This is not to dispute anything from the article. Just a reminder that if you sympathize or relate with any cause to reduce animal product usage, you don't have to be "vegan" or "vegetarian", just try to reduce your consumption to the point where it starts to inconvenient you.
People are usually critical when I opt for vegetarian options, and then completely lighten up when I describe that I do eat meat. It's strange how defensive people get about eating meat, and how quickly they lighten up just because I eat meat 5 times a year.
Not so strange, when you have been the repeated recipient of either the "meat is murder" or "I'm obviously better than you because I don't eat meat" comments from militant vegetarians.
Basically, there's prejudice and justification on both sides of the divide, and it's too easy to respond to the constant hate with your own hate.
I can speak from the other side though. After someone realizes that I don't eat meat, I usually (as in way too often) get follow up questions about the reasons etc. I'm not sure if this is because of attempted "small talk" or other reasons, but after a while, I just got tired of it.
I generally try to avoid long follow-up discussions on the topic, because I simply don't think it's worthy of attention (at least in this context).
Whatever float your boat as long as you don't tell me what to do / what to eat / what to think.
Once a vegan asked me if I enjoyed eating "dead animals". I asked him if he preferred I'd eat them alive which put an end to the conversation.
Maybe it's not about eating meat but about sanctimonious folks that feel it necessary to call those around them names and denigrate them because they do not follow the person's favorite fad. Once people learn you are not one of those, nobody has a problem with your food choices per se.
That said, I've never felt defensive around people I know that choose to eat vegetarian or vegan (yes, I enjoy meat, if you didn't guess :). But they never felt the need to somehow make a debate out of it either. If people respect each other's choices and accept them without judgmental attitude, there's no place for contention and defensiveness does not arise.
I hope you stopped to appreciate the irony of that statement when you wrote it.
Today, literally an hour ago, long after I wrote the above comment, I've read a complaint from one of my friends online, that their online community was invaded by preachy vegans (the community has nothing to do with nutritional advice and didn't initiate the discussion on the topic) who proceeded to lecture everybody about how they should give up meat immediately and how they should feel bad if they don't do so. And from what she is saying, it's not the first time it happens in that community. That's exactly what I am talking about.
I think commenting on how this looks like is not the same as what those vegan activists were doing. Not even close.
If the end goal is less meat, then, for me, the results were clear: black and white thinking was far more effective.
I've been vegetarian for 9 years.
Most religious laws are absolute prohibitions or absolute mandates - no foods are mostly kosher or halal, no foods become haram or treif merely because of quantity. None of the ten commandments are quantitative or subjective. Being a frummer is burdensome and inconvenient, but it's also remarkably straightforward. Strict and absolutist behavioural rules are easy to understand and apply.
The heuristic I apply is I only eat antibiotic free meat. It has nothing to do with animals taking antibiotics per se, but rather that large farms abuse them as it's cheaper to pump a pig full of antibiotics than it is to provide remotely sanitary living conditions, nevermind the environmental issues around creating antibiotic resistant superbugs.
After 6pm you eat what ever you want