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The ultimate battle.
"Good news, everyone! You don't have to eat meat! I've got enough gazpacho for everyone."
"Veggies are what food eats."
Bob is a born and bred "meat and potatoes" type of guy. He counts meat-related foods as his Trademark Favorite Food, has a Bacon Addiction, staunchly believes that Real Men Eat Meat, and in extreme cases will willingly become a Burger Fool just to be close to the burgers. Chicken, pork, beef, fish, lamb, goat—if it's meat, he'll eat it without any qualms, and he's not afraid to be a Large Ham about it.
Alice, on the other hand, is a vegetarian. As such, she's a supporter of the all Soy diet and would thus thrive in a Veganopia environment, and literally Does Not Like Spam. She'll probably eat Fantastic Fruits and Vegetables, or jump at the Call to Agriculture. Maybe she'll advocate Artificial Meat, the type that's made from plant byproducts, such as tofu, mictoprotein, or gluten steaks, and she might well assure you that it Tastes Like Chicken. Perhaps at one point she used to eat meat, but switched camps after meeting her food live and in person. Or perhaps she doesn't eat meat because it's against her religious beliefs to do so. If the creators of the work dislike veggies in general she will probably be a Straw Vegetarian.
When their philosophies on food come together, expect them to clash. Bob thinks Alice is eating Fake Food, and that she just needs to try meat once to appreciate how good it tastes; Alice is squicked out by Bob's dietary choice and thinks he'll suffer Death By Gluttony for his obsession with meat.
A Cooking Duel may ensue for each side to prove that their preferred food type is superior to the other. Worst-case scenario, a Food Fight or Diner Brawl will ensue.
Basically, this trope is about the kind of conflict that goes on when a meat-eater and a vegetarian have to share the same dining space. There will be no middle ground.
No Real Life Examples, Please! on this page. PLEASE. The last thing we want here is a brawl between "meat-and-potato people vs. tree-huggers."
Some examples of Meat Versus Veggies:
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Anime and Manga
- The eponymous character of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water is a strict vegetarian and believes there is no justification for eating meat. She is so stubborn about this issue, in fact, that she turns a deaf ear to Jean's arguments that he and her friends only eat meat for food, not for cold killing. (She abandons this attitude, however, when she tells them about her tragic past that led to her rigidness about it.)
Film
- In the 1987 movie Date With an Angel, the angel responds rather poorly when the main character offers her a burger...she does, however, eat the French fries.
- The 2005 low-budget film Shooting Vegetarians focuses on the main character, a vegetarian, being forced to go and work in his father's butcher shop. Hilarity Ensues.
- Willy Spino, a meat-eater, and a vegetarian blind woman have a minor spat about their diets in the Apocalypse film series movie Revelation.
- In Bedtime Stories, this is one way Skeeter Bronson and his sister Wendy are at odds with each other. Wendy raises her kids on a strict vegetarian diet, as evidenced by a gluten-free wheatgrass cake that nobody eats at her daughter Bobbi's birthday party. When Skeeter tries to make breakfast for the kids using various foods in her kitchen, he asks in exasperation "Doesn't your mother have tastebuds?", and he later gets them burgers for dinner as they stay with him at the hotel where he works.
Live-Action TV
- Phoebe Buffay of Friends is an odd case, as she flits between being a strict vegetarian by virtue of being an animal-rights supporter, and eating meat as part of Hypocritical Humor. The trope is played straight in one episode, however, when she gives in to the pressure to impress her boyfriend's parents and eats some veal, and is later sick because of it.
- Another episode has her horrified when, while acting as a surrogate for her brother and his wife, she starts to crave meat. Her friend Joey vows to take up vegetarianism during Phoebe's pregnancy to balance it out.
- Dharma and Greg: Abby, Dharma's mother, is a strict vegan, which causes problems in some instances.
- Roseanne is every bit of a Jerkass toward Darlene and her boyfriend David because they're both vegetarians.
Roseanne: (introducing them when they're camera-shy) They're vegetarians. They don't have the strength to hold their heads up.
- On another occasion, she delivers this line to David:
Roseanne: Listen to me, David! RABBITS AND GEESE AND GOATS ARE NOT PEOPLE!! THEY DON'T SING AND DANCE!! THEY'RE FOOOOOOD!
- Star Trek: The Original Series: Mr. Spock is a vegetarian, and is extremely displeased with himself when he eats meat in an out-of-character moment in the episode "All Our Yesterdays":
Spock: Please pay no attention. I'm not myself. I'm behaving disgracefully. I have eaten animal flesh and I've enjoyed it. What's wrong with me?
- In Enterprise, there is a sect of Vulcans that rely on both emotion and logic in balance, and they have no qualms about eating meat.
- Gordon Ramsay once tricked a vegetarian into eating meat in one of his cooking shows. Needless to say the vegetarian wasn't pleased.
- In Leonardo, Jerk Jock Michelangelo makes fun of Leo for being vegetarian, and suggests the birds he frees should be "released" into a cooking pot.
- Frequently referenced on No Reservations - Tony falls squarely into the meat camp, many of his personal favourite Food Porn moments involve huge piles of sizzling animal parts and he rails against vegetarians or vegans with political motivations he finds ridiculous and who don't actually know how to cook vegetables properly. He will grant points to the (generally Buddhist) vegetarian cooks of places like India and China, however.
- Starsky And Hutch have been known to clash when it comes to food. Starsky mostly eats salami, pizza and any spicy burrito with onions. Hutch, however, prefers a more 'healthy' approach.
- Given a slightly different spin on That Mitchell And Webb Look in a sketch where a meat-eater is invited to a dinner party at a vegetarian couple's house and, when told what the menu is, asks what the 'meat' option is. The vegetarian, of course, replies that they're a vegetarian household and there's no meat option. During the ensuing argument, however, the meat-eater points out that when the meat-eater had the vegetarian and his partner over for dinner he was courteous and respectful enough to provide a vegetarian meal for them despite it not being his preferred choice of meal, and in a way it's actually a bit rude and hypocritical of the vegetarian to expect the meat-eater to bend over backwards to accommodate the former's dining requirements in the latter's home without being willing to extend the same courtesy when the roles were reversed. The vegetarian finds he has no comeback to this, so they decide to cook the family cat for the meat-eater.
- Downplayed on MythBusters; for the most part, the members of the Build Team respect each others' dietary choices (Kari is vegetarian, while Grant and Tory are not). However, the producers of the show do deliberately send Kari to pick up meat products from the butcher (because her reactions make for good TV), and Tory and Grant aren't above teasing her about it themselves.
Literature
- Vorkosigan Saga: Cordelia comes from Beta Colony, where all the "meat" is actually vat protein. When she marries Aral and moves to Barayar it takes her a long time to get used to meat from actual animals.
- IIRC from a remark by one of the Koudelka sisters in A Civil Campaign, Cordelia still insists on vat meat at Vorkosigan House, thirty-some years later.
- In Memory, Miles tells how as a boy he used to bring home fish caught from the local lake, which Cordelia would dutifully eat. He stopped when he realized his mother was not enjoying it.
- In the novel Elizabeth Costello, the eponymous character's vegetarianism is just one of the many issues she has to contend with in the world she lives in.
- In the Garrett PI series, vegetarian Morley and steak-lover Garrett constantly mock each other's eating habits. Interestingly, Morley is the one who's a stone killer by profession.
- In the Baby Sitters Club series, Dawn and her family were vegetarians (though this varies from book to book; sometimes they simply avoided red meat, and sometimes they, especially Dawn, were devout vegetarians). This was especially played up after Dawn's mother married Mary Anne's father, with three vegetarians and two meat-eaters in the same house having to make peace with one another's diets.
Webcomics
- In Girls with Slingshots, Jameson's girlfriend/later wife Maureen is a shy vegetarian blogger who is harassed by one of Jameson's longtime friends, Candy. At first Candy's jokes and pranks about Maureen's eating choices/reactions to the thought of meat are treated as funny, but eventually everyone in the group decides that Candy has gone too far for too long and call her out on it. As for the rest of the cast, it rarely if ever comes up as an issue.
- Kevin & Kell takes this trope to its logical extreme, with it being the (as Danielle put it) arbitrary distinction used to divide society, a la race or sexuality. Then again, this is a society of Talking Animals, and given that the meat eaters prey on the veggie eaters often...
- A prime example is Bruno Luplin, a wolf that converts to herbivorism. It's treated in society as if he was transgender, and unfortunately it's the not-so-accepting part of society.
Web Originals
Western Animation
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