How to be a vegetarian? (And also, why to be one?)

[Alex K]

That's very true, about taste retraining. I now love all my replacement foods, including soya/oat/rice milk. It's just how my food tastes. All these replacements have got hugely better recently, in case anyone tried them a while back and thought they were horrible. Some of them indeed were very nasty. But now there is a wide range and you'd have to be a really fussy, stubborn bastard not to find something you like.

Of course, some people decide beforehand that anything that isn't meat will be disgusting (I've met quite a few).

I find it quite striking how my sensitivity for the tastes of different vegetables has intensified over the past 8 years. I now find a rich world of flavours and spices and volatile oils in things like fennel, all types of celery, beats, etc. that I would never have suspected, and have never noticed before when I thought of vegetables as the mere side dish. Rather than being forced to eat boring stuff as a vegetarian, I find that food has become so much more interesting to me.

[Alex K]

This is just slacktavism to feel good about yourself.

I find your attitude of -- apparently -- dismissing any ecology-inspired changes in personal behavior as "slacktivism", very problematic, even stupid. As if it didn't matter what the 7 billion people on this planet do. Liking a page on a facebook for saving starving children in africa, that's slacktivism. Changing your behaviour to reduce your footprint is not slacktivism, please! Insinuating that all these people do it for selfish reasons and can therefore be dismissed might just be a bit of a selfish excuse on your side not to change anything about your habits. I'm not saying that it is.

[Catholic_Lady]

Delete due to misunderstanding

[The Grand Nudger]

If there is one thing I can say after being a vegetarian atheist for 8 years now, it's that the meat eater is almost as offended by the mere existence of vegetarians as the believer is offended by the mere existence of atheists.

When confronted with one, they lose the ability to brain and are reduced to slobbering trolls who need to taunt, tease and straw-man until they feel sufficiently reassured of their lifestyle.

Perhaps this is why meat eaters taunt you, rather than any dietary decision you've made?  

This is just slacktavism to feel good about yourself.

I find your attitude of -- apparently -- dismissing any ecology-inspired changes in personal behavior as "slacktivism", very problematic, even stupid. As if it didn't matter what the 7 billion people on this planet do. Liking a page on a facebook for saving starving children in africa, that's slacktivism. Changing your behaviour to reduce your footprint is not slacktivism, please!  Insinuating that all these people do it for selfish reasons and can therefore be dismissed might just be a bit of a selfish excuse on your side not to change anything about your habits. I'm not saying that it is.

Picking the broccoli over the bacon isn't going to save any trees, but it's easier than actually planting trees, or raising funds and public support for a wildlife refuge, or...well....actually doing -anything- that might achieve what a person set out to do by picking the broccoli.  What counts, ofc, is that it makes the person feel good, that one feels like they can tell others what they should do and criticize them for not buying in. As you did above, and as the OP did with the thread.

Slacktavism.

Now, you can imagine how that might irritate a person who hasn't bought into the marketing, or actually is doing something that will achieve the effect, eh? For example, unless sustainable ag models are supported and promoted there's no difference in picking the brocolli or the bacon. There is currently no known way of growing sustainable commercial vegetables that doesn't involve livestock. You either spread shit over your fields or you spread oil over your fields. If you'd like for us to stop spreading oil over our fields we're going to need -more- livestock production, not less...and it's going to have to be integrated (rather than segregated as it is now). I suppose we could go back to strip mining our fertility.....but.......that was even worse than oil is.

[CapnAwesome]

This is just slacktavism to feel good about yourself.

I find your attitude of -- apparently -- dismissing any ecology-inspired changes in personal behavior as "slacktivism", very problematic, even stupid. As if it didn't matter what the 7 billion people on this planet do. Liking a page on a facebook for saving starving children in africa, that's slacktivism. Changing your behaviour to reduce your footprint is not slacktivism, please!  Insinuating that all these people do it for selfish reasons and can therefore be dismissed might just be a bit of a selfish excuse on your side not to change anything about your habits. I'm not saying that it is.

Well I didn't really have time to go into details but what I mean is that people have to be realistic about what they are actually doing. I hear vegetarians all the time make outlandish and untrue claims about what vegetarianism does. In the opening post the person said that they are a vegetarian because they want a clean and healthy environment and a rainforest still there for their children. I'm sorry, but by being a vegetarian you are not accomplishing that. Especially if you still own a car and generally partake in a first world lifestyle. Most people who think they are saving the world are still part of the consumer culture and are pretty badly deluded about what their real footprint looks like. As for me personally, everything I own can fit in a backpack. I don't take part in a first world lifestyle as part of an intentional choice and am not part of the consumer world. So I don't have existential guilt that I need to alleviate by adopting some goofy diet that really doesn't do much. If you want to save the rainforest, you need to go down and save the rainforest. If you want to smugly feel superior to those around you, vegetarianism might be a good way to go.

[Alex K]

That's impressive (the lifestyle), personally wouldn't do it though. Anyways

I'd call the smug superiority an added bonus then, because I really didn't become vegetarian for that reason