Welcome to my page “ask the vegetarian”. Here all i will post answers to questions that you guys (the readers) have sent to me. I try to answer all questions that get send to me. On this page you can read the most common questions. You can read all of the questions here. If you want to ask a question you can so using the form here.
A few of the questions i answer on this site have been asked to me in person rather than through the website. I will still include the question here if it is a question i think is interesting or if it a question i get asked often.
Do you think it is morally wrong to eat meat?
No I do not but a lot of vegetarian do believe that it is wrong to eat meat. To me this has never been a moral choice. It is simple a question of eating a diet that is healthy and that you like.
With that said i think there is a lot of problems with how we keep the animals that we farm for food. I do not think there is anything wrong in eating meat from an animal that had a good life and died quickly without pain. This is unfortunately often not the case. How we keep animals in the food industry is one of the great tragedies of our age.
Do you think a vegetarian is morally obligated to go green in all aspects of their life?
I think the answer to this questions depends on why you choose to become a vegetarian. If you become a vegetarian for moral reasons then the answer is yes. In this case i think you have a moral obligation to extend the same believes into all other aspects of your life. I think you have an obligation to stay true to your morals.
If you have choose to become a vegetarian for other reasons than i do not think that you have an obligation to go green.
In short. You should always stay true to your moral believes whatever they might be.
You suggest that we support the movement by investing in vegetarian green companies. How can i do that? are there any vegetarian funds i can invest in?
This is a very good question. It is a question i struggled with for a long time. I spent a lot of time looking for a suitable fund to invest in but in the end i did not find anything that really suited my needs. All the ethical funds that i looked at contained companies or elements that i did not like. They where not vegetarian and they were promoting ethical values that was different from mine.
If you start looking into different funds i think you will find the same to be true for you. This is not surprising considering that we all have different ethical values and if you build a fund that is supposed to appeal to a lot of different people you will always have compromise. I did not want to compromise. I wanted to be able to support the exact companies i believe in and benefit from their growth.
I decided that the only way i could invest my money in the way i wanted was to invest them myself directly into stocks in the companies i choose to support. The idea of investing in stock was a little scary at first but i soon discovered that it is very easy to buy and sell shares. Modern online brokers makes it just as easy as ordering a new book from amazon and many of the brokers are free to try.
I choose to go to the website aktiemäklare.com to find a broker was a good fit for me. Aktiemäklare.com is a Swedish site that was a good choice for me since i am Swedish. You should be able to find a similar site in your country that let you compare the brokers in your country.
Starting to invest directly into the companies i believe in and want support is one of the best decisions i ever did.
Do you really think that tofu sausage/ground beef/ chicken etc taste like the real deal?
No I do not. I do not think any of these products are good and they do not taste anything like the real product. I think this products are a problem that scare many people away from a vegetarian life style. I know they kept me away from one for a long time. I think vegetarian should strive to eat their own products that are made to taste good, not to mimic something else.
Do you think that it is right to keep pets?
I do not see anything morally wrong in keeping pets. A pet can do a lot to improve your life and provide a lot of emotional support. If you put a little effort into it then you can give the animal a very good rewarding life. I do however think it is wrong to keep a pet if you do not have the time, means or intention to give it a good life. A pet should be given the same considerations that you would a human, a family member.
I do think it is very wrong to try to keep an animal such as a dog or a cat on a vegetarian diet. They where not made for it and there is no way you can convince me that it is good for them. Do not get a pet if you are not willing to give them a diet similar to that they would receive in the wild.