you and develop new ideas, they just want everybody to be like them. Being different scares them.

The immune system improves when one stops destroying it by eating poisonous (animal-derived) food. But what i wanted to say was that everbody different gets picked on. It makes the teasers feel better about themselves. And most often the subject of the teasing is people who they do not understand. Like vegans. The One Reason I've given people to tease me for being vegan is that i usually stay up until 1-2 o'clock in the night doing stuff with the computer, so i look kind of sleepy and exhausted all the time (they don't know why). So everyone who gets a chance, suggests that "eating a porkchop will wake you up" or "that's the cost of eating carrots" or something similarly stupid.

I don't mean to be a digger, but this is a good topic, glad i found it. Given that I am one of the maximum 10 (guess there might be someone more than just me) vegans in Estonia, I've had more than my fair share of these kind of reactions. When i say I don't eat meat, the first reaction is acting like I was ill with something serious. Questions like "do you have some allergies" and "one needs meat to survive" are not rare. Then it is like "you do eat fish and chicken, right?". When i say no, they ask if there is something wrong with me. So i try to avoid revealing my eating habits, unless necessary. Most people think it is just "a plea for attention", like one of my relatives, who since finding out i was a vegetarian, tries to avoid me. Okay, without eating just meat, i could manage with the posionous comments. But since i decided to go vegan, it is totally out of control. My grandma truly believes that i have anorexia because i wont eat animal products. A very close relative also suggested I should see a psychiatrist. Some people have found it necessary to call me a girl, beacause a "man" eats "meat, preferrably raw and in huge amounts". Sorry I don't classify as a man, and everyone on this site also. :/ Everybody that know about my being vegan think it is not normal. I'm kind of getting sick of justifying myself because i have nothing to justify! It is the meat-eaters that need to justify their murderous behaviour (which can't be justified)!

I'll try.

Same here.

I PM'd.

but the trick is that military service in estonia is compulsory. and i just received a letter saying that i've been accounted to start active duty autumn 2007. yay!

sorry for digging up this thread, but it will soon be a firsthand problem to me... actually i don't mind taking some 9 months off to train my body , but i think there's going to be hard times for me as a vegan... so i was thinking if there is a law that says people can't be discriminated for their beliefs, and i believe eating animals is unacceptable, they have to arrange me something satisfactory to eat/wear/etc while being a vegan... also, i would really like to hear everyones personal experience about being vegan in the army...

I'll be waiting for that. Sweet, glad you liked it here, it's a nice place to live but the only trouble is that here are practically no specially vegan restaurants and food choices in supermarkets..

will the transport be taken care of ?

i ate over 20 apples yesterday for supper

melon, bananas, wild strawberries

One of the best and most comprehensive articles i have read about B12 - http://www.living-foods.com/articles/b12issue.html .

YOu may not have taken a supplement, but did you drink soy or rice milk? They usually are supplemented with B12, as are many meat analogs. No, one day i just quit eating meat because it felt gross, but that time i never did a research on the topic...

I know that adults have about 5 years of b12 stocks in their bodies, but what about children? I'm pretty anxious at the moment, because, like i said in the first post, i never took a supplement when i started to be a vegetarian 5 years ago at the age of twelve... my fitday report says i get about 20 % of b12 from regular food and i now take a supplement...

I was just surfing the net reading stuff about veganism, when i came up to these things. Surely they are at least to some extent the work of the meat industry trying to scare us vegans, but... This means when i quit eating meat at the age of 12 and never took any supplements or things to replace the protein and amino acids from meat, that i am irreversibly retarded now?

weelll.... actually yes i do occasionally. And i have also noticed having developed mad ninja skills even without training... so.. that just might be the problem!!

is there another shape-up challenge coming anytime soon? it could really give me the motivation i need to start training...