I find the topic of vegetarianism interesting for some reason.  Several of my friends are practicing vegetarians (not vegans), and it is either something that seems to becoming more common, or I've just been exposed to it more in recent years.  I eat meat, although I continually toy with the idea of not.

A friend (who was vegetarian) and I once had a discussion on the reasons people decide to forego the consumption of some or all animal derived foods.  I'll probably forget some, but they were:

• Environmental veggies: My girlfriend became a vegetarian several years ago mainly when she recognized the tremendous negative impact of the mass production of food animals, particularly the grazing of beef cattle, especially in the west.  Tremendous long term, sometimes permanent damage has been done to huge areas that have been overgrazed.  Now this is a hot topic in the western U.S., and I am not going to jump into the middle of the environmentalists/rancher thing, but the truth is that damage is being done to a lot of land to raise a relatively few cows.  I have a lot of respect for this viewpoint.  For more information try the book Beyond Beef.   Kind of sort of, but not really related is Cadillac Desert.
• Cutesy veggies: I've met people who do not eat certain animals because, basically their too cute to eat. These are the people who see a cow and say, "Aah, poor thing, how could anybody eat that poor cow".  These people often speak in baby talk to animals.  Often these are the "vegetarians" who eat chicken and fish, these animals apparently not being cute enough.  Get a life.
• Moral veggies: Some vegetarians think it is wrong to eat another living thing. Now I believe they mean well, they claim they are respecting life, but I think they are fooling themselves.  The fact is all life feeds off other life, plants and fungi either need the nutrients from the decomposition of previous life, or feed directly on life. All animals (including vegetarians) feed directly off other life, either plant or animal. Another common claim is that commonly eaten animals are more intelligent than plants and have feelings. The assumption being made here is that the way these animals experience life must be similar to the way we experience life. This strikes me as rather self centered and arrogant. They are also forgetting about the life which they do kill and eat (plants and many vegetarians who I've met eat at least fish and sometimes chicken) which may in fact have "feelings", we don't know, try reading a book called "The Secret Life of Plants". So moral veggies don't really respect all life, they just identify with lifeforms whose experiences they think are similar to their own. Apparently to them some life is more equal than others. It's really a matter of accepting the world as it is, rather than pretending it follows the moral code of one small bit of the timeline of one segment of the population of one species. Nature doesn't give a shit about your morals. In the end another life ended so yours could continue whether you are vegetarian or not.
• Health Veggies:
• Just don't like meat veggies:  I worked with a woman who did not eat any meat simply because she did not enjoy the taste or texture.   Never did like it since she was a little kid.

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last time I got off my ass and changed something here: 28 Oct 2001