Vegetarian?

I'm not sure why I'm a vegetarian anymore.

Every reason I have can be argued against.

I eat chicken/quail/duck eggs (fish eggs? I don't know). I consume cow and goat milk products. I ingest gelatine every time I eat gummies and marshmallows. I guess I'm not really a strict vegetarian.

1. The environmental reason - the one I guess I believe in the most. Less energy is used to produce grain than it is to produce a chicken. I eat eggs though, which take a lot of energy to make (by the chicken). The environmental reason also doesn't hold when a piece of food gets thrown away. For example, if I happen to have a slice of sausage pizza, and I throw away the sausage, I'm wasting all the energy it took to grow corn, grow the cow, process the cow into sausage, transport the sausage, and cook the sausage on the pizza. Also, I eat a lot of processed foods (chips, chocolate) that take a ton of energy to process, transport, and package. Finally, the most environmentally friendly thing to do is to eat the minimum number of Calories needed to be a vegetable. A.k.a. not waste Calories by exercising. Fundamentally, the best way to be environmentally friendly is to die and decay in a forest somewhere.

2. Cost/convenience reasons. Being a vegetarian seems to be cheaper (unless you're really into buying vegan cheese and fake processed soy pepperoni that sells at some $13/lb) if you live on dairy, beans, nuts, and soy. Also, I don't know how to cook animals.

3. The "disgust" factor. Factory farms, squishy chicken butts being mashed into nuggets, fecal pieces in ground animal flesh...it's gross, yes, but it's also something that is easily avoided by being ignorant, or buying dead animals from a different company.

4. The "moral" reason which I haven't been believing in ever since I read on Wikipedia that lions eat animals. Well, duh, I knew that, but in the context of "Why can other animals eat animals, yet we can't?", it makes perfect sense that we, as animals, are able to eat animals. I guess I don't have much compassion for animals.

5. The health reason, which I never ever took into consideration, really. I know that I'm not protein deficient but sometimes I worry that I'm iron and vitamin B12 deficient. I'm not obese or overweight. However, I'm a living example that "vegetarian=healthy" is false, and I dislike that stereotype. Dude, I eat so much candy.

Apr 2005 - no chicken nuggets

Oct 2005 - no chicken, no gelatine.

Apr 2006 - no animals except fish/seafood, no gelatine.

Jan 2009 - no fish, no animals, gelatine okay.

Jul 2011 - I dunno.

I think it's just that I've been a vegetarian for so long (okay, not really that long) that it's just become habit. So now, if you asked me why I'm a vegetarian, I say "I just feel like it."

Maybe I should be a flexitarian-freegan-vegetarian-freeloader.