Like I said, I’m an on-and-off vegetarian. I’ve also been a pescatarian, and for a very brief time, a vegan. It was tough to do when I was younger, but as I’ve aged, I’ve lost some of my taste for meat. That helps.

But as much as I might love to be a devout vegetarian, I’m incapable of being a devout anything. I live in the Gray Zone: I admire the high-minded and noble, but I can’t walk that walk myself. I’m a pragmatist, not an idealist. At the dinner table, that means I’m mostly a vegetarian, I prefer not eating meat, but if someone’s gone to the trouble of fixing hamburgers, or if I’m out at a restaurant like Cochon, I’m gonna go with the flow. Cowardly? Maybe. But I manage to keep more friends.

I’ve been thinking about this a good bit lately, so when I stumbled across the following chart about global meat consumption, I found it a little interesting.

Among the top-ten meat-consuming nations, we find:

• Not one country from Africa.

• Only one country from Asia: the tiny island of Nauru, which seems like an anomaly. Purportedly, over 78% of the population there is obese.

• Only one country from South America, despite the fact that Brazil is renowned for its love of beef almost as much as Argentina is.

• Even though we think that Americans eat far too much meat, there are others who eat far more.

Anyway, food for thought. (Har.)

[elistmania]