Why are you a vegetarian/vegan?

As the thread title says.


I had already stopped eating red meat for about 4 years ago just because I didn't like pork and beef too much. Then I stopped eating chicken because one day, I just looked at a whole roast chicken and thought - "That's actually pretty morbid." I had a hard time disassociating my food with the whole animal - every time I saw a pork chop I'd think of someone going up to a pig and slicing it off the live animal then cooking it. It disturbed me to think that that was basically what meat was.

Then about 1.5 years ago, I decided to become a vegetarian. The only difficulty was not being able to eat salmon sashimi anymore, but I'm over that now. Part of the reason was the whole morbidity factor as mentioned earlier, but another was that my gf was/is vegetarian and I didn't want to make her uncomfortable, so I started to eat more vegetarian food and realized I didn't have to eat meat.

About 4 months ago, I decided to go vegan because I didn't think it was right to not eat animals yet still buy eggs and milk - I was still in that cycle of cruelty to animals and I wasn't all that comfortable with it. Besides, cow milk is kinda gross anyway.

I also have felt healthier since going vegan. People always seem to feel uncomfortable eating meat around me when they know I'm vegan, but I emphasize that it's just that I don't feel comfortable eating meat and stuff, but I don't really care that much if other people do. I just wish that people were more respectful of animals and understand where their food is coming from - instead, they denounce the admittedly graphic AR videos as "shock tactics." They seem to fail to understand that it's reality.


It'd be interesting to hear your stories

Well, for me because I realized why the fuck should I eat dead forms of innocent intelligent life.

Also because I ate way too much meat, since I stopped I lost some spots and stopped getting flabbier!

I am very fortunate to be born vegeterian and my family is vegeterian too so no problem there. I also decided to lean towards veganism now and I haven't had cheese or butter in a while but I still have milk. It is the hardest thing to get rid of you know.

Meat is disgusting, the meat industry is disgusting, the whole process is disgusting and barbaric, in my opinion..

The meat industry objectifies living things. I'm a non-meat eater, not really a vegetarian. I'd eat animal if I killed it.

No real story behind it - just a conscious choice. Vegetarian for two years, getting closer to vegan but haven't cut out cheese yet. A recommended read is the Sexual Politics of Meat by Carol Adams. A great book on feminism and speciesism.

http://books.google.ca/books?id=Awrw...esult&resnum=5

I oppose the murder of animals. Also, it made me super excited when I got down to 111.5 pounds!!!

oh, it's been about 12 years for me.

I have been a vegetarian for 3 years. I notice I feel better and my mind is more focused. I thought about going vegan, but I need my eggs and cheese. Also getting braces helped.

I've been meat free for eight years. I'm a vegan because I don't support the exploitation of animals.

My mothers family is from Alaska, they're all hunters and a lot of them are either loggers or fishermen. I've sort of grown up around this stuff and I never wanted to have anything to do with it. My family has for the most part gotten over me being vegan (even though they think it's weird). Though my grandmother thinks it's a slap in the face to my Native America background...I won't get into that.

I was feeling healthier after being vegan but then I learned how to cook. :P I try eating mostly raw and as healthy as I can now.

There's my vegan story.

I am a full vegan now. I don't do fur either, not as long as we have the technology to have more efficient painless alternatives like cotton. Also,I recommend that people that are making a transition to veganism try out soy cheese and chocolate soy milk.

Capitalism preys on people's weaknesses. It is funny when delusional anarcho-capitalists say that "consumers volunteer to purchase products." Anyways capitalists manufacture food so that it is addictive as possible and they prey on the fact that it is an evolutionary necessity for infants to like their milk, so milk-based diary products make a great thing for good-for-nothing capitalists to use to exploit people's natural weaknesses.

When they manufacture cheese the capitalists will throw in all sorts of chemicals, salt, and other things to make it as addictive as possible. So comrades, next time you eat cheese, think to yourself "this was made by capitalists to addict me, not to make me healthy." Capitalists do not care about your health, just look at how big cigarette corporations are as evidence for that.

Because agribusiness must die.

Well, my grandmother was the first vegetarian in the family and my mother was the second. It was something I always knew was an option.

When I was 12 I started thinking about it seriously. I knew one vegetarian girl at school at the time, and it made it seem more accessible than just my mother. My choir took a trip to Disneyland in L.A. and we went to a place called Medieval Times for dinner. It was dinner and a show. It had these horses that were so clearly mistreated. Then they brought out the "food", which was a head-less chicken, and no utensils. I was so grossed out. I wanted to do it, but I didn't know how to start.

About half a year later I was outside where I had found a dead bird. My little brother (he's autistic) came up and didn't really understand what it was... and accidentally kicked it in my face. I cried for about an hour and told my mother I was done. I went pescetarian for a year to transition, and then cut out fish.

At age 16 I wanted to go vegan. I knew the horrors of factory farms and I knew how much of a difference I COULD be making. In my research I found out about gelatine and rennet (in cheese) and eliminated those, and my mother did the same. I'd gotten many vegetarian friends around me by this point by showing them media, but no one vegan, or even anyone who cut out those by-products. At 17 I convinced my parents to let me go full out. My last day of being sixteen I had mac and cheese and milk chocolate just one last time, and on my birthday I stopped it all cold turkey. Since then my father and sister both went pesc, and my mother joined me in veganism, despite originally disliking the idea.

=D

For health, environmental and ethical reasons.

Much like community believer, i was lucky enough that my mother raised me as a vegetarian as she felt hurt when she decided to stop eating meat that she had done in that past. Whereas i couldn't feel like i had been slighted in anyway if i was raised without but then decided to eat meat after all... which i was ofcourse offered the choice and happily declined

Because farm animals/fish are the most oppressed life forms on earth

My video explains the core reasons behind my decision:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrsF5bgQEKM

After I saw a classmate of mine kill a squirrel with his flip flop I decided I would no longer consume any living beings. I had tried going vegetarian before but I didn't know how to cook. I stay vegan for health and environmental as well as moral reasons.
I've been a vegan for almost two years. I went vegetarian for a couple months two years ago and then went vegan right before my 16th birthday.

Because, whilst I am not a pacifist when it comes to revolution, I do understand that killing of any life is theoretically wrong. Why should enslaved animals be killed to feed me when I can happily live on fruit and vegetables?

I always wanted to become a vegetarian but didn't think I could afford the non-meat alternative products. But I've been a vegetarian for about 16months. I've gone through periods of being vegan, I was vegan for a period of about 2 months until I arrived in Brazil and I couldn't avoid eating animal products - so I became a vegetarian. I also was vegan for another period of 3months when I left Brazil, but switched back to vegetarian.

I'm a vegetarian because of the environmental implications of the meat industry. It takes so much energy, etc. to slaughter animals, feed them, transport them, etc.
People who are meat eaters can get annoying though if they get all over my case...

I'm a vegetarian because animal products are both cruel and environmentally unfriendly. I aim for a vegan diet, but I do occasionally eat eggs, usually when I'm eating out somewhere.

I agree with that Quail. It is interesting because we have many different beliefs and a different ideology, but I agree with much of what you have said about vegetarianism and animals. I have never bought into the humanist (in a negative rather that positive sense. I am a positive humanist, I believe in mankind but I do not only care about mankind alone), or the view that environmentalism or care for animals is incompatible with socialism. Why should I think mankind has some metaphysical superiority to other animals, rather than just evolutionary advancement? I am not a fundamentalist Christian, therefore, I acknowledge that mankind doesn't have a ''right'' to use other animals for his own needs.

I never really decided to become a vegan. At some point a couple years ago after thinking about the hellish existence a chicken in a factory farm must have I started to repeatedly choose to buy vegan stuff. Besides stuff that would have otherwise been trashed I think I've gone at least a year without meat eggs or dairy. I still eat sugar and stuff, hopefully a negligible amount of money goes to the meat industry from that.