A fix for the meat-eating debate

Shelley wonders if she can be called a semi-vegetarian, a faux-vegetarian, or a part-time vegetarian? Photo / Istock

Admitting to being conflicted and a little squeamish about feasting upon the flesh of sentient beings is a guaranteed way of annoying people.

Four years ago I declared "Roast chicken? Delicious. Having to acknowledge we're eating dead animals? Kind of gruesome." (I also confessed to lying to my daughter but let's not worry about that today.)

My ambivalence and hypocrisy were seized upon in a spirited comments section. It seemed that vegans, vegetarians and meat-eaters were all provoked by this admission. I'd somehow managed to alienate people on both sides of the meat-eating debate. Reader submissions included:

"I wonder how many people would still eat meat if they had to personally kill, skin, gut, and dismember the animal they wanted to consume? All that nastiness is hidden from us privileged westerners, who can just go and buy a slab of meat in a nice shrink-wrapped package from the local supermarket ... There's simply no need to eat meat in the modern world. Of course, like Shelley, the vast majority of people are too lazy and selfish to make any changes to their own lifestyle."

"Even if vegetarianism wasn't good for you, it is selfish and short-sighted to continue consuming meat when this causes needless suffering and immense destruction to the environment."

"She admits that she has problems with the killing of animals yet she proceeds anyway. No sympathy here for her finding that holding a headless dead animal is 'unsavoury'."

"I live in Manhattan (NYC) and each week I go to the local ... market and I buy my own live chickens and kill them, pluck or skin them, and prepare them to be eaten. I believe, as do many chefs around the world that if you cannot stomach the thought of killing the food on your table ... then you shouldn't be eating it."

I got the impression that there are two distinct camps: those who eschew meat entirely and those who eat it as often as possible. Yet surely it can be more nuanced than that.

There must be a spectrum of vegetarianism. I can't call myself a vegetarian because I eat meat approximately once a month. Yet there are people who eat chicken every day who call themselves vegetarians. Go figure.

I must be a semi-vegetarian, a faux-vegetarian, a part-time vegetarian or possibly all of the above. For Vegetarian Awareness Month I've decided to stop beating myself up about those few occasions when I allow my appetite to triumph over my ethical concerns.

Instead of focusing on the exceptions, I'm going to concentrate on the fact that 98 per cent of the time I eat a vegetarian diet - which is said to be healthy and environmentally friendly as well as kinder to animals.

It's a philosophy that fits within the reducetarian movement which "envision[s] a world where all people eat less meat".

(And in light of the latest health warnings this is surely a worthy aim.)

According to a co-founder of this organisation, "Small changes lead to big impacts, and it's not all or nothing. It's foolish to discount the benefits of all the meatless meals and to instead focus on the occasional meaty meal."

These will be comforting words to those vegetarians whose carnivorous habits were exposed by a recent study. Evidently a third of so-called vegetarians eat meat when drunk; specifically, they have a weakness for kebabs and burgers. That's awkward.