Posted by Sarah88 on Jul 03, 2007 · Member since Jul 2006 · 140 posts
Anyone care to share their reasons for going vegan or vegetarian?
Posted by Anonymous on Jul 03, 2007 · Member since Dec 1969 · 11789 posts
Everyone said that I would revert in college due to "peer pressure,"...
A few years ago I dropped in to my grandparents place and my grandmother cut me a piece of bacon and egg pie. She said she thought university life would have 'fixed' me. I just laughed, its no secret that we all think she's a bit batty.
Posted by kittylove on Jul 03, 2007 · Member since May 2007 · 19 posts
1) the healthiest societies known in recent history eat traditional diets that are about 95% unrefined plant products. 2) the aforementioned horrors of factory farming- even if you don't care about the animals, the production methods are disastrous for our health and the environment. 3) several major religious traditions, including the one I adhere to, practice abstention from animal products at least part of the time.
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Posted by karatekid1975 on Jul 04, 2007 · Member since Feb 2007 · 456 posts
At first, mine was health reasons. Heart desease and strokes run in my family. Most of my family is also over weight. I'm also lactose intolerant.
I went lacto-ovo first. Worked out nicely, except for the fact that I was still eating dairy. My tummy was screaming! I did this for about 4 years. Last August, I went vegan.
Now that I've been vegan for a while, the life style itself is working on me. I saw the PETA thing about factory farming. I won't wear anything that came from an animal, like fur, leather, silk, ect. Well, and I have a skin allergy. I HAVE to wear cotton only. But even if I didn't, I wouldn't touch the stuff above. And I'm getting MORE strict about what I eat (I wasn't "strict" vegan at first). It's hard to be "strict" vegan living with a meat eater, but I'm glad I'm doing my part.
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Posted by AshleyKimball on Jul 04, 2007 · Member since Nov 2006 · 536 posts
I originally became vegan to make disguising my eating disorder easier. It's easier to explain to someone why you're not eating with a fail-proof statement. After a while empty statements like "I'm sick; I just ate;I don't care for that food" becomes suspicious.
When people ask why I'm vegan I usually say: I love animals, they are my friends. Exploiting and killing my friends does not interest me.
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Posted by short T. on Jul 04, 2007 · Member since Jun 2007 · 8 posts
I was never that proud of the fact that i ate meat, but it was just what i was used to. After a health scare I told my self that if I don't make a change im going to be one of those people who have heart attacks around the age of 45 or 50. I'm 33 now. I decieded to try being a vegetarian for one week to see how I would like it, and I liked it. So i decieded to go vege full time. I feel alot better, just by cutting out meat i was cutting out most of the fast food i was eating.Soy milk and tofu can taste pretty good, and i don't miss meat at all. im kinda creeped out by it now. Also, from a flossify stand point, im glad i dont eat meat anymore. We all have bodies and we all need to eat in order to live, but we were never giving any special food to eat. So we have to eat each other. In order for life to survive we have to hunt down , kill and eat the flesh of other life . This is the begining of all cruelity and a flaw of creation. Not eating meat is my way of giving our cruel Mother Nature the finger
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Posted by hiimkelsi on Jul 04, 2007 · Member since Sep 2004 · 2297 posts
I was hoping that someone else on here had a childish reason like me, but all of yours are very ethical and understandable. My reason is a cute boy and punk kids. This really dreamy boy came over to my house one time and was talking about being vegetarian, and I thought, hey, I dont really like meat that much, I should just give it up and hang out with this boy more often. I then noticed that all of his really cool friends were also vegan and talked about animal rights, so I started reading about it to kind of fit in. Well of course reading about it makes anyone stick to it. Maybe a month or so after he told me about that, I wanted to go vegan, but didn't have anything to really push me over the edge. I really didnt eat much dairy of eggs anyways because of my lactose intollerance and my lack of cooking ablility made me think it wasnt that necessary or possible. It wasnt until I ate an egg and cheese omlet at my Universitys cafeteria that made me go vegan 4 years after I went vegetarian.
So thats it, a cute crusty boy with green hair and animal rights patches all over his raggedy clothes.
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Posted by hiimkelsi on Jul 04, 2007 · Member since Sep 2004 · 2297 posts
That's one of the reasons I don't think people should beat themselves up if they "cheat." Life is fluid and the choices you make lead you towards a goal of how you want to live. If you continue in a forward motion, your mind and body may not be caught up to each other in any given moment - but they do all catch up eventually.
I forgot what else I wanted to say, I was so wrapped up in my own story. Goodness.
I totally agree with your statement humboldt_honey. We all do our best, and whether its in line with each others best it does not matter! Anyway, no one likes the vegan police!
I hope that made sense. My mind is just a big bowl of thoughts, sometimes those thoughts make statements, sometimes they just make thoughts.
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Posted by humboldt_honey on Jul 04, 2007 · Member since Feb 2007 · 12529 posts
I was hoping that someone else on here had a childish reason like me, but all of yours are very ethical and understandable.
I forgot to add the why to my story. I wanted to become vegan because in college a girl named Laura, who I thought was really cool, was vegan. That was the first time I tried. I lived in a no-meat-in-the-house place then and I still failed. But I became more aware of the foods I ate and psychologically got turned off of meat, which is when I went vegan for real. When I was around a lot of vegans it was really hard and now that I'm by myself, it's easy. The other reasons (healthy, animal rights) came into it after I had transitioned. I'm really happy to know I'm not alone in the peer influence angle.
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Posted by macie26 on Jul 05, 2007 · Member since Feb 2007 · 85 posts
i became vegetarian because i just got more and more uncomfortable at the thought of eating meat. it started to feel unnatural and wrong and that, as an animal lover, i couldn't do it anymore. a few years later i decided it wasn't necessary for me to consume dairy or any other animal product, so veganism. i think that i am in a fortunate enough situation to have the option to chose a lifestyle, one that's not dictated by money or availability. and the thought (and it probably is just a thought) that my choices could help secure food for others (10000 lbs of grass to feed a 1000 lb cow, which in the end would feed a 100 lb human - skip the middle man and 10000lbs of grass could feed 1000lbs of human - i can't remember what this process is called, but i learned about it in a marine bio class ???) and reduce waste makes it feel right also. i often find myself having to defend my vegan ways, but i'm used to it coming from a very traditional italian family. which might also explain the eventual veganism: my very italian grandmother took me on errands with her when i was, like, 5 or so. she brings me a huge warehouse that was full of rabbits in cages and tells me to, " go picka one out" in her cute brooklyn/italian grandma accent. so i found one that i liked and thought was really cute and i showed it to the man who was working there. he tells us to come back in an hour or so and he'll have all ready for us. i was so excited, i thought i was getting a new pet! no no no, we return in an hour and the man hands my grandma a pack of meat! it was my pet bunny! my grandma didn't know why i was so sad; in italy the rabbits were for eating, not for pets! i hate to say it, but i think that night i still ate the rabbit for dinner :-\! but i like to think that event had a huge impact on my future decisions!
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Posted by Anonymous on Jul 05, 2007 · Member since Dec 1969 · 11789 posts
My dad put a slab of roast pork on the dinner table; skin, hairs and all (because the crackling's the best part right?). I looked at it, and in my mind I saw the pig - alive (I have always adored pigs). I told my dad that I couldn't eat it, and he said "I thought you would say that, so I cooked this too". He had also roasted a chicken. I looked at him like he was insane and didn't eat meat again. I had asked my parents if I could become a vegetarian a year before (when I was 12 or 13) and they had said no. So this time I did it without their permission. I went vegan a year later, by then they had realised they couldn't stop me.
I think becoming vegetarian or vegan is a realisation. For the ethics driven veggies anyway. When I made the connection between meat and live animals I realised I couldn't be a part of this cruelty. I think people have been conditioned to understand the origin of meat on an detached intellectual level. They don't really understand, or feel the connection between living animal and the flesh of a dead animal. Tell a child that pork comes from pigs, and they'll correct you: "No silly, pork comes from the supermarket".
Posted by hiimkelsi on Jul 05, 2007 · Member since Sep 2004 · 2297 posts
i became vegetarian because i just got more and more uncomfortable at the thought of eating meat. it started to feel unnatural and wrong and that, as an animal lover, i couldn't do it anymore. a few years later i decided it wasn't necessary for me to consume dairy or any other animal product, so veganism. i think that i am in a fortunate enough situation to have the option to chose a lifestyle, one that's not dictated by money or availability. and the thought (and it probably is just a thought) that my choices could help secure food for others (10000 lbs of grass to feed a 1000 lb cow, which in the end would feed a 100 lb human - skip the middle man and 10000lbs of grass could feed 1000lbs of human - i can't remember what this process is called, but i learned about it in a marine bio class ???) and reduce waste makes it feel right also. i often find myself having to defend my vegan ways, but i'm used to it coming from a very traditional italian family. which might also explain the eventual veganism: my very italian grandmother took me on errands with her when i was, like, 5 or so. she brings me a huge warehouse that was full of rabbits in cages and tells me to, " go picka one out" in her cute brooklyn/italian grandma accent. so i found one that i liked and thought was really cute and i showed it to the man who was working there. he tells us to come back in an hour or so and he'll have all ready for us. i was so excited, i thought i was getting a new pet! no no no, we return in an hour and the man hands my grandma a pack of meat! it was my pet bunny! my grandma didn't know why i was so sad; in italy the rabbits were for eating, not for pets! i hate to say it, but i think that night i still ate the rabbit for dinner :-\! but i like to think that event had a huge impact on my future decisions!
how traumatic for a young child!
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Posted by humboldt_honey on Jul 05, 2007 · Member since Feb 2007 · 12529 posts
My dad put a slab of roast pork on the dinner table; skin, hairs and all (because the crackling's the best part right?).
That reminds me of when my sister and I were kids. My dad would go fishing and bring home some trout and fry them for dinner. My sister and I would beg for the fish tails because they were crunchy like chiips, which we were only allowed to have on the 4th of July. It was a huge treat. Ewww...
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Posted by lotus42 on Jul 05, 2007 · Member since Mar 2007 · 3081 posts
When I was a kid, we only had "real breakfast" on the weekends, and my dad would ask me if I wanted "dead baby chickens" with my grits (referring to eggs). I wouldn't eat eggs for years after that. For some reason, as I grew up, it didn't bother me as much. Now I don't eat eggs (despite his comments).
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Posted by Anonymous on Jul 06, 2007 · Member since Dec 1969 · 11789 posts
Well, I started researching vegetarianism in march of this year. I started out doing it mostly for health reasons. I really wanted to go vegan right away, because I have never liked port or red meat, and rarely ate any other, and I didn't want to consume eggs (hello?!?! to me, they're like abortion for chickens) and dairy, espcially dairy, because it was so unhealthy and bad for you. But, I am in recovery from Anorexia, so my parents and doctors thought it was just a way to loose weight. So I was forced to consume nonfat yogurt (or should I say "puss)-urt:Bob and Jenna, a while ago). About 3 weeks ago, I was finally allowed to go full vegan, and I love it. Now, ethical/humane/environmental reasons have moved up as well, so my reasoning has turned into all issues. I think eating animals is just gross, including byproducts, but it's nice to know the health benefits of eating a vegan diet as well. Hope I didn't ramble on too much...
Posted by Anonymous on Jul 06, 2007 · Member since Dec 1969 · 11789 posts
I've always hated eating animals from a very young age. It finally came to an end one Xmas when I could see the vein line running through a slice of meat. I was an instant Veggie which progressed to veganism when i really became aware. :)
Posted by amandapanda on Jul 08, 2007 · Member since Jul 2007 · 1 posts
Want to get pregnant I became vegetarian when i was 11 until i was 21 because i hated the thought of eating animals and just loved them all to much. I moved in with my husband and for some unknown reason i began eating animal products. That was 2 years ago and since then i have had so many health problems. From IBS, wheat allergy, and i am having huge problems getting pregnant due to a hormonal inbalance. Been vegan now for only a short time but i have never felt better, i finally remember what its like to feel normal!! Im closer then i ever have been to being pregnant as my cycles are coming back in to a regualr patten due to my hormones balancing. NEVER EVER will i allow my self to fall back in to that horrible diet of eating animal products, its not worth my health... :)
Everyone said that I would revert in college due to "peer pressure,"...
A few years ago I dropped in to my grandparents place and my grandmother cut me a piece of bacon and egg pie. She said she thought university life would have 'fixed' me. I just laughed, its no secret that we all think she's a bit batty.
1) the healthiest societies known in recent history eat traditional diets that are about 95% unrefined plant products. 2) the aforementioned horrors of factory farming- even if you don't care about the animals, the production methods are disastrous for our health and the environment. 3) several major religious traditions, including the one I adhere to, practice abstention from animal products at least part of the time.
At first, mine was health reasons. Heart desease and strokes run in my family. Most of my family is also over weight. I'm also lactose intolerant.
I went lacto-ovo first. Worked out nicely, except for the fact that I was still eating dairy. My tummy was screaming! I did this for about 4 years. Last August, I went vegan.
Now that I've been vegan for a while, the life style itself is working on me. I saw the PETA thing about factory farming. I won't wear anything that came from an animal, like fur, leather, silk, ect. Well, and I have a skin allergy. I HAVE to wear cotton only. But even if I didn't, I wouldn't touch the stuff above. And I'm getting MORE strict about what I eat (I wasn't "strict" vegan at first). It's hard to be "strict" vegan living with a meat eater, but I'm glad I'm doing my part.
I originally became vegan to make disguising my eating disorder easier. It's easier to explain to someone why you're not eating with a fail-proof statement. After a while empty statements like "I'm sick; I just ate;I don't care for that food" becomes suspicious.
When people ask why I'm vegan I usually say: I love animals, they are my friends. Exploiting and killing my friends does not interest me.
I was never that proud of the fact that i ate meat, but it was just what i was used to. After a health scare I told my self that if I don't make a change im going to be one of those people who have heart attacks around the age of 45 or 50. I'm 33 now. I decieded to try being a vegetarian for one week to see how I would like it, and I liked it. So i decieded to go vege full time. I feel alot better, just by cutting out meat i was cutting out most of the fast food i was eating.Soy milk and tofu can taste pretty good, and i don't miss meat at all. im kinda creeped out by it now. Also, from a flossify stand point, im glad i dont eat meat anymore. We all have bodies and we all need to eat in order to live, but we were never giving any special food to eat. So we have to eat each other. In order for life to survive we have to hunt down , kill and eat the flesh of other life . This is the begining of all cruelity and a flaw of creation. Not eating meat is my way of giving our cruel Mother Nature the finger
I was hoping that someone else on here had a childish reason like me, but all of yours are very ethical and understandable. My reason is a cute boy and punk kids. This really dreamy boy came over to my house one time and was talking about being vegetarian, and I thought, hey, I dont really like meat that much, I should just give it up and hang out with this boy more often. I then noticed that all of his really cool friends were also vegan and talked about animal rights, so I started reading about it to kind of fit in. Well of course reading about it makes anyone stick to it. Maybe a month or so after he told me about that, I wanted to go vegan, but didn't have anything to really push me over the edge. I really didnt eat much dairy of eggs anyways because of my lactose intollerance and my lack of cooking ablility made me think it wasnt that necessary or possible. It wasnt until I ate an egg and cheese omlet at my Universitys cafeteria that made me go vegan 4 years after I went vegetarian.
So thats it, a cute crusty boy with green hair and animal rights patches all over his raggedy clothes.
That's one of the reasons I don't think people should beat themselves up if they "cheat." Life is fluid and the choices you make lead you towards a goal of how you want to live. If you continue in a forward motion, your mind and body may not be caught up to each other in any given moment - but they do all catch up eventually.
I forgot what else I wanted to say, I was so wrapped up in my own story. Goodness.
I totally agree with your statement humboldt_honey. We all do our best, and whether its in line with each others best it does not matter! Anyway, no one likes the vegan police!
I hope that made sense. My mind is just a big bowl of thoughts, sometimes those thoughts make statements, sometimes they just make thoughts.
I was hoping that someone else on here had a childish reason like me, but all of yours are very ethical and understandable.
I forgot to add the why to my story. I wanted to become vegan because in college a girl named Laura, who I thought was really cool, was vegan. That was the first time I tried. I lived in a no-meat-in-the-house place then and I still failed. But I became more aware of the foods I ate and psychologically got turned off of meat, which is when I went vegan for real. When I was around a lot of vegans it was really hard and now that I'm by myself, it's easy. The other reasons (healthy, animal rights) came into it after I had transitioned. I'm really happy to know I'm not alone in the peer influence angle.
i became vegetarian because i just got more and more uncomfortable at the thought of eating meat. it started to feel unnatural and wrong and that, as an animal lover, i couldn't do it anymore. a few years later i decided it wasn't necessary for me to consume dairy or any other animal product, so veganism. i think that i am in a fortunate enough situation to have the option to chose a lifestyle, one that's not dictated by money or availability. and the thought (and it probably is just a thought) that my choices could help secure food for others (10000 lbs of grass to feed a 1000 lb cow, which in the end would feed a 100 lb human - skip the middle man and 10000lbs of grass could feed 1000lbs of human - i can't remember what this process is called, but i learned about it in a marine bio class ???) and reduce waste makes it feel right also. i often find myself having to defend my vegan ways, but i'm used to it coming from a very traditional italian family. which might also explain the eventual veganism: my very italian grandmother took me on errands with her when i was, like, 5 or so. she brings me a huge warehouse that was full of rabbits in cages and tells me to, " go picka one out" in her cute brooklyn/italian grandma accent. so i found one that i liked and thought was really cute and i showed it to the man who was working there. he tells us to come back in an hour or so and he'll have all ready for us. i was so excited, i thought i was getting a new pet! no no no, we return in an hour and the man hands my grandma a pack of meat! it was my pet bunny! my grandma didn't know why i was so sad; in italy the rabbits were for eating, not for pets! i hate to say it, but i think that night i still ate the rabbit for dinner :-\! but i like to think that event had a huge impact on my future decisions!
My dad put a slab of roast pork on the dinner table; skin, hairs and all (because the crackling's the best part right?). I looked at it, and in my mind I saw the pig - alive (I have always adored pigs). I told my dad that I couldn't eat it, and he said "I thought you would say that, so I cooked this too". He had also roasted a chicken. I looked at him like he was insane and didn't eat meat again. I had asked my parents if I could become a vegetarian a year before (when I was 12 or 13) and they had said no. So this time I did it without their permission. I went vegan a year later, by then they had realised they couldn't stop me.
I think becoming vegetarian or vegan is a realisation. For the ethics driven veggies anyway. When I made the connection between meat and live animals I realised I couldn't be a part of this cruelty. I think people have been conditioned to understand the origin of meat on an detached intellectual level. They don't really understand, or feel the connection between living animal and the flesh of a dead animal. Tell a child that pork comes from pigs, and they'll correct you: "No silly, pork comes from the supermarket".
i became vegetarian because i just got more and more uncomfortable at the thought of eating meat. it started to feel unnatural and wrong and that, as an animal lover, i couldn't do it anymore. a few years later i decided it wasn't necessary for me to consume dairy or any other animal product, so veganism. i think that i am in a fortunate enough situation to have the option to chose a lifestyle, one that's not dictated by money or availability. and the thought (and it probably is just a thought) that my choices could help secure food for others (10000 lbs of grass to feed a 1000 lb cow, which in the end would feed a 100 lb human - skip the middle man and 10000lbs of grass could feed 1000lbs of human - i can't remember what this process is called, but i learned about it in a marine bio class ???) and reduce waste makes it feel right also. i often find myself having to defend my vegan ways, but i'm used to it coming from a very traditional italian family. which might also explain the eventual veganism: my very italian grandmother took me on errands with her when i was, like, 5 or so. she brings me a huge warehouse that was full of rabbits in cages and tells me to, " go picka one out" in her cute brooklyn/italian grandma accent. so i found one that i liked and thought was really cute and i showed it to the man who was working there. he tells us to come back in an hour or so and he'll have all ready for us. i was so excited, i thought i was getting a new pet! no no no, we return in an hour and the man hands my grandma a pack of meat! it was my pet bunny! my grandma didn't know why i was so sad; in italy the rabbits were for eating, not for pets! i hate to say it, but i think that night i still ate the rabbit for dinner :-\! but i like to think that event had a huge impact on my future decisions!
how traumatic for a young child!
My dad put a slab of roast pork on the dinner table; skin, hairs and all (because the crackling's the best part right?).
That reminds me of when my sister and I were kids. My dad would go fishing and bring home some trout and fry them for dinner. My sister and I would beg for the fish tails because they were crunchy like chiips, which we were only allowed to have on the 4th of July. It was a huge treat. Ewww...
When I was a kid, we only had "real breakfast" on the weekends, and my dad would ask me if I wanted "dead baby chickens" with my grits (referring to eggs). I wouldn't eat eggs for years after that. For some reason, as I grew up, it didn't bother me as much. Now I don't eat eggs (despite his comments).
Well, I started researching vegetarianism in march of this year. I started out doing it mostly for health reasons. I really wanted to go vegan right away, because I have never liked port or red meat, and rarely ate any other, and I didn't want to consume eggs (hello?!?! to me, they're like abortion for chickens) and dairy, espcially dairy, because it was so unhealthy and bad for you. But, I am in recovery from Anorexia, so my parents and doctors thought it was just a way to loose weight. So I was forced to consume nonfat yogurt (or should I say "puss)-urt:Bob and Jenna, a while ago). About 3 weeks ago, I was finally allowed to go full vegan, and I love it. Now, ethical/humane/environmental reasons have moved up as well, so my reasoning has turned into all issues. I think eating animals is just gross, including byproducts, but it's nice to know the health benefits of eating a vegan diet as well. Hope I didn't ramble on too much...
I've always hated eating animals from a very young age. It finally came to an end one Xmas when I could see the vein line running through a slice of meat. I was an instant Veggie which progressed to veganism when i really became aware. :)
Want to get pregnant
I became vegetarian when i was 11 until i was 21 because i hated the thought of eating animals and just loved them all to much. I moved in with my husband and for some unknown reason i began eating animal products. That was 2 years ago and since then i have had so many health problems. From IBS, wheat allergy, and i am having huge problems getting pregnant due to a hormonal inbalance.
Been vegan now for only a short time but i have never felt better, i finally remember what its like to feel normal!! Im closer then i ever have been to being pregnant as my cycles are coming back in to a regualr patten due to my hormones balancing. NEVER EVER will i allow my self to fall back in to that horrible diet of eating animal products, its not worth my health... :)
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