Vegetarianism

[bee]

I've been a vegetarian for nearly all my life and I have my reasons which I know quite well.

I was wondering, however, if anyone else here is a vegetarian and I have two questions regarding that:

1) To what degree are you vegetarian? (i.e. Do you eat chicken and/or fish? Are you vegan? etc, etc...)
2) What is your motivation for being vegetarian -- or if you aren't, perhaps do you have motivations for being NOT vegetarian? (i.e. family is vegetarian so you are, ethical reasons, health reasons, something else, etc etc)

Danke schön!

[Aurone]

I'm pretty much an Omnivore, I eat equel amounts of meat and non meats. I do like beef, some pork, turkey's alright and buffolo on rare occassion. I do also though like Apples, bananas, Corn, lettuce, esc. Also a wierd habbit of mine, I do a prayer for anything I'm eating that was once an animal, I may not have killed it but I think the least I can do is honour the creature that it once was.

[Aletheia Dolorosa]

I'm not a vegetarian. That being said, I have some beliefs about food and the circumstances under which it is produced. If I have the choice, I will eat only organic meat. An animal died so that I could go on living, and it should be shown some kind of respect and dignity, not kept in atrocious conditions. If I don't know if the meat is organic or not, I tend to choose to eat something with vegetables.

I hate chicken legs, thighs and wings, and I really dislike eating anything gelatinous or gristly. I dislike most cured meats, and things like meat pies and sausage rolls where you can't tell where the meat comes from, and so I avoid them like the plague, but that's due to taste and not ethics.

I also believe people should not eat anything they're not prepared to kill. Although I don't know if I have the physical strength to kill an animal, I know I could mentally do it if I had to. It really irritates me when people eat meat and then act all horrified when they see what actually goes on in an abatoir.

Sorry to rant on.

[Riali]

i'm not vegetarian, and i can accept the whole food chain thing and generally not feel bad about eating animals.

That said, if i think while i am eating "this was once alive", my stomach rebels and i cannot eat it.
So I don't tend to eat a lot of meat.

When I do, it generally needs to be processed or chopped up and disguised and i need to be sure not to think too hard about it.

If it has bones, or skin, or is in too big a chunk, or resembles an animal in any way, i just can't eat it.

Also, the varieties i can handle are limited to cow, pig and chicken.

Seafood is fine though. i'm not crazy about fish, but taking a crab apart does not bother me at all, and i really like most shellfish.

Yes, i realize that this is all very arbitrary and unreasonable, but i can't help it. i am getting rather more adventurous since i've been in china (one needs to). I can handle some bits of bones or chicken skin from time to time now. My school served chicken feet today though, and that is still way over the line!

[Cookiemonster]

I only eat fish and poultry, no other meat, and I won't eat meat off the bone, like chicken wings or thighs or that sort of thing. Also, I'm very picky about the bits of meat I do eat, so skin or fatty bits on bits of chicken or turkey are out. If I can get it, I prefer organic fish and poultry, but I can't really afford organic foods on my budget so that's not often.

My reasoning started out as mostly the whole 'animals are cute and I don't want to eat them' thing when I was in my early teens, and I went through a period of just eating fish and nothing else, but I felt I needed some kind of meat in my diet cos I was getting a little anaemic (my mum didn't cook separate meals for me or anything, I just had what everyone else had without the meat in, so I didn't get fish often either, just whenever everyone else had it), so the poultry and fish thing is a kind of compromise in a way, I suppose, which I've just stuck to even now I cook my own meals.

[Tomsy]

In terms of animals, I only eat fish, which is what all of my immediate family do. I wouldn't call myself a vegetarian really, since I understand it's an all-or-nothing word. More often or not, though...

Tom: I only eat fish.
Person: Oh, so you're a vegetarian?
Tom: *sigh* Yes.

As far as the moral side goes, I'm more or less indifferent. I obviously object to any overly cruel treatment of animals in farming, and since I live quite happily on my diet as it is, I don't really see it as necessary to eat any more animals. That said, I certainly don't judge other people for their choice to eat meat, and you won't see me trying to force vegetarianism down anyone's throat. It's a shame that when I tell people what I eat and don't eat, many of them assume I'm going to start berating them because they eat meat, and they tend to start defending their own choice of diet, or attacking mine, simply because they seem threatened.

Similar to Riali, I do find it difficult to eat a whole fish, with the head still attached, though this is something I have become slightly more used to over time because of my like for sardines.

[daemonpurra]

I don't understand how you could live with yourself if you are a vegetarian. I eat meat and I love it so who needs cows

[Huginn]

I don't understand how you could live with yourself if you are a vegetarian. I eat meat and I love it so who needs cows

Well, you can certainly live as a vegetarian--it's entirely nutritionally possible. I don't see why people would have qualms about not eating meat (in fact, most of the people here seem to show some qualms about eating meat for various reasons). You can enjoy meat just fine (I certainly do), but why single out the cows, man?

[Leif]

I love eating animals! I love everything from ribs to sushi. However, I haven't eaten shrimp once since I watched Tommy Boy...

I realize that it's a bit barbaric, but until an equally delicious alternative is invented, I'll continue eating meat. I suppose in the future humans will regard us as savages for eating other living beings, and they're probably right.

[bee]

I don't have a problem with other people eating meat, I just don't do it myself. People tend to worry about it... "Are you going to be offended if I eat a hamburger in front of you?"

It's rather sickening though if I really think about it. My mom and I went grocery shopping for my grandma and we absolutely could not buy the raw hamburger meat stuff. It was rather nauseating to look at and neither of us could make ourselves touch the package to put it even in the cart.

I also watched some friends eat chicken today. One of them was bored and absentmindedly throwing the knife into the chicken so it'd stick in the bone, then pulling the knife out and doing it again. It seemed ridiculous. That was once ALIVE. And you're throwing a knife in it.

As to how I can live with myself being a vegetarian. I haven't eaten meat since I was 5 or 6 years old. I don't eat it for moral/ethical, environmental, AND health reasons. But it's a personal decision that I made and have not had forced on me (at any point now, I could change if I wanted). That's how I live with it.

[krebbe]

My philosophical view regarding meat-eating is that of Mufasaism. It states that everything exists together in a delicate balance. As king, you need to understand that balance, and respect all the creatures - from the crawling ant to the leaping antelope. Now even though we eat antelope, albeit not very often, when we die, our bodies become the grass. And the antelopes eat the grass. And so we are all connected in the great Circle of Life.

The important lesson of this is it's OK so long as you DON'T GET CREMATED.

[Ian]

I'm a cheating, albeit lifelong, vegetarian. Like Tom, I have fish as my get out clause and still eat fish when I have the choice between that or no meal (common when I'm in Scandinavia for example). I still like Salmon, Cullen Skink soup and the occasional fish and chips (like twice a year ). But otherwise I've barely eaten fish in the last 3 years or so. I've never eaten meat, and the vast majority of my close family are vegetarians (although many are fishy ones) (including grandparents, several great aunts/uncles etc). My generalised reasons are that I don't agree with breeding animals for consumption and mistreatment and so on. The idea now of eating meat disgusts me (although sometimes I wish very hard I could eat more easy-to-get-on-the-streets junk food). Essentially the biggest reason that I haven't stopped being a vegetarian as an adult is that as a lifestyle it suits me, and it hasn't failed me yet.

[Melancholy Man]

I eat vegetarians. Don't mind vegans, but won't touch demi-vegetarians. They taste all fake, like pot noodles.

[Ursae Majoris]

I have no problem with people who choose to be vegetarian. I even have a few friends who are vegetarian. Personally, I love meat and have no qualms about eating it.

[aklebury]

I eat meat, but tend to shy away from seafood - especially prawns and shrimps after a friend who is a real hippie-activist told me that for every (i think) kg of prawns caught 3kgs are thrown back into the sea as by-catch.
Its just such a waste, and typical of humans, over-fishing without any regards for sustainability.

[bee]

I eat meat, but tend to shy away from seafood - especially prawns and shrimps after a friend who is a real hippie-activist told me that for every (i think) kg of prawns caught 3kgs are thrown back into the sea as by-catch.

I've been doing research for a speech I'm going to give on this (decided it would fill 7 minutes better than Fibonacci numbers) and I found a similar statistic:

In the U.S. (which is surprisingly one of the most efficient producers of meat), it takes 6.9kg of corn & soy and 30,000 kilocalories of fossil fuel to produce 1kg of pork on the table. A lot of work for a little bit of flesh.

[Aletheia Dolorosa]

Yes, the meat industry is incredibly wasteful. But then so is all farming. If it wasn't an industry, and instead everyone had his or her little plot of land, things would be a whole lot better. For one thing, people wouldn't be so disconnected from the food they eat, and from the process required to get that neatly-packaged tray of meat bought in the supermarket.

Then again, if we were all subsistence farmers, we'd have no time to read, or write, or do any of the other fun things that make life worth living...

[Laura]

I'm not cut out to be a farmer. I think it's because they have to get up so early. And grisly things like this happen:

http://newsfeedresearcher.com/data/arti ... 41.51.html

I'm not a vegetarian, but I absolutely hate having to cook meat, so when I was living with my roommates I didn't eat meat at all except when we ate out. I've been thinking about giving up beef for a while. Red meat is supposed to be extremely bad for you, and my family has a history of high chloresterol (sp?), so it's probably a good idea.

[Aletheia Dolorosa]

I need to eat red meat. The last time I donated blood, the nurse freaked out because my haemoglobin levels had dropped from 165 to 118. 115 is the lowest of the 'normal' range. So basically I'm anaemic. I know it's possible to get iron from other sources, but you need to eat them in larger quantities to get the same level of iron.

Lean, organic meat is not bad for you, although we all eat it in too large quantities in the West. You're meant to eat it only a few times a week, not for more than one meal a day. Meat, like most kinds of food, is not inherently unhealthy. It's the large servings which are the problem.

[Jaya]

I don't really eat red meat [anymore]. It's a good source of...iron or something. Although strangely enough I had some sort of iron deficiency or slight anaemia when I was younger and DID eat red meat. It's never come back. I do eat bacon if tempted because it's so yummy and smells lovely. But that's rare.

Vegetarianism's alright. I tried it for a year. Didn't really make much of any difference to me. We don't eat meat that often at home.

And yeah, Laura, cooking meat can be annoying - I'm always nervous I won't cook it properly enough...