MSNBC: More and more people are calling themselves flexitarians — meat-eating vegetarians.
Or, as I used to call myself, a non-practicing vegetarian.
Veggie guru Molly Katzen is quoted as saying, “I don’t feel it’s wrong if you’ve got a great big plate of vegetables [and] your protein is from a healthy, happy chicken, or a grass-fed cow.”
Actually, for the past month I’ve been a free-rangeatarian. I’ll eat meat as long as it’s had a decent life.
I was motivated to make the switch in part by reading Michael Pollan’s piece on Peter Singer in the NYT, published in 2002. (But note the correction in the Times’ abstract here.)
It turns out that this is very easy to do at home. We were already buying organic, free-farmed milk and most of the meat we bought was free-range anyhow. But it’s somewhat harder when dining out. It rules out almost all meat, many fish (e.g. almost all salmon and catfish), and pretty much any eggs. If I were going to be really strict about it, I wouldn’t eat much cheese or milk, either, but I’ve got to draw the line somewhere. My lunches these days feature a lot of cheese sandwiches and tuna sandwiches.
