Vegetarian at work buys chicken pasta but picks the chicken out??

[rhysella]

She claims she's a vegetarian for moral reasons but still BUYS the chicken pasta at work, but picks it out. I've suggested to her that she's still funding the animals death and that if she likes the chicken, she may as well have eaten that.. probably fairer to the chicken that died. She looked disgusted at me and apparently I don't understand vegetarianism and that she physically can't bring her self to eat "the poor animal that should never have been food". I fully understand why vegetarians have that view, I do. However, surely you don't then BUY chicken??

I know this is is pointless

Ive been ill the past couple of days so I spent the whole day on the couch. Tonight my husband came home from work and insisted on cooking for us so I wouldnt have to get up. It was a pasta recipe with chicken in it. When I cook I cook the chicken and my veggie subtitute separately and add them at the end.

Husband hates cooking and almost never does so he was making a huge effort for me. (Before anyone says its unfair, this is part of the division of chores we agreed on and is 100% the right and fair decision for us) At one point he starts swearing and comes upto me with puppy dog eyes admitting he dumped the chicken pieces in the pasta without thinking about because he was following the original recipe.

I would normally have hated picking out the chicken and eating the pasta but I was touched by how hard he was trying and said it was just big chicken pieces (it wasnt!) and I would pick them out, no biggie (it was!). The other alternative would have been to scrap the whole thing and eat toast or something and make him feel guilty over trying to do something nice for me.

My point is, its not always so black and white as people make it out to be. Ive been a veggie for a long time and I would most certainly prefer to have my food not touch meat but there are situations where its preferable to the alternative once in a blue moon. And I absolutely don’t think that that makes a “fake, wannabe, attention seeker” etc.

"I'm sorry but I heartily disagree. It's actual vegetarians that campaigned and asked for more veggie food, clearer food labelling etc. "

I used to be an actual vegetarian so I was part of that too.
Also people who are flexitarian may become vegetarians one day and be part of that too. Some people do it in stages and start by reducing.

"How long a list is either what you do or don't eat? Surely just give whoever the shorter of the 2"

Quite complicated. And why should I if I don't want to? People don't really get it, but understand if I say 'vegetarian'.

"Why don't you eat certain meats?"

Don't want to. I was vegetarian for a long time and when I stopped I reintroduced some meat, but can't really go back to others so I can eat a chicken salad (and yes, leave out some of the chicken possibly) but not a steak or a burger, for example.

I never campaigned for anything when I was vegetarian (well, pescatarian, except that word didn't exist then).

I think I'm increasingly uncomfortable with labels for how people eat.

Are you sure she’s doing it for ethical reasons and not just because she didn’t like meat? I don’t eat meat or fish, but will eat things with meat stocks and I would happily pick meat out of a dish and eat the rest.

From the first sentence of the OP She claims she's a vegetarian for moral reasons. If that's what she's saying, that's all the OP can go on.

I had a classmate like that at uni, who used to buy a pepperoni pizza only to remove pepperoni slices later because she was apparently a veggie.