Modern attitudes

I am a vege. I really could not cope with a fish flavoured butty the smell of fish really puts me off.

I could probably eat ham or such like. or I could pull out the filling and eat the bread which would at least give me some useful energy giving carbs.

A hundred years ago animals bred for food were not managed in the same way as today. Animal husbandry was very different.

I am vegetarian for two reasons and religion doesn't enter into it. The first reason is I don't like the idea I would be eating an animal, the second is how that animal lived and died. Being really honest, I am not sure if I would have become vegetarian if I thought animals bred for food were treated well and I didn't have concerns about animals welfare.

If I was the homeless man and very hungry, I would have accepted the gift and thanked the person for their kindness. I would have scraped the tuna off the bread and eaten the bread. We're lucky that we live in a country where there's places where he could get food, so he was not starving. I would guess if he was starving, he would have eaten the entire gift.

So yes, attitudes towards food have changed, but so have attitudes towards animal husbandry. Unlike a hundred years ago, most people these days have no idea about the processes used to fill our supermarkets with meat, poultry and fish. They don't want to know either.

Had every right to refuse it. Not sure if he seemed grateful, as it didn't say, but agree totally with MargaretX re you can't say what you would do unless you have been there. Remember the plane crash in the Andes? (was it?) where they ate the flesh of the dead. (apologies if you're having breakfast!!). But then I'm not sure if any that tucked into their fellow passengers were veggies! If you asked me now, I would quite categorically tell you I wouldn't eat a human being. But if it meant dying. Well watch out.

Faye,I appreciate how you feel now, when you have enough food and how you would feel after starving for a week, but I think that after 3 weeks or more you might feel differently.

I say that because all of us would probably throw up if someone offered us a piece of human meat, but there are many fully proven examples of people under extreme hunger conditions, with no immediate help for their situation eating, not just human flesh, but killing and eating it.

I think it is a good idea to ask if the beggar would like something to eat before you buy it, as someone may have given him something 10 minutes before you kindly did, in which case he might not be hungry and might prefer something that he can keep wrapped up out of the sun (if there is one) for several hours to have later.

I made a friend at a Mother and Baby group who was entirely vegetarian for medical reasons. Her digestive system could not tolerate meat or poultry although she could manage white fish. When she was in long labour with her second child a bossy midwife insisted that she must eat and presented her with a plate of shepherds pie. My friend warned the midwife that it would make her very sick but under pressure said she would eat the potato topping. She managed a couple of forkfuls but the potato was soaked in beef gravy and the inevitable happened - she began to vomit with huge convulsions - and out popped the baby unnoticed.

Crumbs, there's the script for a film there!!!