Also known as the Jules Clause:
“Well, if you like burgers give 'em a try sometime. I can’t usually get 'em myself because my girlfriend’s a vegetarian which pretty much makes me a vegetarian. But I do love the taste of a good burger.”
I think vegetarian diets are too boring. I love to cook, and eliminating all meat dishes limits me too much. I need variety.
However, I do have a big problem with factory farming, and buy our meat (including the meat I use for dog food) from a local free-range farmer/butcher.
Too lazy, too damn inconvenient. Voted “bad person.”
I’ll never understand this argument. Just because you can’t get away from killing altogether, you shouldn’t try your best to limit the amount of killing directly related to your diet? 
It’s not all or nothing - eat meat or eat no food. Meat-eaters don’t all draw their line in the same place, either; some only eat free-range meat or avoid specific types of meat and fish (like cod from overfished areas). We all make decisions about our diets, don’t we? It’s not just vegetarians.
It’s just such a strange, strange argument to make. Why do I keep seeing it on threads like this?
Some people here honestly eat meat because they think vegetarians are self-righteous? That seems to be on par with driving a Hummer because Hybrid drivers are smug.
Some vegetarians are self-righteous. Some radically so. Fortunately, my friends aren’t. They’re fine with me eating meat; they just choose not to themselves.
I eat very little meat, but when I’m hungry for it, I have it.
The inhumane methods we use to slaughter our living food grate on my conscience and I try not to think about it. I’ve done my research and it sickens me.
Cognitive disonance, yes?
It makes little difference in the scheme of things but I suspect I soothe that guilt by trying to treat all living things in a nurturing way.
I imagine some of my behavioral indifference comes from the culture in which I was raised where it wasn’t uncommon to see people slaughtering their own food in a matter-of-fact way. It also was a culture where meat was the centerpiece of each meal.
This, mostly. If I don’t have meat, I get very weak and spacey. I’ve tried the vegetarian thing. It was like going off heroin.
I love vegetables. I could probably easily become a vegetarian. I sometimes order vegetarian meals in restaurants, or make a vegetarian meal at home.
But, I also love meat. I like a nice char-broiled steak, or lamb vindaloo, or chicken wings, or bacon, or …
It’s all good: vegetarian and carnivore.
I’ve tried vegetarianism and veganism and it just didn’t work. I need meat. If I don’t eat meat, I still feel hungry.
Vegetable farming kills tons of animals, by the way. Not only directly, but indirectly by encroaching on their habitats.
Incidentally, I don’t see how a person can be a vegetarian for ethical reasons, but also say that they don’t think they’re ethically superior to those who eat meat. If you think eating meat is unethical, then you think meat eaters are unethical. If you don’t think eating meat is unethical, then vegetarianism can’t be an ethical choice. You can’t have it both ways.
I checked Meat is delicious and I’m a bad person. I was vegetarian for a year, and I am still concerned about the conditions under which most food animals in this country are raised and slaughtered. When I was a vegetarian, I missed meat a lot, and when I moved in with my stepsister and her boyfriend, we all cooked and ate together, and they weren’t vegetarian, so I just let it slide. I would like to limit my meat purchases to only humanely-treated animals, but unfortunately that is outside of our current budget.
I couldn’t really tick anything on the poll.
I don’t consider meat-eating as inherently immoral. If we allow animals to live “happily” to an advanced age (or at the least no more suffering than they may experience in their natural environment), and then slaughter them painlessly (or at least quickly), I have no problem with that.
I try to buy meat that comes closest to this ideal.
A common response to this is “How would you like it if you were being farmed for meat?”, for which I have an answer, but it would be a hijack to go into that here.
They are pescetarians.
You’re welcome.
I was a vegetarian for about two years, but gave it up for a variety of reasons. Mainly I lost too much weight. Also, my diet was crappier than ever; I just ate a lot of junk food. My household was reluctant to give up meat, and the rest of the family was constantly arguing with me about it (my uncle asked me if I was going to turn lesbian as well).
If there comes a point in my life where I’m not responsible for feeding anyone but myself, I plan to reduce my meat intake drastically but I don’t think I’ll give it up completely again.
I was vegetarian for 10 years, and I stopped when I moved abroad because I didn’t want to be refusing food that people offered me. Since coming back, I rarely cook meat, but I’ll order it occasionally. I’m not terribly fond of meat, but I have no good reason not to eat it now and then.
Because I’m a pastured poultry farmer and it would be more than a tad bit hypocritical of me to abstain from meat.
With that said, I make it a rule not to eat anything I don’t know personally.
Must resist urge to make joke connection to not eating meat…
Mmmm… meat!
nm. too easy.
If I became a vegetarian I’d have to give up chicken, which is not going to happen.