Lisa the Vegetarian

"Lisa the Vegetarian" is the fifth episode in the seventh season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on October 15, 1995. In the episode, Lisa decides to stop eating meat after bonding with a lamb at a petting zoo. Her schoolmates and family members ridicule her for her beliefs, but with the help of Apu, and Paul, and Linda McCartney, she commits to vegetarianism.

Directed by Mark Kirkland, "Lisa the Vegetarian" is the first full-length episode David S. Cohen wrote for The Simpsons. David Mirkin, the show runner at the time, supported the episode in part because he had just become a vegetarian himself. Former Beatle Paul McCartney and his then wife Linda McCartney guest star in the episode. Paul McCartney's condition for appearing was that Lisa would remain a vegetarian for the rest of the series. The episode makes several references to McCartney's musical career, and his song "Maybe I'm Amazed" plays during the closing credits.

In its original broadcast, "Lisa the Vegetarian" was watched by 14.6 million viewers and finished 47th in the ratings for the week of October 9–15, 1995, with a 9.0 Nielsen rating. It was the fourth highest-rated show on the Fox network that week. The episode received generally positive reviews from television critics. It has won two awards, an Environmental Media Award and a Genesis Award, for highlighting environmental and animal issues.

The Simpson family visits a petting zoo, where Lisa is enraptured by a cute lamb. That night, Marge serves lamb chops for dinner, but Lisa is troubled by the connection between the dish and its living counterpart, and announces that she will no longer eat meat. In response, her brother Bart and her father Homer mock her relentlessly. Reaction at school is no better; when Lisa requests a vegetarian alternative to the cafeteria food, Principal Skinner labels her an "agitator". The students are then forced to watch a Meat Council propaganda film, starring Troy McClure, which criticizes vegetarianism. Lisa is unimpressed by the film, but her classmates tease her.