These days I find myself holding back more and more when it comes to discussing my eating habits. Those who have read my bio know that I am a vegetarian. I would be vegan, but I from time to time partake in the occasional cheese product (such as feta and goat cheese) or a product that has milk or egg as an additive, vs a main ingredient (some MorningStar products for example). I have also stated in a previous article my reasons for this lifestyle.
However I don’t talk about it much these days as I somehow pull aggro no matter how the subject comes up. I can be very passive and matter of fact and not go into any detail or I can give the full list of reasons, but somehow it seems to hit a sore spot with a lot of people. The idea of giving up meat for some people is not only difficult to imagine, but downright insulting it seems.
Case in point: this article from CNN. Personally I thought the article was great. Notice how many times they mentioned spices? Some of the menu options they mentioned didn’t even occur to me as I would in previous years just pick through sides, figuring I was the one with the “weird” eating habits so I didn’t expect my family to change the menu for just one person. This year is different as my girlfriend wants to try out a Tofurkey and see if it holds up, should be interesting seeing as I have never had one (be expecting a review).
Anyways, although there were some positive comments from omnivores and vegetarians/vegans alike, there were some just plain rude ones thrown in there out of nowhere. As if the posters of those negative comments were actually insulted at the fact that someone wouldn’t have turkey with Thanksgiving dinner. Someone even mentioned some nonsense about how insulting it was that people are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan yet this made the front page of CNN. Um…Thanksgiving is just around the corner, so it is relevant just as much as the posts about the economy and shopping this holiday season are.
I tend to get very angry at responses such as the negative ones to that article. So many times it is from someone who hasn’t done any real, unbiased, research. They throw out the typical responses about how vegetarians suffer from malnutrition, lack of protein, etc. Some even get all biblical and start saying that God wants us to eat meat (sorry news for my Seventh Day Adventist friends I guess). I know there are some very militant vegans out there, ones who are very angry at anyone who still eats meat, but not me.
I don’t carry myself like that… at least I don’t think I do. I order my all veg/no cheese pizza at a local restaurant and don’t say a thing about the steak someone at the table just ordered…because I don’t care. As my superhero friend said once, in her response to someone ordering something meaty when she was out and they challenged her raw vegan lifestyle a bit: “I will enjoy my food. I really hope you enjoy yours just as much.”
The thing is, I try to avoid the confrontation. I see them conning red and I back away. But sometimes they spawn right behind me and before I knew what hit me, such as the comments at the end of the CNN article, my lifestyle choice is being pounded. Such as just last week at work when someone came into our little break area as I was heating up my pasta with megasauce (a super chunky sauce I make). This dude I work with asked me what I was heating up, I stated pasta, he started in on the “any meat in that?” stuff. He was ready for a throw down.
I launched back after he shot a few comments out at me…a bit harder than I should’ve. I mean, he was definitely a few levels below me in the whole healthy lifestyle knowledge department but what the heck, it was an easy kill. Even if I didn’t want to get into it to begin with and ultimately didn’t gain any useful experience from the encounter.
I can go on, hard core, about the reasons why I have the opinion that eating meat is wrong. I can also really get into the facts behind the healthiness and cleanliness of the kinds/amounts of meat most people consume but I usually don’t. I try not to even talk about it anymore.
In regards to the CNN article specifically, I know that John Gabriel has a theory on this. But if the article is indeed any example of how people frequently react, both online and in person, why would I bother? I know what leaving out the meat does for me and although I would love others I know or meet from time to time to be in the same boat, it’s ultimately up to them and nothing I can say will change that. Just be happy, be open minded, and does what works for you.
Best to discuss politics or religion instead I guess.
Related posts:
Speaking of going aggro, except trying not to… =}
So many of your posts are about living the vegetarian/vegan lifestyle, but they’re missing any overt connections to the whole healthy living/weight loss/exercise theme of this blog, and I find it a bit annoying. I’m not saying you should be trying to sell us the lifestyle or anything, just please figure out how to tie your points into the more generic audience here. What sort of choices are you making within the non-meat lifestyle that do or don’t further your goals of overall health improvement? What sort of special challenges do you face when trying to combine weight loss and veggie-ism? If someone wanted to incorporate less meat into their diet, can you recommend simple substitutions for traditional foods? Stuff like that would be more worth my reading time on this blog than someone griping about not being left alone about his non-meat diet choices.
It’s true, 9 out of my 27 articles have been related to vegetarianism in one way or another. And only some of those going into any detail about the food itself, whether or not it is healthy, and so on.
I see now after being gone several months, and taking some time to read back, that the only times I have ever spoken about own health goals has been in my “Hell Level” and “Re-Roll Your Diet/Exercise Routine” posts. Not only that, but the only times I mentioned substitutions for traditional foods (besides the CNN link in this article) were in the “He who controls the spice controls the universe” and “That calls for a smattern of pattern” posts.
I would be more than happy to go into greater detail about what differences I have seen between my omnivorous days vs vegetarian days in regards to fitness and the healthy choices I made in both lifestyles.
This post was originally going to be in reference to the CNN article itself. But when I completed reading it and I saw the comments afterward it reminded me of another challenge of the vegetarian lifestyle, the judgment of others. Usually people think of the hardcore vegans who call omnivores murders and such, but some don’t realize that for many vegetarians they just have to keep quiet about what they eat to avoid confrontation.
I don’t care if you want to be vegetarian, but the constant articles about it does look a little preachy. I was vegetarian for 5 years, very strict vegan for 1. Even tried the whole raw foods thing, and did the Master Cleanse for a FULL 10 days. After quitting all of that stuff and eating a balanced omnivorous diet, I grew a whole inch taller from age 28 to 30 – FINALLY getting the minerals I needed. My brain works better and faster now. I like the shape that my body has taken – no more saggy butt, I lift 4x heavier (I keep records) and have so much more endurance that it isn’t even funn. But everyone is different – personally, I will never go back.
Interestingly enough, through all those years, no one got confrontational with me even once, people would ask me for recipes, or would ask questions about stuff before inviting me over to eat at their house. But I never pulled any sort of moral issue into any of it, even when I taught a veg cooking class at a local yoga studio….
Maybe you’re putting off a confrontational vibe or something? As a general rule, people don’t really want to hear about other people’s eating habits, because there is an implied “superiority” from the person who is sharing. Just a theory.
I’ve actually encountered a similar phenomenon in my efforts to simply eat healthy. I’ve had people get snippy with me simply because I choose not to eat fatty foods or, even worse, try to convince me that it is ok to do so “this one time.” Fact of the matter is that people tend to get aggressive when confronted with someone who is trying to take care of themselves. We talk about it a lot at Weight Watchers. The theory is that we’re reminding them that they are making poor choices and they’d rather drag us down than go through the trouble of making better choices themselves.
That said, Scott was specifically brought on to ShrinkGeek to act a a voice for the vegan/vegetarian community and we’ve asked him to focus a lot on that subject.
Hrm…did I just spam my /taunt command?
Weird… maybe you guys just have really mean friends or something…. though I have heard this sometimes happens to some women when they start to make healthier choices than their peer groups… No one’s done this to me though, but it wouldn’t be the first time that I’ve been a statistical anomaly.
Ok, makes sense about Scott then -
As a fellow vegetarian, I know your story all too well.
It often goes like this:
Host: “Matt, you didn’t get any turkey?”
Me: “Oh, thank you, but I’m a vegetarian.”
Angry screams from around the table: “WHY??!??!”
Me: (cower in fear)
The BEST response I got was from a 12 year old girl at a girlfriend’s family’s dinner:
“You don’t eat meat? That’s gross!!!”
I know this comment is a bit late to the party, but I’ve appreciated the vegetarian/vegan information here. Some of your articles have opened my eyes to a lot of different food options, which when you’re learning to take back your body one bite and one exercise at a time, is extremely helpful.
So often the healthy food purveyors get you stuck in the ‘you must eat this food and make it as boring as possible to be healthy’ rut. It’s nice to be able to see different ways of doing things that can be healthy and delicious.