• squiblet@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    When I was a vegetarian I ran into people who thought meat was only beef… so they thought being a vegetarian meant sure, you’d eat pork, lamb, fish, chicken, turkey, just not beef. Kid of a weird thing to think, since for one a chicken is clearly not a vegetable, but also why even bother to make that distinction? “I have a special diet where I don’t eat beef!” and that sounds drastic to them. Some people’s minds are blown by the idea of no animal parts at all, like “What do you eat?

    • DharkStare@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I have several Indian co-workers who are “vegetarian” but eat chicken which I have been told “is not meat”.

      Also, my mom worked for the church and a large number of people would call up every Lent to ask if chicken was meat…

      I’m not sure where this idea that meat = beef comes from but it’s very prevalent.

      • kmkz_ninja@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Because if they believed “meat” was more than beef, then they wouldn’t be able to eat pork or chicken during lent.

        People let religion bind them, then try to wiggle out of it whenever they can.

    • TechyDad@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’m mostly vegetarian because I keep kosher and kosher meat is expensive. It’s cheaper to be vegetarian than a meat eater if you’re kosher.

      That being said, note that I said “mostly vegetarian.” For complex reasons (which I’ll get into if anyone is interested), fish isn’t considered meat when it comes to kosher laws. So beyond some rules like “don’t eat shellfish,” I can eat fish like salmon or tuna just fine. (In fact, I just made salmon for dinner.)

      If I was asked “is fish meat,” I’d say that it was. I wouldn’t default to the religious description except to explain why I’d eat tuna with cheese but not a beef cheeseburger.

    • chinpokomon@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      The cow is sacred in India, so they don’t eat beef. Most of the Western world won’t eat dog or cat, but that isn’t a universal thing and while probably not as common today, it doesn’t mean that it’s an unheard of practice. Until recent times, people would eat what was available which didn’t have alternative value.

    • Sodis@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      And then they forget, that just a hundred years ago huge parts of the population were more or less vegetarians, because meat was sparse and expensive. In Germany we had the phrase of the “Sonntagsbraten”, so basically a meat dish on Sunday, because it was a special occasion to eat meat at least one time a week.