Never saw the appeal of StarGate SG-1, though I did enjoy the sequel StarGate Atlantis. This particular episode was dreadful, I felt 'MacGyver' too easily dismissed vegetarians as idiots - at least that was my impression when I first saw the episode. A better TV show would be Star Trek TNG. They had many episodes that touched on the subject (first season's quote "we no longer enslave animals for food purposes" is still in my head).

I would recommend another show from around that era, 'Kung Fu' with David Carradine. A few episodes had the main character Caine explain he doesn't eat meat and sometimes others would become veggie by the end of the episode because of his influence (at least a couple times). He was never preachy about it, and often seemed to stand back as a casual observer than to get involved. For example, he once told a kid the rabbit would outrun the fox chasing it. "How do you know?" asked the kid. "Because the fox is running for his dinner, and the rabbit is running for its life".

Carradine later adopted some of Caine's philosophy by learning martial arts and becoming vegetarian.

My site talks about it:
http://www.veggiedude.com/kungfu/

Thanks so much! I've found the episode. Like you said it's season 1 episode 7 of Star Trek TNG.

Season 3, Disc 4 - it's called Pretense.

http://www.gateworld.net/sg1/s3/reviews/315.shtml