"Even if the vegetarian is a more highly evolved human being (???), it seems to me he has lost something along the way, something I'm not prepared to dismiss as trivial. Healthy and virtuous as I may feel these days, I also feel alienated from traditions I value: cultural traditions like the Thanksgiving turkey, or even franks at the ballpark, and family traditions like my mother's beef brisket at Passover. These ritual meals link us to our history along multiple lines - family, religion, landscape, nation, and, if you want to go back much further, biology. For although humans no longer need meat in order to survive (now that we can get our B-12 from fermented foods or supplements), we have been meat eaters for most of our time on earth. This fact of evolutionary history is reflected in the design of our teeth, the structure of our digestion, and, quite possibly, in the way my mouth still waters at the sight of a steak cooked medium rare. Meat eating helped make us what we are in a physical as well as social sense. Under the pressure of the hunt, anthropologists tell us, the human brain grew in size and complexity, and around the hearth where the spoils of the hunt were cooked and then apportioned, human culture first flourished."
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Michael Pollan
Penguin Books
p. 314
I would argue that Passover is once a year and there are worse moral failings than eating your mother's cooking. Also, think of how much more powerful the ritual will become when you give it a place of honor in your own diet. And finally, learn from this by creating rituals centered on a Vegan meal for your friends and family. You might celebrate October 4th (feast day of St. Francis of Assisi) with a vegetarian, candlelit supper. You might instead choose Arbor day, or Earth day, but whatever you choose stick with it and make it a tradition.
You might be slightly less healthy than the pure vegan, but perhaps slightly more happy.
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