It is just too dull a diet to sustain for health reasons alone. It requires moral underpinning to make it worthwhile. Vegetarians do have lower cholesterol, live longer, and have far larger genitals (I made that last one up actually, but here's hoping it passes into folklore!) And so in a 'who can outlive each other' contest, a vegetarian versus a meat eater. I feel fairly safe in saying that the vegetarian is going to be pounding the pavements longer on average. In my own case switching from a mainly meat diet to a total vegetarian diet (no meat) has had the effect of dramatically lowering my blood pressure. But I think on balance that stress, smoking, exercise and genetics probably have just as large a part to play as diet in determining our health. Especially if you don't go overboard on clogging up arteries with animal fats, and do also eat plenty of fruit, drink lots of water, jump on the rowing machine regularly and even (heaven forbid) eat more than the odd vegetable.

Lapsed vegetarians are of course part of western folklore though. People who blaze the trail for a year or two, and then mire around in the boredom of their diets until they eat of the flesh once more. They feel guilty for a while after they quit, but then gradually forget about it and chalk up the experience to the idealism of youth. They gain succour from those around them who are impressed at their ability to stick with it for even a short time, and then positively glow with relief that they have done their bit and are finally free of restraint. Fortunately the animals we find in our supermarkets are handily pre-tortured and shrink wrapped for us, and so it is easy to forget from whence they came. They also taste great, which helps, and so naturally it is easy to go from the priesthood to a hooker and overindulge where once there was celibacy.

These lapsed folk did of course follow their own better judgement for at least a little while, and for that I fully applaud them. People must make a balanced decision about a diet that because it is limited does by its very nature offer less choice than a meat fuelled existence. Nutrition wise there really are no problems. It is no harder on a vegetarian diet to get the nutrients you need then on a meat diet. The problems with sticking to it are ones of boredom, not health. My message to those people is that just because they lapse and eat a bacon sandwich doesn't mean they have to give up on being a vegetarian. Perfection is very overrated in my book. Why not just eat the damn bacon sandwich, and then go back to trying to live without? You can feel sure that all those other people who nod smugly when you tell them you lapsed and are now eating a t-bone every night are not really displaying knowledge of the weakness of man, but rather knowledge of their own weakness. They couldn't do it, and they don't want you to either because that would reinforce their own inadequacies.