We live in an obese, sickly society. If it isn't cancer, it's heart disease, high blood pressure or allergies. Having spent plenty of time around doctors and nutritionists who not only have unhealthy eating habits but also give skewed advice, I feel fully capable of formulating my own diet, which does not include meat. One good friend -- who happens to be a nutritionist -- routinely uses artificial sweetners and advocates eating crackers and other foods with artificial ingredients and hydrogenated oils -- which are the artery-clogging, possibly cancer-causing variety. I won't address the health issues she has faced at a relatively young age. While good health is certainly one appealing aspect of a vegetarian diet, my real motivation is compassion and the high regard in which I hold animal life. I too have been endlessly taunted by family members sitting around a holiday table with a big slab of meat in the center. I have too much respect for my family members to ever impose my beliefs or turn a joyous occasion into something negative. Contrary to the remarks of many posters on this board, being a vegetarian isn't about judging others. It is about living a way we believe benefits forms of life other than our own.

Ambiguity and ambivalence around the choice of killing and eating animals versus vegetarianism arises because we avoid the direct experience of taking life and/or we escape the associated inner experiences.

Analogously, almost all adults have, in a moment of weakness, lost control and raged at or become physically rough with a child. In a healthy individual the immediate reaction involves feelings of deep regret, remorse, and a drive to avoid future incidents. Adults who have developed a capacity for empathy and autonomy use the experience constructively to change their behavior.

Those of us who have killed animals directly and hands-on know the response shared by all humans: similar feelings of regret, remorse, “wrongness”, and a recoiling from the destruction of something living and sentient. But as children, especially males, growing up we are domesticated not only to kill, but to kill those inner emotional experiences that would otherwise honestly and directly inform our choices. We are domesticated to kill off, to disallow, a part of self connected with empathy and control of aggression.

Ultimately – and profoundly ironically – what keeps us from accessing those inner experiences and from choosing not to kill, not to engage in the manly, virile habit of carnivory, is fear: fear of choosing authentically, fear of inner experience, and most of all fear of rejection by those whose approval and acceptance we become dependent on.

Bottom line: if a meat-eater could authentically and honestly access and report to us his or her inner experience around the possibility of becoming vegetarian, we would hear something like this:

“Yeah, right, like I’m gonna tell the gang at work I’ve become a vegetarian the next time we go out for burgers. Can you imagine? Or at Christmas dinner with Mom and Dad and everybody? The looks I’d get? No way could I do that."

"I’m afraid to.”

It's an urban legend that he was a vegetarian. While I appreciate your attention to vegetarianism, couldn't you please have checked your sources before making such a statement?

Hitler wasn't a vegetarian.

It's an urban legend that he was a vegetarian. While I appreciate your attention to vegetarianism, couldn't you please have checked your sources before making such a statement?

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The fact checking needs to be done by you, and others claming that Hitler was not a vegetarian. He simply in fact was, and it's not even a debated point.

We have many records attesting to his rather silly nature of trying to force his brand of vegetaranism on his inner circle, we even have records of conflict between his chefs and others about how to cook food.

While Hitler wasn't a vegetarian for the majority of his life, that's because he became a vegetarian after his niece died in the early 30s. Hence, for the period of time that he is most know, except for win he wrote Mein Kampf, he was a vegetarian.

This has nothing to do with the morality of vegetarianism.

And yes, I'm aware of Mr. Blue and his wholly unfounded arguements. They have no basis in fact.

I could care less what anyone thinks of my dietary habits, it's simply none of their business.

But then again, I've never "in a moment of weakness, lost control and raged at or become physically rough with a child."

I've also killed animals, skinned them, butchered them, then eaten them. Many many times.

It's food, and it's no different than reaping wheat or shucking corn.

No do I nor most people I know suffer "similar feelings of regret, remorse, “wrongness”, and a recoiling from the destruction of something living and sentient."

Most animals aren't sentient, very very few mammals, much less any other type of animal are even aware of self. This is demonstrable. Outside of great apes, dolphins, sea cows, and a few select others, animals can't even recoginze themselves.

This doesn't mean they should be abused or made to suffer needlessly. Nothing bother a true hunter like than a suffering animal.

You don't personally want to eat meat, that's fine with my. I simply don't care, but when you start talking about how those of us who simply reject your choices must be somehow overcome with fear, you've crossed the line.

Vegetarianism is a religion to many, and they try to force their religion upon others in the same annoying manner than many relgions do.

Neither I nor most care about your religious vegetarianism.

All this talk of food is making me hungry. So, tonight, we're going to our favorite beef restaurant where I will have a salad, a loaf of bread, the 16-oz. prime rib, plenty of side veggies, a couple of nice beers, and some sort of luxurious dessert and coffee.

If that isn't well balanced, I don't know what is!

P.S. For those who say the meat part of my diet will shorten my life, I can only say....

With an idiot in the White House and global warming already beginning to make our lives miserable, who but a masochist would *want* to live longer?