Meat Versus Veggies

Meanwhile, all the omnivores have moved to Switzerland.

Beast Boy: My tofu dogs are cooked to perfection. Yo, Raven. Try one. They're loaded with soybean-y goodness.
Raven: I respect that you don't eat meat. Please respect that I don't eat fake meat.

— Teen Titans (2003), "Sum of His Parts"^note This is especially hilarious considering that Raven's voice actress, Tara Strong, is vegan in real life.

Bob is a born and bred meat-eater. He counts meat-related foods as his Trademark Favorite Food and staunchly believes that Real Men Eat Meat, and in extreme cases will willingly become a Burger Fool just to be close to the burgers. Chicken, pork, beef, fish, lamb, goat—if it's meat, he'll eat it without any qualms, and he's not afraid to be a Large Ham about it.

Simon, on the other hand, is a vegetarian. As such, he's a supporter of the all-soy diet and would thus thrive in a Veganopia environment, and literally Does Not Like Spam. He'll probably eat Fantastic Fruits and Vegetables, or jump at the Call to Agriculture. Maybe he'll advocate Artificial Meat, the type that's made from plants and fungi, such as tofu, mycoprotein, or gluten steaks, and he might well assure you that it Tastes Like Chicken. Perhaps at one point he used to eat meat, but switched camps after meeting his food live and in person. Or perhaps he doesn't eat meat because it's against his religious beliefs to do so. If the creators of the work dislike veggies in general he will probably be a Straw Vegetarian, often of the Smug Straight Edge kind.

When their philosophies on food come together, expect them to clash. Bob thinks Simon is eating Fake Food, and that he just needs to try meat once to appreciate how much better it is than Disgusting Vegetarian Food; Simon is squicked out by Bob's consumption of dead animal flesh and thinks he'll suffer Death by Gluttony for his obsession with meat.

A Cooking Duel may ensue for each side to prove that their preferred food type is superior to the other. Worst-case scenario, a Food Fight or Diner Brawl will ensue.

Basically, this trope is about the kind of conflict that goes on when a meat-eater and a vegetarian have to share the same dining space. There will be no middle ground. Throw in gender and the whole trope coalesces with Mars and Venus Gender Contrast, since Real Men Eat Meat and Women Are Delicate.

Compare and contrast Silly Reason for War, The Butter Battle Book (where a fight over dietary questions can and does really escalate). See also Predators Are Mean and Herbivores Are Friendly, where carnivorous and herbivorous animals are on opposing sides.

No Real Life Examples, Please! The last thing we want here is a brawl between "meat-and-potato people vs. vegetarians."

noreallife

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Cells at Work: Bacteria!: All the good bacteria love vegetables, but all the bad bacteria eat meat. Chapter 1 tells us that the host body loves to eat meat as well, since one of the good bacteria mentions it's all she ate for the past week.
• Goblin Slayer has Dwarf Shaman for the meat side and High Elf Archer for the veggies side, as part of their Elves Versus Dwarves dynamic.
• The eponymous character of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water is a strict vegetarian and believes there is no justification for eating meat. She is so stubborn about this issue, in fact, that she turns a deaf ear to Jean's arguments that he and her friends only eat meat for food, not for cold killing. (She abandons this attitude, however, when she tells them about her tragic past that led to her rigidness about it.)

Audio Plays

• In the Big Finish Doctor Who audio "The Holy Terror", Frobisher (a shapeshifter who uses a penguin body) is introduced playing with an alien fish, tormenting it before he eats it. The Sixth Doctor, a vegetarian, catches him doing this and is appalled, telling Frobisher that what he's doing is unnecessarily cruel and that there's a whole room on the TARDIS full of canned tuna if he's hungry. Frobisher snaps back that the need to do this is part of his nature as a penguin, and it's not his fault the Doctor prefers salad. Then the Doctor finds out that the fish isn't even a real fish — it's created artificially by the TARDIS, and Frobisher's bullying of it has caused the TARDIS itself to go on strike.

Comic Books

• Played with during Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man in the 1980s, in which Animal Man's connection to animal life gradually made him decide to become vegetarian... which in turn caused friction with his wife when she came home to find him emptying the refrigerator of all meat products. In this case, the problem wasn't so much that he'd decided to become vegetarian as much as the fact that he'd made the unilateral decision for his family without consulting them or her, and his high-handed and self-righteous response when confronted about this didn't help either. Later taken to meta-levels in later issues when Animal Man came into contact with Grant Morrison themself, who admitted that they'd been using Animal Man as a vehicle to persuade people to accept their real-life views.

Fan Works

• Rimwards Howondalandians, in or from the Discworld's expy of South Africa, are perfectly relaxed about salad. To make the braai a sophisticated eating experience, there has to be slaai present alongside all the meat. You are not obliged, however, to actually consume it. Just place a small piece of lettuce and a slice of tomato on the plate next to the meat, and that is regarded as sufficient. A.A. Pessimal has a Vondalaander reflect that her nation's cuisine is not a vegetarian one, as she darkly considers the meat-free dish a Quirmian friend has just ordered for her in a posh restaurant. Never mind, she can eat properly when she gets home.
• Kitsune no Ken: Fist of the Fox: Minor characters Sagi and Guren have this dynamic with each other; Sagi's the meat-eater and Guren is the vegetarian. During their first meeting, they're able to articulate their respective points clearly, calmly and respectfully, and the difference of opinion doesn't keep them from becoming a couple later on.
• A semi-recurring theme in The New Retcons was everyone's reactions to April Patterson converting to veganism:
  • Her mother Elly is in straight-up denial, and constantly tries to feed April burgers, tuna casserole, or cheesy eggs. April also has to try new recipes at her brother's house cause Elly hassles her every time she tries at theirs. Even after Elly recovers from her madness and is trying to make amends with her family, she throws out April's vegan margarine tarts because 'real butter tarts have butter in them'. She actually ate them all and was too embarrassed to admit it.
  • Her sister-in-law, Deanna, has more legitimate concerns about April's vegan diet, since she had seen a friend lose her hair due to going on a vegan diet and was worried about the same thing happening to April. However, once April shows Deanna that she's done enough research into the matter to make sure she's getting the proper nutrients, she goes on to support her and buys her a few vegan cookbooks.
  • April's uncle Bill is also a vegan, and his sister Bev is negative about that. April can't understand how Bev doesn't see a contradiction in being a veterinarian to livestock that will just be slaughtered for meat.
• In OSMU: Fanfiction Friction, Octavius is portrayed as being vegetarian, and complains about not seeing a vegetarian option on the menu at The Nutcracker. Opal sighs and tells him to just get a small salad because they're eating in small-town Ohio. It's not revealed whether his friend Oswald is also vegetarian or if he also eats meat, though.

Film — Animation

• In Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Sid and the Mama T. rex compete with what to feed their kids. Sid tries to feed the baby Rexes huge vegetables, but Mama T. rex wins out, as her kids adore the meat she brings them.

Films — Live-Action

• Apocalypse: Willy Spino, a meat-eater, and a vegetarian blind woman have a minor spat about their diets in the film series movie Revelation.
• Bedtime Stories (2008): This is one way Skeeter Bronson and his sister Wendy are at odds with each other. Wendy raises her kids on a strict vegetarian diet, as evidenced by a gluten-free wheatgrass cake that nobody eats at her daughter Bobbi's birthday party. When Skeeter tries to make breakfast for the kids using various foods in her kitchen, he asks in exasperation "Doesn't your mother have tastebuds?", and he later gets them burgers for dinner as they stay with him at the hotel where he works.
• Cheaper by the Dozen (2003): When the Bakers' dog jumps on their new neighbor, Tom jokingly asks if the neighbor had a cheeseburger with her. She states that she doesn't eat meat, to polite-but-disapproving silence.
• Date with an Angel: The angel responds rather poorly when the main character offers her a burger...she does, however, eat the French fries.
• The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey: Has a rather humorous scene where the company, who are mostly Dwarves, are invited to attend a dinner party in Rivendell. Much to the Dwarves' chagrin, their Elven hosts have prepared a variety of green foods and salad for them, and the Dwarves aren't entirely sure what to make of it. Dwalin takes a fist of the green stuff and demands meat, and Ori asks if they have any chips ^note as in British chips, French fries to any Americans reading this. In a later scene, they're roasting food over a fire, including a sausage and some of the leftover lettuce.
• Houseguest: Sinbad's character finds out too late that the person whose identity he's borrowing is a strict vegetarian, so he has to sneak meat in whenever he can while his hosts aren't looking.
• My Big Fat Greek Wedding: Downplayed. Ian's vegetarianism is something of a shock to Toula's meat-eating family, but it's played more as an innocuous quirk than a major source of conflict.
• Shooting Vegetarians: This 2005 low-budget film focuses on the main character, a vegetarian, being forced to go and work in his father's butcher shop. Hilarity Ensues.
• Super Mario Bros. (1993): Daisy, despite being a human descended from dinosaurs, is a vegetarian, but is fed meat as a captive by the aggressively carnivorous King Koopa. She asks a Goomba to bring her steamed veggies instead, which he fails to get to her before she is rescued.
• Would You Rather: One of the first challenges invokes this trope. During a high-class dinner party, when the main course of foie gras and prime rib arrives at the table, one guest politely informs the host that she's a vegetarian. Said host, in turn, offers her $10,000 in cash to break her veggie ways. After a moment's hesitation, she does.

Live-Action TV

• America's Next Top Model cycle 8 had a photoshoot of various opposing political concepts (pro- and anti-gun, pro- and anti-fur, etc.), amongst them being a meat eater and a vegetarian. Unfortunately, both photos were considered some of the weakest amongst the panel.
• In The A-Team episode "Trouble Brewing", this is one of the subplots of the episode. The sisters are somewhat interested in health (for instance, their "soda" is actually mostly fruit juice and they advise Hannibal to stop smoking), and Murdock becomes interested in it for the duration of the episode. He criticizes unhealthy practices of the team's other members and comes up with vitamin plans for them. B.A. is having none of this. When one of the sisters gives him a sandwich, he complains, "Where's the meat?" and when Murdock writes down a vitamin plan for him, he chews it up and eats it.
• This caused a confrontation on Come Dine With Me when a rather insensitive carnivore host decided to serve meat-based dishes anyway, reasoning a vegetarian guest should stop being so bloody precious about it and eat like a normal person, and that he wasn't going to make any allowances for a "fad diet". This did not end well.
• Dharma & Greg: Abby, Dharma's mother, is a strict vegan, which causes problems in some instances.
• In Dinosaurs, it's Carnivores versus Herbivores. Earl and Fran reacted to finding broccoli hidden in Robbie's room like they had found some illicit drug.
• The (first) Doctor Who Strax Field Report on each incarnation of the Doctor reveals that Strax considers the Fifth Doctor's 'vegetarian diet' to be the cause of his lack of warrior constitution.
• Phoebe Buffay of Friends is an odd case, as she flits between being a strict vegetarian by virtue of being an animal-rights supporter, and eating meat as part of Hypocritical Humor. The trope is played straight in one episode, however, when she gives in to the pressure to impress her boyfriend's parents and eats some veal, and is later sick because of it.
  • Another episode has her horrified when, while acting as a surrogate for her brother and his wife, she starts to crave meat. Her friend Joey vows to take up vegetarianism during Phoebe's pregnancy to balance it out.
  • In the Thanksgiving episode "The One With The Rumor", Joey wanted the group to get a turkey, even though he was the only one who was interested in eating it that year.
    Monica: Well, Phoebe doesn’t eat turkey...
    Joey: Phoebe!
    Phoebe: Turkeys are beautiful, intelligent animals!
    Joey: No, they're not! They're ugly, stupid, and delicious!
• H₂O: Just Add Water implies that mermaids are exclusively carnivorous, as seen from the times when Emma's mermaid instincts take over and she starts chowing down on raw fish and lobster, including what they give to the dolphins in the marine park. Mako Mermaids: An H₂O Adventure confirms this when Evie asks why Rita's fridge has no vegetables, and Nixie disdainfully responds that nobody in their "family" eats vegetables.
• Home Improvement: Tim, as part of his all-things-manly shtick, is a firm believer in the idea that Real Men Eat Meat while his wife Jill is not a vegetarian but does try to push eating more vegetables. Even their three teenage boys occasionally complain about Tim's tendency to serve nothing but meat when he's put in charge of cooking.
• Law & Order: Detective Green is a vegetarian, for which his partner Briscoe has a lot of fun at his expense. Although that's as much about Briscoe being the all-time Deadpan Snarker of the series as it is about the actual merits of a particular diet.
• In Leonardo, Jerk Jock Michelangelo makes fun of Leo for being vegetarian, and suggests the birds he frees should be "released" into a cooking pot.
• In one episode of Living Single, Regine becomes a vegetarian and attempts to force her roommates to follow suit by throwing out all the meat in the apartment. The roommates counter this by throwing out all her veggies and having a huge meat-only BBQ in the backyard. This backfires on everyone, however when Regine snaps and demands everyone's meat products for herself.
• Married... with Children: Al and Marcie were often on opposite sides of this conflict, although neither is truly a character to be admired. (Al was a complete and total jerkass towards vegetarians, claiming Real Men Eat Meat while not "manly" in the least, and Marcie was as much a Straw Vegetarian as she was a Straw Feminist.)
• On My Name Is Earl, Earl and Randy stay at a hippie commune for a week, in order to make up for stealing all the property of a former stoner who now lives there. The members of the commune raise goats for milk and wool, and cows for milk and manure (to fertilize the crops and to build their houses), but they don't eat meat. They all come together to share food, a lot of which is glorified salad (perhaps made to look like a burrito or a slice of pizza), or maybe something like "beet loaf." Earl is okay with the food, but Randy has a hard time adjusting to it.
  Randy: I need. To eat. An animal!
• Downplayed on MythBusters; for the most part, the members of the Build Team respect each others' dietary choices (Kari is vegetarian, while Grant and Tory are not). However, the producers of the show do deliberately send Kari to pick up meat products from the butcher (because her reactions make for good TV), and Tory and Grant aren't above teasing her about it themselves.
• In addition to all of Georg's other authoritarian neuroses in Næturvaktin, he is a batshit insane gluten-free vegetarian who abuses his position as petrol station shopkeeper to peddle homebaked spelt bread to customers coming in for hotdogs.
• Frequently referenced on No Reservations — Tony falls squarely into the meat camp, many of his personal favourite Food Porn moments involve huge piles of sizzling animal parts and he rails against vegetarians or vegans with political motivations he finds ridiculous and who don't actually know how to cook vegetables properly. He will grant points to the (generally Buddhist) vegetarian cooks of places like India and China, however.
• In Parks and Recreation, Ron is a staunch meat eater to the point of disgust at fruit and vegetables, and he considers fish meat "practically a vegetable". Chris is a health nut who does eat meat, but is so fixated on vegetables he acts as a stand-in Straw Vegetarian. The two tend to butt heads when it comes to food and in one episode have a burger cook-off: everyone thinks Chris' fancy veggie burger is delicious, but even Chris admits that Ron's plain beefburger is the winner.
• On an episode of QI, Stephen Fry asked why people who do not eat meat are called vegetarians. Jeremy Clarkson's response was "So they can be identified as fools and madmen!". Clarkson also wanted to put vegetarians into Room 101.
• Gordon Ramsay once tricked a vegetarian into eating meat in one of his cooking shows. Needless to say the vegetarian wasn't pleased.
• During the San Francisco season of The Real World replacement roommate Jo is vegan. During a Hawaiian luau she becomes very upset when the chef allows butter to touch her vegetables. At the same dinner she learns she's eaten some salad that has meat in it and induces vomiting on the beach.
• Roseanne is every bit of a Jerkass toward Darlene and her boyfriend David because they're both vegetarians.
  Roseanne: (introducing them when they're camera-shy) They're vegetarians. They don't have the strength to hold their heads up.
  • On another occasion, she delivers this line to David (who had been brainwashed by a Disneyland-esque cult):
    Roseanne: Listen to me, David! RABBITS AND GEESE AND GOATS ARE NOT PEOPLE!! THEY DON'T SING AND DANCE!! THEY'RE FOOOOOOD!
  • Darlene was little better; she not only refused to shut up about her vegetarian status and was every bit as much of a Jerkass as her mom, but at one point actually vandalized her family's diner specialising in loose meat sandwiches. Given that diner was her impoverished family's only source of income at the time, this was a pretty selfish and stupid move.
• Starsky & Hutch have been known to clash when it comes to food. Starsky mostly eats salami, pizza and any spicy burrito with onions. Hutch, however, prefers a more 'healthy' approach.
  Hutch: You know something, Starsk? When they do your autopsy they're gonna find a petrified beef burrito.
  Starsky: *grinning* With onions.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: The Original Series: Mr. Spock is a vegetarian, and is extremely displeased with himself when he eats meat in an out-of-character moment in the episode "All Our Yesterdays":
  Spock: Please pay no attention. I'm not myself. I'm behaving disgracefully. I have eaten animal flesh and I've enjoyed it. What's wrong with me?
  • In Star Trek: Enterprise, there is a sect of Vulcans that rely on both emotion and logic in balance, and they have no qualms about eating meat.
  • The Klingons, the Vulcans' main competitor for the primary alien race in the franchise, seem to eat meat almost exclusively. Most of it is still raw, with some dishes still moving.
• Given a slightly different spin on That Mitchell and Webb Look in a sketch where a meat-eater is invited to a dinner party at a vegetarian couple's house and, when told what the menu is, asks what the 'meat' option is. The vegetarian, of course, replies that they're a vegetarian household and there's no meat option. During the ensuing argument, however, the meat-eater points out that when he had the vegetarian and his partner over for dinner he was courteous and respectful enough to provide a vegetarian meal for them despite it not being his preferred choice of meal, and the vegetarian expecting the meat-eater to bend over backwards to accommodate his dining preferences in the meat-eater's home without being willing to do the same when the roles were reversed is actually rather rude and hypocritical. The vegetarian finds he has no comeback to this, so they decide to cook the family cat for the meat-eater.

Literature

• The Baby-Sitters Club: Dawn and her family were vegetarians (though this varies from book to book; sometimes they simply avoided red meat, and sometimes they, especially Dawn, were devout vegetarians). This was especially played up after Dawn's mother married Mary Anne's father, with three vegetarians and two meat-eaters in the same house having to make peace with one another's diets.
• Discworld:
  • The cooks at Lancre Castle believe that if you can't roast it and stick an apple in its mouth, it's not really food. Wyrd Sisters has a male cook who is driven to insanity by Duke Felmet's diet of porridge, soft-boiled eggs and vegetarian sausages; Lords and Ladies has a female one who terrorises Magrat whenever the soon-to-be-queen uses words like "vitamins" or "quiche".
  • Angua faces an internal dilemma; she's a vegetarian by preference, but is also a werewolf. She seems to limit meat consumption exclusively to her "time of month" though (and always turns up the next day to pay for the chickens she ate).
  • Sam Vimes has this attitude to the classic BLT sandwich: he concedes there has to be a sliver of tomato and a very small piece of lettuce on it to make it a BLT. As long as this is completely concealed by the bacon and invisible to the mouth, he has no problem with it.
• Elizabeth Costello: The eponymous character's vegetarianism is just one of the many issues she has to contend with in the world she lives in.
• Fengshen Yanyi: all Taoist characters, especially the Immortals, are vegetarians by choice and sometimes even mention their choice of food (wild vegetables, fruits, cereals and vegetarian wine) during their songs. Laymen instead can eat meat, though the Taoist fighter Huang Tianhua gets scolded (and implicitly loses some of his powers) when he indulges in a meat lunch. By contrast, some of the evil Jie Taoists, obsessed with showing off their magical skills, have no problem with eating meat, with one of them, Ma Yuan, being a full blown cannibal with a thing for raw hearts.
• Garrett, P.I.: Vegetarian Morley and steak-lover Garrett constantly mock each other's eating habits. Interestingly, Morley is the one who's a stone killer by profession.
• Inheritance Cycle: Downplayed. As Eragon settles into the elven realm of Du Weldenvarden, their strict vegetarianism - born of their greater understanding of and respect for life - comes as something of a culture shock: Elsewhere in the empire, regular meat consumption is a sign of wealth/status, and he's surprised at the elves' rejection of that ideology. Eragon does eventually come around to their way of thinking, but in later volumes he does consume meat in certain circumstances.
• Vorkosigan Saga:
  • Cordelia comes from Beta Colony, where all the "meat" is actually vat protein. When she marries Aral and moves to Barayar it takes her a long time to get used to meat from actual animals.
  • From a remark by one of the Koudelka sisters in A Civil Campaign: Cordelia still insists on vat meat at Vorkosigan House, thirty-some years later.
  • In Memory, Miles tells how as a boy he used to bring home fish caught from the local lake, which Cordelia would dutifully eat. He stopped when he realized his mother was not enjoying it.

Radio

• On Carolyn and Hercules's first Not a Date in the Cabin Pressure episode "Ottery-St-Mary", Herc orders a salad and an aubergine risotto, and Carolyn's reaction is "But they have real food here!" When he explains he's vegetarian, she calls his reasons childish, and then pointedly orders the rack of lamb and the whitebait platter ("Thirty little lives, yum yum!") This is about typical of their relationship.
• The Radio 4 comedy pilot Common Ground stars Henning Wenn as the owner of a market stall selling vegan food, who has a friendly(ish) rivalry with the woman who runs the hot dog stand opposite his patch, frequently trading barbs about each others' wares.
• Taken to intentionally ridiculous extremes in Nebulous, in which K.E.N.T. investigates a 'vegetarian colony' as if it were an extreme Planet of Hats with an inscrutable alien culture. The vegetarians are physically feeble brainwashed malevolents controlled by a Mad Scientist overclass, while K.E.N.T. struggles to understand what vegetarianism is, can't resist smuggling in chicken even though they'll likely be killed, are shown to become angry and shout at people who don't eat meat, and finding soy-based substitute meat ("Soylent Beige") significantly more repugnant than cannibalism, which they find normal. This is all a deliberately ludicrous inversion of several Doctor Who Author Tract stories promoting vegetarianism (such as "The Green Death" and "The Two Doctors").

Religion and Mythology

• The Bible:
  • The Ur-Example has to be the Book of Genesis, where the two sons of Adam, Cain and Abel each present their sacrifice in thanksgiving to the Lord. Genesis 4:1-9 tells the tale of God ignoring the vegetarian offering. This causes such discontent to Cain, the farmer, that he murders Abel his brother, the meat-eater:
    2 Abel became a keeper of sheep, and Cain became a tiller of the soil.
    3 In the course of time, Cain brought an offering to the LORD from the fruit of the soil;
    4 and Abel, for his part, brought the choicest of the firstlings of his flock. The LORD paid heed to Abel and his offering,
    5 but to Cain and his offering He paid no heed. Cain was much distressed and his face fell.
  • In the Book of Daniel, Daniel and his friends persuade the guards to let them have a vegetarian diet instead of the rich Babylonian food the other captives are served. As a result, they turn out healthier and stronger than all their meat-eating colleagues. The intended Aesop probably has less to do with the virtues of going veggie than with avoiding animal products being the easiest way to keep Kosher.
  • In the Book of Proverbs, Proverbs 15:17 in the New Living Translation says "A bowl of vegetables with someone you love is better than steak with someone you hate."
  • In the Book of Romans, Paul the apostle contends with believers in Jesus Christ, some who believe that they can eat all things and some who believe that they can eat only vegetables. As in Daniel, the issue has less to do with the food itself — meat was often sold by pagan temples after it had been previously used as offerings to heathen gods, and some of the newly-converted Christians were taking issue with the connection to idolatry. Paul's response was that the one who believes they can eat all things should not despise the believer who abstains, and the believer who abstains should not pass judgment on the one who believes they can eat all things, because whether they eat or they abstain, they do it all for the glory and honor of God, who is their Master.

Stand Up Comedy

• South African stand-up comic Barry Hilton sums up his country's attitude in a routine on braai culture;
  Boykies don't eat anything but meat. They just graze meat. That's it. Salads? They think nothing of salads. MEAT!
• Much of John Pinette's comedy revolved around food, and his subsequent attempts to eat healthier. He talked about a clash he had with one dietitian who was vegetarian and tried to get him to only eat salads, which led to the quote below. To his credit, however, in the same routine, Pinette acknowledges that he has no beef (pun intended) with vegetarians on principle and doesn't look down on them. He even kept up some of the practices the same dietitian recommended, like juicing (taking fruits and veggies through a special blender and drinking the resulting mixture), he just really doesn't like salad.
  "She wanted me to just eat salad. I said no. Salad isn't food. Salad comes with the food. Salad is a promissory note that food will soon arrive. When I see a salad, my brain goes "Something good is about to happen, wait right here." And then she said "what about steamed veggies?" Oh, you spoil me! Steamed veggies is just hot salad!

Tabletop Games

• Subverted in Warhammer 40,000, of all places. The Tau are herbivores, Wide Eyed Idealists who preach the Greater Good and plan to unite the galaxy whether it wants to or not, and have a bad habit of trying to shame any potential allies they come across. The Kroot mercenaries are Noble Savage carnivores who snarkily call the Tau out for the hypocrites they are behind their backs. Yet the Tau have come to an understanding that the Kroot simply can't eat vegetables; as long as the Kroot agree to not eat Tau corpses, they all work together just fine.

Video Games

• In Digimon World -next 0rder-, this is taken to the extreme, with the Digimon living in the Ohguino Wastelands managing to turn the debate into a full-on war. Interestingly, in the digital world, meat grows from the ground, so the whole war was started over something as petty as personal preference.
• In Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, Bowser uses meat-based healing items while the Mario Bros use mushroom-based ones (although the Bros are heavily implied not to be vegetarian generally when a door recommends Mario eat more puttanesca (which contains anchovies) in Partners in Time). Nevertheless, Bowser's meat-and-sweets-exclusive diet is used for comedy quite a lot of times in the game, particularly in the sequence where a dispute between Bowser and a vegetarian carrot farmer (who believes that 'a healthy body craves no meat') leads to Bowser being forced to eat a carrot the size of a large car, which he moans about several times later.

Webcomics

• In Delve, the antagonists are an Apocalypse Cult dedicated to the Devourer of Worlds, and all their rituals revolve around cannibalism. They taunt one of their number who underwent a Heel–Face Turn with "Your body won't be eaten, but rot. Just like a vegetable."
• In Girls with Slingshots, Jameson's girlfriend/later wife Maureen is a shy vegetarian blogger who is harassed by one of Jameson's longtime friends, Candy. At first Candy's jokes and pranks about Maureen's eating choices/reactions to the thought of meat are treated as funny, but eventually everyone in the group decides that Candy has gone too far for too long and call her out on it. As for the rest of the cast, it rarely if ever comes up as an issue.
• In Grrl Power, protagonist Sydney identifies as a vegetarian but doesn't want to bring it up because of this trope. And given how some of her teammates react in the very next strip, you can hardly blame her. ^note Sydney will eat fish on the grounds that they are "ugly and delicious" which is strictly called Pescatarianism but many Pescatarians identify as vegetarians in real life as well
• Sometimes happens in Johnny Wander, such as when Yuko excitedly proposes a new bacon recipe to her friends, who are all vegans/vegetarians. Cue awkward silence.
• Kevin & Kell takes this trope to its logical extreme, with it being the (as Danielle put it) arbitrary distinction used to divide society, a la race or sexuality. Then again, this is a society of Talking Animals, and given that the meat eaters prey on the veggie eaters often... A prime example is Bruno Luplin, a wolf that converts to herbivorism. It's treated in society as if he was transgender, and unfortunately it's the not-so-accepting part of society.
• In this Square Root of Minus Garfield, the title cat is offended enough by salad to beat a plate of greens with a ham.
• A couple of scenes from Stand Still, Stay Silent show Sigrun to be on the meat side of the conflict. After an early Unfortunate Item Swap results in the main cast having a supply of candles instead of food, a merchant ship drops new food crates. One contains vegetables (which greatly disappoints Sigrun), and the second is about one third cans of tuna and two thirds a young man who had hidden in the the crate. The ship is too far away by then, so Mission Control gets called about it. Sigrun complains about one of the crates being filled with "garbage food" and only after that mentions the stowaway.
• Vegan Artbook is based entirely around this conflict, with the vegan main character and friend group, against her meat-loving brother and local Karen(s).
• In the Walkyverse, for a while Joyce didn't want to eat meat while she was pregnant with Bobby, and wonders if maybe he's vegetarian. This annoys Walky, who loves meat so much he suggested they put steaks on their wedding registry. The next day, Joyce starts craving steak. Badly.

Web Originals

• James Lileks' fisking of the Meat Cook Book in his Gallery Of Regrettable Foods includes many comments reminding readers to never, under any circumstances, eat the vegetables, as a way of satirizing the book.
  WARNING! The carrots here are not to be eaten. Your manly meat-a-rifficness will diminish if you eat the carrots. Vegetables are for commies .
• The "You might be a twinkie if..." list, "twinkie" referring to "My great-grandmother was a Cherokee princess; do you want me to read your aura?", has "If you ask me for vegetarian recipes..."
• Epic Meal Time has fun with this one.
• whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com's personality is extremely abusive to everyone, but originally, if you clicked the 'I DON'T FUCKING EAT MEAT' button it would switch to insulting you about your diet instead of just generally swearing at you. It has since switched to giving actual vegetarian options. All part of the fun.
• In an episode of Nerd To The Third Power, host Dr. Gonzo told a story about the greatest burn he ever witnessed. He had been standing in line at a Five Guys (a burger place), and the woman in front of him asked the cashier if the restaurant had a vegan option. Without missing a beat, the cashier replied with "Yes, the exit." Gonzo said he had to get out of line because he was laughing too hard to place his own order.
• SCP Foundation: There's a very disturbing example with SCP-3240, a phenomenon that causes predatory animals and humans to engage in Autocannibalism while giving them a Healing Factor to replace lost flesh. Humans under this phenomenon form a cult that's at odds with a being they call Pan, who's associated with plant life and herbivores. When the SCP Foundation managed to neutralize SCP-3240's effects among humans, it caused anomalous levels of plant growth and herbivore reproduction from said plants.

Western Animation

• The Arthur episode "Sue Ellen Vegges Out" starts with Sue Ellen becoming a vegetarian. She doesn't try to impose her dietary choices on her friends, but Francine and Muffy decide it sounds cool and copy her. Muffy quickly becomes frustrated with the restrictions and gives up, leading to the conflict of the episode. Francine flaunts her ability to stick to the diet (putting her on the Veggies side), while Muffy makes it her mission to get Francine and Sue Ellen to also give up (putting her on the Meat side), but it's more about the girls' stubbornness than the actual issue they're fighting over. At the end of the episode, Sue Ellen snaps and points out that vegetarianism was her own personal choice, not a statement of moral superiority and certainly not something worth fighting over. Francine and Muffy concede and apologize.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender has a minor moment of this, when Team Avatar arrives to the Fire Nation: Sokka is overjoyed to eat meat at last, while Aang gets a little sick thinking about eating meat, and decides to stick with the veggies. In general, the Water Nation had meat as a major part of their diet (being from a part of the world where food was scarce), and the Air Nation was a vegetarian society being a race full of Animal Lovers (doubly so for Aang, being the Avatar). But since the Gaang are True Companions, Aang, Katara, and Sokka get along fine.
• The Bounty Hamster episode "Fashion Victim" has Marion as the vegetarian, being a hamster and all, and Cassie as the meat-lover.
  Cassie: Call me old-fashioned, but I like my food to have a face.
• Danny Phantom: between Tucker and Sam, Meat and Veggies respectively. It begins after Sam gets the school to take meat off the school menu, and it escalates to the point where the two of them each organize two dueling protests in front of the school.
• Played with in Green Eggs and Ham: Sam-I-Am is obsessed with the eponymous meal and convincing Guy to try it. So when he learns that Michellee is vegan (and what a vegan actually is), it looks like it's setting up a conflict, especially when he's dubious at the prospect of tofu green-eggs-and-ham substitute. But when Michellee points out he can't know he doesn't like it if he doesn't try it, he's the last person who's going to argue with that.
• King of the Hill: In "And They Call It Bobby Love", Bobby Hill dates a classmate who's a vegetarian, which initially frustrates his father Hank, since as a propane and propane accessories salesman, he loves to grill meat. But when Bobby's girlfriend dumps him, he gets back at her by eating a 72 oz. sirloin steak within an hour, with everybody, including his ex-girlfriend's parents, cheering him on.
• In The Midnight Gospel, Meat City is plastered with billboards extolling the virtues of meat. One billboard shows a piece of broccoli inside the buster symbol, suggesting that the clown-parasites take a dim view of vegetables.
• In Peace on Earth, Meat-eaters and Vegetarians are among the warring factions mentioned as the Grampa squirrel explains how Mankind wiped itself out. Though, if you take into account that the story takes place after World War I, it's obvious that he must have seen Indian soldiers fighting for Britain, eating vegetarian dishes, and shooting up German soldiers who have eaten sausages. Ignorant of the big, screwed-up politics behind the conflict, the old squirrel, then young, must have assumed these monstrous-looking humans wiped each other out over dietary choice as well as physical deformities (flat-footed Germans shooting up buck-toothed Brits).
• In The Powerpuff Girls (1998), Bubbles was sort of an odd case, at least continuity-wise. She claimed to be a vegetarian in some early episodes (being an Animal Lover, it made sense) and actually, no-one in-universe objected to it. In some other episodes, however, she seemed to abandon this philosophy entirely, having no problem with the Professor's sloppy joes. (Most likely, this was a case where it was Depending on the Writer.)
• The Simpsons: between Lisa and Homer in "Lisa the Vegetarian", where Homer is throwing a BBQ around the same time as Lisa has just converted to vegetarianism. Lisa ends up sabotaging the BBQ, Lisa goes searching for others who share her philosophy; when she finds them in the form of Apu and Paul and Linda McCartney, they point out that though they share her values, she's actually being an intolerant jerk. Lisa is particularly surprised that Apu doesn't eat cheese.
  Lisa: Then you must think I'm a monster.
  Apu: Yes, indeed I do think that. But, I learned long ago, Lisa, to tolerate others rather than forcing my beliefs on them. You know, you can influence people without badgering them over it.
  • In a later episode, it's revealed that Marge has gone the passive-aggressive route, and is in the habit of putting meat juice in Lisa's food.
• Teen Titans:
  • Beast Boy is a vegetarian (or a vegan; he doesn't seem to eat eggs or dairy, but is still referred to as a "vegetarian" in canon) because he's "been some of those animals." He frequently encounters conflict with Cyborg because of his dietary preferences (making scrambled tofu instead of scrambled eggs, at which Cyborg was not amused). In one episode he tries to persuade Raven to eat one of his tofu-dogs; her response:
    Raven: I respect that you don't eat meat. Please respect that I don't eat fake meat.
  • In fact, in the episode "The Beast Within," one of the signs that something is wrong with him is when he eats meat and eggs and apparently enjoys them.
  • Beast Boy can tolerate the presence of meat when he wants to. In "Employee of the Month", he sort-of-willingly works at Mega Meaty Meat because the Employee of the Month prize is his dream vehicle.
  • His counterpart on Teen Titans Go! is a little less pushy. While he reacts with disgust when offered a meat dish, he's cool with the others eating meat. In fact, the one episode where he did try to force his teammates to eat veggies, he wasn't even trying to get them to give up meat. To quote:
    "Look, I think meat is gross. But other people like it, and that's cool. You just need to have a balanced diet, whatever you eat!
• In What About Mimi?, Mimi's mother is vegan, but when she's away for the weekend Mimi's father secretly eats meat.

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