I will start by stating for the record that my favorite vegan meal consists of foie gras. So there.

This post is about Butter Boy, but for one of the few times on this blog, it actually isn’t about me trying to kill him with tasty bovine buttery goodness, or jerking his chain for personal amusement.

Nope. Not this time.

So what exactly does my pal and ride-share have as personal plans for tonight? He’s going to have dinner at a vegan restaurant, apparently because one of his friends is always on the lookout to do something different.

A vegan restaurant. And willingly. As a social outing.

I’ll pause just to say “hmm…”, but that certainly falls into “different” all right.

I had a case of the willies when I read where he was going, because personally that ranks right up there with Amway meetings.

I’m not truly opposed to vegetarianism, except perhaps in the cases of expectant mothers and parents raising young children ([rant] dumba$$! you are so putting the kids at risk! [/rant]). I fully grasp and comprehend the underlying concepts of vegetarianism as it pertains to health, lifestyle choice and religion, and I’m fine with this: Buddhism for example espouses vegetarianism and there are entire (and rather complex) vegetarian cuisine offshoots from both Chinese and Japanese culinary traditions.

Veganism is of course an extreme form of vegetarianism. From the point of view of being a lifestyle choice by an informed adult, I’m also okay as it’s really the free-will choice of that individual.

I guess my main problem with veganism is that many professed vegans (along with many regular vegetarians) I’ve met over the years are poseurs who have espoused the choice either to further political views (e.g. PETA, Jediists, NDP) or to mask compulsive dieting and personal issues with body image perception. When I hear someone say that (s)he is vegan while eating honey because it’s a plant product, I tend to call shennanigans: honey doesn’t magically grow in flowers as it’s a product of animal (bee) activity and if you eat it, you support the enslavement of bees for your own base pleasures.

And while I personally enjoy eating honey, I do have to write more about this, including some scribbling about a recent trip to Paris and Berlin, partially because of one dinner shepherded by a waiter named “Fabian Boom” (how cool a name is that?), and partially because of interesting conversations with a team member who so happens to be a raw vegan. That was a fascinating discourse in and of itself, but in the end I do believe she associates me with the second and third coming of the AntiChr*st.

And Butter Boy? Well, I’ll at least get to find out how things went when we meet up next week. But in the meanwhile, I’ll point him to the following:

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