Flexitarians
07 September 2005

This, from MSNBC.com:

CONCORD, N.H. – Even after five years, Christy Pugh has no trouble sticking to her vegetarian regimen.

The secret to her success? Eating meat.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m a bad vegetarian, that I’m not strict enough or good enough,� the 28-year-old bookkeeper from Concord said recently. “I really like vegetarian food but I’m just not 100 percent committed.�

(thanks to True Blue Semi-Crunchy Mama for the pointer).

Well, Christy, you aren’t a bad vegetarian. Know why? Because you’re not a vegetarian at all. The equation is actually pretty simple. Vegetarians don’t eat meat. If you eat meat, you’re not a vegetarian. It is really that simple.

Carol Adams calls these pseudo-vegetarians ‘saboteurs’ because they’re screwing with the very meaning of what it is to be vegetarian. If vegetarian means eating meat and chicken ‘on occasion’ then it might as well mean absolutely nothing. It loses all of its power and meaning.

This is where the article above comes in. The MSNBC piece uses the new term ‘flexitarian’ to describe people who are ‘mostly vegetarian’ but who just aren’t “100% committed” (the words of our friend, Christy, above). The article itself is about how wishy washy fools flexitarians are changing vegetarianism itself, and how some vegetarian publications are more than eager to go along. To wit:

“To target the part-timers many [publications] have softened their approach to meatless diets, even at risk of alienating the far smaller reader pool of true vegetarians.”

Their prime example, without surprise, is the dairy and egg industry lovefest of Vegetarian Times, which used to annoy me with its abundance of cheese-covered egg dishes even when I was an ovo-lacto vegetarian.

It is good that people are limiting their intake of meat. I applaud that. But why hijack vegetarianism with your flexitarian ways? My real gripe is that flexitarianism lends further legitimacy to the narcissism of american culture and the way it understands the choices of vegetarians (e.g. being veg*n for health is fine; being veg*n for ethics is weird).

I’m not trying to be the vegan police. I’m not trying to create an exclusive club. But this flexitarian shit is annoying, pointless, and threatens to confuse the meaning of vegetarianism. If you’re a flexitarian, congratulations! We’re here to help you go all the way. But don’t sabotage us by screwing with the meaning of vegetarianism.

(oh, and p.s. Molly Katzen, you suck! (if you don’t get it, read the article)).

  Posted by Bob Torres    Permalink    Filed under:
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