Today’s question comes from Anne-Kari, who wants to know:
Are you a vegetarian or an omnivore? And why?
I do eat meat and other animal products, and I think it would be hard for me to be a vegetarian: the discipline and the preciseness it takes to get a full range of nutrients without animal products would be too limiting to me. (I’ve done discipline and precise before, because the only way I can ever manage to lose weight is by weighing and measuring food and counting calories, and that is an exhausting and obsessive way to live.) I also cannot abide most legumes, which are the best source of protein if you’re not going to eat animal products, so that would be another problem.
I don’t have a moral issue, per se, with consuming animals, and when it has been possible, I try to acknowledge the contribution an animal has made to my plate. (Once, for instance, I was able to eat an egg that had been laid that morning, and I literally thanked the chicken that produced it. Because I don’t live on a farm, however, that’s not something I’m often able to do.) I do think that food animals should be treated well, for their own sake as well as for the nutritional value of the food they go on to provide. Factory farming is an abhorrence, and we meat eaters are going to have to face the moral issue of the impact raising animals for food is having on global warming.
Your turn…
That awesome image up top grabbed from Uni Magazine, though I couldn’t find a credit for it.
This QOTW comes via a previous QOTW, which asked “What kinds of things would you like to learn about your fellow FlickFilosopher readers?” Feel free to continue adding suggestions there for me to grab for future use.
