Someone knew you were a vegetarian, served you chicken broth with out saying anything, and then later acted surprised you ate it anyway? Wtf?

I’m vegetarian mostly for environmental reasons.

If the food is going in the trash if I don’t eat it, I don’t really care if it’s meat or not. I’m mostly trying to reduce eating meat, but throwing it away otherwise is dumb.

I’m not trying to be perfect, I’m just trying to make a difference. Purity ideals are for 13 year olds.

Honestly, who cares. Eat what you’re comfortable with. The label thing being a real or not is do assine. People doesn’t eat certain things all the time.

I’m not vegetarian or vegan but in my mind eggs have always been fair game for vegetarians. It’s just vegans who skip animal by-products as well as meat.

I’m level 5 vegetarian with couple of missionary badges and gold stars for public protest. Next year I hope to adopt couple of old chickens and ascend to level 6.

I feel like a meat eater choosing to eat less meat makes more of an impact tham a vegetarian choosing to move closer to vegan, regardless of the specifics.

Personally, though? I’m a vegetarian who eats eggs and dairy, and occasionally whem dining out I’ll go for seafood. And I had chicken once last year in a super specific and special case (revisiting an Indian restaurant in Dublin that I had visited years before when I was only avoiding “red meat”, the chicken 65 was so incredibly good that I gave in). And I tried one small bite of blood sausage in Finland while visiting a good friend in Tampere who ordered it.

Basically, at home, ovo-lacto. Dining out, occasional allowance for pescatarian. Maybe once-every-few-years I might consider trying some meat thing if it’s super, super compelling for whatever reasons.

And I hate leather, I go out of my way to avoid it when buying a car.

I would feel better about myself if I went full vegan though.

If it tries to run away, I don’t eat it.

To me a everything that’s not part of or made from a part of an animal’s body is vegetarian. So no meat, bones, liver, gelatine etc. I would consider vegetarianism to be first and foremost a diet.

Veganism on the other hand is more like an ideology. It is the belief that no human has the right to exert control over another animal. So obviously a vegetarian diet that also excludes products that are obtained from animals, like eggs, milk, honey, leather, wool, etc. But also being against zoos, pets, working animals (such as police dogs) and other stuff like that. I think though that veganism is an ideology that requires nuance. It’s going to be basically impossible to be a “perfect” vegan and most probably wouldn’t go so far as to reject everything I listed, or would agree that compromises can be made for the greater good (for example I don’t believe police dogs should be a thing, but I wouldn’t want to take away a blind person’s dog and I can’t help but like pets).

tl;dr: If you eat meat or bones sometimes you’re by definition not a vegetarian and probably nobody is actually 100% vegan. It’s perfectly understandable that you’d call yourself a vegetarian to keep it simple, even if it’s only 95% true though. I certainly call myself vegan, even though it’s definitely less than 95% true.

I don’t eat flesh. I do eat eggs, honey, and sometimes but rarely dairy. It is not a health condition, so if I end up accidentally eating something with meat in it I won’t get sick and if it was an accident I also won’t get upset with myself or anyone who gave the food to me.

Eggs don’t sound like veggies to me but, at the same time, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. I cut beef almost entirely out of my diet, but I still eat other meat. I also eat offal and such, though. Still, beef can be really bad for the environment so I decided to make it something I have a couple of times a year (or if served it as a guest). Will purists or vegetarians or vegans largely dislike this decision? Probably. Still, I’d rather slightly reduce my impact than do nothing at all.

All these labels…

I try my best to avoid beef and pork. Simply because, as an adult, i saw videos of cows frolicing in grass and getting pets. I saw pigs with as much personality as my dog. Any animal that will roll over to get a belly rub i can no longer bring myself to eat.

Thats it…no more reason than that… empathy.

These extreme line hunting is rather silly and benefits no one. Gamifying ethics is missing the entire point of ethics.

I can only speak for myself.

For me, it’s about harm reduction so not being perfect is OK with me as long as I’m trying. Now personally, that means if my cousin gives me eggs from her spoiled hens, that’s probably OK, but I don’t eat egg dishes when i go out (but paradoxically, I will eat a bun that has egg in it if there is not an alternative).

I eat cheese occasionally, but not if it has animal rennet in it. I rarely drink, but avoid clarified wines since they use isenglass in the processing.
I don’t eat gelatin or meat stocks or bullion. I also avoid leather in my clothing and prefer plant-based clothes over wools.

I limit my dairy, not just for moral and environmental reasons but also since my tolerance for it has diminished with age. Before I went veggie I would drink a gallon of whole milk every week. When I stopped I felt so much better, my acne cleared up, my hair got less oily and my intestines were way happier with me.

I also take B12 supplements because I will often go long periods without having any animal products in my food.

I think you are doing great, good on you for thinking about what you eat and doing your best to do it thoughtfully. I think you should feel comfortable calling yourself vegetarian because you are doing your best to eat as little meat as possible. People who ask questions are probably mostly curious how it works and sharing your experience might help them make similar choices. In my experience the only people policing these labels are too online or openly antagonistic to the entire premise I don’t pay either much mind.

Personally I don’t like eggs much, but I think getting then from a local farm you have a relationship with is the best possible scenario. I do try to avoid dairy as much as possible. You have to remember, in order to get animal milk you need to take it from the baby animals. At scale this involves a pretty horrible love for everyone involved. At small scale maybe it’s ok. If the mom is overproducing for example, and both the mom and child have a good life. But that doesn’t exist in the grocery store or even at most farms. So I just avoid it. It’s hard at first until you find good replacements but many cultures in the world got by fine without it for centuries so there’s plenty of great recipes to learn. I’m not interested in trying to get everyone off it, but most people I talk to have never given it a thought. They think cows just make milk no matter what and need you to milk them so we might as well. I think if you know the true cost of something you might at least have more respect for it.

But as far as things like bone broth, gelatin etc. I basically agree, these are waste products. I might not like the industry it’s coming from, but for God’s sake if you are going to kill an animal at least use every last bit of it.