A Hundred Years of Mocking Vegetarians
25th September 2025
The Atlantic, a Voice of the Crust.
Anthony Bourdain was beloved for his openness to new experiences, for his willingness to eat anything—brains; shark; cobra heart, still beating—with anyone. But he did reserve one bias: The man hated vegetarians. “Serious cooks regard these members of the dining public—and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans—as enemies of everything that’s good and decent in the human spirit,” he wrote in The New Yorker in 1999. “To live life without veal or chicken stock, fish cheeks, sausages, cheese, or organ meats is treasonous.”
For which a good case could be made–humans evolved to be omnivores, and vegetarianism will sooner or later subtract you from the gene pool.