Many decades ago, in my grandfather’s generation, a branch of the family moved to Ahmedabad, Gujarat. My “grand-uncle” had a hard time getting a place for the family to stay because they were (correctly) presumed to be omnivores. Ahmedabad was Gandhi’s town, and nobody wanted meat eaters around. When the family ate chicken, they did so in secret, with my grand-uncle secreting out the bones in the newspaper to dispose elsewhere during his morning walk. If a carcass had been found in the trash, they would have been summarily ejected from their dwelling, with no bones made about it.
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p>Fast forward to today, where in secular Sodom-and-Gomorrah Bombay the one thing you can’t do is eat meat: 
Never mind pets, smokers or loud music at 2 a.m. House hunters in Bombay increasingly are being asked: “Do you eat meat?” If yes, the deal is off…In constitutionally secular India, there’s no bar to forming a housing society and making an apartment block exclusively Catholic or Muslim, Hindu or Zoroastrian. Vegetarians say they too need segregation.
Rejected home-seekers have mounted a slew of court challenges to the power of housing societies to discriminate, but last year India’s highest tribunal ruled the practice legal. [Link]
I’m having trouble reconciling this news with the fact that 70%-80% of Hindus in India are non-veg (thanks Ponniyin) and even the streets of Ahmedabad are full of little three wheeled trucks that sell chicken in Ahmedabad there is a line of 10 or so three wheeled lunch trucks selling chicken outside of the IIM campus.
Maybe it’s because I’m an omnivore, but I honestly I don’t understand the deep emotional resonance of this issue. While I recognize the ethical implications of various diets, I’ve never tried to define my personal identity according to what I eat.
However, for others, this goes far beyond a lifestyle choice. I know atheists for whom this is a dogma, something that encapsulates who they are and where they stand in the world more than any other set of beliefs they hold.
Furthermore, not only do people care passionately about what they eat, they also feel strongly about what others eat as evidenced above. This is something I especially don’t understand. I’m missing something here, something about what meat eating means both personally and socially. What is it about food that leads people to be offended by the lifestyle choices of others?
For those of you who feel your food choices strongly – what does your diet mean to you? How do you feel about the diet of others? If we are what we eat, how does that matter?
Selected related posts: Food for Ogling, er, I mean, Thought, Ravi Chand, melon eater, That Silver Isn’t Vegetarian, Meat without murder?, Holy Cow: Yet another school textbook controversy
Nina – Many people in India feed veggie food to their dogs. Cats are usually not common pets in Indian households. Dogs are fed “people” food 😉
Ennis,
I have lived in Ahmedabad all my life and I never come across them “little three wheeled trucks that sell chicken.” Not once. Pani puri yes, bhel yes, pav bhaji yes. But not chicken.
So please don’t say that Ahmedabad is full of these trucks unless you back this up with proof.
Shah,
I saw these trucks with my own eyes, just six months ago, right outside of IIM campus. There were a large number of them, they’re the little enclosed 3 wheel scooter trucks. I actually tried to take a photo but couldn’t because the battery was flat. I asked both my mother’s cousin and my brother-in-law (one is from Ahmedabad the other went to university there) about them, and they said that they were a regular presence.
Perhaps they stay restricted to certain areas, and don’t have a presence in the rest of town, in which case I was wrong to say that the town was “full of …”
The sight of these trucks is what prompted the reminiscence about my grand-uncle.
Indian buildings have much thicker walls than American ones and I’ve never smelled neighbours’ food cooking or their voices (though one can easily do so in American buildings) – especially when you’re about ten storeys apart. It’s really a rationalization of caste prejudice at the end of the day, vegetarians tend to be upper caste Hindus. If you set up a co-op building as explicitly vegetarian, then you have a right to keep meat-eaters out (bigoted as the reasoning behind it may be). If it just happens to be a building where vegetarians have lived for a long time, and they try to keep people with Muslim or different caste names out, that’s discrimination and it shouldn’t be legal. Ditto the policing of neighbouring restaurants or supermarkets to stop them selling meat.
Unlike the mainstream western thought which does not consider eating meat a moral issue, most Indian traditions do consider it as a moral issue. Indian history is replete with communities and people falling in/out of vegetarianism based on the predominant political and religious thought. However most of the religious leaders of India, whether Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and even Sikh have considered it an important moral issue to discuss(with most if not all of them ruling in favor of vegetarianism). So if you are one of those who have been bought up to consider eating meat immoral, you do not want to subject yourselves or your families to the immoral influences around you. Just like people do not want to accept drug addicts, drunkards and thieves in their communities, it is perfectly normal for vegetarians not to accept meat eaters in their communities.
When I lived in Vadodara, I saw “thela” (or “Lari” as its called over there) selling Chiken-Bhujia. My freinds from High school would buy those and eat it when they could outside their homes, as most of them were strict Veggies.
One very interesting thing I noticed in Vadodara is that sometimes it was a teenage rebellion kind of thing to go eat non-veg food. (I think its because for Jains eating non-veg is explicitly against tenets of the religion)
Dark Knight Some of the stuff above is true ie I dont touch liquor, cigarettes and drugs. Does that make me weak or strong 🙂 As for women, I think they like guys who have control over themselves, not someone who eats anything thrown in front of him.
You see, comments like this:
are what make me call it a lifestyle issue. It feels very much like the way that certain people feel about gay marriage. Although gay marriage doesn’t affect them directly, they feel that they should be shielded from the “immoralities” of others.
From this perspective, meat eating isn’t just a personal choice, or even an ethical choice, it’s a vice and you don’t want to have those sorts of people around.
If you went to school in India with veggie kids around you making retching noises whenever you eat something non-veg for your lunch break, you don’t end up with a lot of love for veggies. I am perfectly happy to ‘eat and let eat’ but I have no respect for veggies who see my meat-eating as immorality/vice etc. Taking the ‘gay movement’ analogy, to me, eating non-veg in India was a way of asserting myself in such company.
Ennis – Such people are a minority. What is your take on “No Smoking” buildings ?
Its a clever arguement but not flawless becoz while it is widely accepted that drugs are evil, nonvegetarianism is just a diet (actually recommended to atheletes like body builders etc).
technophobicgeek
This analogy isn’t appropriate. Non-vegetarains are a majority in India unlike gays (who are a minority in every part of the world)….except ofcourse San Francisco 😉
I can smell smoke, even through thick masonary walls. I had a friend who lived in a duplex next to a smoker, and his own house was permeated with the smell too. [Incidentally, the anti-smoking movement in India seems a lot weaker than the anti-meat movement]
However, as I’ve explained earlier in the thread, unless you’re talking about barbeque, I don’t see how the smell of the meat can be distinguished over the strong masala, even a few feet away. Instead, I think the issue is that of the feeling that meat particles are in the air, and if somebody else is cooking meat, that you must be partaking in “second-hand meat”
Furthermore, as I said earlier, you can always ban meat cooking without banning meat eaters. The former is an issue of practice, the latter is an issue of moral judgement.
This does feel like a way to remove certain types of people, based on ethnicity and moral judgement. I just don’t understand these issues of contamination and contagion. Meat isn’t tobacco smoke.
Well, I grew up in a neighborhood in suburban Bombay where the majority were Gujjus or Tam-Brahms. No Muslims allowed. So yeah, us disgusting phish-eating Bongs were a bit of a minority there.
I must confess, when someone vegetarian (from India in particular) does the whole ‘non-veg is evil and I won’t hang out/eat with you’ thing, I have to fight back a slight temptation to stuff a chunk of steak down their throat 🙂
I hear you TPG. Even I used to feel like that. Nowadays, I have decided to remain nonchalant about this issue – to each according to his own. But if somebody is not comfortable about me eating non-veg with him/her, I do tend to avoid those individuals next time. Nobody wants to mingle with people who judge your character based on what you eat, do they? Religious scriptures be damned!
It is quite surprising that eating non-vegetarian as a morality, or religious issue is never discussed in Bengali/Oriya/Assamese households. I studied in Indian Army run schools where dietary habits are never an issue. I realized the significance of this issue in the eyes of some people when I started mixing with Brahmins of South India and Gujjus during my undergraduate engineering days.
This is a good topic to discuss desi tolerance of ‘difference’ I think. Choice of food is largely non-invasive, doesn’t prevent other people from doing what they do, isn’t threatening in the same way as other lifestyle choices, and YET people have strong visceral responses to it. In the US, multi-culti society and general liberal norms encourage a tolerance of difference (in theory at least), on the other hand, these groups seem to be perpetuating homegeneity and similarity. Isn’t that a bit archaic? For urban living? It’s a housing society in BOmbay–something about modern life making us cling to older forms of behaviour? All veggie families living happily together? Do they think their children will also marry each other and live happily ever after in the same housing complex?
Its turning out that nonveggies are more tolerant to differences than the veggies. Any thoughts?
Ennis,
I too lived in Amdavad for a very long time and I’ve never ever seen those chicken-vending trucks that you mentioned. A truck in front of IIM (or may be NID) etc would be serving just a small niche market in and around that institute where they are likely to find non-veg eating consumers.
I also find it very hard to belive that 70-90% of India is non-veg. It just doesn’t reconcile with my experience of living in many different cities in India. My personal experience – and no, I didn’t hang out just with Gujjus – is that majority of Indians I came across are vegetarians, although non-veggies are quite a significantly large minority.
I find nothing wrong with Gujjus in Mumbai not wanting meat-eaters in their apartment buildings. If they find meat-eating morally repugnant and against their religious beliefs, they have every right to associate among themselves. After all, the same token also allows non-vegetarians to prevent vegetarians from living in their vicinity, if they wanted to. This is no different from Jewish-only buildings in NYC, for example. Just as Orthodox jews in NYC (and Montreal too, for that matter) would not associate with anyone else and live in their own separate communities – in fact, many of them would not even see a non-Jewish doctor or dentist – Gujjus and Jains are happy in their own communities. Nothing wrong with that : they have every right to create a separate space for themselves within the society. After all, there’s no legal or fundamental argument for forcing people to mingle with anyone they don’t want to : if anything, such a force would amount to a violation of their personal freedom. In a free society, I have just as much right not to like you or hang out with ou for whatever reason I care for.
Ennis,
Thanks for acknowldeging me..
I think even within non-vegetarians in India, there are a lot of taboos. Not many people eat beef/pork.. religious people have a lot of restrictions.. and that goes for almost all religions.. I was surprised to find a Muslim colleague of mine who never eats non-veg in restaurants in US, because the meat was not “halal”.. and Muslims avoid “pork”.. It would be interesting to find out if they allow pork-eaters in their localities.. (in places like Pakistan/ Bangaldesh)..
And meat eating is a taboo only for the upper caste Hindus and the taboos decrease in order.. Many OBCs eat chicken/mutton not beef/pork. Dalits (in many cases except Dalit Buddhists I think) have no such qualms..
Oops.. the preceding comment was from me..
Further I never knew some Christians (Catholics ??) don’t eat meat on Fridays.
I’m a veggie and I have a lot of non-veggie friends..we eat out a lot and there has been no “friction” at any time. I’ve never eaten meat..and its not because I’m a PETA supporter..or becuase my religion tells me so. Its just that I have never tasted meat..and I find the smell and sight of it a bit offensive. This does not mean that I stop other people from enjoying their dishes. One thing that I hate is the desi-veggie guy/gal who thinks that he is kind of superior to other desis because he hasn’t eaten meat. They try to justify their choice of being a veggie by invoking “animal cruelty” excuse. The real reason why they never ate meat was becuase it was NOT ALLOWED in their household, their moms never cooked meat..and they found the smell/sight unsavory. Ethical treatment to animals is not the main reason. I’ve seen those very guys hurl stones at stray dogs and cows and shooting at pigeons with their air-guns.
..
the later part explains the first part of your statement. It’s because I think you hang out with just that crowd of “vegetarians”.. In reality India is probably 70-90% non-vegetarian.. From the article referenced, (it talks about 220 million vegetarians in India out of a billion ) it is 80%..
I was used to being the token vegetarian in the group no matter where I lived in India. And since I was an atheist born in a meat eating hindu family, I got used to the never ending curiosity as to why I quit meat. In America however, I find no looks of surprise because they assume it’s a religion thing. It’s sad that people consider veg’ism just a blind religious practice. Eating meat can very well be considered a vice for the obvious reason that it involves a form of murder. So it’s only as much a mere lifestyle choice as smoking is.
Ranting done, while I find the practice of living and moving in separate communities unproductive, it doesn’t seem surprising. I totally buy the “wanting to keep muslims out” motive behind the move. Having said that, any vegetarian will testify to most meat, fish and eggs having distinct odors – with or without the masala. The reason we accidentally eat meat is because their texture is similar to soy, paneer and mushroom…and the missing brown filled circle in the brown square here in the US. 🙁
Not even close, based on my three decades of experience as a “born” vegetarian. I don’t ask carnivores where they get their fiber or their isothiocyanates and I wish they’d extend the same respect to me. I am so damned sick of being harassed about whether I get enough protein. I’m taller than both of my parents and I have visible quads and calves. I feel like asking them as they scrutinize me with a mixture of nosiness and disapproval, “what do you think?”
It’s okay to interrogate a vegetarian about what they eat, how they “survive” it (oh, the horror!) or whether they’re healthy (!); no one blinks an eye. I would never do such a thing to someone else, just based on common courtesy. Yet the non-vegs who cross-ex anyone with a different diet are more tolerant? Desi, please.
I just don’t want it in my house. I don’t care if I’m eating at a restaurant with friends and they order it, though like a few others here, I’m very touched when they ask if doing so will disgust me. If I feel comfortable enough to say it, the answer is “Yes, if it’s seafood or meat which drips blood when you cut it”. If they do order those things, I don’t say a word to them about their choices. I just hide behind the centerpiece/wine list/whatever and concentrate on not looking/inhaling too deeply.
The smell of tandoori chicken is disgusting and immediately affects my appetite. When I’m getting seated at a brown restaurant and they put me next to a table engulfed with smoke featuring audible sizzle, I politely ask to be placed somewhere else. The only thing worse than THAT smell is the stench of seafood, which makes me want to vomit…the popularity of calamari among my friends is something I have to bear, but the entire time, I feel sick.
Ennis, you know I love you, but I think you are so off on the “you only smell masala” bit. No. I smell meat. And I hate it. That’s why I live in a strictly vegetarian household and THAT is why I avoid the seafood section of supermarkets. I don’t care what others choose to do, but as far as I’m concerned, their rights end when they start to infringe on mine. If they want to use their polluted fork to spear something off my plate OR examine me about why I eat the way I do…well.
ANNA – You don’t like the smell of sizzler tandoori chicken ??
If that wasn’t evident, I’m thrilled to state it again– I HATE IT. I hate the smell of almost ALL MEAT.
Have you tried a tandoori paneer platter? It’s much the same.
You’re right about 100s of pounds of raw seafood in the supermarkets – that’s a very pungent smell, but also not one likely to come from a domicile.
When you walk down the hall, can you tell which of your neighbors is eating what? I can’t.
Again, the restriction (and some of the comments of others) pertains to being a meat eater not about cooking meat.
I am afraid this is just a guesstimate based on what the author of the article may have observed.It is really difficult to come up with the percentages. And it is not a useful track of the argument either, because we all know that there are fairly large numbers of both types in India.
However, coming to the non-vegetarians in India, they are all not ‘meat eaters every day of the week’. Firstly, in India, vegetarian food is cheaper than non-vegetarian items like chicken, meat etc., unlike the US (and many other Western countries) where meat-based diet is generally cheaper than a veggies-only diet. (If you are surprised, please go to Wal-Mart, look at the prices and do the Math/s.)
Secondly, like Ponniyin said above in #69, there are many customs/taboos among the non-vegetarians in India, esp among the Hindus.Many non-veggie friends of mine in Andhra eat meat only once or twice a week. It is not just out of religious reasons ( Saturday being dedicated to Lord Balaji, his devotees shall not touch non-veg that day etc etc), though. Typically, non-veg preparations do need more preparation time compared to veggie cuisine.So, it is almost a ritual for the man of the family to go out on Sunday morning, buy some meat from the local butcher, and for the entire family to have mutton curry for lunch.
As far as tolerance goes, my observation of South Indian mores is that the non-veg eaters understand and respect vegetarians’ choice. As a boy from a ‘supposed-to-be-vegetarian’ caste, whenever I visited my friend’s houses, their moms ensured that there is a variety of vegetarian dishes on the table.And when they discovered that I don’t mind the occassional chicken piece, they were surprised, but served me chicken just the same.
Vegetarians (again in South India) take their choice as a matter of fact. There is no looking down upon non-veggies as such.Of course, there are exceptions to any situation, any where in the World.
Bottomline: A non-vegetarian can be a vegetarian 5 days a week. And some vegetarians eat non-veg now and then in restaurants, but never at home.And as for smells, it is best when people are sensitive to others’ likes and dislikes.And Jains/Gujjus in Bombay who don’t want people from other communities staying in their Co-ops are free to do so.They can also go take a flying…
I agree. Hell almost 50% of the people couldnt even afford to eat meat even if they wanted to. The rest of the non-veg people also dont eat non-veg regularly the way Americans do. The proof of this is the fact in India you have to go to some specific place to buy meat whose sales are about 10% all food item sales.
From the same article, one reason why it’s hard to buy meat:
Objecting to cans of tuna isn’t an issue of smell. I don’t know anybody who opens tuna tins in the supermarket.
I knew one vegetarian who objected to eggs so much that she wouldn’t let her roomates keep eggs in the same fridge, lest her food be (in some way) contaminated by them. Again, eggs do have an odor, but not when they’re in a shell in a box. And the smell was more likely when her roomates (also vegetarians) cooked eggs, and she couldn’t prevail on them not to.
Ennis: I was born, raised and lived in Ahmedabad till I came to USA. Being born in strict Hindu Brahmin family, meat was a no-no. Not even eggs. I remember from High School and College days (St. Xavier’s all the way) some of my best friends were Christians, Muslims, Parsees, Sindhis, Sikhs, Jains, and even a twin Jews. During lunch time we would sit together under trees and open our lunch boxes and munch and talk. Obviously all did not bring Vegetarian in their boxes. Over time You learn to live with and respect individual choices. However, I can see how for some people this “Tolerance Threshold” is very low. In College days I would sneak out and go for an adventure of eating “Mutton Samosa” with a Muslim friend of mine in the inner city. When I came to USA I was eating Beef, Chicken, etc.. Some of the best 10 Ozs. steak I had was deep in the heart of Texas. Never liked any Seafood. I am 95% Vegetarian now. Occasionaly I eat chicken. By the way I was in Ahmedabad last November, and I do not remember those “rickshaws” you mentioned – selling meat. May be in the inner city, in heavily populated Muslim area, where one dare not to go even during daytime if one is not a Muslim. Whomever said, “You are what you Eat” is right. Bottom line is: to each their own choice. Peace.
Dear Yo Dad,
I should change the post – I only saw them outside of the IIM campus, but I did see 10 of them in a row. My brother-in-law said they were the most popular lunch places around, but we never had a chance to go there …
No, I have not, because I hate paneer.
I also hate baingan, portobello mushrooms (all poo-smelling fungi, really), tofu and tempeh. The textures of these foods make me cringe. If I wanted to chew that much, I’d eat charred, dead flesh and thus forgo the abuse of troglodytes who think I’m “missing out”/equate my family’s choice to be vegetarian as child abuse. Preferences for foods are formed within the first few months of life, I think. None of the foods I listed above are present in the pure vegetarian Kerala cooking I ate while growing up; you don’t stick paneer in sambar or avial or rasam or theeyal.
Veggie, non-veggie… I say, just do what you want! Yes, there is something to be said about the merits of the practice of discipline, whether it be vegetarianism or meditation. And if you are religious, you do end up getting a nice bundled package including not only a societally and politically unjustly determined set of rules on how to live your life and make most important decisions, but also a prepackaged list of practices like absolute vegetarianism, abstinence from sexual thoughts (because sex is bad, until suddenly when you’re married, it becomes all good), patriarchy and lack of individual originality, all with a promotional free lifetime subscription to monthly, daily, weekly and yearly doses of fear of consequences (hell, damnation, etc…) if you do not do what you’re ‘supposed’ to do. Uh oh, did I start talking about religion again? Back to being veggie, my opinion is, if you’re going to be veggie, do it if you really want to, and if you really want to, then you won’t need to walk around putting down people who do eat meat, or participating in boycotts or rallies… make your choice and be at peace with it… it’s the people who need to yell louder who don’t really believe in what they’re yelling about to begin with and are just trying to convince themselves even more… Accept it, people are different and will make different choices in life, make your own choices and stop judging the rest of the world.
Also, there is no such thing as perfection! The world needs to stop pushing everyone to achieve it! If someone claims they are vegetarian and but they eat meat once in a while, so what? The world will not come to an end! We don’t make people who eat meat but decide to eat a salad one day feel bad about their decisions… Do what you want, the people who will try to make you feel guilty for not sticking by morals they have trouble sticking by, will just have to deal with it.
Shaif.
It was doomed. Doomed from the start. 🙂
Very correct. Some recent studies (too lazy to dig up right now) suggest that there is a way to inoculate your children against picky eating my making your pregnant wife eat everything (especially everything vegetarian since that is where tastes come from). Then, in the first few months of a child’s life make sure they regularly rotate through every flavor of babyfood.
Ennis: You may be right. The new retirement home we baught last winter is a stone-throw away from IIM. Yet I may have missed those Rickshaws. IIM being “World Class and World Famous” ! obviously have mixed population and may have started this trend. What shocked me (may be I am old fashioned)was when we (me and my wife) were sitting in a place called Cafe Moccha or something like that, a block or two away from IIM, we saw “College Girls” smoking and passing around “Hooka”. Now that is progress!!??. Although I was a Pipe Smoker for more than twenty years, I was shocked to see preety Gujarati girls with Hooka.
God Anna, what do you eat??? I am a hardcore veggie, but I love paneer, cheese, and tofu (and eggplant). And N. Kumar, no offense meant, but your post about South Indian tolerance was an eye-opener. My Tamil ma-in-law doesn’t even like me using onions and gags anytime she sees garlic in someone’s kitchen. She was stunned into silence when she saw bottles of garlic pickle in her cousin’s house until someone explained that he had a heart condition and it was ‘medicinal’! The imp. question might be: how does one legally define a housing society? Who funds it? Can a private organization make its own rules and associate freely with whomsoever they want? Private colleges, corporations, clubs etc. do all the time. If it’s a govt. funded society, then I see problems. The taxpayers aren’t all veggie gujus.
Coming from a Guju, Swaminarayan vegetarian family and being a pseudo vegetarian, I have major inner identity conflicts about eating meat vs. not.
My maabaap are vegetarians, but allowed me to eat meat as long as it was outside of our home. My first taste of the forbidden flesh was Chicken McNuggests at McDonalds when I was six years old.
I like seafood and tandoori chicken; I’ve made chicken subjis in the past, though rarely; and if I am a guest at someone’s home and there are no veggie options, I eat the meat dishes; but by and large, I am vegetarian…(not said confidently). There are limits, however. No organs, intestines, interiors. No bleeding carcasses—“done rare”– on my plate.
Having a significant other who is a meat-eater is problematic, but one can work around it. My live -in ex of 4 years is as carnivorous as they come. Months would go by when all we would eat is vegetables because that is mostly what I cooked. Sometimes, when we’d be at the supermarket and pass by the meat section, he’d burst out,”I need meat. I feel it. My body is craving it. Please, Cheap Ass, can we prepare something with meat in it? Please?” Seeing that I myself feel physical cravings for fruits and vegetables, and thus understand bodily urges, I’d reluctantly assent. But he compromised: he’d cook a vegetable dish and prepare the meat separately.
The Bhagavad Gita wisely says: “You are what you eat”.
Kumar N (#78):
Amen.
Well then we weren’t doomed from the start– I was. My poor Mother couldn’t stomach anything other than strawberry ice cream and green grapes for most of her pregnancy. I apparently forced her to throw everything else right back up. See? I’ve been particular since conception. In fact, I just got off the phone with Moms and she said I’ve always been a very picky eater.
I don’t know if the “rotating” works for every child. She said that as soon as it was time to start me on solids, she even made my baby food from scratch, boiling and pureeing every kind of vegetable or fruit she could get her hands on, but it was futile– I’d take a few bites and then refuse to eat. The first two years of my life, I lived on Similac. Aside from a taste for very sweet coffee which really started to manifest at about 18 months, they couldn’t get me to regularly consume anything besides that specific brand of formula.
ANNA:
I hear you. The incredulous harrassment is unbelievable. I lived abroad for 4 years, in a country where they are hearty meat eaters, and vegetarianism is at best a fad. Nobody could understand why I was a vegetarian, and my hangups about having meat at home. Everytime, someone tried to get me to try a “wonderful dish” of “rare done steak” (practically still bleeding on my place), “exceptionally yummy liver sausages”, because I don’t “know what I’m missing”. I tried to explain it to them that vegetarianism is so much a part of the lifestyle of certain sections of India, and that there are Desi cuisines based on vegetables that have evolved throughout the centuries. How do you get your protein, they ask. Well, duh, that’s why Desi meals (at least the Guju one) are accompanied with daal. I think that the Desi veggie cuisine is well-equipped to provide the proper nourishment that our bodies need.
Vat?! I love all of the aforementioned, except for tempeh. Don’t know what that is.
Its a bit difficult being a vegetarain in US, especially if you don’t do regular cooking. I don’t like salads and I can’t have a plate of salad for my meal. I’m a not a big fan of uncooked veggies..be it in my sandwich or my rice! Desi veggie food has a lot of variety and can easily provide a balanced diet.
Brown FOB: for me, it’s all about tofu, black beans and veggie burgers. Those three things together constitute perhaps the healthiest edible and great tasting substances on earth. Ridiculously low calories, practically no fat, crazy protein and super high in fiber. you cant beat it.
I get this question so often, I feel like posting a nutrition journal. A few hours ago, I had a spinach and feta pizzeta with a mango-flavored acai juice chaser. The only constant in my diet is the RTD shake I have for breakfast every morning; it has 32-34 grams of protein and it’s addictively delicious. I eat whatever appeals whenever I’m wandering around shopping at Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s– both of which are uber-veg-friendly.
The point is, I eat plenty. I’ve got the Sir-Mixalot-approved backside to prove it. 😉
Iam not sure if Buddha even ate meat. But even if so, there is some reasoning behind it. Buddha ate whatever was given to him as alms. And note that in the case of Buddha, he did not kill an animal and eat the meat for himself. The intent was never there. And that is true ahimsa. Ahimsa derives from a sanskrit verb root that means “an inclination to not hurt, an inclination to non violent“. Ahimsa is not just being non hurting, non violent, non aggressive. Ahimsa is about having the inclination to be peaceful and non hurting. But when you cook meat for urself, you violate it. Buddha did not. Hope you can see what iam trying to say.
I’m guessing that this kind of harassment happens in the US? I think it’s quite acceptable to be veg in India. The harassment, in my experience there, is the other way round.
Wow, ANNA, didn’t expect you somehow to be so worked up about this topic 🙂 I guess vegetarians would probably consider it nice to be asked if it’s ok to eat meat, but I personally would never extend that ‘courtesy’ to anyone in a restaurant or at my home.
I guess it’s simply I perceive it as a ‘right’ to eat what I want to eat. Moreover, life would always be so difficult if we all had to ask our neighbors and friends if it was ok to eat what we want to eat. Anyway, it’s amazing how many stories people have on this topic. Good post, Ennis!
I still like the analogy that ennis made with the ‘gay lifestyle’ issue.
Blah, specious argument. I might argue that even though I cook meat, but someone else does the killing and it’s that person’s fault. It’s an effective argument, but fallacious. Everyone from the slaughterer to the eater is somewhat responsible in the act of eating an animal.
SS:
Hey, that’s not consistent. If you eat it unknowingly, ie you didn’t know that it was meat and you ingested it, that is different. But if you knowlingly eat meat, whether or not you actually killed it or not is negligent. In that case, people who reguarly eat meat but did not kill the beast with their own hands can qualify as vegetarians. This is not logical.
Take your ahimsa example. If you send out mercenaries to “take out” certain people, does that mean that you didn’t indirectly participate in murder and you are not guilty? I know that this analogy might not be appropriate, but it may be according to your logic.
brown_fob:
In the US, not really. There are plenty of Desi grocery stores that carry vegan stuff. It is a problem in certain European countries, where even bread might contain animal by-products. For example, one might by bread at the supermarket, thinking that it is ok to eat it– bread being vegetarian most of the time. Not so. If you check the ingredients, some bread is made with pork fat.
Soy products and lentils have more protein per ounce than meat (I think).
Well, maybe if I had the luxury of others respecting the following truth which YOU stated so simply:
…but I don’t.
I don’t expect anyone to do that in their home, not when I’m the one who goes on and on about the sanctity of MY vegetarian home. I’m a LOT of terrible things, but I try very hard not to be a hypocrite.
If you wouldn’t “extend that courtesy” to me, that’s says whatever it says about you. It’s your choice and I respect that, I only ask for identical respect in return. My nearest and dearest friends and even some strangers do extend that unthinkable “courtesy” to me and I never forget it or take such kindness for granted; in the case of the latter, it’s an excellent predictor of whether or not they will join the former, which is not to say that I hold it up as some silly requirement in order to be friends.
I get worked up about it because it’s a question of respect and not being selfish or boorish enough to put your desires over the comfort of others in social situations. When you invalidate something as deeply personal as what someone eats, I think that’s deplorable. How dare anyone tell me that “(I) don’t know what (I’m) missing”. Fuck them. I don’t force okra on them, they can stop shoving chicken my way. The lack of dead animals in my system does not somehow render me unable to make my own choices, nor do I need anyone else to explain to me why they are wrong.