What made you decide to become a vegetarian/vegan?!
I'm not looking to p*** anyone off, I'd just like to know....
Answers: Were you raised that way? Is it for health reasons? Are your parents/siblings veg. too? At what age did you become veg./vegan?
I'm not looking to p*** anyone off, I'd just like to know....
Hi there,
I was raised in Australia on a mainly vegetarian diet. It wasn't because my parents were anti-killing or hippy or anything. They were just educated, aware of nutrition and trying to save money. We also spent a lot of time in India and south east Asia where it was more hygienic to avoid meat because refrigeration was unreliable and the variety of non-meat food was excellent. I was also allergic to cow milk as a child, so my mother would make soy milk before it was available in the shops.
As a teenager I ate whatever, went to Maccas, stuffed my face on sausages at my grandparents and etc. But my upbringing stayed with me and I knew what was right to eat and how to cook.
When I became aware of animal cruelty and factory farming in my early twenties I became more dedicated to a vegetarian lifestyle. But I found it very easy because of the way I was raised. It would be harder for someone raised on meat.
I am in my early 30's now and still live on a great variety of multicultural non-meat foods. It's just everyday life to me. And I wear a suit to work every day in the city, have always been athletic and am very "normal".
Thanks for asking. Cheers :)
Hello, Reenie! I just answered one of your other questions. =)
When I was twelve, I watched a video (www.meat.org) that scarred me for life. Ha, just joking. It did make a great impact upon me, though. Immeadiatley, I went vegetarian, researching everything on places like www.peta2.com, www.goveg.com and getting recepies off vegcooking.com. (Great resouces, even if you're not a veg!!)
For my New Year's resolutions for 2008, I wanted to become a vegan, so bam! Here I am, happy, healthy and guilt-free knowing I'm not consuming something that had a face.
=)
When I was 11 I decided humans were jerks. Man kills others for no good reason, steals, lies, pollutes, etc. I thought, "we are not any better than animals (in fact we may be worse), so why are our lives more important?". So I stopped eating meat. Also it is a disgusting idea. You are eating dead flesh...I can't get over that other people don't see that it is gross.
I became a vegan, because I do not like the idea that a cow carries her baby for over 9 months. Than after giving birth, her child is taken away so quickly, so humans can have the milk versus the calf. Which later feed very poor lack foods so it can be a tender veal.
See as a woman, - I am 31. When I have my child, I would never want any person, to take away my child. So I can not support a industry that uses that method dominantly. I understand there are farms that do not, but 90% (by tyson, cargrill, smithfield) of beef and dairy cows in this country are raised on intensive farming conditions.
Money is power. I use my money to support companies that are ethically inlined with my morals. I have a choice. I choose to not support an industry that cause so many cruelties. I also buy from companies that do not employee children in developing countries.
Hi,
I am a vegetarian and I have been one for about 1 or 1 1/2 years. I became a vegetarian because my mom (who is a vegetarian) showed me a video, about factory farms, and that made me start thinking about vegetarianism. I didn't really become a vegetarian because of that....that was just a small reason. A couple other reasons I became a vegetarian are that:
~ I don't like factory farms
~ I do not like the fact that I would be eating an animal that could be living if I didn't choose to eat it.
~ I do not enjoy the feeling of meat when it sits in my stomach.....it makes me feel like something in my stomach is holding me down.
~ It is healthier if you maintain a healthy diet
~ I believe animals should live
Those are my reasons!!! I choose to become one on my own, my mom did not tell me I should be one....I choose. My dad and brother are NOT vegetarian, but they rarely eat meat.
Hope this answers your question!!! =]
I'd always hated the thought of eating animals and was slowly but surely eating less and less meat. One thing that put me off, was one day going to see a friend of a friend who was an old farmer. He was livid because his son had taken over the farm and was giving his cows food mixed with arsenic, sold over the counter, apparently somehow it has something in it to make them fatter or something, I haven't a clue. The thing that eventually led me to give up meat altogether was this. I live amongst a farming community sadly like most farming these days its all about the money and no thought of the welfare of the animals. there are sheep kept in the fields behind my house. The shepherd regularly moves them from field to field. However they chase them so fast the mothers and lambs get separated. Sometimes the lambs either get left in the field alone or climb back through the fence to try and find their mothers. The one night I could hear a poor little lamb crying for its mother and as I didn't have a torch couldn't go down and investigate, so I sat up all night, I was too upset to sleep. When it was just gettting light at 5am I trudged down in the frost and ice and let the poor little hungry lamb through the gate into the next field hoping it could find its mother. There is no way I could ever eat meat again after that.
1. no my family hate it
2.not really but its a benefit
3.nope like i said they think its stupid
4.14
oh and what made me vegan was i really like animals its healthier
im a vegetarian i have never liked idea of eating animals i remeber always asking my mom and she kept saying no so i just hid it on my sisters plate instead then i turned 10 and she finally gave in i cant stand the idea of eating other animals i cant see how people can take their children to a farm to show them the lovely animals then take them home and serve it for their tea ? i am raising my daughter as a vegetarian until she is old enough and wants to make her own mind up i was and still am the only vegetarian in my family and i get o your still doing it then as if it was a phaze i was going through makes me so mad sometimes but i got used to it now :)
I'm thirteen and I was searching the web and one sight said, "What they haven't Told You" and I am a VERY courious person so I saw it and it changed my life. It showed what goes on in the slaughter houses and even the way to the slaughterhouses. I'm a real animal person but actually, lately it's been healthier because I am trying new vegetablesa and dishes.
Well, for starters, I'm almost 24 and have been a vegetarian since I was 20. My reason for initially becoming a vegetarian was for health reasons ... I developed polyps in my gallbladder (caused by such things as too much cholesterol in the diet) and decided to adopt a plant-based diet rather than get surgery (an option I discussed thoroughly with my doctor). At the time, my gallbladder attacks were so bad that simply eating a slice of commercially made bread (containing eggs, milk, etc.) would leave me in the foetal position as I moaned in pain ... not very pleasant!
Also, this was the time that I left home to attend university and with my newly won sense of autonomy, and discovery of self, I decided to make quite a few "life changes" that would have been close to impossible while living under my parents' roof; vegetarianism being only a small part. Long story short, vegetarianism just felt "right" for me and I decided to give it a shot.
However, as my years of abstaining from the consumption of meat has progressed, so to has my reasoning behind staying with a plant-based diet. I do agree that keeping large quantities of domesticated animals for the sole purpose of being consumed is wrong, but on many levels; environmentally, economically and morally/spiritually. Nonetheless, as I stated earlier that a vegetarian diet simply felt right for me, let me be the first to state that I understand and accept that not everyone shares my viewpoint. I am not an individual who vehemently attacks others for not following my personal belief structure. Rather, I enjoy engaging discussion, such as this.
As for parents/siblings being vegetarians ... no, they're not. I was raised with the notion that eating meat was the only natural route for a human being to take, and that any other direction would lead to illness. Meat of some sort was always offered ... every daily meal had some sort of meat being the primary mode of sustenance (to be ceremoniously washed done with a cold glass of milk). Nonetheless, as you can probably deduce, this high intake of cholesterol did much to exacerbate (if not directly create) my health problem I mentioned earlier (so much so that my dad also had problems with his gallbladder, but opted for surgery). Unfortunately, After 4 years I'd even go so far as to state that they're still unsupportive of my "phase" and would like nothing more than to have me join them tuck into a "nice big steak!"
That being said, my girlfriend is also a vegetarian and we act as each other's support.
Actually I grew up in a very meat "devoted" family. Seems like very week there would be a barbecue picnic of some kind especially during the hunting season where venison would be the main feature. But I never did like the taste of meat all that much and pretty much feasted on the side dishes. My parents took it all in stride. Some of my cousins tease me all the time but that's what cousins do so it never bothered me all that much. My siblings were all fine with it. In fact they liked that there was more of the "good stuff" for them.
None of my siblings are vegetarians nor are my parents. I became a "full blown" vegetarian when I turned 18. Why did I do it? For no particular reason at first. It was just a natural progression. though I was already aware of a lot of goings on in the meat industry, it was during this time that I began to empathize more with the suffering that animals have to go through. It was also around this time that I became more active with environmental issues. Since then, I've decided that while meat eating is normal and acceptable for most people, I on the other hand cannot allow another animal to die for me. Not knocking other people's choices especially omnivores. But meat eating is just not for me anymore.
I have a daughter and I am raising her as an omnivore until she is old enough to be allowed to make some of her own choices.. My husband is an omni as well.
I became vegetarian at 18 and vegan one year later.
Why?
The Golden Rule/ethic of reciprocity
I wasn't raised vegetarian, but my sister and I went veg at 14 and 16 respectively. We both did some reading on various reasons not to eat meat and came away quite convinced. For me, it's a combination of most of the major reasons. I don't believe that killing animals for food is acceptable *because it's not necessary.* I know there is a historical precedent for it, but there were also fewer choices avaiable to our ancestors. I know there are cultures that rely heavily on meat (the Inuit in particular) and that vegetarianism isn't an option in that environments. But in my world, everything my body needs is available from plant foods, so causing suffering to sentient beings is unnecessary and wrong. I also do it for my health. Vegetarians as a group enjoy a number of health benefits, including reduced risk of heart attack, stroke, hypertension, type II diabetes, obesity and certain types of cancer. Lastly, I chose it for the environmental benefits. Two decades ago when I went vegetarian, nobody was talking about global climate change, but I still wanted to be conscious of how I used the planet's resources. Intensive animal agriculture uses far more land and water and creates far more polution than plant-based agriculture. Now that global climate change is a concern, it's an even more important part of why I eat the way I do. Switching from an omnivorous diet to a vegan diet has been likened to switching from driving an SUV to riding a bike. It's simply more in line with my values. Over the course of the first few years that my sister and I were vegetarian, my mom gave up eating all meat but fish, which she now eats in extremely limited amounts (and chooses carefully for it's environmental impact.)
I became a vegetarian my Junior year of high school... I just don't like meat.. I didn't eat it much anyways and I was very picky; chicken had to be cut a certain way, bacon had to be burnt to an almost inedible crisp, beef had to be very hot..etc...
Even when I was little I only liked shrimp for two days and I would hold beef in my cheek like a chipmunk and never swallow.
Even though there are a lot of ethical and health reasons for being vegetarian, there are a bunch of us out there that plain don't like the way it tastes.
I'm just picky...
I don't eat meat, but I don't indulge in things like soy milk or tofu either.. ...or lettuce...
I'll stick with my Italian side and go for the Minestrone soup and gelato ;)
Im not a vegan, and im proud to not be!!! Im going to explain why im NOT vegan. I don't understand what the whole moral complex and superiority issue has anything to do with what you eat. You vegans imply that you are so much better than the rest of us, cause of your food choices?? Vegans, i do not know how to stress this to you but you are NOT part of a greater lifestyle or better than others, your talking about FOOD, not politics, not science, not history. A diet is what you guys are going on about. It takes too much time and effort to do something that is driven by a moral righteousness that you must feel every day. And i hate feeling smarmy and like im right and everyone else is wrong. I can emphasize with people who have stomach problems, but not with people who do it because they think they are joining a cause. As for the whole animals suffering, well, they're always going to suffer as long as humans are around. This is why i choose to eat meat and dairy produce, because its readily available, and i can eat it, it tastes good, is healthy, and my change of diet wont really affect anything considering the two billion people other people on the planet.
I decided to become vegetarian for many reasons. I started originally because I felt it was wrong and unnecessary in our society with so many other resources. I also agree with the ideology that it is bad for the environment. Another reason is that I never learned to cook at home so went out on my own barely knowing how to fry an egg. I found cooking without meat less complicated, and at times less expensive, than cooking with it. Eventually I found that it is easier on my digestive system as well. I consider all of these reasons to be personal. I discuss my thoughts on food when someone expresses interest but otherwise keep to myself about it. I will tell you that I did not stop eating meat because I did not like it - I grew up eating and loving meat. As far back as a teenager I ate my steaks rare or not at all.
I was not raised this way and am the only one among my family and friends that is a vegetarian at this point, although I have had friends along the way that were. My family tries to be supportive, and some are better at it than others (ex. my mom rolls her eyes most of the time, while my husband, an omnivore, happily eats whatever new foods I want to try). Since I became vegetarian as an adult, I have had the luxury of making the choice freely and without affecting the lives of others much. I have not been a full vegetarian (no meat of any kind, full time) for long, just under a year, but am so far pretty happy with the changes it has brought in my life. There were times in the beginning that I thought it would be challenging at times but have found it suprisingly easy. Even when my mom or husband eats a rare steak in front of me. :)