No, I will not just take the meat out.

I don’t eat mammals or fowl. The simplest way of phrasing that is by saying I’m a vegetarian. But by definition, that means I survive on vegetation alone, which isn’t entirely true.

I will drink milk (lacto-tarian). I like eggs (ovo-tarian). I enjoy sushi (pescatarian). I just don’t want to eat anything that has (or is genetically supposed to have) lungs and legs.

So for the ease of writing this rant, I’ll just use the phrase vegetarian.

Whenever I’m offered a food item and it contains some sort of mammalian or feathered ingredient, I usually politely decline without mentioning my diet.

But some people won’t let you refuse food. It’s just their nature.

So I must come up with some sort of reason why I don’t want the pepperoni pizza or the turkey sandwich or the cocktail weenie.

“I don’t eat meat,” is usually the quickest response. I can’t say my refusal is dietary because “diet” has become so synonymous with weight loss that I always get a you’re-so-skinny lecture. I can’t claim heart problems or genetics because people simply read your waist size when accessing your health.

So I’m honest. I say I don’t eat meat.

And that’s hardly ever good enough.

I’m quite positive that over 90% of the time, the person offering food responds with, “Then just take it off.”

That’s their logic. “Just take it off.” As if it’s so easy to scrape the cells and atoms of that turkey from off of the spongy bread. As if the entire pizza slice isn’t covered in the grease from those meaty pepperonis. As if the pork shank in the stew isn’t infecting the floating bits of celery and potato.

“It’s just there for flavor,” I’ve been told.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Tell the vegetarian who vomits at the smell of meat that the bone marrow is just for flavor. Genius. What do you think causes the flavor, asshole? The mere thought of meat? Because I’m sure there’s a little more science involved. Like the breakdown of tissues with heat and the diffusion of the oils and fats into the surrounding edibles.

Do you know what would happen if I ate all of that pizza grease? I’d probably vomit. It’s happened before. I was served something with meat juice in it (I was blatantly lied to), and I tossed my cookies for hours.

That’s right. Serving chicken broth or bacon bits or what have you to a vegetarian is giving them a good, thick slice of slowly creeping food poisoning.

So if you’re one of those just-take-the-meat-out people, change your ways. Change them now. Because as idiotic as you think we vegetarians may be for our over-sensitivity and bleeding hearts, at least we’re somewhat logical when it comes to food composition.

Just show a little more respect.