To think ‘Flexitarian’ isn’t hypocritical?

[MotherOfDragons90]

My DH and I have been gradually phasing meat out of our daily lives. For environmental and financial reasons. I’m not finding it difficult to not eat meat day to day, but I refuse to cut it out completely. I will still enjoy a cheeseburger at bonfire night, roast lamb at MILs on the odd Sunday and a nice steak on our anniversary.

I said to my DSis today (who is a full vegetarian) that I think our balance works well and if everyone did the same it actually might make a difference environmentally, and for animals. She is adamant that it makes no difference and I’m just a hypocrite who may as well eat meat all the time.

It’s really got my back up because I feel like I’m genuinely doing my bit and she’s just stamped all over it! Am I being a hypocrite?!

If all meat eaters had just one meat free day a week it would make a huge difference. They would still,like you be an omnivore though.

I think you have it spot on with wanting to reduce meat intake

I think the term flexitarian is a bit pointless And stupid, but I appreciate that it is a term you dont use in RL

Yeah, it's the label that's not helpful. My diet has very little meat, some fish. I am aiming towards eating a mostly vegan diet but don't plan to completely exclude animal products or use a label for my diet. I shan't expect people to cater to me either - since I am not currently opposed to eating meat sometimes, I think it is unreasonable to expect other people to not cook meat for me.

I don't think this is hypocritical, I think it's akin to cutting down on your consumption of anything that's detrimental to the environment, like using your car less. However I appreciate that some people choose not to consume animal products for other ethical considerations and probably see my approach as hypocritical or unethical by their standards.

I’m vegetarian, and I’m fully aware it’s a half measure. If I really wanted to change for ethical and environmental reasons I’d be vegan.

Your sister sounds very unaware.

I think your strategy is a good one, which most people will have to adopt in the near future, because as you imply , meat is very unsustainable.

I also like the term flexitarian as it says exact what it is, no ambiguity.

3 meat meals every day

Jesus @TeaForDad. I've never had meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner for one day of my life, let alone every day, and I'm 45 years old!

I think the point that a lot of vegetarians and vegans in particular don’t get (and I say this as somebody who eats a 90% plant based diet) is that cutting meat out doesn’t have to be to do with animal rights reasons.

Environmental reasons are just as )and if not more) important. If we all ate less meat and diary there would be huge benefits to climate change via emissions, soil erosion etc.

Sorry / what I meant to say OP is that reducing where you can is fantastic and definitely makes a difference. It doesn’t need to be all or nothing unless you are animal obsessed.

It doesn't need a silly label though, it's just eating less meat!

@babysharkah I agree about the daft name. Surely it's just eating a balanced diet?

I don't eat any meat or dairy etc. I can't bear the thought that I might be contributing to the torture of animals, which raising animals for meat & other products is. To get those products, meat etc. the animal is slaughtered. In the case of dairy cows they are artificially inseminated over & over to produce calves, thereby producing milk. Their babies are taken from them and killed for veal & other bits & pieces. When the cow is unable to produce babies anymore she is killed. For these reasons I cannot eat animals. For me it is not right and even thinking about it is upsetting.

I think it’s a great thing to do and as others say we should all do it. I think the issue is that the label has a certain ‘value judgement’ attached. Like, you are telling everyone you attach morals to food but really you are just a normal omnivore who thinks a bit more about she eats. There shouldn’t really be a need to label that /“-You don’t really have any special dietary requirements.

I'd say it's a slightly pointless label, as if you are eating meat on special occasions you pretty much would never have to discuss your dietary preferences.

I think it's a healthy way to eat, though.

My mum would never consider herself vegetarian but we rarely are meat at home. Meat isn't mandatory at every meal for meat eaters

Reading with interest. I have a question about the approach (label or no!) that the OP and others have taken - what do you do about eating at other people's houses?
I'm asking because I have been following the approach the OP describes for years. I am very careful about where I source the meat that we eat at home - the problem I have is that, as I do eat meat at home, I can't really expect to be catered for as a veggie at other people's houses. ('I'm not going to eat your meat because I only eat ethically-sourced, organic, traceable meat' is hardly polite guesting!) So I end up eating meat that I don't really want to out of politeness.
I gave meat up for Lent this year and haven't gone back to it yet. I'm not sure I've got it in me to be fully vegetarian (and I want my kids to eat meat for the moment - I know kids can eat a perfectly healthy veggie diet, but I also know that mine wouldn't!), but I can't work out how I can get away with only eating the meat that I choose to without seeming rude/inconveniencing other people.
FWIW, OP, I am definitely in the 'any effort is better than none/it's none of anyone's business' camp.

The label's wanky but the idea certainly isn't

Agreed. Not sure why everything has to have a label nowadays. Just say you rarely eat meat but are not vegetarian.

We are on the same path after watching the David Attenborough climate change documentary as a family.

We are now only having meat three times a week at home. Hopefully as the DC get used to this over the next couple of months we will then increase that so that all meals at home (apart from the sacred sunday lunch) are meat free. The DC are still bound to frequently chose the meat option at school so they will still have plenty of their beloved meat in their diets anyway.

'Flexitarian' is a ridiculous label for what is essentially just eating the same things, but not as much of it. No big deal. Just eat the way you want, but there's no need for the attention seeking term.

You're absolutely making a difference. Noone can live their lives on this planet without having a negative effect - it's about what choices you can make to reduce that, and noone can reasonably do everything! So you draw your lines where you want and be happy.

We've done the same but we don't label it. I used to eat a lot more vegetarian meals but for some reason I upped my meat intake a few years ago, no idea why. So now I'm reducing it again. My dd is fully vegetarian and has been for a few years.

If I have a chicken nugget craving bad I know then I always have a bag of Quorn nuggets in the freezer, I just call them nuggets though.

You are fine op.
I was a vegetarian years ago for health and environmental reasons and concerns with animal welfare (but not through belief of equality with animals) so I had no problems moving back to eating some types of meat.

Obviously if people are vegetarians because of animal equality ethics they are never going to agree with that position.

The flexi label is a bit silly but you are doing absolutely the right thing by cutting out meat. As long as you don't just replace it with eggs and dairy otherwise it's a bit pointless.

You're only a hypocrite if you say that you're a full-on vegetarian (which you don't, so you're not.)

Tell her that if she doesn't only eat fully organic produced foods, then she is a hypocrite...

because if she doesn't, she is killing millions of important bees and insects through pesticides (and that's not in the spirit of veganism, is it?)

Of course what you are doing is better than if you ate cheaply farmed meat every day. Better for the animals, possibly the environment and also for your health.

I don't eat meat but eat fish and dairy. Every now and then I'll have a period of just vegan eating but whilst I think that this is the right thing to do, I don't feel healthy whilst doing it so go back to eating fish / dairy.

If I'm going to an event where they want to know food preferences I'd always tick the veggie box but I don't tell people I'm veggie (as I'm not) just that I don't eat meat.

I do wrestle with the fact that I am a bit of a hypocrite as I wouldn't eat, say a desert with gelatine in, but I am aware of the impact of dairy farming.

I hate the label but understand you did it for ease of explaining on this thread. We are also not entirely successfully trying to cut down on meat. Having 1 DC who is a total carnivore and 1 who eats almost no veggies it feels like a losing battle!!

I don’t personally like the term whatsoever. Technically everybody who isn’t a vegetarian or vegan is a flexitarian. It just means they eat whatever they feel like and don’t restrict their diet in any way. You don’t want to eat as much meat so you’ve reduced that. There’s no term for it, you’re still very much an omnivore.

It will make a difference though, your SIL is wrong. Even if everyone followed ‘meat free Monday’ every week it would make a difference.

I will go against the grain here and say that I do think a label can be useful as something that helps some people conceptualise the idea.

Take me, for example. I love meat. I used to have meat most days, often twice a day. I did feel some guilt about it (primarily for environmental reasons), but going vegetarian or vegan was simply not something I could contemplate, so I just felt resignation about it (‘Well, I can’t possibly change my lifestyle that drastically, so there’s not much I can do.’)

It took reading an article about Brian Kateman and the reducetarian movement for me to realise that I could still make a positive impact, and to sit down and think about what I could feasibly do in concrete terms. I now eat meat once a week, plus fish/seafood maybe a couple of times a month. I have vegan meals a few times a week, though I do still consume a fair bit of dairy. I know it’s not as good as going completely vegetarian or vegan, but I calculate that I’ve reduced my meat consumption so far this year from what would have been at least 30kg to about 4.5kg, and that has got to be worth something, right?

I don’t go around calling myself a flexitarian or reducetarian, though. (In fact I don’t mention it at all.) But learning about it as a movement with a term attached to it was what prompted me to make the change in the first place.

Like thewalrus, I find that the hardest situations are when other people are cooking for me. I don’t make demands for fear of being perceived as a hypocrite who asks for veggie food but is then seen scoffing steak the next day. But the fact is that if I am denying myself meat most of the time, I want to be able to choose when and in what form I eat it. I might have been specifically looking forward to that steak as my precious once-a-week meaty meal; I don’t want to ‘waste’ it on something that isn’t my first choice. I haven’t found a good way of dealing with that yet. I often end up eating meat that I don’t really want out of politeness and then forgoing the meat I do want to balance things out, but it’s hardly an ideal solution.

Of course reducing meat makes a difference. She is being silly. You've done a brilliant thing, keep it up!

I am vegetarian, currently trying to reduce dairy. I have replaced milk with oat milk but I do have the odd bit of cheese still. I get the same from hardcore vegans. Yet they seem happy to eat foods like jack fruit that have come half way across the world, or to buy non-organic fruit and veg which has been grown using pesticides, which are surely not vegan.

No-one is absolutely pure and perfect. We can all try harder, but don't knock people who are making an effort in the right direction. It's counterproductive.