Seriously, Anthony Bourdain, - I would love to
bi*ch slap him! And take his fairy @ss to a slaughter house and ask him, if "vegans are still the enemy of everything good"?

However, one thing I will say for him- he may have a visceral reaction against vegetarianism, but it's not a reaction he has left unexamined. One of his tv  episodes featuring a trip to Argentina dwelled prominently on the slaughter of beef cattle, and Bourdain's own feelings of distaste over the matter- and was also honest enough to admit that America was of course no different in its taste for beef, but that we are more separated and sanitized from the abatoir. So while I don't expect anyone to give Bourdain a medal, at least give him a little credit.

A number of the cases cited in the NY Times article have to do with certain dietary restrictions that do not imply moral judgmentalism, e.g. keeping kosher (well, that can go either way), and being gluten-free.  So they are rather different than the cases where veg*nism is one partner's choice, if that choice is based on animal-welfare/animal-rights ethics.

By casual observation, I think we might make these hypotheses about how the choice between omnivory and veg*nism relates to gender, in Euro-North American society:

1. Carnivory seems often to be part of the package associated with masculinity; refusing to eat meat often looks less than masculine.  Therefore we might expect there to be more female veg*ns than male veg*ns in North America.

2. At the very beginning of relationships, male veg*ns seem to be less tolerant of female omnivores, and less willing to commit themselves to an ongoing relationship with them, than the other way around.  Therefore there are more mixed couples in which the female is the veg*n than there are couples in which the male is the veg*n.

And even if it is true, I have no idea what exactly it tells us about issues of power, fastidiousness, zeal, purity, dread, and so forth.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

The irritation resurfaced when I read the post above: "I'm not a vegangelical" says Balcavage, clearly wishing to dissociate herself from the strident, shrill etc. image which the word is intended to convey. And in the many emotional anti-veg diatribes we see whenever Gristmill examines the environmental ethics of meat-eating, such an image is constantly invoked. "I'd eat less meat myself if PETA just weren't so strident" runs the complaint.

Then my thoughts went to the fact that despite living in a community where veg*ns are not at all rare, I've never actually encountered this trope myself. Just where are all these strident veggies?

And then I suddenly began to wonder if this absence was actually such a good thing. I've always been one of those "polite" veg*ns myself, always responding with a quiet deflection when someone asks at a party "why aren't you eating the ham/beef/turkey - it's delicious!" I hold back from mentioning the short unhappy life and nasty brutal death of the animal they're eating. It seems so unfestive and awkward, so I say something nonconfrontational, like Oh I just don't like to eat meat. The carnivore at my elbow usually backs off at this point and changes the subject.

But perhaps I'll have the courage to take a more aggressive line, now I have a label to cling to. Instead of cringing defensively when this trendy coinage reappears, as surely it will, I'll emulate the Impressionists who turned sneering insult to badge of honor. "Meat is disgusting", I'll say, " you should be ashamed of yourself. I'm a vegangelical and you're infringing my rights to a meat-free environment. Why are you insisting on eating that crap in front of me? Take it somewhere where I don't have to see it."

The non-smokers did it. God, wouldn't it be great if the hard-core carnivores at a dinner party were banished to the back deck in the rain to chew their slim jims away from polite company. Are we being just too nice? Fellow vegangelicals: rally to the banner. Our hour has come!

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

By the way, I do not really like writing it.  For one thing, I hate having to look at the keyboard to see that the asterisk is a capital 8.

Anyway, in the context of the NY Times article, I was just being scrupulously legalistic, perhaps overly so.  The article, and Sarah's post, seem to have to do with vegans, who presumably are vegan as a result of having adopted an animal-rights ethic.  If non-vegan vegetarians are aspiring toward the same ethic, they must be aware that they have not got the point about the treatment of dairy cows and laying hens, and the suffering of fish, so they are in no position to get all Jonathan-Edwards-ish with a significant other.

"Ovo-lacto-," by the way, is linguistically  rather questionable.  But don't let that stop you from using it.  In English, there are no rules regarding proper construction of new compounds.  The only rule that matters is, "Throw it against the wall and see if it sticks."

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Lact-ovo I've always despised, partly as it's often insufficient: lact-ovo-veg-and-some-environmentally-responsibly-caught-fishetarian describes many. My spouse sometimes self-describes as a Hibernian-Prussian-American, which is good for a couple of laughs at a party but does not fit the space on most official forms and would get tiresome if trotted out regularly. It also ignores the many other little threads of mongrel DNA bound up in her totally adorable self.

So for me the bottom line is that if I'm to fulfill my aspirations of marching with the strident and the shrill and don't want to be looked down on for my compromised non-veganism I'm going to need that inclusive, non-divisive label, and I need to be able to speak it. Veg-star-en I do not believe I can utter with a straight face. I may follow Canis's alternative advice and run vejun up the flagpole and see who salutes it.

Other suggestions anyone?


The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

Anyway, the portmanteau word "vegangelical" works fairly well.  There are animal-rights activists who think that fellow vegans miss the point of what they are doing if they fail to tell people in the vicinity why they are not eating meat, etc., even as there are evangelical Christians who would consider themselves deficient if they do not frequently start chatting with friends and neighbors about Jesus Christ.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Since my eating habits are essentially impossible to describe with any brevity (no red meat, no seafood at all; I will eat poultry & pork, but am scrupulous about avoiding factory-raised animals, and generally choose vegetarian when dining out;no game meats, but I will eat game birds every now & then, lacking other options; mostly organic and quite a bit local, mostly whole foods and minimal processed stuff, etc., etc., etc.) I always describe myself as "vegetarian" when traveling on business.  I was in Quebec last week and was surprised to find that not only is salmon considered vegetarian, but so is duck confit!

So, does "vegetarian" include fish?  I always thought is was a "nothing with eyes" sort of definition (hence, the inevitable potato jokes).  Having grown up in a commercial fishing town and seen the bloody slaughter of the docks on a day when the boats come in, I can't imagine fish could be included on ethical grounds as somehow superior to other meats.

That's the question.  What is the illusory erotic standard for food anti-cruelty, anti-GHG political correctness.  And is a juicy taboo slab of meat considered "naughty"?

And therefore exciting.  Hehey.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

I ran into a fair few vegangelicals when I was covering the fur protests on the Russian River a few years back for the local paper. The PETA folks made themselves extremely unpopular with the locals and managed to create a huge rift in the community, as well as a considerable backlash: The meat-minded folks in the community started a weekly barbecue in support of the store that was getting boycotted for selling vintage fur.

The PETA types are shooting their cause in the foot with their strident antics. Yes, many of them are reasonable, but it only takes a few unreasonable ones to discredit the movement.

And remember: portabello (Agaricus brunnescens)is 30 percent protein (by dry weight). Just because you're vegan doesn't mean you have to be protein deficient.

Eat what you grow, grow what you eat

People like to get all het up about their food choices; maybe because it's no longer OK to talk about religion, politics, abortion, etc. in polite company.  Hence the vitriol here on Grist everytime we discuss vegetarianism.

(As an aside, if meat is on the menu, I'm nearly always eating chicken; because of this I have a friend who always calls me "chicken-f*cker," to which I reply, in my best Mr. Garrison drawl, "in front of the children, we like to say "chicken-lover."  I am always reminded of this, somehow, during the raging Grist vegedebates, and so am always snickering, most inappropriately).

My fiance is not a picky eater at all: his list of "do not eat" includes zucchini & pineapple (unfortunately both favorites of mine).  He eats beef and fish and most other things.  However, he has quite gamely jumped on board the CSA bandwagon and is even talking about investing in a chest freezer for this summer's harvest; meanwhile, I am not about to chastise him for getting the occasional burger at McDonald's.

I think food choices are just one of the many things that can attract, or repel, one from a potential date.  I mean, hot guy coming in all dirty from the organic pumpkin patch is pretty, well, hot.  Hotter, perhaps, than hot guy sitting on the couch watching NASCAR and swilling Taco Bell. But it all depends on how important food issues are to you; some people will not consider dating outside of their religion.  

When I met my future husband, he pretty much lived on burgers & pizza - the cheaper the better. When I brought a nice bottle of wine to his apartment we drank it out of coffee mugs.  Now, he thinks nothing of spending top dollar on local, humanely-raised, heritage pork, and he is the biggest Reidel snob you'll ever meet.  We like to call him a food "diamond in the rough."

As for chefs (or anyone who cooks for that matter) who look askance at the plates of vegetarians/vegans, I say, how unimaginative!  And you call yourself a chef?  

It's always so disappointing to go into a nice restaurant (I'm a vegan, so it's rare to eat out anyway) and find that the vegetable dish is an afterthought, a garnish--decoration, no less!  Unfortunately, I think that's the way most people view the natural world anyway.  Trees, grass, blue sky and water--lovely backdrops, but really only tinsel.  Is it no wonder then that our "chefs" can draw no inspiration from the earth's green bounty?