Many people consider themselves to be vegetarian, yet also eat fish every day. Some also eat chicken. Some also eat pork. Some also eat beef. Some people who do not consider themselves to be vegetarian primarily eat rice, misho shiru, natto, tofu, yuba, seaweed and vegetables. Some people cannot exist on a vegetarian diet because of the allergies that Jinmyo mentions, and yet their basic approach to eating is vegetarian. Many women become aenemic on a vegetarian diet.

Perhaps some people think that being a vegetarian is cool just as some people think that being a Buddhist is cool because Richard Gere hangs out with the Dalai Lama. I think it is insulting and shallow however for it to be assumed that this is the motivatation behind someone such as Jinmyo to speak of themselves as a vegetarian. The quality of her nodes, the obvious time and effort that she has put into them, shows that she is not someone who is to be dismissed so lightly as Mr. fustflum has.

I have noded many vegetarian recipes because vegetarian food can be wonderful if protein and carbohydrates are in balance, the ingredients are fresh and are cared for and presented as well as one can.

I think that it does not matter who is or is not a vegetarian. I also think that it can be confusing to eat ethics. Instead of taking up a stance I think it is more worthwhile to pay attention to what we eat and why. I think it is important to look into what we eat, what is involved in it becoming our own skin, meat, bones, and marrow. There is much suffering in this world. Some of it can be prevented. Most of it cannot. I think that how animals are bred, raised, transported, slaughtered, butchered is something that someone should look into and then do whatever seems appropriate or possible to them to do.

Perhaps you think differently.

Let me share a story. You can glean whatever you want from it, or nothing at all.

My father is a farmer. Unlike most farm kids, I very rarely helped out on the farm, but a few months ago, I did come home from college for a few days to drive the tractor a bit. I was to till up the ground so that the crop could be planted there later.

There's a species of bird (I can't remember the name, perhaps someone can help me out) that builds its nest on open ground such as in the middle of fields. What makes this bird unique is that when something it perceives as a predator approaches its nest, it doesn't attempt to defend the nest like many birds, it runs away from the nest, attempting to draw as much attention to itself as possible, and trying to act as a decoy to lure the enemy away from the nest. In the wild, most predators will chase the mother bird instead of attacking the camoflauged nest, and the mother will return to the nest after the predator tires (these are very, very engergetic little birds).

A number of such birds had made nests in the field. And, logically, these birds see 20-ton John Deere tractors as predators, but their diversionary tactics don't generally work very well on a tractor driver who's only concerned with getting the field plowed.

As I drove up and down the field, the mother birds would run around in frenzy whenever I was nearby, and then go back and squat in their nests after I had passed. The first two nests, I plowed into oblivion without even noticing them. The mother birds from those two nests, as well as others trying to distract me from other nests, tended to blunder in the blades of the plow and meet their doom also (this was one of those speed demon 14MPH tractors).

I felt bad about smashing those nests and eggs under tons of razor-sharp steel blades. The mothers who had not yet despondently thurst themselves in front of the tractor would return to the spots where their children had been sleeping peacefully, only to find freshly-plowed ground where their nest had been.

I took note of where the remaining birds in the fields were sitting, assured that that's where their nests were located. I mentally marked the next such spot I would come to, and when I approached it (mother bird gesturing insultingly at me), I brought the tractor to stop, hopped out, harvested the eggs from the nest, and carried them over to the edge of the field, and left them beside a pool of water where a number of the mother birds seemed to gather to drink. I knew it was futile, though: the mother birds would never return to the eggs once they had been touched by humans. The eggs would never hatch. They would die.

I knew I had wasted my time saving that nest, but just the same, I took great care to not let that nest's mother bird suicide herself under the tractor, which was quite a challenge. But what could I do about the rest of the nests in the field? I plowed every single one of them into the fucking ground. Gee, I'm sorry, but did you have a BETTER idea?

I probably killed about 50 birds and potential-birds that day, over the course of plowing the field.

What were we growing in that field?

Soy.

Enjoy your Veggieburger!
sensei wrote: Many people consider themselves to be vegetarian, yet also eat fish every day.
A reason why fish isn't (always) considered as meat goes back to the christian/catholic religion. Besides the story that Jesus presented his disciples fish, the Catharsers living in the south of France in the Dark Middle Ages added some philosophical ideas, being the main reason in this context that fish is no real meat because it's white meat (...).
In the current western civilization it is more or less accepted that the brain is the main thing of the body, but the Catharsers thought it was blood, and by eating blood of animals (as if humans aren't animals...), you would assimilate the vibrations and "essence" of that lower animal. Aka: you are what you eat. They thought that white meat like fish and chicken doesn't contain blood, hence would not take your spirit/soul down/degenerate to the animal level. Also, when eating vegetables and white meat etc. it was supposed to take you up to the highers spheres of enlightenment and the good old days of eden and the likes. The latter is stolen from the greek mythology; more precisely, the times before the gods and goddess: the time of Kronos, where there was peace in the world and plenty of food so that there was no need to kill animals and eat meat: "the heaven on earth".

Well, that's what they thought. Btw, there is no statistical correlation that eating meat results in more violence, only that there may be a tendency that vegetarians, in general, tend to be less violent. An interesting book that discusses some of these ideas is "The Heretic's Feast : A History of Vegetarianism" by Colin Spencer.

Veg`e*ta"ri*an (?), n.

One who holds that vegetables and fruits are the only proper food for man. Strict vegetarians eat no meat, eggs, or milk.

 

© Webster 1913.


Veg`e*ta"ri*an, a.

Of or pertaining to vegetarianism; as, a vegetarian diet.

 

© Webster 1913.

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