Does your back ground support you being veg/vegan?!

I'm going to try to answer this.

My mom grew up on a farm in a small town, and my dad grew up in a conservative Southern home. I grew up in a conservative suburb in Texas. I'm pretty sure I would still at least be vegetarian if I didn't have the internet, because I remember being horrified when my mom told me where meat came from when I was about six. I loved animals (I still do), and the thought of them dying for my food was horrible to me. The idea to stop eating meat was introduced to me by my friend when I was ten, because we became "poultritarians" together (we only ate meat from birds- chicken and turkey, basically). And I became a vegetarian with my friend when I was thirteen, never having researched it on the internet, just knowing that I though killing animals was wrong. But remember, where we lived, there were no vegetarian restaurants or anything like that. My mom told me I could be veg, but I had to cook for myself. People thought I was crazy. And I was the only one of both friends that kept at it.

Of course, if I lived in the wild or in dire poverty, I probably would not be a vegetarian or vegan, because I would be starving and would eat anything that presented itself as food. Or I would be raising my own animals for food, not buying meat filled with hormones from horrible factory farms.

I'm not sure I understand the question. Are you asking whether I became vegetarian solely because of my background and life situation? If that is the case, then the answer is no. I am the only vegetarian in my family, and we've all had largely the same experience and environment the entire time.

If you are asking whether I am aware of the fact that vegetarianism isn't always feasible, the answer is of course. Just as some people would only be able to get meat once or twice a year no matter how much they wanted it, some people need to eat meat if they want to get enough calories. In a survival situation, or one where you have to create all of your own food (as a family or community), you generally need to eat what you can get, even if it is icky parts of an animal.

I think that my vegetarianism is more an expression of me thinking about my food rather than taking the familiar for granted than not.

Before I had the Internet, I made the decision to quit drinking milk when I connected the dots of where it comes from. I made the decision to go Vegetarian without any help from the Internet. I made the decision to go Vegan without any help from the Internet (developed a lactose intolerance and began to think eggs were disgusting).

I dunno how harsh a climate you're in, but the winters in NYS can get pretty nasty. Sure, there is a roof over my head, but that's beside the point.

If I lived in a remote area and worked a labor-intensive job, I'd still probably be Vegan as you can get adequate nutrition from a Vegan diet.

Difficult to say. But the internet didn't exist when I became a vegetarian. The only computers around were probably huge things which took up whole rooms. LOL. Perhaps an exaggeration, but ... Viva la microchip! Ok, it was the mid-1970s, anyway. My mother and one of my brothers were already vegetarians before me but, strangely enough, they didn't influence my own decision. It did, however, make things a whole lot easier for me - having the precedent and the support infrastructure within the family - rather than the struggle a lot of teenage veg*ns have had to go through, being the 'odd one out'.

I'm not sure if I would have even thought of becoming a vegan (which I did in early July 2009), however, if it hadn't been for the internet - specifically this forum - which led me to question why I was still consuming dairy products.

I think if my circumstances were different I would have gone vegetarian but perhaps a lot later. I first became a vegetarian at 11 so I think for me to be thinking about it then it's always been a part of me. I think possibly the biggest factor in me staying a veggie at that age is my mum, she's great and has always been willing to cook veggie food for me. I think perhaps if she had forced me to make my own food I would have stopped after a few months and not tried again until my late teens.

Ethical vegetarianism was initiated around 2500 years ago and was part of religious practices so there is a good chance it wasn't to do with comfort and convenience. As a white anglo-celtic male I'd say my background does not support veganism, it supports mindless consumption founded on a total absence of critical thinking. Luckily I got an education and first hand experience working on farms so I was able to move forward from the ways of my ancestors and other troglodytes to become an ethical consumer.

vegan biologist

Of course it does!
Internet wasn't around for me 29yrs ago when i became vegetarian i simply decided i wasn't happy with the whole terrible life then slaughter route all meat took back then but if my parents hadn't been supportive and tried to source alternative foods for me, as an 11yr old i don't think i could have managed it alone (and they were both meat eaters so veggie was totally new to them &me).
If i had parents who said "eat meat or starve" then yes of course things would have been different!

My parents were big meaters and i was overweight and regularly sick when i was a child. when i left home and were able to make my own food choices i became vegetarian at first it was because of the horrific cruelty in the meat industry but i benefited by losing and maintaining my weight and having so much more energy and feeling healthier, i rarely get ill since cutting out meat and would never go back to that unhealthy way of life.

This 'question' of yours is a little mind boggling...but I shall try to answer it well :)
I think yes. Even without the internet etc I'd still be vegan. Simply because when I was younger, I started voluntarily questioning where my food was coming from. I remember saying to mum "Why do we drink milk from a cow? Do other animals do it? How is meat made?" and stuff like that. It wasn't until I was 13 that I went lacto-ovo and then just over a year ago I went vegan.

i dont think so, but its always possible , to probable

i think its just part of who i am, but i do know i was influenced by people and things around me as well
in general, the only way id not be veggie, is if i wasnt me

we didnt have the net when i became veggie

I'm French, so my background doesn't support it. When I tell people that I'm a vegetarian their response is usually 'oh, but you eat ham don't you?' or 'oh ok that's fine, I'll cook you a chicken instead'

They don't seem to get it..

My geographical background is Chinese, so normally veganism would probably be looked down on or labeled as inferior. But I was born in Canada.
If I was in a situation where I wouldn't get food as easily I'd probably still be a vegan.

dude what

About once a year when I was growing up, my dad would take me and my brother on a trip to his friend's farm so he can get some "fresh" meat. Oh boy, I remember crying so bad when he slaughtered the lambs! And he also got chickens one summer that I helped to raise -- and he slaughtered them too! That hurt. I always refused to eat what I saw him slaughter (yea, yea, I eventually figured out that it's not that much different from getting meat for the store, but hey, I was an ignorant child lol). But as you can probably tell, my dad was a pretty big meat eater, and he was quite the expert on cooking it, too. But, my background is of the middle east, and there is actually a bunch of vegetarian foods (mmmm hummus, baba ghanoush, majadara, falafel, tabouli, kusa, dolma... now I'm hungry!), so although the people of my culture will usually tell me that I have to at least eat chicken and fish every so often, i won't listen cause I know what I need to keep myself healthy :)
Now if I had not grown up around the culture I have, I can't really say if I would be vegetarian. I honestly think, that under any conditions, my amazement for the animal kingdom wouldn't change.

Haha sorry if I didn't answer the question right, but it seemed like a fun question!