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."