Last month my book group met at Allie's for a sleepover. She lives in the country in a little town called Rydal, near Cartersville, and when it's her turn to host it doesn't really make sense to run up from Atlanta and back in the same evening. So we spent the night.

And we ate. I ate pretty much continuously from the time I got there in the late afternoon on Friday until bedtime, then woke up on Saturday morning and started again.

The book group is comprised of really conscientious women and it's a joy to be in their presence. Everybody brings a vegetarian dish to our monthly meetings because some of the members, including yours truly, are vegetarian.

But since we were going to be together for a more extended period of  time this month, the topic of serving meat came up and someone asked if I would be offended if they ate meat. That's a question I get a lot and I never really know how to answer it.

Most of the time I think that the people that ask that question do it sort of rhetorically, in the same way they might say, "How are you today?" without really wanting to hear about another person's sciatica or erectile dysfunction or the foreclosure of their home.

So when someone says, "How are you today?" we all say "Fine. You?" and that's that. And when someone asks if I will be offended if they eat meat, I always say, "Of course not. Do whatever you like" and that's that.

But the book group girls weren't just being rhetorical. They were up for a more in-depth discussion of the issue. Since they care deeply about doing what is right for the world, I told them that half of the antibiotics used in the U.S. every year are administered to livestock in order to keep them alive under feedlot conditions. The over-use of antibiotics has resulted in the development of super-viruses, such as MRSA, which are treatment resistant.

I told them that livestock production is huge contributor to global warming, generating a higher percentage of greenhouse gas emissions than transportation does. In fact, researchers Pamela Martin and Gidon Eshel at the University of Chicago have determined that  changing a meat based diet to a vegetarian one would have a more positive effect on the environment than a change from a standard sized sedan to an energy-efficient hybrid car.

In addition, raising animals for food contributes to pollution, water shortages and the destruction of forests that are cut down to make way for grazing lands.

One by one, the group dropped out of the conversation and got up to help make breakfast except for me and Julie. Julie is an activist for sustainable energy and other environmental issues and she wanted to talk more about how the decisions we make today will affect our quality of life in the years to come. 

Also, as a person who feels passionately about issues, she faces the same dilemma I do when these hot topics are discussed. We wish that the rest of the world shared our views, yet we know that proselytizing turns people off and makes it hard to listen to what we have to say. It's knowing this that makes me say, "Of course not. Do what you like" when people ask if I will be offended if they eat meat.

So in most situations, I'll probably continue to equivocate rather than being too offensive myself. I'll try to provide information without being a big turnoff. And when I lack the skill to do that, I'll let somebody else talk for me, like Mark Bittman so eloquently does in the video below.

As Julie and I chewed on ways we could be effective in influencing without turning people off, the others started bringing dishes to the table and we started eating again.

There wasn't any meat. And I wasn't offended.