Having spent this past summer acquiring news friends with unfamiliar eating habits, and old friends with new found tastes, I thought I’d better brush up on New York diets/ways of life/spiritual eats/yoga etc. Coincidentally there’s a lot of information online and in book stores about this subject.

Whether you’re vegetarian, vegan, pescatarian, raw foodist, fruitarian and there’s many others, there’s a lot of disagreement about the definitions of these varying lifestyles. Some of my friends think it’s stupid, others vehemently opposed or vehemently for it. To avoid definitional entanglement I’ll steer clear of the O.E.D but a quick track of common arguments for or against include:

– Good on you man, I respect you’re way of life. Tell me more.

– Yay for vegeterians! Yay for vegans! Yay for environmental responsibility! Let’s save the world!

– That’s cool but not recession proof. I’m too poor and it’s too hard to be a vegetarian et al in the recession.

– I think tofu tastes like flavorless rubber cement.

– I’m mentally eating chicken and steak (together) as we speak  because it makes me feel better having to  listen to you. I’m an American, darn it.

– I think you’re a masochistic narcissist for controling so much of your diet and believing your body to be such an important political message that it controls every facet of your life.

Whichever way you’re inclined (and none of these views necessarily represent my own), chances are you better be buying organic free range eggs or suffer the guilt on your conscience. If you go on a “raw food cleanse for 5 days” tread carefully at die-hard raw food restaurants (death by orange pulp suffocation while noone is looking, if you know what I mean).

-Nikki-Lee