I had a discussion recently where someone accused me of not being a "real vegetarian" because I eat eggs. I know that's kind of a grey area, and it differs for each person and their reason for being vegetarian (religious, texture, health, environmental, ethical, etc); but what do you personally eat?

For me, personally, I keep it simple. If it looks and tastes like meat, I don't eat it (except special occasions like religious holidays). It makes me feel bad, and I dislike the texture anyway. Feels like an animal died specifically for me, and I didn't even enjoy it. A waste of a perfectly good life. But I'm ok with "regenerative" animal products like eggs and cheese and honey and such, as long as the animals were treated with respect (hard to find dairy that meets this criteria).

Probably the most contentious is bones. Someone once gave me some ramen, and later told me they were surprised I ate it because the broth was made with chicken bones. I didn't know, but also it didn't really disturb me either. Those bones would have been thrown out if not put into soup; and the end result was soup, not a drumstick or something obviously meaty. If nobody told me, I wouldn't even notice. For some reason, occasional bone broth is fine by my books. I'm not an extremely strict vegetarian in the first place though, and everyone I asked said that bones are not vegetarian.

It makes me think about Blood & Bone fertiliser. If you grow tomatoes with it, are those tomatoes not vegetarian…? Where is the line? Curious on others thoughts.

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[–] [S] 3 points 20 hours ago (1 child)

That's a good motto; I try to do the same thing, to an extent. If I'm at a family Christmas party or wedding, I'll eat some roast chicken. To refuse would be rude.

But also, I tend to find that if you acquiesce once, it's too easy to become a habit. People will assume you've given up vegetarianism and serve you meat every time forever (in my experience, anyway). So I usually offend people on the first meal post-Christmas.

I read this interesting article that is somewhat related.

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  • [–] 5 points 20 hours ago*

    I was more on the “if they’re serving me roast chicken after I told them I’m vegetarian, I’m not going to be their guest anymore” side of things, but everyone in my life was very accommodating, so that’s easy for me to say.

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