
Ask HN: Have you gone vegan or vegetarian? - skyisblue
How did you do it? Did you slowly transition or cut out all meat immediately?
======
manlio
The first and fundamental question you want to ask yourself is not how, but
why: when your reasons are clear, the path naturally follows.

I can see three strands:

1\. For health reasons. This is IMO the weakest reason. I'm not interested
(nor qualified) in starting an endless debate about the health risk/benefits
of meat; but if you only want to eat healthier is best to start with the
obvious: cut sugar, snacks, sodas, sweets, junk food and deep fried; eat more
low-GI and greens, etc.

2\. For Ahimsa [0]. Ahimsa is a beautiful and subtle topic, but broadly
speaking it means that you try to minimize the amount of suffering caused by
your actions. Buddhists (as well as Socrates) believe we constantly fail to
understand that our actions have consequences. Ahimsa is about getting in
touch as best as we can with these consequences, and act accordingly to our
insights.

3\. For environmental reasons, i.e. reducing your ecological footprint. This
has some overlap with Ahimsa, but the reasons are practical rather than
ethical and there are exceptions: in terms of sheer sustainability, battery
farmed chicken might be OK (maybe, I don't know).

Whatever your reasons are, it's something I believe is worth thinking about.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahimsa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahimsa)

~~~
gotrythis
Here's reason #4. You'll look younger, have better skin, and live longer.
Vegans typically live 15 years longer and don't have many of the degenerative
diseases which are caused by meat and dairy.

I was pushing my parents to let me become vegan when I turned a teenager. I
stopped eating meat on my 16th birthday despite their assertions that I would
die. Gave up dairy a few years later, which I only ate because the dairy
industry's advertising is so damn strong.

I'll turn 46 this summer, so it's been almost 30 years, and people think I'm
10-15 years younger. Teenage girls still try to pick me up. My fiance has been
vegan for something like 20 years and is 40 this summer. Last year, two high
school kids invited her to the prom.

And reason #5, which was the primary reason I went vegan, followed by having a
sense of ethics and feeling it was wrong to enslave, torture, and murder
animals, because meat is yummy: Eating rotting corpses is pretty gross when
you think about it.

~~~
mod
> Eating rotting corpses is pretty gross when you think about it.

I tend not to let them rot before I eat them, personally.

I don't understand why you had to turn your otherwise-upbeat argument into a
pretty overt attack in the last sentence.

~~~
gotrythis
I'm telling you the reason that I went vegan at 16. And those were the main
reasons. Though at the time, I called it grody, but I'm not sure of the
correct spelling.

Animals start to decompose at the moment of death. The meat at the supermarket
has been dead for how long? Days, weeks? It is in the process of rotting, just
not visibly so. Much of it is actually spoiled, but I've read 70% of meat in
supermarkets is treated with carbon monoxide to keep it from going brown or
grey. You might not like it, but it's a very valid and important argument.

And as for feeling that it's unethical. We (people) enslave entire species,
remove their body parts without anaesthesia, cage them in cells so small they
can't move, force them to have babies over and over and then kidnap their
children and eat them, grind them up, or enslave them as well. It's horrible.
I think that anyone who knows what is done and argues, but meat is yummy or
delicious as someone else did in here, is a sociopath. Can anyone who is
connected to their sense of empathy be okay causing that much pain to other
feeling beings?

~~~
mod
> We (people) enslave entire species, remove their body parts without
> anaesthesia, cage them in cells so small they can't move, force them to have
> babies over and over and then kidnap their children and eat them, grind them
> up, or enslave them as well. It's horrible, and I think that anyone who
> knows what is done and argues, but meat is yummy, is a sociopath.

I produce my own meat, on my own property. Not in cages, no forced babies
(chickens lay anyway), no enslavement (the arrangement is closer to me being
their slave), and no 'body part removal.'

So many of your arguments are made up for non-commercial meat sources.

Also, do you not see how your language is just an attack on meat-eaters? You
say you're just "telling us the reason," but you're not, you're making an
attack.

~~~
gotrythis
You are part of a tiny percentage of people, so that doesn't really mean much
compared to the billions of animals who are part of factory farming.

But, I applaud you for doing it yourself and think everyone should eat meat
the way you do, if they must eat meat in the first place.

The "positive" stuff at the beginning were the unexpected side-effects. The
attacks are answering the question that this thread is about. Why did I become
vegan? That's exactly what I was thinking as a teenager, and continue to think
30 years later.

Is it an attack to say, "Take a look at the results of your actions. This is
what you're a part of. This is the suffering you cause."?

Calling someone a sociopath might be an attack. lol. That comes from being
attacked for being a vegan hundreds of times, just for not eating what
everyone else was, when I didn't bring it up at all. When I explain why, I
get, "but meat tastes good" (Subtext is, "so it's fine for animals and the
planet to suffer because of factory farming, because meat is yummy"). Oh,
well, that's fine then.

~~~
mod
The attacks I'm referring to are the misuse of the term "murder", calling a
couple hundred million folks "sociopaths," and the implication (which has some
truth, no doubt) that those eating the meat are responsible for the
mistreatment of animals and are causing their pain.

I'm sure you can think of dozens of examples where people who are a cog in a
machine are not exactly on-board with the whole thing, yet feel powerless to
stop it.

Diet is not something that everyone feels they can change on a whim. If it
were, I suppose we wouldn't have an obesity crisis, and perhaps more people
would join you as vegans, too.

The cultural pressure to eat meat is also a big factor, just as you have
mentioned in your response here. Not just to be normal, but maybe to avoid
hurting mom's feelings when she makes your childhood-favorite lasagna or
something.

People use the same argument for eating meat (it tastes good) as they do for
getting morbidly obese. Nobody wants to be morbidly obese or impose those
kinds of health problems on themselves, so perhaps you need to understand that
the issue is deeper than just "I do or don't want to hurt animals." It
certainly is with obesity.

------
inieves
I did it within minutes.

Watch the film on YouTube: "Earthlings"

Try to watch it in a full sitting. You probably wont be able to, but try. Then
walk to a mirror and look yourself in the face, and ask if you and this world
are really real, that is, do your own version of a reality check.

Then you will see your proverbial red pill and blue pill.

Dont do it because you think you might lose a few pounds and impress some
stranger at a beach. Do it because you want to deeply re-examine life and this
world. Make it a life path for yourself.

Its either a difficult and impossible path OR its a trivially easy path, it
all depends on your intentions.

Watch the film.

I have been vegan for several years.

It took me almost 2 years to watch the film in its entirety.

~~~
ssijak
You do realise that more living beings are killed while farming plants
(pesticides, rodents killed mechanically and with poisons, etc) than by
raising organic meat? Never understood this argument exactly. If something is
large people usually have more compassion for it, probably because we see
their faces and we can not see face of a mosquito or fly or a bug dying.

~~~
vinay427
How many of those plants are farmed to feed the animals that are then being
killed? I couldn't easily find data on this, but this massive inefficiency is
part of what makes veganism more environmentally sustainable when done right.

------
siddharthgdas
I have been a vegetarian since 28th october 2012.

I was 16 then. I cut out the meat intake immediately. I happened to one day
take a stroll in a part of the town where butcher shops were in plenty and I
stood and observed the butchering process out of curiosity. Whatever I saw
left me pale and horrified. I came back home and cried a lot. The shrieks and
cries of the hen didn't leave my mind. And I decided from that day onwards
that I wouldn't kill for my taste buds.

~~~
galdosdi
It was lucky you lived somewhere where you even had an opportunity to see the
butchering process and thus make your own informed choices about it.

In the USA, it is not difficult to go your whole life eating meat and never
seeing where it comes from, other than "from the supermarket refrigerated
aisle." Many if not most supermarkets don't butcher on site (eg, in college I
once briefly worked at a Walmart meat department and was disappointed I would
not be learning any butchering, but would just be moving around boxes that
happened to contain meat)

I'd like to propose a perhaps odd view: It may not be wrong to eat meat, but
it's surely wrong to eat it if you wouldn't be willing to do the butchering
and preparing yourself if that were the only way to get it.

~~~
ganley
There are many hunters who believe that it is wrong to eat meat unless you
kill and butcher it yourself.

------
tmbeihl
I am a third generation vegan & fourth generation vegetarian. It is much
easier to be vegan than it was 20 years ago. Also the quality of milk and
cheese replacements has significantly improved. The first time I tried almond
milk (1993ish) it was a very poor experience, now it is amazing. My email is
in my profile, feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

------
soloadventurer
I'm always very fascinated by people's rationale and I enjoy reading these
threads. Thank you for posting. My own journey took me in the opposite
direction: I eat nothing but meat and other animal-derived products such as
cheese and eggs (but not milk). I have made this decision after reading _The
Fat of the Land_ by Vilhjalmur Stefansson [1] and _Why We Get Fat_ by Gary
Taubes [2]. I consciously decided the most important dietary principle, for
me, is to never trigger a strong insulin response. I have been zero carb (and
therefore zero fiber) for about a year now.

I have since then thrown in intermittent fasting as well. I fast 22 hours a
day, work out at the end of the day, and then go home and eat 1kg of
steak/lamb. I think intermittent fasting is worth adding to any diet, vegan or
otherwise.

[1] Book was printed in 1956, so copyright may have expired. There's PDFs
online. Here's a link to Stefansson's Wikipedia entry:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilhjalmur_Stefansson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilhjalmur_Stefansson)

[2] Non-affiliate: [https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-
About/dp/0307474259](https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-
About/dp/0307474259)

------
dllthomas
I went vegetarian for a year. The girl I later married was (and is)
vegetarian, and I knew I'd be doing a lot of the cooking, and wanted to see
things from that side for a bit.

As for how, I went cold... tofurkey?

------
nanomonkey
I grew up on a farm in Northern California, so there really wasn't the option
for a "faceless" meat. I decided when I was 15 that I wanted to try to be
vegetarian, I quit cold turkey and have been vegetarian or vegan ever since.
I'm 40 now.

My advice:

\- Learn to cook. You'll want to eat unprocessed foods that come from good
sources. Don't worry about how much protein you're getting. There is no need
to supplement with protein shakes or fake meats. Amino acids are plentiful in
all whole foods except fruits. Nuts, peas, beans and whole grains are all rich
with protein. If you're eating whole foods you shouldn't really have to worry
about it.

For example, why buy isolated whey protein when you could purchase ricotta
(made from whey) or pea protein when you can have split pea soup. The whole
food will be more nutritious and hell of lot cheaper to make. On that note,
purchase an electric pressure cooker, an immersion blender and some basic
cooking utensils if you don't already have them.

\- Learn how to ferment foods. A lot of grains, legumes and vegetables have
mild amounts of phytotoxins that are removed during the fermentation process.
Sourdough breads, yoghurt, kefir, kimchee, sauerkraut, etc. are all great
sources of vitamins, minerals and umami flavors that are not in the "fresh"
sources.

\- If you decide to be ovo-lacto vegetarian, find a good local farm for eggs
or dairy (local for milk, not so necessarily local for cheese). You'll be
saving a lot by not buying meat, so make sure you're purchasing ethically
raised chicken eggs. Eggs are great foodstuff. Chickens are also easy to raise
yourself if you want to feel closer to your food.

\- Don't evangelize. Over the years your reasons will change. Answer peoples
questions when they ask (and they will), but don't push YOUR personal decision
on others.

\- Have fun with it!

------
bananicorn
Vegetarian - just stopped eating meat one day to see if I could keep it up.

(The reason being that I had already been thinking for a while how gross it
actually was to eat animal corpses, and that I'd also rather be alive than
dead, so others shouldn't suffer that fate just because I had to satisfy my
taste buds)

That was the easiest part - the social aspect of it is a lot more complicated
than that, mostly because I had to explain to people why I made the decision,
over and over again. And obviously the braindead comments about not getting
enough protein etc.

Some things I did not even know initially, like how many products contain
gelatine (which is made out of animal bones and skin), but nowadays it's
rather easy to avoid such products.

Going Vegan is the next goal, probably when I move into my own place, and I
already tried going Vegan, but always ran into a wall because I am not the
person doing groceries in this household.

~~~
Arizhel
>and that I'd also rather be alive than dead, so others shouldn't suffer that
fate just because I had to satisfy my taste buds)

If everyone did this, then raising of animals for food would stop. That
wouldn't keep any animals from being killed for food; instead, it would mean
those animals _never existed in the first place_ , and never got to have any
life at all.

Now, I don't know whether that's better or worse: is it better to have a
short, somewhat unhappy life than none at all? This is a question for
philosophers. But it's something to think about. But the point is, you're not
saving any animals from being murdered by not eating meat.

~~~
matty22
This is crazy talk.

I am not vegan. But the life of an animal bred for human consumption is not
"somewhat unhappy". It's closer to "absolutely depressing" or "shockingly
inhumane".

Change the word animal to human in your question: Is it better for a human to
never exist or for it to be born and then at the age of 6 we murder it?

The obvious answer to that is that it's much better that that human never
exist.

Again, I'm not vegan, and I occasionally eat meat. But your logic here is
terrible.

~~~
mod
This is also crazy talk.

There is a HUGE area between "bred for human consumption" and "shockingly
inhumane" chicken farms, for example.

My chickens are out in a pasture right now enjoying the sunshine, hunting
bugs, and they do that every day until they die. The taking of their life, if
it's on my terms and not a predator's, is very quick. The length of their life
is cut short, but the quality of the life they lived is not harmed. In fact,
it's likely improved via watertight shelter and readily available food &
water.

When I hatch, I often get to save the life of a chick who would have died in
his shell. I also get to correct things like splayed legs that would follow a
chicken through its whole life (or leave it dead).

So there's more to the world than your extreme version of things.

The lifespan of my laying hens is quite a bit longer than it would be for one
in the wild. If we compare chickens to their wild genetic ancestor, anyway--
there is no such thing as a wild chicken.

I'll leave the philosophical questions to other folks, I'm just presenting a
contrary example to your rigid set of rules.

~~~
matty22
Fair enough, but you have to understand that your chicken operation is the
exception and not the rule, right?

Factory-farmed chickens do not get to go outside, enjoy the sunshine, and eat
bugs. They live in cramped chicken houses devoid of light, fresh air, or
anything remotely resembling your beautiful sounding farm.

The vast, vast majority of chicken purchased in a grocery store lives out
their life in that second situation, not in a place like your farm.

~~~
mod
For what it's worth, my place is not a farm and not particularly beautiful,
but I do have a pasture and keep chickens.

On to my real response: my "exception" invalidates your argument wrt whether
or not animals should be raised for consumption and have their lives cut
short, which you said was an "obvious answer."

I think most people agree that it's okay, so long as the animal is allowed to
have a normal, fulfilling existence.

We love our chickens and take no pleasure in butchering them, but I feel
certain they are happy to get a shot at life, even if for some of them that
life is only a year or two.

I've had a minute now to think about your "obvious answer" from up-thread. I
had a lot of fun by the time I was 6 years old. Experienced a lot of love,
caught a lot of fish, explored a big world, rode my bike on dirt roads. I knew
where "deer road" was, I knew how to sneak up on the bridge there and spy on
the turtles. A couple of those years just might have been my best. I don't
think I can agree with you.

Anyway, if we pose the question as "is it okay to raise animals for
consumption? animals that wouldn't have had a life otherwise?", I think the
answer is something like "Yes, if we treat them well."

So the answer isn't (necessarily) to become a vegan. A perfectly viable option
is to source your meat differently.

------
adultSwim
I transitioned gradually. Limited when/where I ate meat (eg veg at home, meat
still at work/lunch). Also limited what I ate (eg no mammals).

Transitioning slowly really set me up for success. Doing so allowed me to
adjust my habits. Took longer for my tastes to change.

I thoroughly enjoy my diet now. It doesn't feel like a burden and I don't feel
like I have to compromise on enjoying food.

One thing that is really easy is just eating less meat. By just cutting down,
you don't have to change/think about your diet. Just eat less meat, more
everything else. Cutting it out entirely takes a bit more work (still totally
doable).

------
ganley
I was a vegetarian (abruptly) for a couple of years. Eventually I started to
feel sort of icky, not properly nourished, though this is probably the fault
of my specific dietary habits and not vegetarianism in general.

Since then I've stuck to a low-meat diet; I mostly eat vegetarian, and when I
eat meat I try to eat low on the food chain. I'd say I eat fish and chicken
about once a week each, and pork or beef maybe once a month. I also cook with
chicken broth pretty often.

------
samblr
Im mostly vegan when eating out since Im unsure of meat used. And I like to
cook hence it turns out when you cook meat dishes at home its a real bargain.

------
malyk
Yes. Went from omnivore to vegan overnight, stayed that way for two years, and
then went vegetarian three years ago. No meat since Jan. 3rd 2012.

When my wife and I took the plunge I had been eating lots of meat at
lunches...mostly in sandwich form and we had been unintentionally
transitioning from all meat to chicken and fish to mostly just fish at home
for dinners...wife's preference for fish over other meat drove that.

Then we watched the documentary "Forks Over Knives" and, regardless of the
scientific accuracy of the film, said "Why don't we try going vegan for a
month and see what happens".

So after a New Years trip to see family in LA where we are a ton of meat we
drove home and then...never ate meat again. After the first month "test" we
asked each other if we should try it again for another month, agreed to do it,
and then never asked again.

Over the holiday break in 2014 we ended up eating a bunch of eggs and decided
we really wanted eggs and cheese, so we ditched the veganism and went
vegetarian. We probably eat 80% of our dinners as vegan still,
unintentionally, but we don't feel bad about eating cheese anymore.

One quick tip if you try to be vegan...be flexible if your not doing it from a
moral standpoint. If I ordered a sandwich and they accidentally put mayo on
it, I just ate it anyway. If a coworker brought cookies or cake, I ate it. I
didn't ditch my shoes or belt. True vegans would probably be appalled, but
life is so much easier if you go with the flow. Try to stick to it, but don't
fuss or worry about the occasional lapse.

Hell, I know plenty of vegetarians that are 99.9% vegetarian but occassionally
grab a slice of pepperoni pizza or slice of bacon or whatever. There aren't
any rules...it's a personal decision. Do what makes you happy.

~~~
matty22
Fiancee and I watched Forks Over Knives and did the "let's try it out for a
month" thing as well. She has been totally vegan ever since for more than 3
years now. I eat nearly entirely vegan at home as it just doesn't make a lot
of sense to keep two sets of food in the house. As someone who really enjoys
to cook, it's also been really fun to learn how to cook new types of dishes
that don't rely on animal products.

When we order delivery or eat out at restaurants that aren't specifically
vegan restaurants, I'll eat the occasional meat dish. The real hard one for me
to give up has been cheese. Vegan food companies can make pretty decent faux
meat, but vegan cheese is downright awful.

~~~
KitDuncan
I don't know, have you tried the Chao cheeses? They were pretty close for me.
Daiya isn't too bad either. After 1.5 years of veganism I have to say though
that I don't crave cheese or meat at all anymore and just try the faux
meats/cheeses out of curiosity...

~~~
matty22
I haven't tried Chao, I'll have to see if I can find them. I have tried the
Daiya cheeses and they're ok if you're using them for a sauce or something or
melting them on a pizza.

But grabbing a block of the Daiya cheddar and comparing it to proper cheddar,
Daiya just doesn't compare.

------
deepaksurti
I just flipped the switch one fine day in 2011 - to go vegetarian, it was at
the back of my mind via various sources, I wont go into that. However mentally
for me it was lack of exercise and meat just made me lethargic and I felt
vegetarianism will help.

So I turned vegetarian and started exercise (tennis, walks) and I started
feeling the benefits.

Hindsight (20/20) of course, I think it was just exercise that was needed. I
think we are what we eat but we are polished if we exercise.

Last year I tried just eggs a bit (for me vegetarian = no meat/fish/eggs,
definition I guess allows eggs) but did not like the taste, after 6 years of
vegetarianism.

I woud overall say, listen to your body, eat what you like, but don't forget
to burn those fats irrespective of if you eat meat or not.

------
colanderman
Vegan for about 6 years. I cut out red meat for health reasons for a few
years. I then decided to become vegetarian, which proved fairly simple. I
"slowly" cut dairy from my diet over the course of a few months and
immediately became vegan once I realized that dairy made me feel sick.

Do you usually cook for yourself? Do you live in a rural town with few vegan
options? If the answer to either of those is "yes", I'd give yourself a couple
months to learn how to eat meat- and dairy-free. Otherwise I'd say just go for
it. Especially in a big city it is easy enough to find vegan substitutes (e.g.
mock meats) in a pinch that you should have no trouble supporting a rapid
transition.

Don't forget to take B12 supplements.

------
fader
I slowly transitioned over several years. I first stopped eating pork, then
started doing a meatless day once per week, then twice per week.

There were a lot of factors involved in moving over fully, but the
precipitating event was joining a farm share for the summer. I got a huge box
of vegetables every week and it just didn't make sense to keep buying meat on
top of that.

I had serious (and strange!) meat cravings about 6 weeks in, but those stopped
after a week. I tried a few meat dishes after the summer ended but they didn't
taste good to me any more. And I noticed after a couple of months that I felt
physically better than I could ever remember. So it was easy to not go back.

------
ohstopitu
I did go vegetarian (been vegetarian for ~15 yrs now).

Back during the birdflu scare (2008-09), my parents decided to stop eating
meat (chicken - which was the only meat I used to eat). I was ~12-13 yrs old.

Overtime, I wanted to switch back but for some reason or another (saw some
videos on Youtube about how chickens are treated and killed didn't sit right
with me), never did.

We cut meat immediately. While I didn't miss a lot it, I did eat a lot of soy
in the interim period (ofc a few friends of mine who tried didn't succeed).

Just as an FYI: Don't watch those videos if you like stuff like leather for
example...I love the feeling of leather seats, but I'm looking for synthetic
leather in my next car.

~~~
throwaway7767
> Just as an FYI: Don't watch those videos if you like stuff like leather for
> example...I love the feeling of leather seats, but I'm looking for synthetic
> leather in my next car.

Genuinely curious: are animals slaughtered specifically for their leather? I
always assumed that cattle raised for food would supply more than enough. If
that's the case, buying leather in the current situation should not cause any
extra suffering.

~~~
ohstopitu
Some animals are raised _just_ for their leather while the meat from them is
an additional source of income (especially if you consider luxury cars - one
that finally got me was the fact that Lexus does not like leather from animals
that were raised in farms that had barbed wire....because it damages the skin
and hence the leather. I felt that that animals were raised and looked upon as
numbers and use instead of them being organisms with feelings for example).

------
pards
I was a strict vegetarian for 20 years but recently went back to eating meat
primarily to increase the diversity of protein in my diet.

If you're planning to go veg, my suggestions would be

    
    
      1. Go all-in straight away. 
      2. Stick to it all the time. It's easier on others if they just know that you won't eat meat rather than guessing
      3. Prepare a canned answer to the "Why" question. You'll get asked this every time you share a meal.
      4. Don't preach it, just do it
      5. Don't equate vegetarian/vegan with healthy. Any diet can be healthy or unhealthy.

------
jeffmess
I am slowly getting there. After watching the film cowspiracy my wife and I
decided to slowly transition, mainly environmental reasons but also because of
the way animals are treated. We eat meat maybe once/twice a week coming down
from twice daily, and when we do eat meat we try and source the best from
small farmers. Transitioning away from meat has been relatively easy, where I
personally fall short is dairy. There just isn't a good substitute for cheese
and I find the smell and taste of soya milk awful. Hopefully new products will
come along...

~~~
matty22
Unsweetened cashew milk is the best "veggie milk".

I find soy milk to be so thick it feels like drinking yogurt. Almond milk
tastes like dirt to me, but cashew milk is so close to milk that I haven't
found any reason to buy actual cow's milk in years.

Agree with you on cheese though. There just isn't good vegan cheese.

------
eagerNewb
Went Vegan about 8 months ago. Cut of meat and dairy products immediately.
Feeling great. Been loosing weight - some people might want that, not me,
skinny as it is. I was always a bad eater, so I guess removing meat and dairy
came natural to me. What I can suggest is stop thinking of food as tasty. I'll
eat dirt if it gives me the right vitamins and proteins, don't care how food
tastes as long as it gives my body what it needs.

~~~
Arizhel
>What I can suggest is stop thinking of food as tasty. I'll eat dirt if it
gives me the right vitamins and proteins, don't care how food tastes

Wow, this really sounds like a ringing endorsement for veganism! I'll bet a
lot of people will try it out immediately after reading this!

------
benbristow
No because meat is delicious. Giving it up is effort and not going to stop any
of the negative actions that occur from the global eating of meat anyway.

~~~
vinay427
Sure, one person giving it up may not stop the negative actions from eating
meat, but we live in a society in which your actions influence thousands of
other factors. If activists for causes we now commonly accept pretended that
any change in their own lifestyle would be futile, we wouldn't have advanced
much as a society.

I'm not claiming that veganism is beneficial to society, but that your
argument is rather fallacious.

------
jshupe
I went to an Earth day event in the late 90s, which had lectures on the
environmental impact of beef and really good vegan pizza, vegetarian ever
since -- Vegan for 7 years of that; but got tired of being that guy. I was
already vegetarian at home at the time, so I just stopped ordering meat when I
was out to eat.

------
nailer
Yes, for 10 years (between 8 and 18).

I love animals and care for their welfare (and still do), but reflecting back
as an adult, the reason did it was because I wanted to control over some
aspect of my life, and I consider my own vegetarianism (and my young cousins
'low fat high carb veganism') as eating disorders.

------
tmaly
I was vegetarian for a while back after college.

Now, I just try to eat healthy. I tried the book Vegan before 6, which I
thought was a nice way to move into that lifestyle.

I also am working on a side project to help me find vegetarian / vegan dishes
at restaurants in a location. I still want that healthy option when I am
eating out.

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MarkChristensen
Check out the documentary "Forks Over Knives" for great information about the
health benefits of a vegan (whole food plant based) diet. The title makes
reference to how much better it is to prevent (and even treat) many chronic
health conditions with the fork rather than the surgeons knife.

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factorialboy
Today, going vegetarian is quite easy. Especially in a big city. Plenty of
options all round.

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fareesh
No - but I won't be having kids, and no procreating vegetarian will have a
lower footprint than me, so I think there are other ways at having the desired
impact without being confined to dietary habits.

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ssijak
No.

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nthcolumn
Went veggie but then back due to lack of non-proprietary foodstuffs. Didn't
feel any different but got real sick of pumpkins soup back in Aussie.

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WorldMaker
I've been on a very slow path to veganism for years.

I gave up beef a few years after college for green reasons, as managing my
personal carbon footprint as best as possible made sense to me. Because of
this I would (and still do) make exceptions if I knew the source of the beef
was local/sustainable. I found that after a while of abstaining from beef I
lost an appetite for it and can't really digest anymore and I have very little
interest in beef.

I started to eliminate eggs and dairy for allergy/IBS reasons. I've found that
the less of both I eat, the better I feel in general, but I know that
everyone's mileage varies. For me, eggs turned out to be a bigger culprit than
I imagined in some of my worst food issues. Of the two, I'm more likely to
cheat with dairy than eggs these days.

I live a few blocks from a major industrial pork slaughterhouse. I can live in
ignorance most of the year, but there are a few points in the year where the
output at the facility gets its heaviest (the big one being the holiday months
of late October through mid January), or they do something illegal/wrong, and
their smell ekes over to my part of the neighborhood. Walking into a BBQ place
in my neighborhood to meet friends one day during the holiday period, I had
the nausea inducing moment of realizing how much the smells inside and out
were deeply entwined and more similar than their difference (which at that
point seemed merely hints of charcoal versus hints of feces). From there I
realized I couldn't criticize the facility in my neighborhood and continue to
eat pork, and definitely could not stomach the thought of pork that day.

I find it interesting that without pork, chicken lost most of its interest. I
still eat seafood somewhat regularly, but that's about the last of it for me.

I'm not very strict, still, and see it as my job, not a restaurant server's to
manage it. If I order something that isn't quite right, that's my mistake, and
mostly I eat it and enjoy it anyway. The green reasons on the one side are
full of intentional exceptions for local/sustainable food. On the other side
the allergy issues and growing inability to digest certain meats comfortably
are "spell slot management" issues. I know there are consequences and I try to
be careful and know my limits, but those are, for the most part, my own
problems to deal with.

I took to heart the "Vegan Club" idea that you don't talk about being
vegetarian/vegan unless asked a direct question. I like it to be more of a
private concern. I find small joys in those moments when someone I've had
lunch with for several days in a row gets that surprised realization I've only
really ordered vegetarian/vegan and finally thinks to ask.

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amalag
20 years now

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patrickg_zill
Actually I tried going all meat (Steak and Eggs diet) but was defeated due to
my addiction. I am addicted to carbs, not joking about that either.

