For Vegetarians Only?

Question

Please share your anecdote/story on why you became a vegetarian. Here's mine:

When I was 13 I was helping my mother cook dinner- sweet and sour pork with rice. I had never thought of being a vegetarian before. I loved meat! It's tasty! But, as I was stir-frying the pork, I began to think of how it was once a living, breathing animal. I suddenly got this feeling that it was barbaric to eat meat. 'Why am I more important than animals?' I thought. I began to realize that helpless animals were being slaughtered just so I can enjoy the taste of their flesh. I had never thought of it that way, and it bothered me so much that I didn't eat the pork with my rice during that dinner and I told my mother that I would never eat meat again. She just laughed. I guess she thought I was just going through a phase, but here I am, 15 years later and have not eaten a speck of meat since that day.

Please share your story.

Answer 1

When I was 17, I started working at a health food store. I started reading about the terrible things they give to animals when they are raising them. I started realizing that they raise animals just to kill them, because we feel like eating them. I started realizing that it was brutal and inhumane the way they are raised. I stopped eating meat. I have been vegeterian for 4 years.

Since then, I've decided that ecologically, it is optimal to be vegeterian, also. The amount of land that can feed one vegeterian is so much smaller than the amount of land that is needed to feed a meat eater, since the meat needs to be fed also and the animal itself will only last a human a couple of meals. It just doesn't make sense. Albert Einstein said that one of the only ways to house our growing populations is the evolution of the vegeterian diet. I am in complete agreeance with it. There once may have been a time, when man lived as other animals and hunted them in the wild - this was somewhat acceptable. But not only have we done this to the excess, but we've also taken the homes of these animals and forced them into barns and other un-natural habitats. And if man is going to consider himself "better" than the other creatures of the earth - man had better start acting that way and treating those creatures with a little more respect.

Answer 2

I started to eat healthy. I eliminated beef and pork. I undercooked chicken and that was so gross I eliminated chicken. Saw someone gaffing tuna on TV (gaffing is jamming a big metal hook into the fish's side to haul it onto the boat). Figured I didn't want to be a fish and die like that, so I wouldn't eat things that were killed for me. Why should I hire a "hit man" to cut up animals if I was too grossed out to do it myself. I read Diet for a New America and Diet for a Small Planet. (The current best book is The Food Revolution by John Robbins.) My husband went veg when he recalled killing things for dinner on the farm. (Basically, you start with a happy animal who's enjoying life and slit it's throat. As you cut up animals, the parts still move, it's a horror show.) Animals exist for their own reasons, not my culinary entertainment. Our 10 year old son has been a vegetarian from the start. The closest he's come to eating meat is a few marshmallows (they have gelatin, made from pork).

Answer 3

I've always felt something more for animals than humans. If a human died, I thought nothing of it, even if it was a relative. If I heard about a dog dying, I was bawling.

I've always wanted to be a vegetarian but my family didn't support it. They ate nothing but meat and I would have had only taters and corn to live off on. So I was unable to do anything about it.

When I went to college, I was allowed to have whatever I wanted. There were many different "restaurants" on campus that offered meat free dishes and I took advantage of it.

I'm now meat free for 10 months and I'm not only happier, but much healthier. I eat way more fruits and veggies than I ever did in my parents' house.

Answer 4

Well, I have been an animal lover for a long long time, but my family meals always centered around meat, and so it was difficult to switch. Then my husband made a donation to PETA in my name and they sent me this huge packet of information and well....that pretty much did it for me. My change-over to vegetarianism has been difficult at times, especially coming from a family that still eats a lot of meat, but they have been pretty supportive of it. I give a lot of credit to PETA for not pulling any punches when they explain in detail what the animals go through. I learn more everyday and everyday I am more and more appalled at how we treat the creatures around us. After learning about the environmental effects it has, I'm even more convinced that it is the way to go.

Answer 5

i have been a vegetarian for almost a year now i decided to become a vegatarian because i thought about it one day and its really stupid that people kill animals just to eat thier flesh when we can eat other food thats better for you and healthier without having to kill anything and ever since i have been a vegetarian