Flexivores welcome, or not!

You may remember my post from February 14, 2010. In that post I discussed Cambridge Massachusetts' recommendation for a mandatory meatless day to help the environment. Well, this intrusive proposition appears to have been embraced even across the river in Boston.

Today, my cafeteria within the university's research building, actually had a food station labeled for "flexivores." What's a flexivore, other than a made-up word? According to the creators of this word, a flexivore is a person that eats meat, but chooses to incorporate less or no meat meals into his diet.

You know why this made me so angry? What was so infuriating is the fact that, rather than just presenting this food station as a vegetarian option, the cafeteria publicized this station with some imaginary flexivore label. This label, provided with the definition outlined above, was in plain view in what was essentially a brain-washing propaganda effort to plant the seed in our minds that we should become more conscious of cutting out meat from our diet.

I'm sorry, but this manipulation is deeply disturbing and alarming. In addition, it's insulting that the catering group or even the university would condone displaying this message. As if this silly flexivore label would make it easier to swallow the fact that we were being subjected to a forced dietary restriction.

Later, when I went online to find contact information to send a letter to the catering company hired by my university, I discovered that this organization has implemented a "Meatless Monday" at one of our university's Cambridge based dining facilities under a new "sustainability" initiative. Let me just say that I told the catering organization that they would lose my business if its policy was to infringe on our rights.

If you enjoy being in charge of what you do or do not eat on a daily basis, then join me in saying flexivores are NOT welcome! More importantly, don't let government or organizations start to chip away at your rights and personal freedom. If you do, you'll wake up one day and realize you have none left.