What did make you become a vegetarian?

Question

Is It that you love animals so much or feel sorry for them? I really want to know the answer from vegetarians

Answer 1

For me, it started out as that adolescent super-idealized "it's wrong to kill animals" thing, but now it's turned more into my own form of protest against the way farm animals are treated. I don't necessarily believe it's wrong to eat animals (animals eat other animals) but I think it's important to treat animals properly. And until the various industries involving animals start to treat them right, they won't be getting money from me.

Answer 2

I became a vegetarian when I realized that my body could not digest meat well, and how much I hated the thought of eating dead animals. Not to mention my Uncle took me to a slaughter house in Illinois, that really turned my opinion on eating dead cows. I love animals, and as my next store neighberhood who actually helped me to turn into being vegetarian said, "Whats the diffrent between eating a cow, and not your dog. They are both animals." Every animal wants to have life, why should I help take away that away from them? Because Im bigger, and stronger. There is so much more choices out there for a diet lifestyle. Good post.

Answer 3

I became a vegetarian because of my spiritual practice. As part of our practice, it is of paramount importance to love all beings. Hence, it's really difficult (and contradictory) to eat them (especially just for pleasure).

As an aside, a predominately vegetarian diet really is better for one's health. I was totally startled to learn that the only way humans can digest meat is if it literally rots in the digestive system. However, if someone had a medical condition for which it is recommended by a doctor to eat meat, I think it is reasonable to do so then. We can be vegetarians without being intolerant of other people's beliefs and needs and without pitying animals (loving and pitying aren't the same thing).

Answer 4

3 reasons. 1) Animals are treated very cruel before they are slaughtered 2) Less natural resources are expended on vegetarian diets rather than meat diets 3) Animal fat and animal proteins are linked to cancer. A great book you should read is "The China Study". It is so informative, even if you are not vegetarian.

Answer 5

I’ve “met the cow” so to speak, once I started to rescue and care for animals. I started feeling a moral responsibility for them; if I can’t kill it, I won’t eat it. I’d rather not make someone else raise them in order to kill them so that I can eat a burger if I wanted to.

Now I can eat a meal, guilt free. No more driving by cattle ranches on the road and trying to rationalize why I ate a steak last night.


… I think the animals appreciate it as well :)

Answer 6

I don't particularly love animals. But i don't think that you have to love another organism to recognize that it deserves moral consideration. You don't need to love kids to recognize that donating to UNICEF is the right thing to do.

I would say i became vegetarian because it was the rational and moral thing to do. We all agree that its wrong to cause unnecessary suffering. That's a pretty uncontroversial claim. We all also know that animals do suffer from our meat-eating habits, and we also know that we don't need to eat meat to survive or to live healthy. Every single one of those points is very obvious and uncontroversial, but put them together and conclude that what we do is wrong, and suddenly you're a radical. Putting them together is just simple logic and following the most basic moral rule: do not cause unnecessary suffering.

Answer 7

I became a Vegetarian for health reasons. I was then exposed to animal rights philosophy which made alot of sense to me and promptly became a Vegan. So it was really a mix between both.

Answer 8

I became a vegetarian becasue I was exposed to the truthful realities of the torture and hell animals go through to become our fatty, disgusting meats that we eat and get ill from and get cardiovascular disease from and get constipated from.
I love animals. I would never be able to devour one if I knew it lived a life of hell on earth.
Plus, it's healthier. I care about my body and don't want some hormoney, shitty meat clogging it up and bringing me all kinds of illnesses.
Meat is a violent meal that immediately effects the consumer in a lot of ways even though he/she cannot tell.

Answer 9

My opinion is that once you begin to become aware of what is really going on in this world's reality, you start a journey of awareness. You become aware of the disease that is affecting the people around you, and you learn about cholesterol and heart disease. You cut down on red meat first, and then pork. You start to feel better. You notice that chicken and eggs have still alot of cholesterol and other negative things about them (and we won't even talk about fish and trying to find an ocean without toxins that it came from in order to safely digest it), so you give them up. Dairy is something you try to go without for a month and suddenly your sinus problems go away, and the achy joints. So now you are vegan in eating.

Then you meet other vegans and they introduce you to animal right activists and you become aware of what those animals had to go through just to be on someone's plate! You start to not wear leather, and become a consumer of crueltry-free products. Now you are an animal rights activist.

And now that you can eat only vegetables, you start getting the low down on organics and why pesticides, herbicides, and even now manure can mess up your body's insides (PCBs wreck havoc on DNA - cancer anyone? E.coli H107 on spinach when this strain is found only in animals, perhaps runoff from a nearby dairy farm? Genetically modified organisms/plants that contain the gene to help it grow after Round-Up is sprayed on everything green to make it die). You learn how the amount of clean water is quickly disappearing, yet we are more concerned with the amount of gasoline we have for our cars and our way of life? Now you are an environmentalist.

And the journey goes on and on. . . . . . . ..

Answer 10

I married one who shared the joy of eating vegetarian for your health. I feel good knowing that I am saving lives and eating healthier (and I don't ever have to go through meat preparation again....YUCK!)