Yes, Anthony, once I served a Tofurkey at Thanksgiving, and it WAS soul-destroying. And don't ask me about wholegrain dairy free sugar cookies, either. Got a free range chicken roasting stuffed with a nice lemon, some aromatic bay leaves, and a few onions. What could be bad?

This gluten-free cake has "flame-war" decorated all over it in sugar-free icing. I give it two days before the letters hit 75.

Vegans, look in the mirror. Not only are you not heathier than we carnivores, you look like you're two bean sprouts short of a pulse.

I love soy and carrots and most everything else that theoretically doesn't scream when you kill it, but there's pure joy in chomping down on ribs fresh off the grill.

Mmm. Ribbbbs...

I am SO looking forward to reading his new book, not to mention always available for pistol-whipping rude vegans after an alcohol-soaked evening. One time, I made a birthday cake for a party at which Moby was in attendance; I knew he wasn't going to eat any, but was still insulted nonetheless (at least there was another celeb who not only had some, but complimented me on the taste)!

Let's see if I have this right. It's more "humane" to give a stupid bird a taste of real freedom and then hack its head off before I eat it than to simply not let it in on what it's missing before it becomes dinner.

Likewise for the extra bit of kindness to the mollusks while we actively torture Iraqis in secret prisons. I bet those prisoners would love to be "happy as clams" for a change.

I'm still laughing at the fucktards who think they're saving to world by eating chocolate from beans "guaranteed" to have been picked by whomever they've decided are allowed to pick cacao beans. As if it actually matters.

I take solace knowing that Liberals can be just as anal-retentive about their causes as Conservatives.

What a turd-burglar. Thanks for reducing all of the world into simple black and whites. Things were getting too complicated for Bourdain? The way this man revels in his own waste, sexism, and elitism is just so unattractive. I'm not a vegan and would never be one. I have my likes and dislikes in the world of food, but am always up for something new. I sometimes buy organic, but can't always afford to. But above all else, at least I care about someone besides myself.

The sad little rah-rah-rah that other self-obsessed and equally righteous flesh-eating, cosmopolite, yuppies will get from reading this makes me sad. Bourdain is but a media-hound who seems to know that soon his shock-jockeying will run dry and he will be a nothing once again. I had a bit of respect for this man when Kitchen Confidential came out, but now I see he has just become a one-trick-hack. Bourdain has become what he hated so much.

I hope others can see past the fundamentalism of both the militant vegans and the nihilistic snobs like Bourdain to find a middle path where food still has taste and life still has meaning.

Most food shows acknowledge no principle beyond the palate.

I'm not a vegan but my child became once when she saw her first video of factory farming when she was 12.

Watching her quietly, without obnoxiousness or fanfare, stick to her ethical guns, wasn't soul destroying. In fact, it renewed my faith.

So you can think of places where it wouldn't make sense? Why should that stop a culture that can from walking away from animal cruelty on a ghastly, environmentally insane scale, that exists just for the entertainment of tongues?

You can find lovely vegan or vegetarian food. You can't find that many lovely souls.

I find Bourdain's view depressing, jaded, and boring.

Meals are nice. Good food is fun.

Then there's the rest of your life.

You want to stand for "cuisine"? Ooo, la, la.

Or change the world?

I think vegans don't get why they can be so annoying, because they never have the same experiences with us that we do with them. I decided to test this theory a few weeks ago, when a vegan couple I know in Santa Monica invited me to a raw food bar for dinner. I went because I like the people, but I also decided to make the evening heuristic. I said nothing at all about hating raw vegan food before arriving at the restaurant. I did squint a little when reading the menu, letting out a few clucks and sighs as I ostentatiously read both sides of it several times. When the waitress came and asked for my order, I asked plaintively, "Don't you have any dishes with cooked meat?" She seemed confused at first. "THis is a raw vegan food establishment," she said bravely. I replied, "Yes, well, but you don't have anything with meat? Anything at all? A vienna sausage tucked away behind the jicama?" The answer was still no. "Well, perhaps I could run over to the 7-11 and buy some bologna or beef jerky and bring it back here and eat with you guys. Would that be OK?" My friends seemed appalled. So I just gave the waitress the menu and said, "OK, I'm fine. Just a glass of water please. No ice." Later my friends chastised me for my behavior. I simply replied to them, "Now you know what it's like trying to take a vegan to dinner."

The level of rudeness of the folks here apparently trying to express themselves through their foam and spittle about the rudeness of vegans is ... well, soul destroying, in a way.

Anthony talks about the aversion to dirt as smacking almost of racism in its tone and possible implications. Meanwhile, he apparently is inspiration for a misinformed openly prejudicial hostility to an entire minority group of people due to their dietary choices, which apparently he and some here find inconvenient, or something.

Anthony talked about his belief that many vegans become so out of fear. Admittedly I don't know that many vegans, but it seems to me that the lashing out of people against vegans expresses even deeper fear. I am not a vegan myself, nor even a vegetarian: but I am close to someone who is. And I've the predominant defensive reaction I see people have to her seems very, very deeply seated in insecurity and fear in most cases. I think we see this happening here as well. The extremeness and suddenness of some every reaction i've read is just ridiculous. Especially when considering the vegan comments Tony made were just a few lines of a long interview.

There is fear of thinking themselves being "judged" and perceived as moral inferior (and possibly secretly suspecting that they in fact are so). Fear of being inconvenienced. Fear slightest prospect of life without mcdonalds, or whatever. Fear of insulting their Great Aunty who was raised on bacon fat sandwiches. I actually think that a lot of you deep down are insecure because you do have some inkling of the generally cruel system you depend on. But of course others of you simply (to use Anthony's heroic words from another context), "truly don't give a fuck." Whatever.

I've had tofurkey. It is absolute crap; as is most of the heavily processed vegetarian packaged foods. Not unlike a lot of heavily processed meat byproduct foods. And so I think the person holding the butchered tofurkey up apparently as some sort of evidence of the soul destroying conspiracy of the dirty vegans makes for a nice representative of all of the other weirdly sniping comments so far. Tofurkies of straw, my friends. (And possibly sawdust as well).

This being said, while i find many of Tony's expressions short sighted, philosophically shallow, and sometimes offensive... I do generally like and admire his shows.

And his favorite book is (I have heard him say) Graham Greene's "The Quiet American". So I could never entirely dislike him.