Meatless Like Me
Slate has a great piece called Meatless Like Me. Now, before all you omnivores run away, I want you to know it isn't the typical smug, holier-than-thou, tree-hugging vegetarian diatribe that we've all heard too many times before. It is simply trying to explain that the vast majority of us vegetarians are really not that weird:
To demonstrate what a vegetarian really is, let's begin with a simple thought experiment. Imagine a completely normal person with completely normal food cravings, someone who has a broad range of friends, enjoys a good time, is carbon-based, and so on. Now remove from this person's diet anything that once had eyes, and, wham!, you have yourself a vegetarian. Normal person, no previously ocular food, end of story. Some people call themselves vegetarians and still eat chicken or fish, but unless we're talking about the kind of salmon that comes freshly plucked from the vine, this makes you an omnivore.
Fortunately, at Stanford and here in New York it's not as much of an issue, but I can tell you that in Indiana, and a little in New Mexico, I got some strange looks and reactions from people when they found out I was one of those.
At 4:53 AM on May 9, 2008, Keacher said,
Good read. I've been surprised by how much of a non-issue being a vegetarian is out here. People seem to expect that at least a few people in a group will be vegetarian.