Elaina — it sounds to me like you’re the one doing a lot of the judging, coming in and accusing people of being purists (in quotes for some reason) and accusing them of self-righteousness… no one’s dismissing you and the questions you have.

As far as books, Becoming Vegan by Brenda Davis, RD and Vesanto Melina, MS, RD is the main one to look for. Thoroughly researched and it covers all ages. It’s extremely good and should be on everyone’s bookshelf.

As said in my first post, I’m a meat eater, and even I get annoyed by meat eaters calling themselves vegetarians, it just sounds so stupid, and actually, it is just stupid. Meat, from whatever animal source, is not vegetarian food. Period.

Example: I once lived in a place with a group of people, and a cook. One day, I saw some fish, and I thought: Great, I’ll have some fish for a change. When I tried to take some of the fish, the cook told me that it was for the vegetarians. Now, in this case, the cook knew better (a lot better, in fact), but there were actually people in the group, who called themselves vegetarians, who then went to eat meat! Ridiculous and very annoying, too.

People should just use words for what they mean, and not assign meanings to words that just don’t make any sense.

I can perfectly understand how incredibly annoying it must be to have meat eaters call themselves vegetarians. It’s ludicrous, and shows a severe lack of common sense/intelligence. Even I, as a meat eater, thinks it’s quite stupid and very annoying, that there are people who eat meat, but call themselves vegetarians.

Wake up people, animals don’t grow on plants, they grow inside other animals, or inside eggs, which come out of animals. So I’ll repeat it once more: When you eat meat of any kind, you’re not a vegetarian, you’re a meat eater.

vegans, i hate to break this to you, but you kill things.

No revelations there. Every vegan I’ve ever met is fully aware of The Real World and realizes that you can’t live a life that completely avoids death. So, um, “Duh?”

I think that if you were to take a closer look at the devastating environmental affects of fishing and the cruelty associated with dairy and eggs, you might not just start to like vegans a little more, you might even become one.

Congrats on being nearly vegetarian. I suspect that if you’re really that close, you’ll eventually go the rest of the way.

vegans, i hate to break this to you, but you kill things. you kill animals. you bash little bugs to bits driving down the road. your fresh vegetables come from farms where little rodents are mowed down by harvesters. all of this suffering is part of your life, despite your good intentions.

i have good intentions, but i also realize i cannot completely end the suffering in this world. i pick the suffering that REALLY bothers me and try to end it. what suffering is that, you ask? the meat industry. i abhor animals living a life God did not intend them to live. that is why i dont eat meat. fish… well, they are free. i dont eat farmed fish, nor am i into any seafood besides fish. i rarely eat fish at all, to be honest. my rationale is that fish arent suffering until they are caught- thus they are still evolving and we contribute positively to better fish in the world. i would also eat a deer if i went into the woods and killed it with a bow and arrow for the same reason. nature is cruel. this is God’s way. i cant stop all the suffering in the world, nor do i try to deceive myself into thinking im somehow better than anyone else for my efforts. i just do what i feel is right.

i am a vegetarian. 99.5% of my diet is vegetables.

My husband, for lack of a better term, would I guess be characterized as a pesco-vegetarian. About 8 years ago he realized he was really overweight, stop eating red meat and chicken, and started running. Since then he’s been in a number of marathons (although he’s complaining about his winter weight gain at the moment) and still won’t touch red meat, chicken, pork, etc, but still eats fish. I don’t think he really ever had an ethical problem with it, but he’s much healthier now which is why it’s easy for him to stick with it.

I, on the other hand, have ever tried vegetarianism in any form…I was raised on a ranch and eggs/bacon/steak were diet staples, but most of what we ate came from our own henhouse or from neighboring ranches. I suppose that to me it was just the cycle of life — but then again, we (like our neighbors) just had a small family homestead, we weren’t mass producing for the supermarkets, and our hens were ‘open-range’ before that was cool.

Of course, now that I’m a city dweller and my husband doesn’t eat meat, I am getting more and more to the point where I don’t eat meat either. It’s much easier to prepare one meal for the both of us then to prepare two seperate meals…as a bonus, it’s actually cheaper! What really changed my attitude recently, though, was stumbling across one of those “this is what they do to animals” videos by PETA or whomever, and so…yeah. Very troubling, especially having experience raising animals myself…that’s just not right.

I guess what I’m saying is we don’t really have a ‘term’ for what we are, we just eat what we eat, don’t get preachy about it, and hope that there are options for us when we have to attend a party or function. It’s really that simple!

That post sounded like my cousin who used to joke that he was a carnivore for reasons of “plants’ rights” - “At least the animals can run away,” he’d joke. Except, I don’t think you’re joking.