I had a carnivorous upbringing full of hot dogs and Happy Meals. Until the age of thirty, I clung to a perception of vegetarians as self-righteous dorks.

Then, about a year ago, for climatological (cows hotboxing the planet with their greenhouse expulsions) and aesthetic (that supple body) reasons, I myself turned veg. Experience has proven me right: I’ve seen firsthand that the relationship between vegetarianism and complacency is, as I’ve always suspected, linear. I am now 90% vegetarian and 90% insufferable.

I almost went all the way. Last spring, when Texas monthly deployed a team of 35 diners to visit 411 barbecues across Texas serving the top 50 list I had boasted for a few months that I was “primarily vegetarian.” I discovered tolerable plant-centered recipes, lost five pounds, and led a clean life in general. But when the call came to eat loads of barbecue — as a public service, no less — I jumped off the lentil wagon. For three days I went to eleven barbecues. It was The lost weekend, the iconic image of shot glass rings on a wooden bar replaced by piles of crumpled, sauce-stained napkins.

Leaving Dallas after my last stop, fingers swollen around the wheel from excess sodium, it occurred to me that as long as Slow Bone brisket is available, I will never be a star vegetarian. But I’ll be the best Texatarian I can be.

The texataires are legion, but only reveal themselves with time. Your vegan friend by marriage steals a rib from your barbecue platter and doesn’t break eye contact with you as she eats it, daring you to say something. (You don’t.) Your pescatarian boyfriend admits he occasionally barbecues. Your kind, mostly herbivorous colleague kills a turkey in cold blood.

Texatarianism is a nobler subset of “flexitarianism.” Where the common flexitarian follows a plant-based diet except for occasional indiscriminate dates with fish or meat, the Texatarian makes exceptions for meats that feel particularly Texan. Her definition of “Texan” can change from day to day and is between her and her god. For me, it’s barbecue, tacos or meat served to me by someone who looks offended if I don’t eat it.

And while the flexitarian is wanton in the meat she chooses to consume, the texatarian treats meat as a rite, to be anticipated, respected and selected with care.

“I really appreciate it more,” said Jesse Litvin, who lives in Austin and is primarily a vegetarian. “If you eat something every day, you won’t notice the things you would otherwise notice with the taste and the flavor, and maybe the differences in how that dish tastes elsewhere.”

Litvin was an entirely vegetarian until the age of seven, when he encountered bacon at a hotel breakfast buffet in Washington, DC. It was Eve and the apple: Litvin ate meat frequently for the next fifteen years. When he was in college, Litvin reverted to vegetarianism for sustainability reasons, but now he’s happily mistaken.

He never buys meat to eat at home, and in most restaurants he usually orders a vegetarian dish. “But if I go to the Salt Lick, or a really good taco truck,” Litvin explained, “I feel like the right thing to do is try the meat option there.” (God bless whoever enters the Salt Lick asking for the vegetarian option.)

He pointed out that most cities these days are vegetarian-friendly. It’s pretty easy to participate in the world while maintaining a plant-based diet, even in Dallas. But Texas, he said, has so many more meat dishes than other places. Eating meat here is connecting with the culture.

“It reminds me of who I am, and it reminds me of who we are in relation to each other,” said Jenny Carlson, who also lives in Austin. Along with his partner, Carlson eats a mostly pescatarian diet. “And I also have that with produce, but with meat, because it’s a life – and because of all the lives that go into creating this animal – it’s a moment of connection.”

Carlson, an anthropologist specializing in environmental policy, became a vegetarian twenty years ago after reading Diet for a New America by John Robbins at the university. Carlson is from Elgin, where his father still raises cows. He sells them in Lexington, the home of Snow’s BBQ. So, Carlson eats the brisket at Snow. “That’s where our meat is,” she says. “And we’re from Elgin, so we eat Southside BBQ. Because that’s where we come from.

Carlson was motivated to stop eating meat largely because of concerns about the consequences of mass farming, for the environment, the animals and the workers involved. But years ago, while at home after a long interlude of fieldwork in Germany, Carlson went to a Rudy’s Country Store and Bar-BQ with a group of friends. Sipping an orange soda, she wondered if refraining from enjoying the barbecue with her friends would really right all the wrongs of factory farming. She made a barbecue. (Carlson acknowledged that Rudy’s isn’t Snow’s, “but it was still delicious for someone who’s been in the meat desert for years.”)

Now Carlson and his partner will eat animals that his father killed, or meat that they know was from another sustainable source. They only eat it outside their homes, and only on special occasions. And when Carlson digs into a beef brisket, she’s acutely aware of the labor and resources involved in her meal. “It’s a very environmentally friendly food, and that doesn’t mean it’s bad to eat meat,” she said. “What that means is that a lot is going there.”

I liked Carlson’s thoughtful Texatarianism because he celebrates rather than vilifies meat. The occasional chest shot doesn’t mean you’re a failure, as long as you appreciate its high cost, don’t waste it and enjoy it.

I have infinite respect for vegetarians without exception in my life. They pluck up the courage to sit happily with coleslaw and a piece of cornbread while, across the table, I eat a pile of pork chops with erotic intensity. They are so at peace with themselves that they can go through several taco nopales while I sample all the meat options on the menu. I still yearn for that calm commitment to his values ​​even in the face of extraordinary offers.

But for now I’m content to marinate in the enticing promise of Texatarianism: I can have my chest, and my self-righteousness too.