Newspaper tries to praise vegetarianism

The Guardian newspaper the other day had an article in its leader column headlined In praise of vegetarianism. While it was nice to see a piece setting out to extol the virtues of a practice dear to my heart, I don't think it was done very well.

While I'm quoting slightly selectively, I know, the juxtapositions of the lines "[we] have come a long way since the days of textured vegetable protein. Humane meat is now more popular than ever" is hardly convincing in its "praise". Great, we have humane meat (I guess that's non-factory farmed meat) - it's hardly the bastion of a great argument for vegetarianism, is it now?

The best the piece can do is say "vegetarians still look elsewhere". It doesn't say where. Maybe the writer doesn't know [what he's talking about]. The piece then goes on about the environmental benefits of vegetarianism, which, while worthy, I suspect are not the main reason most vegetarians eschew meat.

The piece goes on to say: "vegetarianism confronts ethical questions that a lot of us prefer to ignore", but the writer fails even to suggest what these are and moves quickly on, completely missing the whole point of vegetarianism in the process. Basically, the piece would have been better called "A little bit of pointless and obvious information about vegetarianism".

By the way, don't bother reading the immense deluge of comments attached to the piece unless you want to hear the "meat-eaters are cruel vs. we have sharp teeth and are meant to eat meat" arguments going round and round in endless cycles of nothingness. Yes, we know you have sharp teeth, you animals.