It’s sad that at the time of making, back in the early 80s, there was a realization that if the world could reduce it’s consumption of meat by 10%, it could feed 60 million more people. As it stands, about one third of cereal grown is used to feed the rich countries live-stock. According to a report by the UN, entitled Livestock’s Long Shadow in 2006 the number of overweight people (1 billion) outnumbered the malnourished (800 million). Mmm, they have also gone as far as to state that livestock products are one of the major contributing causes. Their current statistics for world obesity weighs in at 300 million.

Of course, it would be naive to think that you have to be an omnivore to be over-weight. Shatner himself nearly died during a hip replacement because of heart complications that were due to excess weight.

William Shatner is not the only geeky vegetarian that I have a soft spot for. Leonard Nimoy would have to be up at the top of that list. As Mr Spock, the first officer aboard the Starship Enterprise, he played the first vegetarian to appear regularly on television. Vulcans did not consume meat, although they did use futuristic technologies to replicate food to taste like meat. A 24th century quorn no doubt.