what inspired you?

to become vegan or vegetarian?

 

I was on holiday in France. We were walking along the dock in a small fishing village. A boat had just come in with baskets full of lobsters. One of the lobsters was reaching over the top of the basket and exploring with its tendrils. A fisherman walked past, reached out, casually ripped off the lobster's tendrils and carried on walking. Vegetarianism was inevitable after that, really.

 

I was looking through Peta's site (just got my own computer a year ago) and saw all the video's and such and and words can't really describe how I felt seeing all that.....that was the reality of it all. And I wondered WHY had I never questioned this before *I love & respect animals so much* why did I ever think it was ok to eat them???? Veg from that day on. Vegan in the next year......

Dok...that is so sad....I have a shirt that says LOBSTER LIBERATION. People think it's a joke sometimes but that just gives me an oppurtunity to talk about it.

 

Yeah, that's the thing though. I'd just never thought about it. I guess most meat-eaters don't unless something like that happens to make them consider what happens to their food before it reachers their plate. I 16 when that happened and I was veggie within a few months.

 

i was at Moby's website one day, and clicked on his essay titled "everything is wrong: facts" which, in addition to environmental facts, had farming facts as well. I had never heard the term "factory farming" before, but saw that everything associated with it was horrible. Everything was disgusting, and so I googled "factory farming" and came up with PETA's website. There I read all these different facts and watched videos and looked at pictures and became horribly disgusted. That night I didn't eat. I believe it was the next day that I became a vegetarian.

 

I was on the subway and this lady next to me was reading a magazine and there was one page there was a picture of a cow, and it looked sad, and the caption was "look at her as more as a burger" or something and I remember it striking a nerve and all of a sudden I felt so guilty...the next day I believe I ordered a vegeterian starter guide....I've been veggie for like 3 years now

 

that was pretty much what got me, was when i just learned about the reality that is the meat industry and how horrible it all really is for the environment the living things in it, and then i just quit cold turkey without ever looking back... until then though i was like just doctoratomik, just never questioning anything about what i had been doing my entire life almost and doing what i was told....
im asking because i'd really like to do something to make a difference and was wondering what helped change yalls lifestyle so i could maybe try to change a few more peoples and do my part in fighting the good fight, at least put a dent in the meat industry or help balance the ever growing amount of meat eaters to vegetarian probably....
lately career paths have sordove been flying in and out of my mind and my future has been crossing my mind but i dont really see myself getting truely passionate about anything else, and just today i was visiting the peta website when i realized that its actually right in my city, this wonderful organization is like a 15 minute drive from me and i never even had the slightest clue, maybe its some kind of sign that im meant to help out there or something, who knows, im definatley gonna look into it though....

 

Books, after reading Eating for Life in 1972 where the author said man's inhumanity to animals was connected to man's inhumanity to man I chose to be a vegetarian. In 1988 after reading Diet for a New American where the author pointed out that cheese was liquid meat I chose to be a vegan. A good book can change your life and your world.

 

Well, over last summer (THAT summer, the summer when yours truly discovered the wacky weed, lol), myself, my friend, and his sister were all chilling in the attic, having a good time and stuff, we were all hungry, so we decided to go order a couple of pizzas from Domino's, which was right across the street.

So we went to pick it up. Now, my friend's sister was already vegan. We'd talked about it before, and I knew what it was and stuff, but ... once we got the pizzas, we were walking back, and I noticed how she wasn't giving us a hard time for not being vegan (back when I was a stupid little omni and thought veg*ns were kind of in your face all the time).

So I made a comment like, "Hey, I think that's cool and all, how you respect my decision to eat meat and don't lecture me about it." And she replied something ot the effect of, "You've got it all wrong, I don't respect your decision at ALL, I only respect the fact that it's your decision to make."

Since then ... I took a good, long, hard look at the problem, and ... well, decided that I was wrong. =)

 

Not sure what got the concept into my subconcious in the first place, just glad it's there.

Always liked animals in the abstract and was pretty much animal welfare. Never really knew anything about it (having been raised omni etc) but always knew there was something fundementally wrong with how people treat/view animals.

Did actually try to go veggie at nine, but failed because I don't know what it was really all about (and my Grandmother tricked me). So it went on the back burner for years.

At risk of sounding like a fangirl the Phoenix family inspired me, in a round about way. Never even knew what vegan was before hearing of them. Read lots of articles about them for totally unrelated reasons but the ideals sank in and made sense.

Still didn't do anything until I ended up here on the hipforums and found so many wise and friendly posters who set a good example. Just proved it could be done and made me realise there was no reason not to be.

So short answer: This place, I think.

 

Animal Cruelty in the meat industry...it's disgusting!

 

Not sure if it was inspirration rather the gross out factor that initially led me to give up meat. First I went off chicken, had bitten into a chicken roll and it was all gristle and after that just couldn't handle chicken...then came fish cause our frends had a trout farm and bought some by for us and after them being cleaned outside I just couldn't eat them as I couldn't help but think of all the goosy guts and how there were probaly still bits in there...thereafter no fish...finally we had some pet lambs, after sitting with them and also the cows next door holding our pet dog and letting these amazingly inquisitive gentlecreatures come up and check us out I just couldn't eat them....

anyhow after stopping I did read some books and stuff and found that they just helped reinforce my choice...Animal Liberation by Peter Singer...Diet for a small planet and other such ones...also my friends who I met after a few years that were hardcore and in others faces about their vegetarianism and then a few years later had stopped probaly helped me stick at it too.

 

I've always wanted to go veggie, but somehow never managed to actually make it.
Then we watched this film about cows in factory farming and on a "traditional farm", from birth to slaughterhouse ... that did it. Stopped eating meat the day after.

 

When I got involved in the peace movement, I started meeting more and more people who were vegetarian and saw that they were eating some good stuff and that it wasn't quite as inconvenient as I thought it would be.

Still, I'm not completely vegetarian. I strive to avoid meat and other animal stuff. I'm in a nasty little town where it's still not so cool or convenient. I'm on a vegetarian path.

 

about 16/17? years ago i saw the news- during a time when there was a meat glut and they had to store huge quanities of animal corpses in these massive freezers. The pictures were on teh news for a long time, pictures of row after row of lamb bodies, hanging upside down. Whole buildings full of these little corpses hanging there. At first i was angry that they spoil my dinner (slaps self)- cause it made me sick to see it. Then it was - oh heck i can't eat meat anymore..until then i hadn't realised really that meat was a living breathing animal. I am so glad they had those pictures on the news, now i look back and wonder if the camera man was a veggie

yeah years later i found out about factory farms... and that reinforced my disgust at the meat industry. I cant think of anything more evil than the meat industry.

 

I would start getting queasy in the meat section of the grocery store, I hated buying it and touching it and looking at it. And I saw pamphlets of slaughter houses and geese being force fed to make goose liver pate'..... and after all that it was just a matter of time.

 

Well, the whole AR thing started when I was a very small tot and my dad explained where fur coats come from. 11 years ago I found out about how veal calves were raised and stopped eating baby cows, then stopped eating and wearing all animals 9 years ago. Finally figured out that creatures were still being tortured to suit my tastebuds and went vegan 1.5 years ago. Still learning the fine details at this point...guess I'm a little slow.

So, it seems that my inspiration has always been newly acquired or newly recognized knowledge.

 

I was at another forum and this tread was about vegetarianism. I started arguing agains it. After that I started thinking about what I had said, if it was what I meant or just something I'd been taught to mean. And just the word showed up so many places, it finally made me read the "Why be a vegetarian" at hippyland. That inspired me and when I joined the hip forums I started reading more. One day I was visited my cousin and I found out she also wanted to go veggie, so we were gonna stop eating meat slowly. I stopped eating meat, but she didn't
but she was more in it because she didn't want to gain weight.
I think my reasons worked better

 

Truthfully a combination of reading the Bhagavad-Gita and starting to get physically sick around meat...I'd see it or smell it and want to barf...it still makes me sometimes... I can't believe I ever ate it...

 

A combination of childhood reasoning and the very wise words of my religious studies teacher.