[vegetarianism].

[COMMENT]

Bacon is a vegetable.

[NOPE]

I know you're just making a joke....but this point always makes me wonder why people think it's so.

I'm what I call a "lazy vegetarian". I don't buy meat when I go food shopping and I'll avoid it when I'm eating out...but if it's served to me i a social setting I'll eat it.

The taste issue seems pretty silly to me. I really don't think meat "tastes" all that impressive. I'm not repulsed by it...but it's not like meat is some kind of magical taste exlosion. Meat cooked with no seasonings or condiments tastes pretty bland, don't you think?

side rant: if anyone out there thinks they've come up with something funny along the lines of "but meat is GOOD!", trust me, your vegetarian friends have already heard it. although they'll likely chuckle politely at it, deep down they want to kick you in the balls because every single time the topic of their diet comes up, some wise guy figures it's time to let fly with a gem like "well if we aren't supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat?"

imagine eleven years of hearing the same stupid jokes over and over again. imagine if, through some strange curse, every time a certain topic came up someone would start reciting the rick james skit like it was the funniest thing on earth.

you'd eventually develop a near-murderous reaction to it right? right. so please, lay off the meat jokes. they aren't funny, nor are they edgy or offensive, they're just annoying.

I will instead suggest combining the two jokes you mentioned into a new "Cocaine is yummier than vegetables, bitch!" uber-joke.

umm... I can hear the vegetables screaming too.

Tell you what. We'll agree to this if you guys agree to drop the preachy bullshit every time we want to eat a hamburger in front of you. Deal? -And that includes eye rolling and looks of disgust.

not at all.

hey don't blame meat eaters for your totally unfunny friends. maybe you are telling us instead of them because they would probably just keep doing it harder.

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

or maybe i told them years ago, and still tell them despite the fact that i'm no longer vegetarian. i'm sure you've got a knee-slapper just raring to go though.

d20 said:

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

Oh you!

I'm not nor ever have been a vegetarian, but, definitely +1. Nothing is more irritating than the same "fresh, clever" joke or variations thereof over and over again from different people. (For me, it's when I'm loading my cart with books at work and people pass by and make some comment about how they've got me all boxed up. Gaaah. Every few days, these people. Every one of them seems to think they're the first and only person to have thought of that.)

I bring my kids out to my brothers farm quite often to hang out and help. They collect eggs and feed the chickens and turkeys. They are free range and so yummy. I think happy birds are tastier birds. The kids understand the food chain. I explain it at supper that these are the very birds they fed and they say ...yum.

Not really a joke.....I really enjoy the taste of meat even when it is unspiced and no condiments, especially fish. I really dislike the taste of most every vegetable no matter what has been done to it or added to it. I eat meat because I like the taste of it. I don't eat vegetables because I don't like the taste of them.

My firm belief is that if you try hard enough that you can find a meat that you think tastes good, and a vegetation (fruit or legumes count, too) that you think tastes good.

So far I haven't found too many of either that I don't like and yes I am a rather heavy fellow.

I can support that argument to a degree. Factory farms and all the issues tied to them are the worst part of meat consumption.

However, the majority of people who make that argument don't actually abstain from factory-farmed meat. In my 3 years of volunteering with an animal rights group and talking to people about it on campus, I never met someone who exclusively ate local, farm-raised meat. But about 1 in 5 people brings it up as this mostly hypothetical argument.

I do see this as sorta a good thing, though. It means people actually do care about the issues, and are starting to think about it. Nobody really wants to inflict the damage onto the environment that factory farms do, and nobody really wants animals to suffer. It usually comes down to a convenience factor. It's too much of a hassle to go to that fancy store on the other side of town, or it's too expensive.

It's getting easier with the current focus on health and preservation... Whole Foods and the like are popping up all over. But as the demand for natural and organic products go up, the facilities that produce them get larger and more lax, and now a lot of organic farms are just as bad as factory farms in terms of clenliness and animal abuse.

There's really no easy solution. So I just do my part and try to pass on what I know to anyone who's interested in hearing.

As an omnivore who's known a number of vegetarians and vegans, my experience tell me the answer is "no". Most of those people, whatever their reasons for their diet, knew that the dominant dietary paradigm involved consuming meat, and weren't preachy or overbearing about their choice.

My own sense of what is meant by this accusation is that there's an implied moral superiority that vegetarians profess, simply by being vegetarian, at least in the minds of the meat consumers who feel under ideological scrutiny even if the specific vegetarian in question has no intention at all of making anyone else feel morally inferior.

If you get what I mean ...

*pokes corpse of tasty dead animal to rile up the veggie crowd*

No doubt. I was just trying to raise the issue that it's not eating meat that is as big a problem (in many, but not all ways) as our relationship (or lack thereof) to our food.

If the argument is that killing animals for food is cruel and no longer necessary, you might be right. If the argument is that the way we currently treat animals (what and how we feed them, where they live, the hormones that they're pumped full of) for food is wrong, you're definitely right. If the argument is that eating meat is inherently ruinous to the environment or our health, then I'd disagree. That's all I meant by the above. I do not always stick to the "no factory farming" rule, but I'm trying to be better about it.

Very true. Whole Foods, and much of the current "organic" movement is almost as bad as the factory farms (with the very real exception that they do avoid harmful pesticides and other chemicals). The animals are certainly treated nearly the same. Read "The Omnivore's Dilemma" for more on the hypocrisy and deception behind Whole Foods and the organic factories. It really is better to buy from local, small farms than it is to buy from many huge "organic" factories.

In general: No. But it's happened to me at least three times with three different people that I can remember at least somewhat recently. One person asked me to move my "flesh" to the other side of the table. Which I thought was way cool.

But no, it's not an epidemic or anything.

I think it's frequency would probably be proportional to the frequency of bad 'meat good' joke makers. And both of these numbers would likely correlate to the number of douche bags in a given population.