Since the 1800's in Thailand, there has been a yearly vegetarian festival in which attendees participate in rituals from eating to piercing themselves with spears to drive away evil spirits. Everyone refrains from sex and meat-eating, and they dance and celebrate to bring luck to their community!

The Vegetarian Festival began in 1825. A traveling Chinese opera company came to Phuket and immediately fell ill with a mysterious disease. While they were sick, they observed a brief two-day tradition of honoring past emperors by refraining from eating meat. These two events would seem to be unrelated, but the opera company members' illness vanished! The people of Phuket were fascinated, and learned the vegetarian rituals the company had followed to cure themselves. They continue to honor vegetarianism as restorative and cleansing, and the festival is now a 10-day affair during the 9th lunar month.

The Vegetarian Festival, alive and well, took place from September 28th to October 7th this year, and below is our gallery. If you're feeling brave, you can see pictures of the piercings here, and you can read more about the history and traditions of the festival here.

I don't eat as healthy as I should (the entire bag of Dove milk chocolate I ate last night is proof of that), but I'm always looking at ways to make my diet a lot better.

Cooking Light has picked five healthy food trends that you might want to follow. I've heard of most of them, though Flexitarianism is a new term to me, even though I would say many American's follow this without even know it. It's when a person eats a diet that's mostly grains, vegetables, and fruit, with a little meat, fish, poultry, and dairy mixed in too. Functional Foods are foods that are enriched with more nutrients, such as orange juice with calcium. We know what Organic Food, Locally Grown Foods, and Vegetarianism represent, but are you familiar with Slow Food? I first heard this term a few years ago (and there have been books written about it and it's a growing movement). It's choosing locally grown food, cooking it in traditional ways and then eating it with family, something that a lot of families don't do nowadays. Whenever I hear the term I think "food that's not cooked in a microwave," though I doubt that's the real definition.

It was a term that was coined several years ago, but I haven't heard it being used recently. "Flexitarian" refers to a person who wants to eat vegetarian, but will occasionally eat meat. In 2003, the term was voted most useful by the American Dialect Society.

A flexitarian is a person who eats about an 80% vegetarian diet, but for whatever reason, whether health or taste or other reason, will "allow" meat. However, most flexitarians are less motivated by animal rights or other socio-econo-political reasons, and moreso by the health aspect.

With the heightened interest in veganism and vegetarianism, I found an article about flexitarianism to be sort of funny. People in the article refer to themselves as "bad vegetarians," so they have become "flexitarians." It's great to see a trend in people's diets changing to more plant-based, but I didn't know that it had to be validated with it's own special term.

Eat as you see fit. Vegan. Vegetarian. Sometimes vegan. Vegetarian when it's possible. Carnivore. You don't have to have a name for it.