Well, despite cowardly attacks from idiots, MT's statement "Eat whatever you want, but keep your self-righteousness about it to yourself" sums up my view nicely.

Once had a good friend who upon graduating high school (here in the US), turned hardcore evangelical vegan. He religiously sent away for the most 'shocking' PETA videos he could, and set about annoying everyone he knew.

End result was that we started eating MORE meat around him, just to annoy him as much as he was us. Very quickly, we stopped associating with him. Eventually, one of our less forgiving friends beat the living crap out of him one day, as he still insisted on showing up at our hangouts, yelling "Meat is murder!" and all the other trite sayings that the extremists gave him to say.

I have no problem with vegetarians, regardless of how 'stringent' they are. However, the hardcore activist kind get roughly the same treatment as the average hardcore evangelical Christian gets - polite refusal, attempts to disengage, then varying rudeness until they finally go away.

M