Vegetarian Wars

The topic of vegetarianism can be a combative one, on both sides of the field.  I think it's safe to say that both teams are carrying a lot of emotional baggage.  But does that make it okay to engage in shaming former vegetarians?  That's exactly the thrust behind a recent Newsweek article about people who move back and forth across the "vegetarian" line.

The term "flexitarian" is a useful one, and if people keep insisting on a dogmatic, absolutist definition behind the "vegetarian" camp, we may need to start using it more often.  The article's author, Jennie Yabroff, takes the classically militant stance that equates occasionally eating meat with a betrayal of the vegetarian ideals.

This kind of near religious hand wringing is, frankly, the kind of thing that turns a lot of people off of vegetarianism.  It seems a little extreme that what you choose to eat for lunch can suddenly become the subject of a holy war.  Is it possible to not eat meat, while still not being a vegetarian?  This is exactly the reason why I tell people that I "don't eat meat" rather than saying that "I'm a vegetarian."  

Although technically the term "vegetarian" may be the correct one to describe my diet, it also maps to the kind of political pundit who refers to "steak apologists" as Yabroff does in her article.  The word "strident" comes to mind.  I don't want to eat meat, but I also don't necessarily want to be a vegetarian, with all the political discourse and bumper stickers that the term implies.

There are a lot of reasons to not eat meat.  In fact, increasingly the only reason TO eat meat is "it's tasty and I want to."  And with the concern over climate change and the carbon footprint of meat, a lot of people are giving it up for the most part.  I spoke to several friends over the holiday season who have gone to eating meat only once a week, or once a month.  Not only does that not make them vegetarians; it makes them targets for the outrage of political vegetarians like Yabroff.  

Is that fair?  Hardly.  And it only serves to make vegetarian look bad as a whole.  Many people decide to keep eating meat because they don't want to be associated with the vegetarian movement.  And who can blame them, considering the sneering tone of the last paragraph of Yabroff's article?  She name checks the concept of "moral superiority," but what if we could all give up the idea of calculating who holds the moral high ground?  What if we just suggested that if people want to eat less meat, that's probably a good choice?  Arguing for the moral high ground from a vegetarian standpoint is futile anyway.  I mean, let's face it, no vegetarian (no matter how strident) can hold the moral high ground once a vegan wanders into the conversation.

Yabroff starts off her article with a horrified paragraph about the news that Mollie Katzen, author of the Moosewood Cookbook, has a new cookbook out which includes meat recipes.  (Yabroff is so appalled by the news that she fails to include the name of the cookbook, which is Get Cooking.)  According to Yabroff, a good vegetarian is one who feels "guilty about their sins of the flesh-consumption."  Well I guess I'm not a good vegetarian then, am I?  Nor do I want to be, if that's what it's about.