I had a discussion recently where someone accused me of not being a “real vegetarian” because I eat eggs. I know that’s kind of a grey area, and it differs for each person and their reason for being vegetarian (religious, texture, health, environmental, ethical, etc); but what do you personally eat?
For me, personally, I keep it simple. If it looks and tastes like meat, I don’t eat it (except special occasions like religious holidays). It makes me feel bad, and I dislike the texture anyway. Feels like an animal died specifically for me, and I didn’t even enjoy it. A waste of a perfectly good life. But I’m ok with “regenerative” animal products like eggs and cheese and honey and such, as long as the animals were treated with respect (hard to find dairy that meets this criteria).
Probably the most contentious is bones. Someone once gave me some ramen, and later told me they were surprised I ate it because the broth was made with chicken bones. I didn’t know, but also it didn’t really disturb me either. Those bones would have been thrown out if not put into soup; and the end result was soup, not a drumstick or something obviously meaty. If nobody told me, I wouldn’t even notice. For some reason, occasional bone broth is fine by my books. I’m not an extremely strict vegetarian in the first place though, and everyone I asked said that bones are not vegetarian.
It makes me think about Blood & Bone fertiliser. If you grow tomatoes with it, are those tomatoes not vegetarian…? Where is the line? Curious on others thoughts.
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To me a everything that’s not part of or made from a part of an animal’s body is vegetarian. So no meat, bones, liver, gelatine etc. I would consider vegetarianism to be first and foremost a diet.
Veganism on the other hand is more like an ideology. It is the belief that no human has the right to exert control over another animal. So obviously a vegetarian diet that also excludes products that are obtained from animals, like eggs, milk, honey, leather, wool, etc. But also being against zoos, pets, working animals (such as police dogs) and other stuff like that. I think though that veganism is an ideology that requires nuance. It’s going to be basically impossible to be a “perfect” vegan and most probably wouldn’t go so far as to reject everything I listed, or would agree that compromises can be made for the greater good (for example I don’t believe police dogs should be a thing, but I wouldn’t want to take away a blind person’s dog and I can’t help but like pets).
tl;dr: If you eat meat or bones sometimes you’re by definition not a vegetarian and probably nobody is actually 100% vegan. It’s perfectly understandable that you’d call yourself a vegetarian to keep it simple, even if it’s only 95% true though. I certainly call myself vegan, even though it’s definitely less than 95% true.
All these labels…
I try my best to avoid beef and pork. Simy because, asan adult, i saw videos of cows frolicing in grass and getting pets. I saw pigs with as much personality as my dog. Any animal that will roll over to get a belly rub i can no longer bring myself to eat.
Thats it…no more reason than that… empathy.
This here. Although I also save spiders and all kinds of critters. And I do occasionally eat meat, but not with a clear conscience. I avoid most milk products, but still haven’t managed to let go of cheese. :/
My initial and main reason foris being vegetarian the environmental impact. From that perspective beef and dairy would need to be the main things to cut. I cut all meat and most milk, I’m not a big fan of eggs. Main issue is cheese. Otherwise I’d be vegan. Even though it’s a bit a mess, but the main goal of halving my food related carbon emissions is reached.
I’m vegetarian mostly for environmental reasons.
If the food is going in the trash if I don’t eat it, I don’t really care if it’s meat or not. I’m mostly trying to reduce eating meat, but throwing it away otherwise is dumb.
I’m level 5 vegetarian with couple of missionary badges and gold stars for public protest. Next year I hope to adopt couple of old chickens and ascend to level 6.
Making a vegetarian dish for your friends without telling them and having all of them enjoy it and none of them go “Is this vegetarian?” Earns you a blackbelt.
I had people think there was legitimately crab in this recipe even though I told them before there wasn’t: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkVc5dN0eQ8
How much XP does it take to reach level 5?
We had a re-birthing ceremony in my friend’s hot tub. I am now a Level Five Laser Lotus in my Reformed neo vegetarian community.
This changes from guild to guild by mine follows the Old Denomination rules of Southern European Vegetarianism (Spanish branch) so it’s 75k points.
I think you are doing great, good on you for thinking about what you eat and doing your best to do it thoughtfully. I think you should feel comfortable calling yourself vegetarian because you are doing your best to eat as little meat as possible. People who ask questions are probably mostly curious how it works and sharing your experience might help them make similar choices. In my experience the only people policing these labels are too online or openly antagonistic to the entire premise I don’t pay either much mind.
Personally I don’t like eggs much, but I think getting then from a local farm you have a relationship with is the best possible scenario. I do try to avoid dairy as much as possible. You have to remember, in order to get animal milk you need to take it from the baby animals. At scale this involves a pretty horrible love for everyone involved. At small scale maybe it’s ok. If the mom is overproducing for example, and both the mom and child have a good life. But that doesn’t exist in the grocery store or even at most farms. So I just avoid it. It’s hard at first until you find good replacements but many cultures in the world got by fine without it for centuries so there’s plenty of great recipes to learn. I’m not interested in trying to get everyone off it, but most people I talk to have never given it a thought. They think cows just make milk no matter what and need you to milk them so we might as well. I think if you know the true cost of something you might at least have more respect for it.
But as far as things like bone broth, gelatin etc. I basically agree, these are waste products. I might not like the industry it’s coming from, but for God’s sake if you are going to kill an animal at least use every last bit of it.
I am not a particularly strict person when it comes to eating, but my main criteria are environmental impact and “how complex was the nervous system involved and how much did it have to suffer”. I admit I am pretty racist in that regard. No big cluster of neurons, no pity from me.
I am ovo-lacto and pretty strict about it. To me the line is “did an animal have to die to produce this?”
If the answer is no, I’m okay with it. Eggs, dairy, honey etc. Are all on the table. I always try to avoid low-quality eggs that are likely factory farmed. Organic only or cage-free local farms I have seen with my own eyes. Dairy I am a little split on - we do cheese and yogurt and plenty of dairy products, but we use oat milk instead of regular milk. This has more to do with flavor and texture preferences than dietary morals.
There is ONE exception I allow myself and that’s gelatin in unavoidable areas - the main one being medicine. I will try to find vegetarian options but sometimes it can be quite hard to find pills which do not contain pregelatinized starch or gelatin capsules.
I’m also curious - where do people come down on things like oysters and clams?
Mussels especially are so extremely basic in their construction they’re almost like plants. It’s an interesting question. Personally I don’t like the texture
Mushrooms are genetically more similar to animals than to plants.
This fact will not save them from my pan of butter 🫤
I’m not trying to be perfect, I’m just trying to make a difference. Purity ideals are for 13 year olds.
There is no vegetarian authority. If you can live up to your own standards you doing better than most of us.
Not to mention that reducing your consumption of animal products, whether or not it’s a total thing, is still a very good thing and is probably the single most impactful thing you can do as an individual to help out the planet and your health, especially when it comes to red meat.
This is the mindset most should have about it
Perfection is hard
People shouldn’t be giving others grief for making moves in the right direction just because it’s not as far as they’ve gone
The strange thing is that the person griefing me was in no ways vegetarian and eats meat twice a day 😂 I didn’t take it too personally
You’re doing great, king, far better than I am! Keep it up.
reducing your consumption of animal products … is probably the single most impactful thing you can do as an individual to help out the planet
I seriously doubt this
It’s basically true. Animal agriculture (land use, resource use, and pollution to create animal products) is a major source of pollution which competes with transportation for the biggest source of global warming.
Unfortunately the more nuanced take is that it’s not a single thing; it’s a series of choices that eventually become habit. But so is not owning a car.
I think technically the single most impactful thing you can do is to remove major polluters from the planet (though in many cases that is illegal so, in case cops are watching, I’m certainly not recommending that).
No one ever expects… THE VEGAN INQUISITION!!!
Incorrect. I am the vegetarian authority.
For me, the border is animal parts (meat and bones). I eat fish, all seafood (squid, shrimp, …), eggs, cheese, milk, … I know that fish and squids and shrimps are animals, but yes, eat what you want, don’t let groups with their ideology impose on you what you eat.
There is no shame in what you eat. Where I live (70% are Orthodox Christians, 25% are Muslims) religious fasting is very common. In short, Christians in certain parts of the year (and every Friday) follow a vegan diet, Muslims in one part of the year follow a diet with intermittent fasting.
I always ask them “You believe in God, the Almighty, the creator of the universe, all 2 trillion galaxies, each with 100 billion stars, countless planets, and he cares what and when you put something in your stomach?”
I’m curious why you don’t eat animal parts but squid is ok? Squid and octopus are more intelligent and show more self awareness than many animals raised for food. I am no longer a vegetarian, but still won’t eat squid or octopus any more than I would a chimpanzee. I guess it depends on your reason for vegetarianism. Please do not take this as an assault on your beliefs, just curiosity.
Initially, it was a bet with my daughter that I could go a year without eating meat. After that, I got used to it and don’t feel the need to eat meat in my diet. The second factor is the quality of the meat in the stores. Everyone brags about “organic”, but it’s very different from real farm meat. When the meat is “industrial”, I won’t eat it. Third, I’m starting to get annoyed by the greed of farms to produce and sell more meat with a longer shelf life for a lower price. They don’t care about the health of the buyers (or the animals in general). So no thanks.
Why fish, squid, mussels, octopuses, crabs? They weren’t originally included in the bet, secondly, I don’t know, my decision without any particular reason. BTW, I don’t think any animal is intelligent so I don’t have a problem with that.
I’m not vegetarian or vegan but in my mind eggs have always been fair game for vegetarians. It’s just vegans who skip animal by-products as well as meat.
Vegan. Anything else and you’re just doing mental gymnastics.
Noooo my heckin cheese.
Honestly, who cares. Eat what you’re comfortable with. The label thing being a real or not is do assine. People doesn’t eat certain things all the time.
