Folks. Here’s a fun fact: Biblical texts make no direct allusion to any specific type of fruit, apple or otherwise, in the sections pertaining to the Edenic myth. You know, Eve, Adam, Forbidden Fruit, Genesis (not the band) – not one Granny Smith or Macintosh to be found.

In reality, the Latin phrase ‘Bonum et Malum,’ meaning roughly ‘of good and evil,’ looks like a form of malus, Latin for apple. It was just a little piece of language, a metonymic association, widespread poetic intuition way back when. Really, the faculty for a bad pun came to create one of the world’s most famous, loaded symbols. Witzelsucht. Eisegesis. “Orange you glad I didn’t say bodily shame? Haha, no but seriously…bodily shame.”

I went vegetarian recently. The justification I gave over the first few weeks was one that I cribbed from a shamefully enthusiastic Tumblr: I could not imagine actually killing a cow. After the first month, I could have raised a cow, named him Charles and waved goodbye while he got loaded onto the truck. Luckily, I lived in The Big Apple, which made it easier. Or so everyone told me. Oh, like all the readily available pizza, I responded, and they shook their heads, judging. No. They meant the fact that this city is privileged with hundreds of vegetarian and vegan service industry options. This, though great in many ways, also cultivates a scene that is…the worst.

So much of being a vegetarian in New York seems to be about saying that you’re a vegetarian, hinting that you’re a vegetarian, putting on multiple scarves and then making, like, super earnest eye contact.

It’s something I believe in—don’t get me wrong. I’m still a vegetarian. (Damn you, Charles! With those deep, brown eyes!) And this type of inter-critique might not be crucial when the vapid vegetarian is a relatively small voice compared to the alternative conversation of catch-all ‘hipster’ bashing and affected bacon-worship. But still, it is a specific type of jerk-move to take a cause and rework its narrative to make a convenient lil’ label for oneself. Long discussions over leafy greens and satisfied looks to the server ultimately seem a little funny when all it is, at the end of the day, is a dietary option. A whole lot of something out of nothing. I guess it is just too appealing to talk talk talk about the food we eat as a way to talk about ourselves and not much else.