Armin Meiwes is a cannibal, at least he’s known as one for eating a man who didn’t have enough excitement in his life and volunteered for dinner.  When the court ordered a psychiatric examination for  Mr Meiwes they found that as a little boy Armin always wanted to eat his school mates. He resisted the urge for quite a while at least long enough to find someone willing to be eaten. Surely enough that last dinner brought Armin to prison. And now according to News.com.au Armin turned “vegetarian”,  

“He finds the idea of factory farming as distasteful as his crime was and now sticks to vegetarian dishes.” 

That’s surely appears more radical than any trasformationof a butcher or a chicken farmer into a vegetarian, but aren’t we jumping to conclusions. The guy is quoted as saying he doesn’t like factory farmed meat. This doesn’t mean he turned vegetarian voluntarily. There’s hardly a choice in jail even other inmates cannot be classified as organic food.

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Although Spain’s national laws against cruelty to animals have abolished most archaic spectacles of animal cruelty, they specifically exempt bullfighting. Now a group of Spanish politicians, intellectuals, artists and environmentalists lead by the Green Party has called for the abolition of bullfights. It is claimed that public opinion in Spain is largely against bullfighting and according to some sources almost 70% of attendees at Barcelona bullring are tourists. In fact several towns in Spain have banned bullfighting altogether. In August 2007, state-run Spanish TV cancelled live coverage of bullfights claiming that the coverage was too violent for children who might be watching, and that live coverage violated a voluntary, industry-wide code attempting to limit “sequences that are particularly crude or brutal.”

Meat eaters in Mumbai have to hide their eating habits to be able to live in vegetarian only housing estates. Despite being the most cosmopolitan city, Mumbai is split along ethnic and religious lines. It’s estimated that as much as one third of the city’s population is vegetarian mostly people from Jain and Hindu religious groups.

Denying someone the right to move into an apartment on the grounds of caste or religious affiliation is illegal in India, but vegetarian-only homes occupy a gray area under the law. Although the government does not record numbers, vegetarian leaders say thousands of such buildings are dotted around the city. No other city in India has such a concentration of vegetarian ghettoes.

After reading this you might think that an airline serving only vegetarian food on board doesn’t look like such a radical idea for India at least.

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If you travel to eat you can’t go wrong with 6 tips for the traveling vegetarian. Unfortunately most of us can’t afford the luxury of planning every food intake mission. When you’re lucky to spare just a few minutes for lunch, how do you ensure that you get something fast and vegetarian? Here’s your food court guide to vegetarian eating out.

Mediterranean (or close to it) - Definitely go for salads. If you’re a vegan then skip pizza and Greek salad. You can always ask for steamed veggies (usually cauliflower, broccoli, beans) or baked potato and pumpkin.

Chinese/Vietnamese - Even non vegetarian places will have a pretty good idea how to cook vegetarian food. If you’re a vegan that’s probably one of the best options as they do not use cheese or milk. Even if it’s not on their menu they’ll be happy to make stir fry veggies with tofu and some kind of sauce.

Japanese - Sushi is a pretty safe bet. There are sushi with seaweed, tofu, vegetable eg cucumber, carrot, avocado. Seaweed salad and miso soup is an excellent addition to the above.

Indian - Although almost 40% of Indian population are vegetarians you’d be hard pressed to find a pure vegetarian Indian restaurant or a fast food outlet anywhere but India. Fortunately, almost any Indian cuisine specialist would have a couple of vegetarian dishes. Don’t count on them if you’ve a vegan as milk, ghee and paneer are used nearly everywhere.

Turkish - You’ll be surprised to find quite a few vegetarian options on the menu. Any vegetable that can be stuffed with or wrapped around rice is a go. This includes grapevine leaves, capsicums, tomatoes, eggplant, beans and spinach. Top it up with falafel and you’ll be set for a quick lunch.

If you look carefully you’ll discover a lot more options than I mention here. And just in case you find yourself in a foreign country without a foreign language make sure you head to http://www.allergytranslation.com and order yourself wallet size cards with you dietary requirements listed in the language of your choice. This will make your eating out even easier, and you’ll save yourself lots of trouble trying to explain what exactly you eat.

Recently launched MDLR Airlines claims to be the only airline in the world that serves only vegetarian food on board. The airline started operating with 2 AVRO RJ-70 aircraft leased from British Aerospace flying from Delhi to Chandigarh. Other regional destinations will include Ranchi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Goa, Surat and Bhavnagar. MDLR plans to have a fleet of 10-12 aircraft by the end of the year.

This is a very interesting idea and makes flying vegetarian a lot easier, at least in India. For the other parts of the world we still have rely on own experience and internet research of airlines vegetarian meals.