Jul
31st
2016
Strictly Vegetarian Indeed · 10:37am Jul 31st, 2016
Everyone is familiar with the ham sandwich:
But in Fall Weather Friends, Pinkie Pie mentions a hot dog eating contest while announcing for the race.
Clearly, that song and dance for the buffalo was just a way of luring them into a false sense of complacency. 
Rewatching season 1 is a bit weird. Beyond the weirdness of the voices being off at the start of the show, the animation is lower quality and there's a bunch of odd little bits of quirkiness.
The early episodes have really good scripts by and large, though.
One sad thing that was lost: Pinkie Pie's little songs. Once everyone started singing, that character trait of hers fell by the wayside.
gah. I wish they paid more attention to those things.
How true.
Coincidentally, I have just spent a week on holiday with a vegetarian. There is such a thing as a vegetarian sausage (made from Quorn) and there is also vegetarian ham (likewise, obviously).
Granted, using the word "ham" is pushing it a little (they do refer to it as "ham style"), unless the GM industry is getting really creative.
This is nothing new - many years ago I was making Spaghetti Bolognase using Quprn mince. There is even a bacon substitute.
4124104
HERESY!!! Heresy I say!
Unless it comes off a pig's ass it is not bacon!
...Heresy!
Apart from that meat-substitute stuff is cool, ate some stuff that was suppose to taste like fried chicken, could hardly tell the difference.
I was reading through season two transcripts not long ago and appalled by the number of times they say things like "Let me give you a hand".
4124215
Bacon is a belly-cut, not a butt.
I remember in one of the Redwall books (Rakkaty Tam to be specific) there was a very vegetarian sausage. Brian Jacques had a habit of describing foods in extreme detail.
Assuming the meat was vegetarian – for the sake of our squeamishness of thinking of technicolor ponies eating flesh – I'd still have to ask why emulating flesh in their meals would be a common thing for ponies.
These ponies almost undoubtedly eat eggs. They overwhelmingly obviously raise and keep chickens for this purpose (chickens do not hunt truffles, which is the presumably tongue-in-cheek Word of Faust excuse for the pigs). The cartoon depicts a cartoon-standard single-rooster farmyard. Given all that, Just what does everyone think happens to all the remaining males? They're likely not keeping them around the farm—even if we assume they're off-screen somewhere, they're pecking the hell out of one another for dominance in the artificially-high population density that agricultural husbandry requires, and that's just cruel. Alternately, they're keeping all the females and tossing the males into the massive biological disposal area that Is Everfree, ditto. Basically we're down to (a) large-scale magical gene manipulation to ensure a 99% female population, (b) completely alien biology that conveniently favors agriculture ratios over species-survival ones or (c) ponies at least occasionally eating some chicken, which they are biologically capable of doing if they can digest eggs.
Also note that Rarity appears to think that shrimp appetizers are appropriately glamorous, as she converts a candy dish into a plate of them in "Inspiration Manifestation." Cowboy boots also exist, and I have yet to see a cloth cowboy boot; so are they just skinning the animals and not eating the meat, or what? (Presumably they're pigskin boots, as cows are demonstrably sapient, and I'm not sure that would fly.) You can argue strict pony vegetarianism, but it requires an uncomfortably contorted point of view.
That said, pony "hot dogs" are carrots on buns.
4124638
Maybe the boots are cork or ocean leather (kelp)
4124638
Although generally herbivorous, rl horses can, and do, eat meat.
I don't think it would be far off to assume it might be a decadence thing (your example with Rarity), or maybe even a cultural thing (Dash may very well have shared a plate of fish with Gilda in flight school).
I always assumed ponies were "mostly" vegetarians. No red meat, chicken and fish very occasionally, but everything else, including milk, cheese, and eggs is totally normal, along with the staple veggies.
4124638
We know 100% they consume eggs; beyond them being used in baking, Rarity made eggs for breakfast in Sisterhooves Social.
To be fair, they may engage in chick culling instead.
That said, it pretty badly undermines the idea that they'd have some sort of moral compunctions against killing animals.
Yeah, that'd be awfully wasteful. And really would defeat the entire point of them being "vegetarian" anyway.
As a wise man once said, "If we aren't supposed to eat animals, why are they so tasty?"
4124300 ...meh, same difference.
I've never really seen how little ponies can be vegetarians, if we're going to take a realistic (for whatever given value of "realistic" you can drop into a cartoon like this, anyway) view of their physiology.
They have huge heads with presumably giant brains giving them human-like intelligence. That's a huge energy demand, and in proportion to their body size and available gut length and capacity, it really seems like they'd need sources of calories much more dense than grass and hay. This explains their predilection for ridiculous amounts of desserts and sugars in general - but you don't get a whole lot of things like proteins and amino acids or minerals like iron out of slamming sugar, generally speaking. There has to be something else in your diet to help you build tissues and such. Even hummingbirds, the most metabolically furious sugar specialists out there, need a bit more than just nectar.
The most efficient solution, the one evolutionary pressure that favors increasing energy demand would also favor, is becoming at least partially carnivorous. It becomes a slippery slope once it starts, too. When you're an herbivore that finds being more intelligent, faster, more active, and more compact gives you an advantage, you'll reach a point at which a diet of plants becomes the limiting constraint because you just can't get a shorter, lighter, more streamlined gut and sustain more activity on that energy budget. But if you enjoy the occasional snack made out of your smaller fellow critters who've done the work of collecting energy for you into a dense form, that wall breaks down and lets you keep responding to pressure to increase your fitness. Soon you find you're developing capabilities like offensive skills and physical endurance that lets you actively pursue and kill prey - unicorn magic and pegasus flight are useful for a lot more than just fleeing from other, larger predators - and features like acute binocular vision that are usually found on good hunters (notice how little ponies have huge, forward-facing eyes).
No, I don't see how they could be anything other than the descendants of adorable little horses-turned-wolves (or at least partially wolf-like, anyway).
4124638
Well, you have to have something to feed to the griffons living in Equestria. Not to mention all of the carnivorous pets. As for that "ham" sandwich, that's obviously just some oddly pinkish cheese.
No idea whey everyone gets worked up about that.*
I'm pretty sure that any actual leather in Equestria (as opposed to waterproofed canvas or other materials that can look like leather in a cartoon) come from the griffon societies out there. Or leather-bark trees, which I just made up now.
*After accidentally typing "why" as "whey", I decided to leave it as. It's much punnier that way.
I suppose a lot of meat things could be written off as a bit of cultural translation. Toss something with a similar idea out there that we understand in just a word, rather than having to go into detail. Heck, they might even use the same word to reference something different.
4124638
Ponies keep a lot of carnivores as pets. Rarity has a cat. AJ a dog. Pinkie an alligator. Twilight has an owl. And then there's Fluttershy, with seals, raptors, bears, and so on, all looking for a good home, pets to be. A decent chunk of those are not fish eaters. Pet food, I'd say, is the best explanation for the pigs on the Apple farm. And probably what happens to any unwanted chickens/roosters.
Edit: Also worth noting that many of the pretty animals that might otherwise be used are shown to be quite intelligent. The interactions we've seen from Angel Bunny and the mice in Fluttershy's home... Angel Bunny in particular understands the concept of books, clocks, and various other things. That could make ponies less inclined to use those animals as a source of pet food. Meanwhile, the pigs are shown pretty much just lazing around, without a care in the world. So I put forth that Equestria's pigs are not very bright, and that's part of why they are used as food-stock.
4124810
I'm more inclined to go with ponies (and other creatures) absorbing magic, and that that fuels their extraordinary abilities.
For all we know, someone on a dying planet orbiting a red star built a space ark, a space ark that crashed on Equestria, where the yellow sun imbued the creatures with abilities like flight, energy beams, and mad farming skills.
4124910
The thing is, if they don't have compunctions about feeding pets meat, why would they worry about eating it themselves? Seems a bit contrived.
Yeah, Angel and Owlowicious seem sapient (and Gummy, if you take Slice of Life seriously). Conversely, Winona is a dog and the pigs are pigs.
4124984
The series seems to depict magic coming from within rather than from outside, though, with characters glowing with inner power and the magic for Twilight's transformation emerging from her heart.
4125043
Doesn't seem contrived at all. If their bodies are designed to eat plants (and eggs), and not to eat meat (no tearing teeth, for example), it makes sense that they eat plants (and eggs) instead of meat. Likewise, their taste buds could well be set up in such a way that plants taste good and most meat doesn't. Or it could just be a social stigma on the eating of meat by ponies (much like how we in America aren't prone to eating horse meat, but have no problem with Fido scarfing it down).
4124805
Furnace Whelps' Flavor Text is my favorite incarnation of this sentiment.
"Baby dragons can't figure out humans—if they didn't want to be killed, why were they made of meat and treasure?"
4125062 Sure, it could be that it all comes from within, rather than an outside thing that is stored ala Superman, or the ability to just gather whatever ambient magic is around within them when it is needed. But however they tap into magic, wherever it comes from, it could still be magic.
4124638
A whole lot of fandom-given pony truisms require that, I think
4124638 Most vegatarians do eat eggs they are not meat, it's only when they are fertile do they hatch.
http://www.enkivillage.com/do-vegetarians-eat-eggs.html
4125213
Acknowledged as a biological fact. The point is, while eggs themselves are not necessarily meat, the agricultural production of eggs results in a lot of superfluous chickens that will never be used for egg production. For many, many years, human society's answer for the problem of superfluous chickens was to eat them. If ponies aren't eating them, where are they going? This was the question being discussed.
4125072
Herbivores tend to have more complicated digestive systems than carnivores do. While it is certainly true that digestive tracks specialize to some extent, a lot of "herbivores" are capable of eating meat. RL horses, for instance, are capable of eating meat, and while they are herbivores, they are not obligate herbivores. Moreover, cooked meat is significantly easier to eat and digest than uncooked meat is. Given that they eat very protein-and-fat rich things like eggs sunny-side up, it seems likely that they'd be able to eat cooked meat as well.
As far as their teeth go, their teeth are not exactly identical to ours, but they possess both incisors and molars, and may or may not possess canines as well (it is hard to tell from the one good shot we have of the inside of Big Mac's mouth, as horse canines are oddly positioned). Given real horses can and occasionally do consume meat with their dentition, it certainly isn't a deal breaker.
Bacon, sliced ham, chicken soup, pulled pork, fish, ect. all seem like things they should biologically be able to eat without much trouble.
If they do avoid meat, it is likely for cultural reasons.
Or maybe Pinkie Pie is going to be very surprised when she finds out where ham comes from.
"Why don't they call it pig, then?"
Of course, the most important rule is "does it make for a good story?"
4125628 Yeah, I don't think it is because they can't, but it is more that they don't. The real life meat eating horse thing, for example, happens mostly because the horse is suffering from a calcium deficiency. They're after the bones, not the meat. The rest of the time, they go for their preferred diet of plants. And while it is carnivores that have the shorter digestive tracts and lack enzymes in their saliva to break down plants, as well as other biological differences, that doesn't mean that meat digests as easily for herbivores as it does for carnivores. Probably doesn't sit as well. So while ponies could eat it, I'd expect it isn't so much cultural reasons as it is "plants taste better". A pony who grew up in a griffon town where the cultural reasons don't exist would most likely still be herbivorely-inclined. And for that matter, ponies also don't seem to freak out about having griffons in town (the Equestrian Games had quite a few), nor did Twi have issues with the food on the EG side of the mirror.
But obviously, we've got no canon answer to all that, and much of it is most likely because the show doesn't need to address it, so they don't. And if they ever do, I doubt they'll put much thought into it, but just go with what seems humorous at the time. Which leaves us free currently to do whatever without conflicting with canon
Oh, and to digress off diet and over to writing momentarily...
s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/photoshop/2/7/1/564271_v1.jpg
Quite the accomplishment, and inspiration for pegasi and earth ponies everywhere.
4124810 one answer is magic, but there is really only evidence of that for Earth ponies. Clearly they can easily produce far more than they need for one pony very easily. The way work it is that yes growing all that food is tough, but it's the earth pony thing, every step enriching the soil without any effort. Pre-historic Earth pony herds roaming a territory that inevitably produced far more food than it would otherwise and supporting their bigger brains despite the issues. Unicorns were forest dwellers, but not little wolves, focusing on bird eggs at first, and eventually birds themselves. Pulling eggs out of nests with levitation also is an obvious advantage and cooking birds with magic in midflight makes them easier to eat teeth wise as well as not requiring tools. Pegasi are just always around water so of course they eventually picked up eating fish, and lightning can solve the cooking issue and teeth easy enough. There may have even been sub-tribes that focused on sea or fresh water fish but obviously that faded one way or another. Then to make this all at least semi pointless along comes Discord and during his reign your wife might not even stay a pony much less the race she should be so things get complicated genetics wise. This also results in things like the Cake twins down the line, but also all ponies being capable of digesting fish and eggs properly. Of course since originally it wasn't this way there are still cutural taboos about this sort of thing, at least talking about it. Also while I ignore it even being a thing, this all comes out in a story as a result of Gilda realizing something really is chicken pate, culturally you could have some cutural reason why even though they can do all these things, even well and how they got here, they just stopped.
4125456 4124805 It seems like magical chick culling could be a mostly humane answer. That ponies, mostly earth ponies but rarely unicorns or even pegasi with the right talents, can just know what sex an egg is the moment it's laid. This is still slightly creepy and a bit morally grey, but not nearly to the extent RL chick culling is. There is also a really horrible ultra feminist joke about eating males there, but I can't quite work it out.
4126317
Shoo-be-doo
Maybe it's a giant slab of pickled ginger? Nawh, even I don't believe that, heh.
YES. Thanks for noticing.
4127114
The biggest/cleverest thing is how they use the early episodes to very strongly establish various characters... well, characters, as well as a number of interpersonal relationships. It does quite a bit to highlight their character traits and flesh them out. I need to continue my In Retrospect posts at some point.
4126401 I actually meant of pegasi, so more like the division between see birds and forest birds that do some fishing from lakes. As to sea ponies, I have the granny Pie Pinkie mentions be a sea pony in a story so clearly that's a possibility too, but they're somewhat seperate in that they diverged from land ponies a long time ago.
4124395 Rakkaty Tam was an interesting read, though a bit more forgettable than stories like Triss, Mattimeo, or Redwall.
4131107 Mariel of Redwall is probably the best book in the series imho.