The thing is, people can thrive on vegetarian diets (to me, it's not a fad, it's a lifestyle choice, I'm just really lazy with cooking and eat takeout more often than not, and chicken is very convenient for that), they just need to be well-informed on what they're supposed to be replacing the meat/animal products with. A lot of people just cut meat out, don't replace it with alternate sources of protein and iron, call themselves vegetarian, then promptly get really ill. I never felt better or healthier than when I was really focused on my diet, several months ago, and was eating a properly balanced mostly vegetarian diet during the week. As part of my transition, I was allowing myself meat (poultry and pork) on weekends and I would then feel really crappy until... well, my system got rid of it in the natural way.

As a side note, the only way I will eat meat is if it's so freaking salted I can't taste the blood and urea in it anymore (which gives it that dead animal flavour, which I loathe). As a result, I suffer from relatively bad water retension and my blood pressure was borderline for my age for awhile.

With that said, I am completely and utterly angered by the whole anti-carb movement (if there isn't a good reason to avoid them, like, oh I don't know, being diabetic, for one thing). Humans have been eating carbs as their main source of calories for ages and ages, and, yes, we've been more sendentary in the past 30-40 years than ever before in the past, so that the need for that quick burst of energy to be able to get through the day is no longer there.