It's a matter of ease and usability. Go to any normal restaurant and the set of non-meat (read, tofu) is rather limited (read, none). Of course, I cook myself and I'm selective that I don't eat too much meat. But that's additional work. It would be great if non meat would be a more common part of the food industry. To make it easier to find / eat it. (Even the salad offerings are terrible, most of the time. The Mediterranean areas are pretty good at that, though).
"Go to any normal restaurant and the set of non-meat (read, tofu) is rather limited (read, none)"
We must be in dramatically different parts of the world... I never really considered the east coast particularly good for that particular kind of variety either.. ..but I have no problem eating vegetarian most of the time.
Here (Netherlands) it's also not that bad, there's often a few sections on the menu: meat, fish, vegetarian. If you're lucky, they're of similar size. Supermarkets have a reasonable selection of meat substitutes, though I prefer to use cheese, mushrooms or nuts (and meat ;))
It does vary even more, now that you mention it: I remember San Jose in Costa Rica having many different vegan (not vegetarian) option.
