I feel your response is unnecessarily hostile, zealotous, and an "I got you back" clause, when I wasn't particularly attacking anyone, despite your knee-jerk perception. Which ironically is what I was alluding would happen to the author unless she made that closing statement. Therefore, I am working on the assumption you're a vegetarian here, so forgive me for what I'll write below
While I don't mind someone coming to me and saying they're a vegetarian (after all, everyone has their reasons), what I *do* not like is when people adopt the whole militant quasireligious (and wrongful) stance that a) Vegeterianism is healthy, let alone healthi-er, and b) that it is somehow upper-class and noble, and that it should be associated with a certain lifestyle, like incessant jogging and yoga and bowel enemas and the such.
As a doctor I have been exposed to tons of evidence that pure vegetarianism is not healthy at all (evidence, may I add, that I was surprised to find out about, given the media blurb, and that I did not go out of my way particularly to get; I was simply exposed to it by virtue of working in a hospital). Yes, in general a vegetarian on the whole tends to be slightly more involved in their health, so they're healthier by comparison to the general McDonalds eating population, but that only reflects their obsession with a healthy (or at least what they perceive to be healthy) lifestyle. However, any comparison with a healthy non-vegetarian person watching what they eat (including healthy doses of greens and vegetables), and doing ACTUAL research on what is and what isn't good for you, will show that being vegetarian in itself is much less healthy. You have a much less chance of getting necessary protein on board, at least not without exceeding daily calories in fat and carbs, and most of them are likely to come from phytoestrogen-rich protein sources which increases your risk for all sorts of baddies big-time. Throw megalocytic anaemias, erratic insulin profiles, frequent faints and acidaemia into the mix, and you start getting an idea of what I'm talking about.
Even worse, being a vegetarian in our modern trendy society, is seen as a fashion item. A way to look thin and skinny. Especially for girls. So they go and eat nothing but salad, and then go for a jog in the morning (which is the worse thing they can do, especially if they're not getting protein on board - instant muscle-wasting). And, ironically, they seem to prefer this immunocompromised, syncope-prone, weakened body, and its unhealthy, muscle-wasted, skinny-fat, i-can-see-your-skull appearance, because they've worked so hard for it. You can almost tell a vegetarian from the fact their perception of beauty itself seems altered; but obviously it's beyond criticism and anything you do to comment on their body and health provokes an angry reaction (does this remind you of any clinical conditions?)
Moreover, the whole vegetarian culture is just that. A culture. People 'think' it's good because they 'think' it's good. You read the tiniest bit of scientific info and suddenly you realise all the media blurb is made-up and politicised. Then again, you need to dig in deep to find the evidence, because the internet is flooded in junk info about it instead, and unless you spend hours trying to find anything that doesn't say "Vegetarians are awesome and meat eaters are killers", don't expect to find any real info on the effects of vegetarianism.
So, the problem I have isn't with vegetarians. It's with this notion in vegetarian culture that somehow it's holier than anything and needs to be militantly defended against rednecks or somehow amoral people who don't know better. Please.