Recently un-veg*n friends.... argh
This is a semi-rant because I have already complained to my (vegan) boyfriend about it and I think he is tired of hearing about it! So feel free to ignore, but it feels good to get it out, ha.
So my two closest female friends - friend one has been vegetarian for many years and friend two has been a limited meat/dairy eater for awhile (just fish, I think). Anyway, for different reasons they both have started eating meat - friend one says she "just felt like she wanted to" and friend two has a new boyfriend and every time we are out together they are ordering huge, crazy amounts of meat. I try not to judge how others eat and I would never confront anyone about their eating habits, as I don't think that kind of behavior wins anyone over to vegan/vegetarianism. And I am certainly not perfect myself (in the past I have had my occasional drunken episodes of eating anything in front of me!).
But I try really hard to be very conscious of my eating decisions. And it just bugs me so much that intelligent, well-read, and informed people can just decide to ignore everything they know to be true about meat eating and the meat industry just because they feel like it at the moment. And then I am the one that is crazy and over-sensitive for not wanting to sit at the table with them as they order their third pork sandwich or whatever!
Also, I just read Jonathan's Safran Foer's new book - Eating Animals - and of course that made me even more fired up about it.
Anyway, maybe I just need to make an effort to have more veg friends and less meat-worshiping friends...
Just wondering if anyone has been in a similar situation and how they have dealt with it?
*hug* Monieluv
I totally hear you. I'm at a very liberal (politically) liberal arts school, and the "cool" thing here is to be vegetarian or vegan.... and so quite frequently you get these people who are going to be veg*n because all these documentaries and lectures given at the school about the horridness of the meat and animal product industries.... but a lot of them are more guilted into it than actually invested in the cause, so there's a lot of veg*ns that go back to eating meat, and because of the relatively large veg*n population, there's some making fun of the Veg*ns sometimes. It makes me sad whenever I have a friend who was like, veg*n for this or that long, and go back to eating meat. One of my best friends was veg*n for a year, and then he went back home to a rural area of Texas and started eating meat again... and he's been back here for the last two years and always says he's not veg anymore because of texas... but really? (1) I spent a summer in rural Iowa, and it was just as hard there (really? You poured bacon grease on your bbq'd corn? Are you just trying to piss me off?), and (2) You're not in Texas anymore. And now you're sitting next to me ordering the Meat Lover's Pizza. It's frustrating. >:(
I'm reading that book also, but only in small doses, but it does help me to stay encouraged.
Sometimes people just have to stray for whatever reason and there's not much we can do about it. Many times those who stray come back, because once you have a taste of the veg*n life, you have a conscious that haunts you every time you eat meat and that denial has to be faced. (This usually doesn't include those whom have been vegan only for a short while just to look cool.)
I know this because that's what happened to me after being vegetarian for many years. I came back and finally even went vegan.