it's their choice to turn a deaf ear, but in reality I think the choice to eat humanely raised and pastured animals is very important in promoting animal welfare.

If no one supports these types of practices, then corporate factory farming wins. Animals really are a vital part of sustainable farming, mostly in that they truly promote soil fertility and soil integrity which is key in keeping this planet healthy. Plenty of vegetable farming including organic farming is done as a monoculture and leads to run off that is destroying life in bodies of water all over the world.

Nature designed her system to include an animal food chain and well, if your vegetarian friends choose to attempt to re-author it, well, what can you do?

I try to stay out of conversations about these subjects with the vegetarians/vegans I know, but if it were brought up I would stand by the basic point that what I am doing is very acceptable to me from a broader moral standpoint. I split a bottle of wine with a vegetarian not but a few days ago, and we had no problem agreeing on that :)

Given that their lifestyle is more akin to a religion than a thoroughly researched, science-based approach to diet, it's futile to attempt to sway their opinion. Obvious vitality is the best argument.

We have a vegan friend who works for PETA, and it's simply not worth it to ever get into it.

two very close friends of mine who have been vegan for 20+ years and own a vegan junk-food grocery store deleted me off of facebook when i started eating a paleo diet. really hurt my feelings- these are people who i hvae known loner than ive know my husband. i flew to their wedding from new england to east bum f**k louisiana. i respect their passion and the fact that they have literally devoted their life to something the believe in so strongly. it was never an issue for me in the slightest. i have friends who follow all sorts of weirdo diets like i do, and its never been an issue.

i was forced out to dinner a while ago with this horrid woman who i had never met before, a friend of a friend, who is vegetarian. we just clashed from the moment i met up with her, but food never came up. when we ended up at dinner together at a thai place, i ordered lamb and veggies she got some pile of rice noodles in sugar/soybean oil and fried tofu. she leaned over the table and asked what i was eating and when i told her she did the most obnoxious histrionic gagging fit. i just started laughing like crazy, and i dont think she appreciated it one bit. but it was so dramatic!

the whole damn night i was itching to point out the hour long ride we had to take in her LEATHER UPHOLSTERED LEXUS.

that sort of thing kills me. but she wasnt and never will be a friend, so i was thankful to see the back of her.

I am a paleo-eating Yoga teacher. :) I think it's refreshing for Yogis to realize that they don't have to fit the stereotype to be a Yogi. When my students realize that I'm no longer a vegetarian they seem relieved. As for my friends and students that enjoy a vegetarian lifestyle, we extend a common courtesy. They know that I've been there-done that, and it wasn't right for my family. It's all good. I figure if they are that closed-minded, we didn't need to be friends anyway :)

My closest friend of 20+ years is vegetarian (though he eats eggs and seafood), and I am currently strict Paleo. We have dinner together 1-2x per week and travel together. I'm amused by his choices as he is by mine. A couple of years ago he successfully lost 50 pounds on his diet and is in great health.

We are both serious about our diet + health and do a lot of reading and research, but have just come to different conclusions, and each have something that works for us. We have also both tried lots of diets over the years and know not to get dogmatic about our choices even while remaining disciplined.

It is fun to come up with dinners that work not only for the two of us, but my family who are pretty non-Paleo. For example last night I made whole roasted rockfish, oysters on the half shell, broccolini, and basmati rice, with sorbet for dessert. Side dishes included salmon roe, spicy pickled radish, seaweed salad, and dried pineapple. You can't say that we suffered in any way and had a great time.

I think the idea that you can't be friends with someone because they eat differently is absolutely ridiculous, and might be a sign that you're taking yourself a bit too seriously.

I just moved someone who I found on craigslist into my old apartment. Just casually talking, we ferreted out that she was a vegetarian and that I was a "carnivore" (in her words). She told me that she couldn't stomach how awfully animals were treated and couldn't believe that I could either, and that she'd "probably" eat meat if the meat industry weren't as it is. I told her that I couldn't believe she'd make a judgment of my character after having known me for 15 minutes, especially after helping her move her damn fridge, and that I love animals and I'd only ever eat one if it came off a pasture both out of respect for the animal and for my own body. I dropped the knowledge-bomb about grass-fed farming, and she didn't even know such a crazy thing existed.

I told her all I knew about it, and punctuated it by asking her if she would consider eating meat now, you know, being that her vegetarianism was based on a reasonable moral inclination. Having listened to me demolish that moral avenue and replace it with an ethical alternative, she said she "probably won't" eat meat anyway. Ok!

Strangely enough all three of my closest friends are vegetarian or (borderline) vegan. No problems whatsoever. I don't get preachy or smug about my diet and they extend the same courtesy to me. In fact it's really a non-issue. Though I do have to laugh a little inwardly when they complain how "unfair" it is that I am so lean/fit even though I eat meat and fish instead of "healthy" soy and beans :D

What vegetarian friends?

My vegetarian friends don't seem to care very much, honestly. The most heated food debate I've had came with someone who follows Weight Watchers, and was regarding the high-fat content of paleo diets (she was a bit irritated by my "fat doesn't make you fat" comment) rather than the animal-flesh component.

Admit to them that you have indeed become a cannibal. After all, if you can eat one kind of meat then you can eat another (human meat). After all, that's their point, isn't it? Then you can point out that plants have a sensual life all of their own, are living beings, and that therefore, they (your friends) should take the next logical step: stop eating and become breatharians. Ask them, if it's ok if you roast them after they have succumbed to that "lifestyle choice".

My sister and her husband do an Ornish style pescatarian diet. We talk about nutrition together all the time. We both understand and respect each other's position. We also make fun of each other a lot, but we're sisters and don't take it seriously.

I think if people take it too seriously it can be a problem. The friends I have that are vegetarians vary in response to my diet. The ones that identify them selves by diet do. The ones that see it as just one part of there whole don't. That's fine with me.

There are certain topics that can lead to rather heated conversations especially by those who don't agree with you.

My tactic has always been passive aggressive, so while they may try to bate me into a discussion where they'll try to bully me, they are usually enjoying a primal/paleo appetizer or some other dish I've made for them and they are loving it.

I love turning the tables on them this way!!

I have vegetarian/vegan friends, they still talk to me but never about our diets. We respect that we are all different. We talk and hang out together on the basis that we have the same spiritual "bond" with nature, or at least we feel that we do so that keeps us off the topic of diet.

I do admit though, some of them are the most unhealthy people I know.... yet the perceive their selves to be healthy. but thats not because they don't eat meat, its because all they eat is "organic, vegan, vegetarian" junk food.

I have two vegetarian friends. One is an older man who simply thinks the very idea of eating meat is "gross." (He also thinks the smell of bacon frying is "nasty" but otherwise doesn't seem to be a danger to himself or society, so no one has tried to have him committed. Yet.) I can respect that a whole lot more than the friend who is a long-time vegetarian for health reasons. She'll carry on and on about how Americans are so fat because of all the fatty meat we consume (good gawd, don't even get her started on The China Study) and was thrilled when the new USDA dietary guidelines came out earlier this year because they endorsed a "more plant-based diet."

This friend, however, suffers from a multitude of health problems - reduced thyroid function, borderline diabetes, screamingly high triglycerides and such scary high blood pressure that she needs to carry nitroglycerine pills with her everywhere she goes - and she is only 52. But it's all genetic and heredity, you know; it couldn't be her diet. NEVER her diet.

I spend a lot of time going "mmmm-hmmm" and "you don't say" when she talks about her diet and her health.

I was rather surprised at how negatively my vegan/vegetarian friends reacted. I thought they were better than that. Goes to show how much brainwash is involved in ve*ganism. I sure feel like I've been suffering from severe brainfog all these years. Hearing vegan propaganda now feels like getting abducted by aliens :D