AnnaleeDec 13, 2022

#Food Today's advice column inspired grouse:

Starter salads are not a vegetarian entree!

I am a breathing embodiment of the stereotype that vegetarians love salad. I really do! I love salad A LOT.

And yet, not being a cow, I still cannot digest roughage. Folks who seem to fully understand for themselves and their meat-eating guests that a bowl of greens is not a meal should not have trouble grasping that it is not a meal for a vegetarian, either.

Show threadAnnaleeDec 13, 2022

#Food If you are providing a meal for vegetarians and you really don't know what to offer you can go ahead and ask the vegetarians in question. But a good guideline is that vegetarians have the same macronutrient needs as everyone else. Our meals typically contain some combination of carbs, fat, and protein.

Fun fact: lettuce contains none of the above. All it is is fun to crunch. Basically the bubble wrap of the food world.

Show threadploumDec 13, 2022

@Annalee :

— Here a fish for the vegetarian !
— Sorry but vegetarians don’t eat animals
— But it’s a fish!
— I’m not specialist in biology but I’m pretty sure fish are not plants.
— Vegetarians eat fish!

(happened to me at a wedding)

Show threadMarcus Marcius MarcellusDec 13, 2022
@ploum @Annalee (Fish != animal) Now here is where a solid grounding in cladistics would have helped your server avoid that embarrassing error.
Show threadRichard Baker
@ploum @marcas @Annalee We really should be called something other than “vegetarians” though, because mushrooms aren’t plants and are more closely related to animals.
Dec 13, 2022 at 5:45pmWeb
Show threadMarcus Marcius MarcellusDec 13, 2022

@ploum @Annalee @sharpblue Indeed! Mind you, you’re not *very* closely related to a truffle. But yes: more closely than either of you are related to a carrot.

Also: a number of seaweeds regularly eaten by humans are no more plants than an elephant is.

Show threadGareth HuskDec 14, 2022
@sharpblue @ploum @marcas @Annalee you had to go there didn't you
Show threadRichard BakerDec 14, 2022
@ghusk @ploum @marcas @Annalee Cladistics is interesting! People are fish! Reptiles don’t exist!
Show threadMarcus Marcius MarcellusDec 14, 2022

@sharpblue @ghusk @ploum @Annalee People are fish? Well [somewhat sniffily], sarcopterygii, anyway.

Reptiles don't exist? Of course they do. There's one tweeting on the feeder outside my window as we speak. Or swap out "reptile" for "amniote" and include us as well.

For many purposes, one no more need insist that an ant is a wasp than that a tomato is a fruit. That doesn't hold true in systematic biology, though.