[LA Conservative]

I think it has to do with where you live. Dietary habits are culturally ingrained, regardless of ethnicity or religion. I personally keep close to the Med diet, eating soy products (legumes) whenever I can, but occasionally having fish or chicken a couple of times a week. I love red wine. In LA, it's easy to do as there are vegetarians among almost all ethnicities, so you have a huge selection of vegetarian foods. In fact, there is a Vietnamese vegetarian restaurant and tofu factory just 5 minutes from my house.
But just outside of LA where many of my co-workers live, they think that if you don't eat meat, you're unamerican, even the Democrats among them. Even my folks, who came from the meat eating capital of Chicago, thinks that it's crazy to eat tofu. They're in very poor health and feel like crap most of the time. My boss, who loves meat, finally had to admit she felt like crap after eating meat, and now orders chicken breast instead of meat, and fruit instead of fries.

[dfwgator]

Fish and chicken are meat.

[little jeremiah]

Conservative means not having to do things for show, and so that other will people "like" you.

I and my better half do not "look" conservative to a lot of folks. In fact, when we put our Bush/Cheney sign on our gate a number of neighbors who had snubbed us all of a sudden became friendly, because they didn't think people who looked like us could possibly be conservative.

That's just downright silly.