vegetarianism

Cool post on the subversive Christianity blog. I'm not a 100% vegetarian, although most of the time I would like to be. I just don't enjoy meat that much. But one of the things I most appreciate about the Orthodox church is its tradition of fasting from meat--anyone who follows the guidelines of the church fast eats vegan for more than half the year. While I've often thought that humans ought to be vegetarians (we were in Eden, right? and, I mean, look at our teeth), I think that a guideline that requires everyone to do it at least some of the time is a great idea. It's not asking more of anyone than they can handle, but it challenges everyone to eat less than they otherwise would.

One other piece that the above post mentions only indirectly is the fact that the amount of energy required to supply people with meat is far greater than that required to supply vegetarian diets. The lower you eat on the food chain, the less energy you're using. (Which is why my husband keeps trying to convince me to eat bugs.) And in a world of increasingly lower energy supply, there are few better things you can do for the environment or for society.