I have never really liked meat. The idea of a bloody (or even well-done) steak with neatly criss-crossed grill marks on my plate has never been appealing to me, and I have basically limited my carnivorous intake to the occasional chicken breast. My boyfriend is a vegetarian, and I can go for long stretches of time without eating any meat at all. So why am I not a vegetarian, too, already?

Here are the reasons I’ve come up with (while sitting over a bowl of my mom’s famous beef stew):

- It still doesn’t seem to be quite accepted. If you’re invited to dinner at someone’s house or invited to a wedding or some other bash, it’s assumed that you eat meat. If you don’t, you either have to make everyone feel bad by arranging for a special plate or you have to forage for roots and berries among the side dishes.

- Some of my favorite dishes from childhood have meat in them. Sure, I don’t eat them now, but when I go home and my mom makes them, it’s sweet (and they’re still delicious). Knowing I couldn’t eat those anymore would kind of depress me. Wait, who am I kidding? It would totally depress me.

- One of my goals is to travel around the world, and I don’t want to have to limit myself in any way when I do that. Especially when it comes to eating local fare that may or may not come from an animal.

- BACON. Need I say more?

Okay, but lately I’ve been giving these things more serious thought. World Vegetarian Day – which is happening right now! – is arriving at a perfect time for me, because I’m finally considering just making the plunge and going full veg. After all, none of my reasons from above are really relevant on an everyday basis, and here’s something else: fake meat is surprisingly good. Yeah, that’s right. I said it. That Morningstar bacon will never come from a real hog and will always look and taste just a little bit off, but honestly, it’s pretty damn good. Good enough for me to give up the real stuff.

Plus, protein is everywhere. I didn’t realize I ate so much protein on an everyday basis until I started tracking my food with The Daily Plate and saw that I usually get about 250% to 300% of my daily protein requirement – all without eating meat. These foods are just bursting with protein and I happen to eat them (in large quantities) on a daily basis:

Eggs
Milk
Soy milk
Cottage cheese
Regular cheese
Yogurt
Peanut butter
Nuts
Lentils

I don’t need some artery clogging meat to survive. I can live meat-free and still get everything I need. So here it is: October 1, 2009 just might be the onset of my own personal journey toward vegetarianism.

PETA, call me! I wanna do one of those naked ads!

What do you vegetarians think? Is it easy? What made you decide? Why should I do it?

Vegans in New Zealand, however, are taking it one step further: They won’t even DO IT with someone who eats meat. Apparently, the vegansexuals are all over the Kiwi continent.

I understand completely someone’s personal decision to remain meat free. I was a non-red meat eater for eight years myself. There are a lot of factors and personal vindications that come with being a vegan or vegetarian.

My old rule used to be that if I wouldn’t kill it with my own bare hands, then I wouldn’t eat it (because, yes, if I needed to I would kill a turkey with my own hands).

This totally went out the window when I realized how delicious beef, pork and lamb were. Which works out well now that I work at a Texas BBQ restaurant. Mmm, meat.

But, I digress.

The whole vegansexual trend reminds me of this really weird article I read a while ago about a man dating a woman that required him to wear a full body condom-like plastic suits to have sex. And he did it. And he described it. It was totally weird.

Doesn’t that cut the whole intimacy thing out of the equation? I mean, who wants to feel nothing but rubber or latex when you’re doing it. Wrapping up the man meat is enough for me.

Which leads me to my point about the vegansexuals. While they’re attracted to meat eaters, they don’t want to have sex with them because they believe a meat eater’s body is a wasteland of dead animal carcasses. They literally believe that you are what you eat. Because of this theory, one woman “really struggled” with the bodily fluids of carnivores. Interesting.

By cutting out meat eating sex partners, they’re kind of wrapping their sexual desires in a full body condom suit. Its just sex. Sure, it can get messy but it isn’t dirty. The vegansexuals, like the plastic suit lady, are making our bodies seem like nasty objects—unless they’re totally clean, wrapped in plastic and free of all animal by products, of course.