Lions And Antelopes

Terminology legend for those too lacy to Google or use dictionary:

Vegetarian
- a person who does not eat or does not believe in eating meat, fish, fowl, or, in some cases, any food derived from animals, as eggs or cheese, but subsists on vegetables, fruits, nuts, grain, etc.

Vegan
- a vegetarian who omits all animal products from the diet.

Pescetarian
- a vegetarian who will eat fish; also called pescevegetarian, piscatorial.

I’m an omnivore, I haven’t moved on from the nutrition that evolution has created my bunodont teeth to indicate. This is to say that I eat meat, as well as fish, vegetables, fruit and so on. I don’t have a healthy diet, I don’t count calories, and though I’ve considered trying out vegetarianism and pescatarianism in the past, it hasn’t lead to anything. I guess I’m not motivated enough. Once I saw this horrible documentary with no narration that showed the brutal way animals are treated in the food production process in some French factory or something along those lines. The scene I remember the best was one where masses of little baby chicks were moved around on a conveyor belt to these plastic boxes. Some chicks kept falling off and this raunchy looking factory-worker lady just threw them back on, like they hadn’t even been alive. No emotion, no carefulness. It was like she had been throwing rocks, bored as hell. And these poor chicks just sat on that conveyor, fell around, chirping. Still, that documentary wasn’t enough for me to pull a Lisa Simpson and start rejecting meat over night because of emotional reasons (it did make me want to adopt all the poor baby chicks of the world though). I guess all I can do is check the brand on what I eat and prefer local brands. Luckily I don’t eat that much chicken so, yeah…at least I’m keeping myself from contributing to some cruelty. Eh?

As for the versus idea of the topic, I don’t find that particularly interesting. I won’t go to health benefits and such since that’s a topic everyone and their mother has likely gone through multiple times in their lives - I think some were already covered here too. Plus there’s google for finding out pro and con arguments on that. I’m not passionate enough on the subject to fill this post with my own arguments.
What I will say is that I respect other people’s nutritional choices and don’t feel the need to start shoving meat down anyone’s throat. Many of my friends are vegetarians and it’s fine by me since they don’t exactly try to shove their lifestyle down my throat and they are not snobby about it. Vegetarianism is not going to harm anyone, except for the one on the diet if they aren’t careful, so I don’t mind, why should I?

Only unpleasant thing is that some vegetarians and vegans alike show a nasty higher than thou attitude about their ethical and nutritional choices. I think the worst of it I saw on PETA’s forums. One day I figured I’d give the site a look and what I saw was a board full of thousands of aggressive vegans whose attitude was utterly disgusting. In one thread some poor new member asked if she was a bad person for eating meat or something along those lines and a hoard of higher than thou vegans, senior members, pretty much told her that yes she is the worst person in the world and she doesn’t really love animals. It was like witnessing a crowd of 20-year-olds give a 5-year-old little girl the beating of her life. That sort of an attitude is not going to help anyone. I’ve seen somewhat similar rude behavior from the carnivore side too. Mostly crude jokes in the form of face book groups though. Nothing as flashy as PETA forums. I guess I’ve been lucky on that front. Generally I’m surrounded by accepting people in real life so such conflicts rarely come up there. Most of the rudeness I witness is online where it's bound to be harsher than in real life due to a certain degree of anonymity.

I guess I'm done with this ramble. I don't think I had anything concrete to say but... I posted! Late, sure, but better late than never. :P