2007-09-06

Today in a Mexican restaurant

[note: this was formerly on my MySpace blog on this same date ... I'm ditching MySpace for reasons mentioned on 3/16/2010 and copied this here]

A young couple, mid 20's, walks into a mexican restaurant today. A fairly typical Boulder couple, a bit hippie-granola to their look. Nothing wrong with that, I've associated with that look myself (but managing long hair is for the birds).

They are seated a booth away from me and the waiter brings out a bowl of bean dip. This restaurant uses ground beef in their bean dip. The lady of the couple, in a voice that has just a twinge of attitude to it, immediately tells the waiter, "you can take that back now please."

The waiter, confused, replies, "its for the chips" that he is about to bring out.

The lady continues, "we're vegitarians, don't waste it on us" and makes it clear she isn't going to touch the bowl but that it offends her.

This story wouldn't even exist if it stopped there. I respect everyone's right to be upset at whatever food they find disgusting. In fact I personally think the most of the meat industry is like the Wal-Mart of the food world, sacrificing our health and future for a quick buck. I'm all for grass fed beef and eating LESS meat, but meat itself doesn't bother me. It is a part of our nature. Taking a stand is fine though, and not wanting it on your table is definitely your perogative.

However, about 5 minutes later the waiter returned to take their order. The woman says ... "we'll share the shrimp fajitas".

Ok, so, they're not anti-meat. They are probably anti-beef. Possibly anti-four-legged animal protein. Again, that's great. And no, I don't equate shrimp intellect with cow intellect. However ... the whole attitude shown about the chip dip just seems hypocritical. They weren't rude. Don't get me wrong. But ... if you don't eat beef then say "we don't eat beef". Ok? I hate to tell you this, but the fishing industry is almost as bad to the ocean as the ranching industry is to the land.