I am an unapologetic omnivore. I eat vegetables (preferably uncooked) and fruit as the major part of my diet, but I need meats, too. And milk products, and eggs. Grains come in mainly as "carriers" for the other stuff (pizza is messy without the crust).
I have friends and acquaintances who are various degrees of vegetarian, and that's fine, especially if they are doing it for health reasons, like avoiding antibiotics and hormones and so on. Where I get impatient is with those who say they "won't eat anything with eyes", or "anything that had a mother". They seem to think that it's ok to eat broccoli just because they can't hear it scream when they tear its living arms off. It's alive! All our food is alive (or comes from something alive, in the case of milk and unfertilized eggs). In my belief system, it's all the same degree of alive.
Back in the '70s there were experiments on plants, where they would have one person who would water and fertilize the plant (they used geraniums), and another person who would beat up on the plant, crushing leaves and tearing up roots. Then they measured the electrical output/conductivity of the plant. When the nice person approached, the needles stayed steady. When the nasty person got within a few feet of the plant, the needles went wild. Tell me that plant wasn't aware! Tell me it wasn't afraid! A "certain large computer manufacturer (think Blue)" actually played with using plants as security devices on mainframes.
Certain plants, when attacked by insects or browsing animals, will put out a chemical that alerts other nearby plants, who will then put alkaloids into their leaves to discourage the predators, even though they themselves haven't been munched yet. Tell me plants aren't at some level conscious, tell me they don't communicate! Just because we can't hear them doesn't mean they don't speak. I'm pretty certain they don't ponder Algebra, but I also know of plenty of humans who don't.
And don't argue that it's "just a chemical thing". The working of the human brain is "just a chemical thing".
I don't mind hunting, as long as the hunters eat what they bag. I strongly object to trophy hunting. I grew up on a mountain where many families relied on hunting for the larder, and on trapping to fund the other necessities. Nothing was wasted. That's fine. I've eaten possum and deer, squirrel and rabbit, pheasant and wild duck. There were plenty of trophy heads on the walls, but there's not much to eat on the head, and mounting it was akin to honoring it. "And that big fellow over there got us through the winter of '59."
All I ask is that whatever I eat didn't suffer unnecessarily on its way to me. I don't eat veal because I once stumbled into a veal barn while visiting a dairy farm. I support efforts to uncage chickens. I understand kosher laws require a quick clean kill. I wish there weren't so many people to feed. I appreciate what I eat.
On the other side of the spectrum, I am annoyed by people who say that "God created the plants and animals for man, that man is placed in dominion over the rest", and who think that man is rightfully the "top of the food chain". Well, that same God created viruses and bacteria, too, and it's not real clear to me exactly who He's rooting for!
It's all a big circle, not a chain. There is no top.
The only thing that is expressly meant to be eaten is fruit**. It's better for the plant that the fruit is eaten rather than just rot where it falls, because when it's eaten the seeds are deposited farther from the parent. So if you aren't eating meat because you don't want to kill something, you shouldn't be eating plants, either. You should eat only fruits, only those that grow in your area, throw pits out the window, and poop in a field.
**All living things are "meant to be eaten" by something, eventually, but you know what I mean....
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