Morticia's answer sums it up nicely for me. I also liked Carol's story about the carrot.

For meat and potato people to get snide about vegetarianism is a bit odd, considering the last few decades of medical revelations regarding heart disease and various other common degenerative ailments. I would suggest that meat and potatoes people are just very good at blindly imitating what they have seen others do before them...in other words, they conform. Most of them would not, however, be very happy in the confines of a slaughterhouse. I know of two lifetime meateaters (in their early twenties at the time) who became vegetarians after a few months working in a slaughterhouse. They won't touch meat now. Maybe they know something you don't, Whippet. Have you seen where your meat comes from?

On the other hand, strict vegetarians can also be quite elitist and dogmatic. To say nothing of annoyingly superior.

This shows that you can be a prat quite regardless of your diet...healthful or otherwise.

- LH