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Star Trek has always tried to be fairly political, and include a large amount of social commentary within the confines of a fictional world. Thus, it may not come as a big surprise that they also tackled the controversial (for its 1960s time period) topic of vegetarianism. The shows never dive too deep into this, never fully committing to give an opinion about whether it is good or bad. The majority of characters still eat and enjoy animal protein, with one societal exception: the Vulcans.

The first, more obvious reasons behind not eating meat, is that the Vulcans have a profound respect for all living creatures, and eating them would go against everything they stood for in this respect. Non-violence is one of their society's highest creeds, and while they still partake in hunting for the honing of their skills, they do not kill animals. While it seems to be fairly consistent within the franchise that all Vulcans refrain from eating meat, there is an odd exception that must have been a continuity issue: at one point, Quark from Deep Space 9 cooks a ‘traditional Vulcan favorite,’ jumbo Romulan mollusks, which, if anything like the mollusks of earth, are definitely not vegetarian. Vulcans are noted to be vegetarian specifically rather than vegan, T’Pol from Enterprise being referred to as such. Additionally, Tuvok seems to have no issue with eating Porakan eggs in an episode of the Voyager series. There is still some debate over whether Vulcans are vegan or not in general, but the consensus is that they are simply vegetarian.

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While these reasons make a lot of sense for the culture, it is odd to see it still adopted en-mass in a time when the majority of food (at least for a Starfleet officer) is replicated. The use of this technology means that animal protein can be created without the necessity of harming a living being. Meat can be created from light, and thus should avoid any ethical discomfort for a Vulcan. The only explanation for their conditioned avoidance is most likely to do with their cultural history. Vulcans may no longer see an issue with consuming fabricated meat; rather, they choose not to eat it simply because they never have, and have no desire to. While Vulcans enjoy food, they do so with much less vigor than other races, often seeing it as a logical necessity for survival and fitness rather than an emotional indulgance. They can eat meat now, as long as it comes from a replicator. But much like many humans avoid the vastly different sustenances of other races (Klingon bloodwine comes to mind) the Vulcans are forever turned off of the notion.

Star Trek: spock eating meat

In addition to cultural morality, there may be a geological factor at play in Vulcan vegetarianism. Vulcan is a desert planet with a fairly harsh climate. Maintaining the production of enough livestock on such a planet would be hard, and while not impossible, it would have been much easier to grow crops than both livestock and the required crops to feed them. Ever the logical society, Vulcans would have chosen the route that drained fewer resources.

The reasons listed above are fairly logical for the Vulcan people, but there is another strange side effect consuming real meat has on them. The shift to becoming vegetarian came over a thousand years prior to the ‘modern’ Vulcans shown in the shows, at the moment where they began following the teaching of Surak, their spiritual leader of sorts. Those who followed became the Vulcans seen in the show. The ones who chose the war path and rejected them were cast out, and became the Romulans.

There is an episode of The Original Series called “All Our Yesterdays” in which Spock is transported 5,000 years into the past, and encounters his rather brutal ancestors. It is here where they show the ancient Vulcans eating meat, proving that they are a race capable of doing so, and that their bodies could actually digest it. Spock, feeling the negative effects of the jump in time, begins to revert into the mentality of his ancestors, displaying fits of emotion and even consuming meat. While not directly related, the moment heavily suggests that the consumption of meat is part of his transformation back into a wilder, more animistic Vulcan. It's implied that the eating of meat was the final push to send him spiraling back into his ancestral, illogical, and emotional ways.

Star Trek: T’Pol

For Vulcan society to begin to eat meat again would feel a lot like a return to a much darker side of their history, a time before Sarak’s teachings and long-lasting peace. There are modern Vulcans shown in the franchise who consume animal protein, but these are often splinter fractions of Vulcan culture, ones who either refuse to control their emotions, or are designed to be specifically suspicious. Their eating meat is used as a plot device to sow the seed of doubt against them, as this is seen as an unnatural thing for a Vulcan to do. The best example of a normal Vulcan reaction to eating meat comes in the Enterprise episode “Broken Bow: Part 1” where Captain Archer and Tucker are eating dinner with T’Pol, and they openly discuss her vegetarianism. She seems appalled by them as they tuck into a steak (as this is a time before replicators remember), and she roasts them with the following:

“You humans claim to be enlightened, yet you still consume to flesh of animals.”

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