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Re: The World is a Vegetable

Drew posted:
> Here are Jeffrey Steingarten's [excerpted]
> thoughts on vegetarianism. I'll post them
> without comment.
> 
> Last year, VEGETARIAN TIMES magazine commissioned
> a study by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman. About 6.7
> percent of the adults they telephoned told the
> pollsters that they are vegetarians, way up from
> 3.7 percent in 1985. This works out to 12.4
> million vegetarians nationwide, an apparent jump
> of 80 percent.  Two-thirds of vegetarians are
> women. At this rate, I calculate, everybody will
> be a vegetarian by the year 2024, or at least
> everyone will say they're a vegetarian by 2024.
> But then how can over half of them possibly be
> women?

VERY BAD MATH.  you cannot merely assume that the
growth would remain constant.  that's ridiculous,
Mr. Jeffrey Steingarten.
 
> The problem with the Yankelovich survey is that
> many people who say they're vegetarian have an
> extremely eccentric idea of what a vegetarian is.
> Forty percent of them report that they eat fish
> or poultry or both every week.

yeah, i wouldn't call that a vegetarian.  nor the
people who eat red meat.  what were these people
thinking?

> Amazingly, only 4 percent of today's vegetarians
> avoid animal products entirely, an inconsequential
> quarter of a percent of the total American adult
> population, or a mere five hundred thousand people
> from coast to coast.

4% of vegetarians are vegan... yeah, i can see that.
it's wack to cut out cheese.  it's cheese, man.

"it's like no cheese i've ever tasted." -wallace

> Europeans eat vegetables because they
> love vegetables.

if i was a vegetarian, this would be me.  i love
vegetables.  big bag of greenbeans for dinner?  fine
by me.

> Nearly all the voluntary vegetarians in the world
> (not those vegetarians from poverty or religious
> belief) live in America and England.  Neither group
> is known for their skills in the kitchen.

this survey is kind of slanted anyhow... *most*
people, vegetarian or not, are not known for their
skills in the kitchen.  but i'd say per capita,
the % of vegetarians who know stuff in the kitchen
outweighs the % of non-vegetarians who know stuff...
simply due to the fact that they've been forced to
learn due to the lack of good selection out there 
for them to eat.
 
> Is this what I have been reduced to? What in the
> world am I doing, standing in my own kitchen,
> mixing up packets of microwavable, artificial
> Tex-Mex convenience food? Is this what being a
> strict vegetarian boils down to? And in large
> part, I'm afraid the answer is yes.

No, Jeffrey Steingarten, you are quite simplistic in 
your thinking.  there is so much stuff out there... 
not even fake-meat things that are "normal person 
food" that a vegetarian can eat.  i'm not talking 
vegan, though.

Pasta-freakin-Roni, spagetti with tomato sauce, 
portobella mushroom sandwiches, spinach souflee
stuffed mushrooms, the quite amazing selection of
objects that you can put on a pizza, all kinds of
cheeses, eggs (omelets), etc...
 
> The truth is that humans were designed to be
> omnivores, complete with all-purpose dentition
> and digestive systems.

true, but that doesn't mean that we have to eat meat.

> Vegetarianism is not our national diet.

no one said it was, well except for Jeffrey (to bring 
up his "climatic" point).

interesting article overall, drew.  thanks for posting

it.  but i think that Jeffrey's logic in many 
instances is way out of whack.  he's using statistics 
completely erroneously.  he's defining what we know 
as "vegetarian" as "vegan."  he jumps to conclusions, 
and makes trite little comments that make me feel like

me thought of the short quip of a line, and then 
wanted to form an essay around it to lead to it.

to me, it doesn't make sense logically.  the things
that he says that are falsehoods almost make we want
to become a vegetarian again out of spite.  but...

i love tacos,
Dan

np: buckethead - colma


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