Vegetarianism is Alright

2025-09-18

I've been a vegetarian for over a year now. Technically pescatarian, because I intentionally left that open, or flexitarian, because I just haven't been anal about it. I think that's been the key to making it so easy. I made the swtich for a number of reasons.

First, the ethics. I don't even need to go into that, just read Peter Singer yourself. It just always made sense to me philosophically and I mostly avoided it out of a sense of personal weakness. I remember telling people that were vegetarian or vegan that I had a sense we meat eaters would be regarded hundreds of years from now with the same revulsion we all have toward slave owners, while they would be seen as the abolitionists.

Second, health. I don't actually buy this one. It doesn't seem all that much healthier. Moderation always seemed crucial, but abstention not so much. This let me to the position I eventually took, which was that I didn't need to be rigid about it. And I haven't. On more than one occasion, I have accidentally eaten something with meat and just kept on going.

That leads me to the next point, which is socialization. Before making the switch, I met some new friends who aren't quite vegetarians, but don't eat mammals at least. They eat a bunch of chicken. I don't eat it anymore, but seeing this demonstrated was very helpful in my formulating fish as my own carve out. It felt important to have a release valve of some kind and since I don't live in an area known for fishing, I have never really been big on eating it. If anything, I've become more open to that since the switch. I also settled on fish in particular for the ethical reason of them being further out of my circle of concern. I am a tetrapod, all mammals are, even chicken, but most of culinary fish are not.

Speaking of the switch, there was an event as catalyst for it, and it was health related. It just wasn't really diet related. I choked. It hadn't been the first time, but it was enough to land me in the hospital, also not for the first time. The previous had been much more harrowing, as I'd had a piece of chicken bone stuck in my throat for something like 8 hours before repeated acid reflux finally dislodged it. Unlucky as I was, the ER that night had gunshot victims to deal with and I wasn't priority. But it was the most painful experience of my life, it left an impression, and at some point during it I decided that I would change my diet if it ever happened again.

The thing is, it's been easy. Early on I ate a bunch of Impossible burgers and such. I gained 10 or 20 lbs I'm still having trouble dropping, from all the carbs. But it hasn't actually been difficult. Like, at all. It's probably saved me a good bit of money, too. I eat fish more than I ever have in my life now, but that amounts to maybe once every two weeks. When I do that, I've even discovered a little mantra to mitigate the bad karma a bit on the religious end. I am still not sure how I feel about such things, but pretending to go along with it forces me to take a moment to stop before eating and appreciate the sacrifice of the animal's life. It's a moment of mindfulness I didn't have when my diet was "anything goes."

I'm not a vegan, though, and I don't think I'll ever want to be one. Even as I describe literal religious prayers, that feels less dogmatic than the veganism I have seen. Secular religiosity abounds these days and it's one of the more obvious cases. Plus, too much of my diet is cheese and eggs. The strain I imagined of vegetarianism all these years really would be true of veganism. At least, that's how it seems for now? Who knows.