I had a discussion recently where someone accused me of not being a “real vegetarian” because I eat eggs. I know that’s kind of a grey area, and it differs for each person and their reason for being vegetarian (religious, texture, health, environmental, ethical, etc); but what do you personally eat?
For me, personally, I keep it simple. If it looks and tastes like meat, I don’t eat it (except special occasions like religious holidays). It makes me feel bad, and I dislike the texture anyway. Feels like an animal died specifically for me, and I didn’t even enjoy it. A waste of a perfectly good life. But I’m ok with “regenerative” animal products like eggs and cheese and honey and such, as long as the animals were treated with respect (hard to find dairy that meets this criteria).
Probably the most contentious is bones. Someone once gave me some ramen, and later told me they were surprised I ate it because the broth was made with chicken bones. I didn’t know, but also it didn’t really disturb me either. Those bones would have been thrown out if not put into soup; and the end result was soup, not a drumstick or something obviously meaty. If nobody told me, I wouldn’t even notice. For some reason, occasional bone broth is fine by my books. I’m not an extremely strict vegetarian in the first place though, and everyone I asked said that bones are not vegetarian.
It makes me think about Blood & Bone fertiliser. If you grow tomatoes with it, are those tomatoes not vegetarian…? Where is the line? Curious on others thoughts.
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There is no vegetarian authority. If you can live up to your own standards you doing better than most of us.
Not to mention that reducing your consumption of animal products, whether or not it’s a total thing, is still a very good thing and is probably the single most impactful thing you can do as an individual to help out the planet and your health, especially when it comes to red meat.
This is the mindset most should have about it
Perfection is hard
People shouldn’t be giving others grief for making moves in the right direction just because it’s not as far as they’ve gone
The strange thing is that the person griefing me was in no ways vegetarian and eats meat twice a day 😂 I didn’t take it too personally
reducing your consumption of animal products … is probably the single most impactful thing you can do as an individual to help out the planet
I seriously doubt this
It’s basically true. Animal agriculture (land use, resource use, and pollution to create animal products) is a major source of pollution which competes with transportation for the biggest source of global warming.
Unfortunately the more nuanced take is that it’s not a single thing; it’s a series of choices that eventually become habit. But so is not owning a car.
I think technically the single most impactful thing you can do is to remove major polluters from the planet (though in many cases that is illegal so, in case cops are watching, I’m certainly not recommending that).
The single most impactful is to have one fewer child than you had ‘planned’.
this is dangerously close to malthusianism and misanthropy.
There may not be a vegetarian authority, but God help you if you cross into vegan territory. Those guys are real sticklers.
No one ever expects… THE VEGAN INQUISITION!!!
Incorrect. I am the vegetarian authority.
I’m not trying to be perfect, I’m just trying to make a difference. Purity ideals are for 13 year olds.
I’m vegetarian mostly for environmental reasons.
If the food is going in the trash if I don’t eat it, I don’t really care if it’s meat or not. I’m mostly trying to reduce eating meat, but throwing it away otherwise is dumb.
Honestly, who cares. Eat what you’re comfortable with. The label thing being a real or not is do assine. People doesn’t eat certain things all the time.
I’m not vegetarian or vegan but in my mind eggs have always been fair game for vegetarians. It’s just vegans who skip animal by-products as well as meat.
I’m level 5 vegetarian with couple of missionary badges and gold stars for public protest. Next year I hope to adopt couple of old chickens and ascend to level 6.
Making a vegetarian dish for your friends without telling them and having all of them enjoy it and none of them go “Is this vegetarian?” Earns you a blackbelt.
I had people think there was legitimately crab in this recipe even though I told them before there wasn’t: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkVc5dN0eQ8
How much XP does it take to reach level 5?
We had a re-birthing ceremony in my friend’s hot tub. I am now a Level Five Laser Lotus in my Reformed neo vegetarian community.
This changes from guild to guild by mine follows the Old Denomination rules of Southern European Vegetarianism (Spanish branch) so it’s 75k points.
Someone knew you were a vegetarian, served you chicken broth with out saying anything, and then later acted surprised you ate it anyway? Wtf?
Yeah they forgot I was vegetarian until later lol. I’m not sure why they thought I could magically detect the stock in the broth though
Ovo-lacto vegetarianism is by default what people mean by vegetarian in the US at least. Maybe where you’re from it’s different but that criticism would be strange here.
I think most vegetarians try to avoid things like bone broth (or things containing gelatin if they know about it) but people are strict to different levels. Assuming a vegetarian would be fine eating a soup that included bones would be pretty rude so it’s not weird someone might be surprised you’re less strict than others.
That’s a good point. In my area we have a lot of Punjabi Sikh people from a specific sect (? not sure if correct word), so vegetarian is assumed to be lacto, with no eggs. I don’t know a lot about their religion, but it seems pretty strict. I’d imagine most of the world assumes eggs as well, it’s probably a local regional thing here.
They have some damn fine recipes too.
Funny: in much of East Asian, “vegetarian” doesn’t really exist as a concept and the best you can get is the “Buddhist meal”, which will contain fish.
I did a few years as a lacto-ovo vegetarian, but I also had a carve-out for eating anything I was served as a guest. I would tell people ahead of time, but if they added bacon to the potato salad, I’d just eat it anyway because being a good guest seemed more important than strict adherence.
That’s a good motto; I try to do the same thing, to an extent. If I’m at a family Christmas party or wedding, I’ll eat some roast chicken. To refuse would be rude.
But also, I tend to find that if you acquiesce once, it’s too easy to become a habit. People will assume you’ve given up vegetarianism and serve you meat every time forever (in my experience, anyway). So I usually offend people on the first meal post-Christmas.
I read this interesting article that is somewhat related.
I was more on the “if they’re serving me roast chicken after I told them I’m vegetarian, I’m not going to be their guest anymore” side of things, but everyone in my life was very accommodating, so that’s easy for me to say.
To me a everything that’s not part of or made from a part of an animal’s body is vegetarian. So no meat, bones, liver, gelatine etc. I would consider vegetarianism to be first and foremost a diet.
Veganism on the other hand is more like an ideology. It is the belief that no human has the right to exert control over another animal. So obviously a vegetarian diet that also excludes products that are obtained from animals, like eggs, milk, honey, leather, wool, etc. But also being against zoos, pets, working animals (such as police dogs) and other stuff like that. I think though that veganism is an ideology that requires nuance. It’s going to be basically impossible to be a “perfect” vegan and most probably wouldn’t go so far as to reject everything I listed, or would agree that compromises can be made for the greater good (for example I don’t believe police dogs should be a thing, but I wouldn’t want to take away a blind person’s dog and I can’t help but like pets).
tl;dr: If you eat meat or bones sometimes you’re by definition not a vegetarian and probably nobody is actually 100% vegan. It’s perfectly understandable that you’d call yourself a vegetarian to keep it simple, even if it’s only 95% true though. I certainly call myself vegan, even though it’s definitely less than 95% true.
These extreme line hunting is rather silly and benefits no one. Gamifying ethics is missing the entire point of ethics.
All these labels…
I try my best to avoid beef and pork. Simply because, as an adult, i saw videos of cows frolicing in grass and getting pets. I saw pigs with as much personality as my dog. Any animal that will roll over to get a belly rub i can no longer bring myself to eat.
Thats it…no more reason than that… empathy.
This here. Although I also save spiders and all kinds of critters. And I do occasionally eat meat, but not with a clear conscience. I avoid most milk products, but still haven’t managed to let go of cheese. :/
If it tries to run away, I don’t eat it.
Take it by surprise, got it.
quickly shoos the family dog into the other room
I don’t eat flesh. I do eat eggs, honey, and sometimes but rarely dairy. It is not a health condition, so if I end up accidentally eating something with meat in it I won’t get sick and if it was an accident I also won’t get upset with myself or anyone who gave the food to me.
Same here. I do eat eggs, honey and cheese.
For me, the border is animal parts (meat and bones). I eat fish, all seafood (squid, shrimp, …), eggs, cheese, milk, … I know that fish and squids and shrimps are animals, but yes, eat what you want, don’t let groups with their ideology impose on you what you eat.
There is no shame in what you eat. Where I live (70% are Orthodox Christians, 25% are Muslims) religious fasting is very common. In short, Christians in certain parts of the year (and every Friday) follow a vegan diet, Muslims in one part of the year follow a diet with intermittent fasting.
I always ask them “You believe in God, the Almighty, the creator of the universe, all 2 trillion galaxies, each with 100 billion stars, countless planets, and he cares what and when you put something in your stomach?”
I’m curious why you don’t eat animal parts but squid is ok? Squid and octopus are more intelligent and show more self awareness than many animals raised for food. I am no longer a vegetarian, but still won’t eat squid or octopus any more than I would a chimpanzee. I guess it depends on your reason for vegetarianism. Please do not take this as an assault on your beliefs, just curiosity.
Initially, it was a bet with my daughter that I could go a year without eating meat. After that, I got used to it and don’t feel the need to eat meat in my diet. The second factor is the quality of the meat in the stores. Everyone brags about “organic”, but it’s very different from real farm meat. When the meat is “industrial”, I won’t eat it. Third, I’m starting to get annoyed by the greed of farms to produce and sell more meat with a longer shelf life for a lower price. They don’t care about the health of the buyers (or the animals in general). So no thanks.
Why fish, squid, mussels, octopuses, crabs? They weren’t originally included in the bet, secondly, I don’t know, my decision without any particular reason. BTW, I don’t think any animal is intelligent so I don’t have a problem with that.
Thanks for the explanation. When I started being a vegetarian it was a similar situation; not a bet, more of a “let’s see if I can do this”.
