Hello. This is the New World of Westfahl website, replacing the earlier one that became inactive in 2017. It has now been removed from the Internet, though all of its contents are still available by means of the Internet Archive at

https://web.archive.org/web/20241218083753/http://www.sfsite.com/gary/intro.htm

This website will be less ambitious, since I no longer enjoy the services of the late Rodger Turner to maintain such an elaborate website, but I will be providing information about myself, news, occasional articles, a blog, and contact information.

**********

Blog

While I await guidance from my wife and daughter about what sorts of topics I might be permitted to address, I will talk about the presumably unproblematic issue of vegetarianism.

As we all know, everyone has different preferences about the food they eat, and this is normally accepted without any complaints. Some people love broccoli; some people hate broccoli. But if there is a report indicating that sales of broccoli are declining, those who hate broccoli do not write articles celebrating that news and gleefully anticipating that eating broccoli thankfully is finally going out of style.

Things are quite different regarding my own preference in eating, namely, vegetarianism.

In recent years, I have read several articles about how the company Beyond Meat is having financial difficulties, how a few vegan restaurants struggling to survive have reintroduced meat into their menus, and how vegetarian meat substitutes are more expensive than comparable meats. All of this indicates, to the authors of these articles, that the fad of vegetarianism is obviously coming to an end, and everybody will go back to consuming meat as part of their diets.

And this is absolutely idiotic.

First, vegetarianism is not a “fad.” For millennia, the subcontinent of India has largely been devoted to a vegetarian diet, and Buddhism also promotes vegetarianism; so in 2003 while attending a conference in Hong Kong, a Buddhist temple served me a delicious meal which only had persuasive plant-based substitutes for meat. One company specializing in canned meat substitutes, Loma Linda, was founded over 100 years ago and is still going strong. Vegetarianism has long been practiced by many people, notoriously including Adolf Hitler. When I was at Carleton College in the 1970s, one of the cafeterias serving students offered a menu of vegetarian food for the many students who wanted it. Perhaps vegetarianism has received more publicity in recent years, but it is also a venerable tradition that cannot be properly described as a “fad.”

Second, so what if one company specializing in vegetarian meat substitutes is experiencing some financial challenges? For the record, Beyond Meat has remained in business and its products are still available in grocery stores, like their delicious Beyond Steak. And today, there are several other companies selling vegetarian meat substitutes, and the rest of them all seem to be doing fine. In the 1970s, the Chrysler Corporation almost went out of business; but nobody wrote any articles saying that “Gee, I guess people are going to stop buying cars.”

Third: regarding restaurants, today it is true that most restaurants nowadays will offer “vegetarian options,” but this was not always the case. I was once in a restaurant with my daughter, the first member of my family to become a vegetarian, and she complained to the waiter that there was nothing on the menu that she could eat; he volunteered to have the chef prepare a special dish that did not contain meat. In my own experience in one restaurant, facing no viable options, I was forced to advise the waitress to have the chef prepare a special version of one dish that omitted the meat. And in such restaurants, one cannot be sure that food is being prepared without contamination from meat products, a concern for all dedicated vegetarians. Dealing with these realities, most vegetarians long ago realized that they were better off preparing their own meals without relying on restaurants; there have also emerged several companies such as Amy’s that offer in grocery stores any number of frozen entrees that can be heated up in the microwave. So, on days when I don’t feel like cooking, I can eat Amy’s outstanding cheese enchiladas as an alternative to going to or ordering food from a restaurant. So, vegetarians have largely learned to live without restaurants, explaining why restaurants catering to them might be experiencing difficulties.

Finally, to address the notion that the higher cost of vegetarian meat will drive consumers back to meat: I invite anyone to examine the ever-expanding shelves in the produce section of grocery stores with “organic” produce, grown without exposure to pesticides or other chemicals. These fruits and vegetables are invariably more expensive than those in the regular sections; yet people happily purchase them despite the higher prices. Why? Because they think that organic produce is healthier than regular produce – which is precisely why vegetarians will continue to buy meat substitutes instead of real meat. I would never in a million years go back to buying regular ground beef instead of vegetarian substitutes simply because I might save a dollar by doing so, knowing that red meat is not a healthy option.

So, the question is: why don’t people simply accept the fact that many people choose to become vegetarians? Why do they keep writing articles falsely suggesting that vegetarianism is dying out and that everyone will soon go back to consuming meat on a regular basis? The answer is simple: the carnivores know that the vegetarians are right, and they are wrong, and they can’t stand it.

They know that meat – especially red meat – is hazardous to one’s health. They know that it is inherently immoral to raise animals for the sole purpose of killing them and eating them. They know that the process of producing such meat requires a disproportionate amount of the resources of our imperiled planet, and is harmful to the environment in many ways, in contrast to the economical and benign process of growing and processing plants to serve as meat substitutes. But they are addicted to being carnivores, and in the manner of all addicts they want other people to share their addiction and to ignore the harmful effects of their addiction.

Thankfully, they are not going to win the lame arguments that they are making. People who have chosen to become vegetarians will remain vegetarians, and I am confident that there will be increasing numbers of people who will recognize the logic and morality of abandoning meat and join their ranks.