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Why are you a vegetarian? Or why not ?

 
  

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Rage
00:00 / 17.09.03
I'm curious as to how many people have changed since this post.

Have been a vegetarian for the past 6 months, and am working on going vegan. Has anyone else switched affiliations? Why?

For me it's about feeling better. There's more of a desire to fly now. So light and airy. If I were to eat meat again I'd probably throw up. Yucky heavy nasty.

Was also thinking about how fucked up it was: that kids are raised eating meat without knowing what they're really doing. Isn't this a form of rape? I know I wouldn't have eaten all that meat if my mom would have told me what needed to happen for it to be on the dinner table.
 
 
Perfect Tommy
03:52 / 17.09.03
I've changed for the better; when I last posted, I was a vegetarian for the most part, but I was the 'eating loads of cheese and pasta and Taco Bell' kind of vegetarian. Since then, I've developed more of an interest in cooking and actually eating vegetables. It helped that I lived next to a organic foods grocery store for 9 months.
 
 
Cat Chant
06:59 / 17.09.03
kids are raised eating meat without knowing what they're really doing. Isn't this a form of rape?

No.
 
 
Quantum
07:19 / 17.09.03
I'm a vegetarian out of habit. I was raised veggie, because my mum was into macrobiotics and organic foods etc when I was a kid, ate chicken breast curry and fried breakfasts while at Uni. Then went veggie again- it's healthier, cheaper and tastier, and the agricultural industry do some horrible things to meat, but mostly it's my default setting (although I ate a bacon sandwhich recently- yack, staying veggie).

I don't particularly care about the animals involved and I don't have any strong views on the subject, but if I say I'm vegetarian people project all these stereotypes on me, like I'm going to throw red paint on their leather jacket. I had someone tell me I couldn't eat sweets the other day, because they had gelatin in. "So?" I said, and they got that shocked look and said "Because you're a vegetarian" slowly and simply, like I was too stupid to realise what it meant.
 
 
BioDynamo
14:46 / 17.09.03

I've changed. Still refuse to offer money to products produced by cruelty to animals, so my buying patterns are still vegan. However, from dumpster-diving (the ecological model, taking care of other people's trash), I've shifted towards shoplifting and other forms of theft (the class war model, causing as much damage to the oppressive structures).

So these days I'll happily enjoy exquisite luxury-products, both vegan, vegetarian and meat, by stealing them from the biggest and most horrible examples of consumerist capitalism that I can find.

I still dumpster-dive frome some local stores.
 
 
Jack Denfeld
06:44 / 18.09.03
Sorry about the threadrot but BioDynamo got me thinking about stealing food. You can usually walk into one of those giant super k-marts or super walmarts with a friend, grab a big sandwich from the deli section and just start walking around talking with your friend and eating the sandwich. As long as you seem pleasant and give a smile or two when you see the workers they don't seem to mind or register that you're stealing.
 
 
Mazarine
00:25 / 19.09.03
I briefly, in grade school, became a vegetarian on principle, since I didn't think fur coats were a good idea and I felt like a hypocrite. I was an idealistic child, but a forgetful one: at a soccer banquet, I forgot I was a vegetarian and I ate a meatball.

I should be a vegitarian, really, because I know the meat packing industry is not a humane one. But there are several factors which prevent me:

1. I am a picky eater. Pathetic excuse, but it's true. I don't like tomatoes unless they're stewwed or in a sauce, onions unless they're cooked and chopped fine, I don't like peppers, squash, tempeh, basically, I really don't like most vegetables. It severely narrows the vegetarian diet.

2. As impressed as I am by the genius that's gone into the faux meat products, I cannot afford them on a regular basis- actual meat is less expensive for me.

3. Without meat, I get tired and irritable, probably because I don't know enough about a vegetarian diet to get my protein elsewhere.

4. My family is from the American south, and I've been raised on meat: especially rare, red meat: I enjoyed it then, and I enjoy it now.

These may all sound like cop-out answers, and maybe they are. If I ever strike it reasonably rich and can afford to come up with a vegitarian diet I can live with, I hope to become one. I think it would be healthier, and it would be less hypocritical of me.
 
 
Whisky Priestess
19:46 / 20.09.03
I am a picky eater. I don't like ... onions ... peppers, squash, tempeh, basically, I really don't like most vegetables. It severely narrows the vegetarian diet.

I'm with ya.

I'm a non-conscience vegetarian, and have been from the age of about 7. I haven't eaten any meat at all since then except by mistake (chicken, and I nearly chucked). Still love the smell of Peperami though. Does this make me a pervert?

Basically I'm veggie because I was a very picky eater as a child: it's a tribute to my mum and vitamin pills that I'm alive today. I have a vague memory of liking chicken skin (because crunchy) and liver (because soft) when about 5. But since thenabouts, and despite not liking almost any vegetable you care to name, I've been a cheese, potatoes, salad and bread kinda veggie. It's a lot quicker to name the veggies I do like than those I don't, but that would be dull.

I too get the "But you're a vegetarian! You can't -"
a) wear fur
b) eat gelatin sweets
c) buy battery eggs
d) wear leather

And I also get the even more fun
"You're a vegetarian? You must eat -"
a) fish
b) white meat
c) onions, peppers, cucumber ... etc.

There's a lot of baggage that goes with not eating the flesh. It's the cross that non-political vegetarians have to bear, along with Orwell's open contempt of us as hairy-eared Hitler health freaks. And on the subject of veggie felines, I have recently discovered that my step-cat loves ham-flavoured Quorn. Who knew?
 
 
Persephone
22:27 / 20.09.03
Aren't all cats, in a sense, step-cats?

I did come to a decision a few months ago re: vegetarianism. I eat meat, for a complex network of reasons ranging from the physical to the political. But until I can decide not to eat meat, I figured that the least I could do was not promote eating meat --i.e., not publish recipes involving meat, particularly not on my website. (Don't look now, they're not up there yet.) This is probably in contention for Lamest Change Of Heart Ever, but there you go.
 
 
Secularius
22:04 / 21.09.03
< threadrot > Whisky Priestess: Any idea why Orwell hated vegetarians? This was the first time I heard this. After a Yahoo search I found this quote from Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier: "One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist and feminist in England." He apparently hated particularly such pacifist mystics as Gandhi claiming that "the teachings of Hitler and Gandhi are the same," but seems to have had even more respect for Hitler: "I have never been able to dislike Hitler," he admitted in 1940. Why did the man who wrote "all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others" and devoted his life to criticizing oppression and violence hate nature-loving pacifists who tried to live healthy, ethical and spiritual lives? At least they tried to practice what they preached. It seems to me that Orwell was guilty of the thought-crime that is paradox. Does anyone have more info on this matter? Links, articles, books?< /threadrot >
 
 
Whisky Priestess
23:43 / 21.09.03
Yeah, it's in Wigan Pier, and perhaps also Down and Out in Paris and London, that orwell rips into us poor lambs. I think his principal beef was that he thought veggies believed that not eating meat would extend their lifespan and allow them to become virtuously glowing centanarians. He reckoned they were nuts, basically.
 
  

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