Brewed Fresh Daily

Even after five years, Christy Pugh has no trouble sticking to her vegetarian regimen. advertisement The secret to her success? Eating meat. �Sometimes I feel like I�m a bad vegetarian, that I�m not strict enough or good enough,� the 28-year-old bookkeeper from Concord said recently. �I really like vegetarian food but I�m just not 100 percent committed.� Pugh is one of a growing number of part-time vegetarians whose loose adherence to the meat-free diet is transforming a decades-old movement and the industry that feeds it. These so-called �flexitarians� � a term voted most useful word of 2003 by the American Dialect Society � are motivated less by animal rights than by a growing body of medical data that suggests health benefits from eating more vegetarian foods. �There�s so many reasons that people are vegetarians ... I find that nobody ever gives me a hard time when I say I usually eat vegetarian. But I really like sausage,� Pugh said.