People who say 'I'm a vegetarian but I eat chicken': Dud or fucking dud

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They do. I know a few.

admittedly i'd never actually say anything to their face. but it does confuse me a bit.

See also: people who try to FREAK YOU OUT by going "oooh, look at this meat, mmmm dont you want to eat it, look at this burger!!!!!".

Ok that might have been at primary school.

FIGHT THE POWER.

"AHA! I CAUGHT YOU! You're not a vegetarian... YOU EAT FISH!" Yeah, but who gives a shit, at least they're trying to eat healthy, you know? I'm not saying that vegetarians deserve a medal or anything, and there are plenty of annoying vegetarians who shove it in your face because of whatever reason, but the backlash against fish-eating or chicken-eating or egg-eating "vegetarians" is a little weird.

Personally, I don't give a fig. I think not eating red meat for health reasons is completely valid.

"AHA! I CAUGHT YOU! You're not a vegetarian... YOU EAT FISH!" Yeah, but who gives a shit, at least they're trying to eat healthy, you know?

You're completely missing the point.

As Supercub said, it's not the fact that they're eating fish or chicken, it's the fact that they're claiming to be vegetarian when they're not. It's like saying 'I'm not racist but I hate black people,' or 'I work for Pixar but I own a tie.'

But I'll say what I said then: I'm one of those "annoying people" -- I'm mostly vegetarian, but for the past few years I've started occasionally eating fish. This is partly out of curiosity -- I was raised vegetarian, so I'd never even tasted fish until recently -- and partly out of pragmatism, in case I end up at a restaurant with little to no vegetarian options. I'd say I eat fish on average about once every 2 months. What do I call myself? Vegetarian. Why? Because any situation where I'm going to be calling myself anything, which is usually when someone's planning a dinner or trying to pick a restaurant, I know that if I say "vegetarian" then there'll definitely be something for me to eat, and in general I prefer vegetarian meals. Other than those situations, I don't call myself anything, I mean I don't go around with a big "V" around my neck or anything. I have my own moral views about the whole thing, but I don't get into them unless someone asks. I spent my whole childhood trying to hide my weird diet from my friends and classmates, and even though I don't hide it anymore, I never acquired any missionary zeal about it. People can eat whatever they want to, I'm not going to give anyone shit about their diet. But please don't give me shit about mine. I'm not claiming to be anything, and I don't make a moral crusade out of what's on my plate. But for all practical purposes, I'm vegetarian, and in the situations where it comes up it's way easier to say that than to get into the exceptions and caveats.

Then, um, I'm not giving you shit about anything, am I? :)

"Vegetarian" and "racist" may be two words that have different meanings to different people, but there are societal standards for what defines racism, for very good reason, but there really aren't any that strictly define vegetarianism, because one being "vegetarian" only affects the person claiming it, and affects no one else -- more importantly, it affects no one else negatively (except the person making the claim if it's *outrageously* departing from the colloquialism for "vegetarian")

at the risk of making this thread NSFW, here's a better analogy: "I'm a lesbian, but I like sucking cock."

Maybe, maybe not. But a chicken eater can't deny that he or she has "sucked cock".

Andrew is right.

*checks the time*

except Niman-dogs at the coffee shop. and lamb.

tabitha jenkins?

??

Isn't the point that if you eat animal product, by definition you aren't vegetarian? Bugger the moral argument, it is a semantic one.

I don't give a shit if someone who claims to be vegetarian then goes off and hoes down on a six-foot chicken. That's their business. WCMO is that they claim to be vegetarian in the first place.

Being vegetarian can be extremely difficult for some people [a while ago I tried it and lasted six months before becoming quite ill [I plan to go back to vegetarianism as soon as I can sort out wtf happened and/or can afford to see a dietician]]. When someone says 'I'm a vegetarian' before eating a roast shark salad, it's assuming a label of which they're not worthy, and it's mightily insulting to anyone who has put a hell of a lot of work into becoming and staying vegetarian.

For the record, I don't come across all militaristic when I see people do this at restaurants, but I do tell them someone who eats chicken/fish isn't a vegetarian.

I try and make a random reference based on the name of the magazine you work for and this is the thanks I get!

Duh, yes. Where have you been since 1996?

This annoys me too and I don't eat meat. (Well, I eat fish so I guess I'm a big LIAR!). I hate it when vegetarian restaurants have dishes like veggie meatloaf. It just reinforces the idea that food should revolve around meat and that there's something missing in a vegetarian's diet. Just do something creative with the vegetables and quit trying to form tofu and seitan into gross faux-meat shapes and textures.

Isn't the point that if you eat animal product, by definition you aren't vegetarian? Bugger the moral argument, it is a semantic one.

The semantic issue isn't as cut-and-dry as you try to make it though. That's what's annoying about people who try to get on a vegan's case about wearing leather shoes. What about honey, film and other gelatin-products, tons of products that are processed with bone, and probably thousands of medicines that use animal byproducts. There is pretty much no way to be a "pure" vegan and I assume most vegans and vegetarians eventually come to realize this and learn to compromise.

x-post

And on the avoiding utensils rap, what about orthodox jews? They have seperate kitchens to observe kosher preparation, I'd never give them shit for it - I always respect whatever a persons eating choices are. I do worry about vegetarians who aren't bothering to educate themselves on what food they eat tho (insofar as they'll happily eat Mcdonalds or processed foods etc)

I also know one meat eater who only eats carnivores - the logic being, that if he doesn't eat them, they'll eat another animal, so even stevens on that one.

Likewise I think the *way* we all eat meat is what should matter - using all of the animal, only eating it occasionally as ancient man would have. I try to eat that was as, if nothing else that seems good health logic. I eat much pulses, vegetables, grains, and try to avoid too much processed food. I eat meat, but in small amounts in a dish and/or only a few times a week.

The idea people would eat mostly meat and processed foods every single meal sounds horrible!

i have heard that coopers produces the only australian beer acceptable to vegans. dunno if there's any truth to that though.

http://www.vnv.org.au/AlcoholByName.htm

i've been a vegetarian for almost my whole life (i think i had a hot dog when i was about 5, and turkey at thanksgiving until i was about 8, as far as i can remember. feel free to shout at me if you think i'm mis-labelling myself)

i'm not a militant animal-rights supporter, i have leather shoes. i basically don't eat meat because of the 'gross-out' factor. it's just something that i can't do.

however, this does not mean that i'm healthy! i saw emily's post about how difficult it can be to get nutrients from a veg diet and see what she's getting at, but the thing is, i don't really care. people give me a lot of crap because i'm veg but eat more junk than anyone else i know. like it's my job as a vegetarian to eat well, or something. i HATE it when i order the vegetarian meal on airplanes and i get couscous with a granola bar iced with lemoncurd or something gross as dessert, and everyone else gets mac and cheese with chocolate cheesecake. it's like, 'um, hi. just because i order the veg meal doesn't mean i don't want the chocolate cheesecake!'

sorry, just wanted to point out that people shouldn't expect vegetarians to be the 'healthy option' any more than they would anyone that eats meat. (unless said vegetarian is one that loudly proclaims the health benefits all the time)

read a lot of articles in places about vegetarian equivalent of cod liver oil and how veggies are often lacking this. asked about it, flax seed oil, at local healthfood shop only to be told it came in gelatin-based capsules.

> 'um, hi. just because i order the veg meal doesn't mean i don't want the chocolate cheesecake!'

amen. lots of cheesecake has gelatin in it though so you have to be careful. i tend to avoid it unless i can see the box. the one good thing about the bse scare and all those burning cows is that companies started using non-animal alternatives for that stuff. polo mints, for instance.

i liked those granola bars though 8)

a couple of times i've asked for vegetarian meals on planes but ended up with vegan meal instead = bad. fly virgin and one of the options is always vegetarian so you don't need to pre-book.

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EAT US! NO REALLY, COME & GET IT! EAT US! EAT US! EAT US! BON APPETIT!

i've never been a vegetarian, but for the last 4-5 years i've been pretty strict about only eating free range & organic meat. in the last six months i've pretty much made it organic-only. i've never got to the stage of asking restaurants where they source their meat from, instead i've tended to do it on trust (e.g. gordon ramsey isn't, i hope, going to serve battery chickens, but if i go out for a curry/am eating in a pub/etc i always eat vegetarian). whenever i go to conferences or fly i say that i'm a vegetarian (although i tend to just take my own food on airplanes anyway).

in fact, i've been far from a vegetarian in terms of my meat-eating preferences - e.g. my favourite meal last year was braised ox cheeks, i've always had my steaks blue, liked eating calves' liver (well, until the double whammy of fainting after eating it in the swimmer (i'm really squeamish) and then undercooking it at home) etc. on the other hand, when cooking for myself i've tended to default to easy vegetarian options, so in times when my flatmate's been away i've often only eaten meat once or twice a week.

anyway, my girlfriend is a vegetarian, and my carnivorous flatmate is travelling the world, so i've been eating much more vegetarian food in the last few months (i should add that my girlfriend has no problem with my eating meat in front of her - it has meant that we have tended to go to restaurants with decent vegetarian options, though, which has made it very easy for me to eat vegetarian too). then i went home over christmas, and ate (impeccably organic) meat/fish twice a day for a week, after which i was pretty keen to get back to vegetarian food.

since then, i've eaten meat/fish three times. on new year's eve we went to morgan m, where i had a 7 course meat/fish menu and colette had 7 veg courses. the dishes were similar (in fact the same for 3/4 courses), and the only courses where i was glad to have the non-veg option were the ones featuring fish (caviar & lobster, in fact). the foie gras/venison/hare were ok, but the veg alternatives looked at least as good.

then for my birthday we went to le caprice, and the only meat i had was in a cep + proscuitto lasagne, which was great but would have been better for me without the proscuitto (i'd already realised that i was properly going off meat at this stage - none of the meat/fish mains had appealed to me at all.

finally, last week i cooked a dinner party, featuring steak. i had a couple of bites of mine but really didn't want it, so stuck with the veg instead.

so, i seem to have stopped eating meat! i think it's very unlikely that this is a permanent thing; i intend to go for pork sausages next time i'm in the s+m cafe, for example, which will be interesting. i haven't thought about fish yet, either, and my inclination (plus my love of sushi) is not to try to drop them from my diet at the moment.

i guess there are two things about this whole situation that i'm finding interesting, the first being that i'm not quite sure how the situation has arisen. my organic meat eating has always been for a mixture of reasons (in brief: it often tastes much better, squeamishness about factory farming, and never fully-explored moral concerns), but it seems to me that my current feelings are much more about preference than any of these - i just don't seem to be enjoying eating meat at all.

also, there's the issue of how to define myself. i wouldn't really care about this, except that i have various friends who i have dinner parties (for want of a better phrase) with, and i'm going to have to tell them that i don't want to eat meat at the moment, which will be... interesting.

i guess finally that i really don't want to start getting too anal about all this stuff - i'm not too concerned about scouring lists of ingredients for non-veg content (i've found myself thinking about this before, actually, just because i very much doubt that processed food involving meat by-products are using free range animals), and i don't want to be. i don't want to get more anal than i am about having organic milk (although i'm planning on trying soy milk again soon - the one time i had i hated it, but perhaps it'll be fine in starbuck drinks), and there's absolutely no way i'm giving up cheese.

anyway, this is more of a thinking-things-out-for-myself post than anything else, and i guess much of it isn't relevant here anyway (i'll see if i can find some old threads to revive...).

but some ppl just cannot get their head around this, i think because of ancient ingrained Things In Their Brains they received as axiomatic. in the uk(+europe/the west/north?) it's prob more specific to older generations: i've been veggie since i was 13 (inc no chicken no fish) and neither of my grandmas (they're both around 75/80yo) can cope yet (this is 13 years later). not that it happens often cos i don't live near so rarely see either of them. but despite me reassuring them that i'm really not arsed about having something made special for me (am "easy" vegetarian, not one of those ones that, like, doesn't eat any vegetables ever apart from maybe chips, wtf), and seriously, i'm more than happy to eat whatever everyone else does minus the meat/fish dish, my mum's mum always buys something like beanfeast (= packet meal consisting of beans mostly, augmented with some faux-meat soya stuff - this is fine by me, beanfeast is yum if you add a few peppers/onions/garlics to it, though actually the peppers/onions/garlics would be fine without the beanfeast) to "replace" the meat as if i was missing out in the first place, and my dad's mum leaves me to my own devices (also fine by me, she's got enuff to do already) saying worriedly and baffledly "i just can't think of anything to base it around, see...". most of us have grown up w/some awareness of the concept of vegetarianness, but when they were growing up and being taught to cook for their future families, to not eat meat when the choice was there would've been a completely bizarro idea. lived through rationing and stuff, and to refuse good meat in a time of comparative plenty would make zero sense. i guess the pro-veggie argument that deals with animal cruelty must've not been relevant then (or perhaps just not prevalent, how long has meat for the mass-market been produced via minimum-price+maximum-suffering(an tastes like crap)-but-who-giz-a-fuck method, were cows happier in the '50s?).

then also i went to stay with my friend in pakistan just before christmas and pretty much everyone there thought i was complete utter mentalist for not eating meat, his mum laughed at me cos she thought it was such a funny idea (i didn't mind, it weren't nasty, his mum = top). went for dinner at his parents' house and there were plenty of things w/o meat so no prob for me or extra work for them but they were telling me exactly what everything was and he goes "yeah, this one has beef in it so pick the meat out- " pauses to register look of lily-livered horror "-you can pick the meat out right? then there'll be no meat in it and you can eat it." haha, as1m, ever since you have known me (ten years) when have you ever seen me pick the meat out of anything and eat the tainted remains? but yeah anyway, they were saying same thing: but what do you eat instead? like there's got to be a big steak-shaped hole in yr life. wonder if other ppl have the same with other, uh, lifethings - what, you don't have a tv? what do you do instead?

anyway, dud, obviously.