Comments on: Quantum vegetarianism

By: Mike Linksvayer

Mike Linksvayer — Sun, 16 May 2010 01:02:11 +0000

I’m not sure why this is

See your previous sentence. I bet identity/signaling is a big part of it:

That is, you are either vegetarian or you’re not, you’re vegan or you’re not, you keep kosher or you don’t.

And you’re on a diet or not…

Working backwards:

Most (if not all) dietary restrictions are binary.

Except in practice.

For example, I’ve “been” vegan for over a decade, but no doubt much of the food I eat in restaurants comes into some kind of contact with animal products, and often contains them, just not mentioned on the menu. And most of the labor that went into production of the putatively vegan dish is literally fed by animal flesh.

Anyway, I agree that more “quantum” restrictions would probably be socially beneficial; I don’t even mind “pesco-vegetarian” and the like. Sort of along the lines of time-based restrictions, I’d like to see diets thought of as cuisines, at the very least in addition to as identities — “Go [out for] vegan!”

By: Emily

Emily — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 20:23:10 +0000

I like this, and I’ve been taking more quantum steps lately! I tend to think of it in terms of servings per week so it can be categorized in terms of high/medium/low consumption. For instance, I used to have >10 servings a week and now I have more like 2.

Glad to see you are still blogging!

By: Frank

Frank — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 18:05:50 +0000

Indeed the different flavors of vegetarianism complicate matters further. I just looked at meat consumption to simplify matters, but I believe my analysis extends to arbitrary restrictions.

By: Cathryn Gorlinsky

Cathryn Gorlinsky — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 16:30:22 +0000

Have you put any thought into the other “types” of vegetarians? Instead of meat, think of it as flesh. This is where the specific types come into play:

Pescatarian (no flesh, except fish)
Vegetarian (lacto-ovo-vegetarian, no flesh, products are OK)
Vegan (no flesh or animal products)
Flexitarian (mostly vegetarian diet)

I worry about the implications of restricting a diet further than accounting for necessary calories, vitamins, etc. Food should be an enjoyable necessity!