The good news about being a vegetarian is that you’ve probably gotten skinny, reduced your carbon footprint, and saved a few cows from an early grave. The bad news is that the guys you want to date don’t care.

We care more about your shape (waist-to-hip-to-breast ratio) and less about your size (skinny), so we’re not impressed when your figure resembles that of an emaciated giraffe. We’ll recycle cans and try not to litter, but we’re not going to get sentimental over saving the world from a couple of extra pig poots. We understand that you want us to feel some compassion for the animals, but it’s hard for us to apologize for being on the top of the food chain. Don’t think for one second that cows don’t spend every day in their pasture wishing they were faster, smarter, and fitted with sharper teeth and opposable thumbs so that they could turn the tables on us. Bears do it to people all the time; birds haven’t quite figured it out yet so they’ll just continue to shit on us until evolution turns them back into dinosaurs –and then they’ll eat us too. That’s just how the ecosystem works. We’re all competing for the same scarce natural resources and we’re all trying to satisfy our need for protein in the most efficient and pleasurable way possible. For most guys, that means eating meat.

Some women think that being hot saves them from this red flag. It doesn’t. Meeting a hot vegetarian is like meeting a hot step sister. Technically, there’s nothing biologically wrong with dating you, but there’s a moral dilemma that prevents us from trying. While we have some rational and scientific arguments to support meat-eating, we’re not going to pretend to be experts on morality or the long-term impacts of eating meat. That’s not true to who we are, nor will it be true to most guys you encounter on the dating circuit. Instead, what we do know is that a hamburger tastes pretty damn good and dating a girl who morally opposes eating meat means she won’t be making us a hamburger and she might even try to make us feel guilty for eating one.

We know that your soy burgers are just to die for, but imitating red meat won’t be enough to help you overcome this red flag.

Instead you’ll have to demonstrate that you’re tolerant of our food choices even if they conflict with yours, and that you won’t harass us every time we buy a porterhouse. If that doesn’t work you’ll have to get salacious, and eliminate the red flag by telling us you prefer to get your protein from semen.