Gone veggie: Trend to stop eating meat hits Houston

Here's a minor, fluffy -- but cool -- little local story with video from KHOU.com | News for Houston, Texas. It focuses on a specific restaurant, but speaks to the wider trend:

Polls show more Americans are saying, "no" to meat, fish or chicken.

The vegetarian trend is washing over the country.

Lunchtime is a busy time in the Baba Yega restaurant's kitchen.

While chicken lovers can get their fix, the cooks chop up a lot of veggies too.

When waitress Rachel Smith isn't serving customers, she's eating veggie platters.

Smith converted to the lifestyle two years ago, inspired by her brother and sister.

"I have a ton more energy," she said. "It's actually really amazing. It's not just your body -- it's like your soul, everything about you just glows."

Smith is part of a growing trend. Recent polls show nearly 3 percent of Americans consider themselves vegetarian, up 1 percent from a year ago.

Clearly this article was written by a carnist. After all if people really loved chickens, they wouldn't eat them. The story also does not specify from which polls they derived their stats, but I'm more than happy to see the local news tell people in Houston that vegetarianism is a positive, growing trend. Especially because they didn't actually use the word trendy.