Glamour girls love it veggie

First Pamela Anderson and now Paris Hilton, vegetarians can count some of the world's most lusted-after glamour girls among their ranks. Paris has apparently been persuaded to change her diet by none other than veggie flag-waver Heather Mills who showed her a video about the fur trade.

"I was grossed out. It was disgusting," shrieked the terminally pouting, golden-limbed rich girl.

It doesn't sound like she has yet acquired a love for vegetarian food, however. "I just survive on pasta and stuff like that," she says. Hmmm, for a girl famous for indulgence and luxuries, this doesn't sound like a recipe for long-term success. Someone needs to send her, or more correctly her cook, the Leith's Vegetarian Bible, quick [If you haven't got it, it's full of the most sumptuous food imaginable].

Still, I suppose many people will be surprised she eats anything at all.

One small step ...

My recent posts both here and on VeggieBoards asking what vegans think of vegetarians produced quite a response. Many of the comments were, shall we say, a bit bristly, with vegans failing to understand why a vegetarian, a so-called animal lover, could continue to contribute to animal cruelty by eating animal products.

I've come to the conclusion that vegetarians either don't have the same conviction as vegans towards protecting animals or they just don't know as much about where the non-vegan foods they eat come from. I find myself falling somewhere in the middle of these two.

Many vegetarians [and I know it's a generalisation, that's why I'm saying "many"] don't know about the dairy industry anymore than the average omnivore does. I wrote in an earlier post that the reason I don't drink milk is because it doesn't feel right, because cow's milk, to me, is designed for baby cows, not people. I didn't know about the calves being taken away at three days.

Meat, on the other hand, requires little investigation. It is, as I said before, obviously a dead animal.

So many vegetarians, you could say, are simply uninformed animal lovers [this is, of course, discounting all those vegetarians, and there are many, who became vegetarian purely for health reasons - they may think, like many omnivores, that there is nothing wrong with eating animals].

If vegetarians are informed, but continue to eat non-vegan products, it is through a lack of conviction for the cause, and in many ways I can see why vegans get upset about this. But having a strong conviction to protecting all animals is not a prerequisite for being a vegetarian. I don't want poor children in the developed world to suffer because of the coffee I'm drinking, [not that I drink coffee, but it's just an example], but do I always check it is fair trade? And do I check what that means in practise? If you smoke, where does that come from? Who suffers? If you wear trainers, travel in cars, buy fruit and vegetables from another country, even drink water, all of these things can result in suffering of some sort. But how strong is your conviction? As Jesus once said, let him who is free of sin cast the first stone.

If veganism is a step along the road to righteousness, but not the end of the road by any means, vegetarianism is just one step behind.

That said, I now find myself, as a result of this discussion, knowing more than I did about other animal products and I'm faced with the dilemma of what to do about it. Not eating meat, for me, being born veggie, is very easy. Cutting out cheese and yogurt, the two things that stop me being vegan, is less so. But every time I cut a slice of cheese, in the last few days, I feel for the poor calves. The cheese is tasting less and less flavoursome. But I still need to find out more. What about organic cheese? Do they still take the calves away? And I need to get my head around making a significant lifestyle choice borne of a now-I-know-I-can't-ignore-it sense of guilt. See what you've done?