In the last couple of threads I’ve read, there have been a couple different Dopers identifying themselves as ex-vegetarians. I’ve known a couple in real life as well. (I should note that I’m neither a vegetarian nor an ex-vegetarian myself.)
So anybody else want to fess up, and say why they made the switch?
I don’t personally consider myself an ex-vegetarian but I did add tuna back into my diet a couple of years ago. That would make some people consider me to be an “ex”. I added it 'cause I needed to make weight and tuna is an easy, lo-cal source of protein (something I don’t get large quantities of).
I was never really a vegetarian, although I usually used that term to avoid long boring discussions about my diet. I ate any food that I didn’t have moral objections to, such as game meat and shellfish. Since I had my colon taken out, however, my diet has changed back to my pre-semi-vegetarian days for medical reasons. It wouldn’t be impossible for me to change my diet back again, but it would be difficult. I’ll probably do it when my weight has stabilized.
I was a vegetarian for seven years, during which I was a vegan for six months. I went back to eating meat because I like it, and because I don’t like vegetables. My hat goes off to vegetarians – it is a very healthy lifestyle.
raises hand
When I was 17 years old, I went through a “coming of age” ceremony in my temple. It’s a ceremony generally for men but my temple was very liberal and so women were encouraged. Anyway, one of the vows I took was to be a proper Hindu, which includes vegetarianism. I remained so for three years.
The main reason I broke away is it was getting harder and harder to find healthy veggie foods when I moved away from home. But an underlying reason was definitely that I was approaching atheism at that point, reading a lot of stuff and not putting a lot of faith in my religion. It didn’t make much sense to be a vegetarian for that reason.
But the real reason? Honest-to-goodness real reason?
Steeaaaaaak. drools
I was raised vegetarian (hey, it was the '70s…everyone was doing it) until I was about 10 or so. I didn’t even realize it until my mom mentioned it when I was about 20. Then I realized that all of my early holiday food memories were of the “Christmas Quiche” and the “Easter Fritatta.” I don’t remember the decision to eat meat being some monumental event. I think we just started one day.
These days, I feel like I’m reverting if I go one meal without some morsel of animal flesh.
I had a friend who broke a three-year vegetarian streak for a breakfast sausage.
Sad. I mean, if you’re going to fall off the wagon, landing on a nice juicy steak is definitely the way to go.
I’m an ex-vegetarian. I became a vegetarian not long after joining the boards (in fact, I stumbled on the SDMB when I followed a link posted on a vegan website). I lasted about two years, then went back to eating meat a) because I was getting frighteningly underweight, and b) convenience. I wasn’t a very good vegetarian anyway. I used to joke that I had just replaced the meat in my diet with cookies.
Convenience is what has kept me eating meat since I put a little weight back on. It’s much easier to find stuff to eat in restaurants and cook meals the rest of the family will eat. However, I’ve been toying with the idea of going back to vegetarianism lately. I’ve gotten some cookbooks from the library and I’m hoping I can just start serving some meatless meals without anyone really noticing…
My stepdaughter was a strict vegan for several years, but has gradually been relaxing her diet. First it was occasional dairy products, and now I’m told she eats eggs.
As she’s about to embark on a two year teaching stint in Germany, I wouldn’t be surprised if she begins to allow herself a little meat or fish.
I was a vegetarian for 7 years (well basically vegetarian; I discovered I could “cheat” by eating seafood and it would not make me vioelently ill like other meat would, so I did ocassionaly cheat) I stopped being a (most of the time) vegetarian (here after call “vegetarian” for simplicity) after I had a breakdown involving the suicide of my sister and my own eventual diagonsis as bipolar. I stopped being vegetarin because I wan’t cooking for myself and eating out all the time was becoming proplematic because I would get sick frequently from something that was supposed to be vegetarian but wasn’t ( I was working in a more rual area that I was used to) When I started eating meat again I dosed myself on pepto and had a wonderfull burger and a steakhouse. I moaned. It was that good.
I was a vegetarian for ten years. Then, around the time I was 24, I decided to throw out the labels and eat what I pleased. Not because anyone was making me be a vegetarian, but because I’d used the label for so long, that if someone saw me decide to order, say, a plate of chicken fingers one day, a big deal was made out of it, as if I were breaking some sacred law (which they didn’t even abide by! I was the only vegetarian in town!). But no, maybe, just that one day, that once in a blue moon chance, I just damn well felt like eating chicken fingers.
So I dropped the title, and now I’m more or less of a sometime-vegetarian… I just don’t tell people in person. I’ve mentioned it here that I am “going back” to being vegetarian, mostly because I’ve gotten quite… er… “chunky” yes, that’ll do in that past few years, and my meat intake has sharply increased in that time. I’ll still eat fish, and probably turkey and occasionally chicken whenever I feel like it, it will just be much rarer, like it was way back when I was “official”.
I’m not vegetarian for any moral reasons (animals eat other animals all the time, I just prefer mine packaged conveniently), I’m vegetarian for the health benefits, and mostly because I just plain don’t like meat that much unless it’s covered in golden, crispy batter or sweet, sweet gravy or any number of sugary sauces. A little bit of meat of any sort here and there won’t cause a disturbance in the Force, or possibly cause some barefooted, bare breasted Wiccan goddess to fly out of the heavens and shoot me with her crossbow though frankly, part of me would love to see* that*.
I became a vegetarian at age 15. I was very outspoken about animal rights, not wearing leather, yadda yadda.
I remained a vegetarian for 17 years. I would say the last two years I started to question why I was still doing it, I no longer felt as strongly against the idea of eating meat. ( I was a know-it-all belligerent bitch about it in my teen years)
The older I got the more accepting I became of the idea of eating flesh and it no longer seemed like I was doing something wrong. I suppose being an atheist may have had something to do with it.
I gnoshed so much meat my first month as an ex-vegetarian it was like throwing a cow into a pool of hungry piranha.
By the way, no regrets, neither for not eating meat for 17 years nor for eating it the past 2.
When my sister reverted to non-vegetarianism after 5 years or so (she’d become a vegetarian at about 14, like a lot of teenage girls in our area), it was for a Whopper at Burger King. I mean, I like them, but it’s not exactly the pinnacle of meat-based food :D.
Hamburger Helper - Chili Mac. A whole box of it at once.
I was only a vegetarian because my boyfriend was, so it was not a big deal to me. In fact, it was a bit liberating to decide that I wasn’t going to “follow the crowd” and be the meat eating rebel amongst my group.
(Hmm…I thought I posted this last night, but I guess it didn’t go through…)
My husband was a vegetarian for about 8 years before we met, and another three after we got together. His beliefs were spiritual, in that he didn’t want to take the energy of dead animals into him. He was a terrible vegitarian - the pasta and Boca burger kind who doesn’t like or eat vegetables.
Finally, he started eating a little meat in carefully controlled spiritual exercises. First venison that had been bow-hunted by a friend of ours, then vegetarian fed turkey, hand raised and humanely slaughtered by another friend. Each time, he’d pray intently over the meat, eating only with his bare hands and thanking the animal’s spirit for its sacrifice.
Then one day someone brought White Castles to a potluck. It was all over. He had five. The next day we were driving by an Arby’s and he made me stop.
He still doesn’t like large hunks of meat or meat with bones in it - he says it squicks him out because it feels “too dead”. :rolleyes: Whatever. So we have ground beef a lot, but not steak. Boneless skinless chicken breasts, but not drumsticks.
I was completely veggie for about four years. Then I went travelling, first to England where I got well sick of egg and cress sandwiches and longed for some tuna. Then to Brazil where the only non-red-blooded protein alternative to beans was fish. Then to the south of France when even the seafood was stuffed with meat.
Throughout this the temptation to eat fish and seafood became unbearable. So now I eat fish and seafood (and have for the past three years), and so am technically not a vegetarian.
I eat it because I like it, and because it is a really healthy protein. I guess back here in Toronto I could give it up again (especially considering the near-total lack of fresh seafood in these parts), but I just like it too damn much.
If I do go back it will be for sausage: cured, spicy, peppery, fatty sausage, preferrably with hot mustard. Mmmm. Or else poutine.
What can I say, it’s the Mennonite in me. Or the Canadian.
::laughs:: My sister was this kind of vegetarian, too. Only she replaced the meat with Dr Pepper, candy, and potato chips. It can be a healthy lifestyle, certainly, but not the way my sister practiced it! She and her family (husband and three kids) all went veggy together and kept it up for 3 or 4 years. Their deal, upon becoming vegetarian, was that Terry would cook and her husband would clean up the kitchen. But this never worked well. Terry has no sense of smell (lost it following a head injury), which affects her appetite; and is a poor cook. She never really adjusted to healthy vegetarian-style cooking. She lost weight and was just always tired and ill. Her husband is a better cook than she is, but he didn’t want to learn vegetarian cooking, either. Finally, he decided that he would take over the cooking, but only if he could cook with meat, and they gave up the experiment.
You’ve alluded to your colon a number of times - can I ask what exactly happened?
I was vegetarian for about 10 years, and my children and I ate mostly vegetarian (I did give them chicken nuggets). Then I met and married my current husband, who is quite the meat-eater, and it just got tiresome to cook for me, for the kids and for him. Additionally, we started trying to eat low-carb in order to lose weight, and that would mean eating a lot more protein than I was getting in my vegetarian diet.
Left to my own devices, I still eat no meat; last night everyone was going in different directions and I had salad. But I’ve gotten used to meat again, and it tastes all right to me. When I quit eating it, it was revolting. I didn’t have any big issues with eating animals or even the vaguest of notions of eating better. I just didn’t like or want to eat meat.
I still really don’t want to eat it, and I think I feel better without it in my diet. However, as a mother with a family to feed, it’s pretty hard.
I was a vegetarian for awhile, back in the '70s when it was The Thing To Do. I wasn’t a very good vegetarian. For instance if I went to somebody’s house for dinner and they were serving elk steaks, which elk they’d shot and dressed themselves, well I would have to have a piece of that elk steak. After all, the elk had given its life. It was the least I could do.
It was not a particularly healthy diet for me, probably because I didn’t cook a great variety of stuff, and I got into some digestive issues. I lost a whole bunch of weight (well, for me, considering I started at about 100 lbs). Basically if you’re a vegetarian you have to spend too much time thinking about what you’re going to eat and whether it will be nutritious, planning meals, shopping, chopping, creatively seasoning, cooking it, etc. For me it was easier just to not eat. But I like meat and will go to some trouble to eat that. Not necessarily every day.