I remember in elementary school I got a lot of questions from people (when I told them that I am vegetarian) how I could possibly survive without meat. Although those questions have since subsided, I now wonder whether some people can survive without meat after becoming vegetarian. (Please understand that this is not meant to evangelize about any benefits vegetarianism has over omnivorous eating [redundant?]. If you eat meat, I have no problem with it; I have my own reasons for remaining a vegetarian.)
Case in point: our dining hall's vegetarian meal tonight was vegan chicken wings. (I'll just say that I didn't have it.) This isn't the first time that the dining hall has served a soy-based meat substitute for the vegetarian meal, and I really don't like eating these sorts of vegan meat substitutes because they're too squishy and quite bland (among other issues).
So really? Vegan chicken wings? This dining hall has served many different foreign vegetarian dishes (many of them variants on traditional Mexican and Italian dishes). And to answer the question that people asked in elementary school, I can survive without meat because there are thousands of Indian dishes that use no meat at all. So if you can do Mexican and Italian vegetarian food, why not some Indian food next time? Why is it necessary to have meat substitutes? After all, not all vegetarians are former meat-eaters.
