The opinion piece, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1505127,00.html">Why I hate vegetarians</a>, is a typical example of hating the cause because of its proponents. The author doesn't counter any arguments of vegetarianism---she simply claims its ok to eat meat because some vegetarians are so damned <iq>smug and superior</iq>. A lovely bit of deductive reasoning akin to taking up smoking because there are non-smokers who are annoying. <bq>People should be allowed to make their own choices and not be bullied or frightened into giving up meat. In the US recently, children in a secondary school were taken by their teachers to a slaughterhouse to show them how animals are killed for food. This tactic is a form of mind control, as unethical as discouraging young girls from having sex by making them watch a difficult childbirth.<fn></bq> Teaching kids where their food comes from is mind control? And letting them believe that there are no hidden costs associated with eating meat isn't? The fact remains that meat---at least in America---doesn't cost anywhere near as much as it should. The introduction to the article states that <iq>[p]eople should not be bullied into giving up meat by humourless, judgmental souls using spurious arguments</iq>. This is absolutely correct, but presupposes that there are no solid arguments for vegetarianism. Nowhere in the article is a single solid argument for vegetarianism refuted---or even mentioned. Instead, there's a laundry list of allegations that anorexia is linked to vegetarianism and that a pair of vegan parents malnourished their kids. No one is going to seriously believe that vegetarianism is just as much a cause of the epidemic of eating disorders as a culture that exalts an increasingly skeletal standard of beauty. Nor is anyone going to believe that vegans are just as dangerous to their kids as parents that let them swell up to incredible sizes on diets of soft drinks, snack foods, fast foods and <a href="http://www.kraftbrands.com/lunchables/index.aspx">Lunchables</a><fn>. Further on, the razor-like incisiveness of this woman's reasoning conflates all vegetarians with the most radical animal liberationists and gives representation only to the most obnoxious vegetarian opinions. More cool-headed vegetarian representatives would have pointed out the much smaller energy and waste footprint engendered by a vegetarian lifestyle. Vegetarians are far more likely to be able to eat locally, disengaging from the vast capitalist machine that rolls food around the globe on a conveyor belt made of limitless energy. Rain forests in Brazil are burned to the ground not to grow soy, but to provide cheap farmland to graze cattle from which burgers are made. All sold to you at artificially low prices that have no hope of including the true cost of this meat grinding machine to the environment and our future. Creating meat takes a lot more energy and space than creating vegetables. The <i>way</i> meat is created in this most civilized of societies is abhorrent in the extreme. Teaching people where their food comes from is not brainwashing---it's an obligation. The author of the piece is the founder of Justice for Women and gets around to rapping PETA's knuckles for exploiting young women in its ads. It's a spurious way of arguing around to this point and it seems more like the author is angry that vegetarians even exist. Their very existence is necessarily an offense because it reminds her of her own hypocrisy vis-a-vis meat.<fn> She does clarify that it's not all vegetarians that irritate her---though she says she's talking about <iq>most vegetarians</iq>, she quickly <iq>those who eschew meat for religious and cultural reasons</iq>. Um, that is most of them. A whole subcontinent full of them. If you manage to live the vegetarian life, you are empirically one step ahead of meat-eaters as far as saving this planet goes. Hatred of vegetarians and their ostensible smugness is a natural reaction to this. It's the same scorn reserved for those who exercise more than you do or eat healthier or don't smoke or drink or watch that much TV---or do anything else better than you do. It's the reminder that someone has managed to overcome their inertia to achieve those things we would dearly like to better in ourselves that irks so. The only way out of this cul-de-sac is to change or deride the lifestyle you covet. <hr> <ft>Forcing anyone to watch anything is unethical. Offering young people the opportunity to see what is actually involved in a childbirth is in no way unethical---it is called education, and is all around a good idea.</ft> <ft>Warning, the site is built with Flash and its content will likely make you lose your own Lunch-able.</ft> <ft>The author is an omnivore and, while not daily brought to his knees with the shame of his hypocrisy, it at least aware of it and willing to face it head on.</ft> <n>More inspiration and stories found in the <a href="http://reddit.com/info/sh5h/comments">comments at Reddit</a>.</n>