Would a vegetarian eat a salad made from carnivorous plants?
Monty: Would a vegetarian eat a salad made from carnivorous plants?
Lynda (Bizarre’s token veggie): I think it’s the thought of it that bothers me most, but I suppose lots of vegetables come into contact with and benefit from dead animals that make up the soil they grow in, so I suppose it’s not really a problem. So, yes, I might eat one.
However, the only carnivorous plant I can think of is a Venus flytrap - and I personally wouldn’t fancy eating one because it’d be pretty tough and indigestible, and I wouldn’t like the idea that it had eaten a load of disease-carrying, poo-eating insects. And I’m the sort of vegetarian who doesn’t eat anything with eye-lashes, which rules it out anyway.
Still, on the presumption that I might not be your average vegetarian, I asked other veggies at Bizarre’s parent company, John Brown Publishing, what they reckoned - here are some of their replies.
Guest columnist Sian Phillips out of Hot Air magazine: I think that eating GM food probably means eating worse things - hormones of frogs etc. I think if the plants tasted like meat I couldn’t bring myself to eat them. It also depends on how well the meat is digested by the plant. (I wouldn’t want to eat a plant that tasted like a Chinese stuffed cabbage.) Anyway, are any of the plants actually edible?
Guest columnist Louise White out of Debenhams Magazine: I have to say, I don’t think this is a problem. Surely the philosophical basis of vegetarianism is that they disagree with the farming and killing of animals purely for the benefit of man. They don’t (in general) disagree with animals killing animals in the natural cycle. Carnivorous plants, as animals, kill and eat their prey entirely as Mother Nature intended and therefore how can there be a problem eating them? (Apart from one of a purely culinary nature, anyway.) You would have to disagree with eating plants that have grown up from using molecules from dead animals broken down in the natural process of recycling to have a problem, I think.
I have always wondered whether vegetarians have a problem eating yeast - doesn’t that count as an animal organism?
Dr Mike (a carnivore): I’m with Lou here. Probably Buddhists would have a much greater problem with this sort of thing? Really strict karma-type blokes go to enormous lengths to avoid killing even spiders and beetles - you hear of Buddhists who refuse to drive at over 20mph in case insects impact on the windshield - so I certainly can’t see them chowing down on a carnivorous plant.