Vegetarian...or not?

Over the years, apparently I've done a pretty good impression of being vegetarian.  I never intended to, and I've never claimed the label for myself.  But I do have a marked preference for veggie dishes, so I suspect this is the root of these mistaken assumptions.

One of my good friends in Japan claims that I must have been a rabbit 'in a former life.' And another time when I was traveling in Europe a friend of mine went out of her way to make sure everything she offered me was "flesh-free."

So maybe I should just make everyone correct and give up eating meat?

But then again, maybe I wouldn't have to.  I've run across some pretty liberal definitions of 'vegetarian' in my time...

In the US, in fact, I've met a number of self-proclaimed vegetarians who consider anything but red meat as fair game (yes, pun intended!).  And in Japan I felt for my truly vegetarian expat friends who were frustrated beyond belief that 'vegetarian' over there includes fish from the point of view of many people.  After all, Japanese cooking so frequently uses dashi (fish stock) as an ingredient that vegetarian purists could be hard put to avoid this fleshly contaminant unless they do all their cooking themselves.

And I'll never forget the 2 weeks I spent traveling around Myanmar with a Dutch friend and her Burmese husband.  She was vegetarian, and while vegetable dishes were plentiful wherever we went...they all seemed to be seasoned with fish sauce!

Of course, there's the other end of the spectrum, too.  I remember back to some of my earlier visits to the Soviet Union / Russia in the late '80s and early '90s.  On a couple of occasions one of my fellow travelers was a vegetarian.  Our hosts (both host families as well as when we were in hotels) were a bit confounded by the vegetarian meal requests.  Result?  Cucumbers!  I can remember one vegetarian lady who said after a month in Russia that if she never saw another cucumber in her life it would be too soon.

Oh, and so long as I'm reminiscing on the topic of vegetarianism...a word to the wise about an Urban Legend.  I spent a number of years working in the travel industry doing tour operation.  Anyone who has ever signed up for a group tour has probably filled out a form that includes a question regarding dietary requests & restrictions.  Well, there's an urban legend out there that claims vegetarian meals on airlines are much better than the regular ones.  You would not believe how many people mark "vegetarian" on their traveler info forms just so they can have "better" meals on the airplane.  Number 1:  vegetarian meals and regular meals aboard airplanes are equally mediocre.  Trust me on this.  Number 2:  understand - if you mark vegetarian so that you can get a vegetarian meal on the plane, I don't know you only mean the plane!  You really don't want to know how many people complained afterwards that they were served vegetarian meals for their entire tour.  Well, what did you think would happen?

So there you have it.  Being vegetarian just isn't so simple as it seems.  Got any good stories of your own to share?  I'd love to hear them!  Feel free to use the comments box, eh? :-)