A breath of fresh air? Yes please, I'm starving

If anyone out there thinks that vegetarianism is a bit of an extreme diet, then check this out. Breatharians, apparently, exist on a diet of fresh air, and nothing else. Now, I like to think of myself as open-minded, but that's completely bonkers. And according to the accounts on Wikipedia, it's almost certainly impossible (I can't believe I'm using the word "almost").

But it just goes to show that however extreme you think you are, there's always someone willing to take it that little bit further. I feel positively mainstream, as Bob Dylan almost certainly never said.

Sexy veggies

Forget FHM, Peta is running a poll to find the World's Sexiest Vegetarian. Strueth!

While it might sound like, jeez, not another silly world's sexiest thing thingy, for us veggies, well some of us, well, me, finding out that a person is vegetarian instantly adds a little something to their attractiveness. Shallow, I know, but there you are.

The list is full of glamourous, and suddenly sexier than ever, film starlets and singers, and it's a tough choice, although Natalie Portman gets my vote. I mean, gawd, she's Queen Amadala and a vegetarian! What more could anyone want. Up against her for the coveted title are Joanna Lumley, Joss Stone, Lauren Bush (Dubya's niece) and Pamela Anderson, among others.

There is also a poll of the world's sexiest vegetarian men. Last year's winner was Chris Martin. If he's going to win again this year and make it a double he'll have to fend off the likes of Andre 3000 (also a previous winner), Boy George, Joaquin Phoenix, Prince, and, of course, Morrissey.

I say, old chap, eating meat is so vulgar

Is vegetarianism the epitome of civilised behaviour? By choosing to break the natural order of death and killing, the cycle of violence I talked about in yesterday's post, are we, vegetarians, actually beacons of intellectual enlightenment?

The inventor Thomas Edison said: "Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages."

He could be talking about vegetarianism - indeed, I think he was. Unless we are also part of the local hunt or shooting party, or matadors or something, we, vegetarians, are unlikely, or less likely than most, to harm other living things.

I know, I know, it's a thorny subject and I should be wary of claiming moral superiority while I still wear leather shoes, benefit from medical advances and all those other things that involve animal cruelty - not to mention standing on microscopic organisms.

But as a general step in the right direction, vegetarians can claim to be upstanding members of the rational elite. This is at odds with the often-spewed view that vegetarians are long-haired, sandal-wearing beardies with no understanding of the finer things in life.

In polite society, where I occasionally find myself, the idea of vegetarianism is usually, it seems to me, considered peculiar and quaint. Not something one would associate with high art and good manners, those other bastions of civilisation. But is it us, who, rather than apologising for the inconvenience caused and muttering embarrassedly about liking animals, as though it was soft, is it us who should be looking down our noses at the meat eaters, shaking our heads at their savage behaviour?

The cow that fought back

It's a sorry tale. A cow, shunted into an abattoir to face having its head chopped off, goes into a mad frenzy and crushes a man to death.

I'm a peace-loving person and I feel sorry for the man and his family. But it's only natural (as meat lovers often tell me - we have sharp teeth after all, and cows have sharp horns). If you're going to kill animals, it's only to be expected that occasionally they're going to fight back. It would be even sadder than it is if they didn't.

I guess the offending cow was put down afterwards, though. Which is also sad. It's a mad, sad circle of violence. Maybe that's what vegetarianism is, a break in the cycle of violence.

Tasty Nestlé veggie sausages, anyone?

I never did like Linda McCartney's range of vegetarian food, but news that Nestlé may be about to buy it is still a little disconcerting. There's a definite trend of huge multi-national companies attempting to muscle in on healthy or ethical brands. L'Oréal bought Body Shop and McDonald's bought a large chunk of Pret-A-Manger.

It means the high street lines between good and evil are being blurred, and some people, no doubt, are going to get confused.

"Hmmm," says one innocent shopper. "I'll just pop in and get a freshly made organic avocado sandwich from Pret. How can that hurt anyone?" Or, "I want to help save the world, so I'll stop eating meat. That Linda McCartney was a vegetarian activist, and a nice lady, I'll buy her veggie sausages. That'll show them."

Except that the fat Nestlé executives in their tall, energy-sucking buildings, with their wall-graphs showing the rate at which African women are buying their milk [and if you don't know what's wrong with that, look here], are laughing at you, the hapless shopper, confused by the mirror tricks of multi-branding.

It's just downright dirty. But, I guess, that's why we hate them. If they didn't do things like that, we'd like them and then it wouldn't matter. Is that a Catch-22? I'm not sure. But to be safe, only eat home-grown bean sprouts for the foreseeable future. And only drink water.

Famous vegans

I spotted a few quotes I quite liked by famous vegans in an article in The Independent, and I thought I'd share them.

Moby, the singer, who owns Teany, a vegan café in New York, said: "When I think of the fact that literally tens of billions of animals are killed nearly every year for human purposes, part of me wants to go out and join the Animal Liberation Front." Sometimes I feel like that, too.

Meanwhile, how about this from the poet Benjamin Zephaniah. When asked what he would eat if he was in a desert with no food in sight except a cow, he said: "I'd find out what the cow was eating and join it." Good answer. Unless the cow was dead, of course. But still a good answer.

Desperate veggie housewife

Here's for a bit of celebrity vegetarian watching. Aparently Desperate Housewives actress Nicolette Sheridan has given up meat in a bid to please her new fiancé Michael Bolton. Now that's an endorsement! Apparently, according to sources close to the star, it is reported that, a friend said: "He's pushing Nicolette to give up meat because watching her eat a lamb chop grosses him out." Yeah, go Michael! And in a real coup de grace, he managed to convince her "it will keep her caloric intake down". Despite all his well-reasoned arguments, however, it seems the desperate one is finding it just too hard to stay away from the evil meat stuff. According to the same well-placed source, "She's trying, but she does sneak a chicken now and then".

What a twittering hoo-hah, is all I can say.

Are you a believer?

A vegetarian couple in West Sussex who were told they could not foster children have persuaded the county council to change its guidelines.

This raises the ever murky question of whether you should you raise your children as vegetarians? I have just written an article for BBC Good Food magazine (unfortunately there is no link as it doesn't have a website) about this very subject. But more of that later. The lady in the fostering case said: "Some people have accused us of trying to push our values on to children but one comment I would say about that is the very nature of parenting is that you influence your children."

This makes sense. If you believe in something, you try to pass it on to your children. You obviously hold beliefs because you feel they're right. Right? This is where it gets sticky, and you have to be really honest with yourself. How much do you believe in it? She compares it to bringing your children up in a certain religion. I made the same comparison in my BBC Good Food article. But what happens if you don't really believe in your religion, as I'm sure many people don't?

I may be waffling here, but for me, vegetarianism is something I believe in, very strongly, for me. It is part of who I am. I like being vegetarian. I find meat replusive. But, you know, I don't actually think eating (free-range) meat is wrong. I want to think that, but my logic says it isn't. My logic says it's natural to eat meat, occassionally. Jeez, what a mind-field.

However, despite this doubt, I fully back the foster parents and I have no intention of giving my children meat. You want to know why? I just can't.

Beginnings...

I was born veggie. Well, strictly speaking, I was born to vegetarian parents who decided to raise me without eating meat. A controversial decision, perhaps, but there it is. Apart from one accidental abberation, which I'm sure I'll get around to recounting at some point on this blog, I have lived my entire 32 and a bit years without eating meat. Strange? Unfortunate? Cool? Who cares? I get many reactions, mostly of surprise and incomprehension, as if I'd said I'd lived my whole life without drinking water. Now, that would be strange. No? Anyway, this is me and this is my blog. Let's see what happens.