Vegetarians: mind telling me about your experiences?

In My Humble Opinion
1

But first let me tell you why.

I’ve always been ambivalent about eating meat. On the one hand, I have some ethical qualms about unnecessarily killing animals for food (and it doesn’t make a difference, as far as I’m concerned, that I’m not doing the killing myself). On the other hand, it seems pretty obvious to me that humans are natural predators and meat-eaters (binocular vision, anyone?), while it’s less obvious that I need to concern myself with the “rights” of cows & chickens. And they both taste sooooo good.

So I’m torn.

Recently, though, I’ve been thinking more seriously about becoming a vegetarian. Partly that’s because of my diabetes; I’m trying to manage my blood glucose wholly through diet & exercise, and I’ve come across some claims that vegetarian diets are more conducive to glucose management than carnivorous diets. I’m researching that as well, of course, but it’s another mark in the "give up meat’ column.

Anyway–as I said, I wonder if the herbivorous members of the Teemnig Millions might give me some input. Anybody care to share why you’re vegetarian–that is, for purely ethical reasons, for health reasons, for religious reasons, or some combination? Are you a strict vegan or do you partake of milk & eggs? Were you raised vegetarian or did you change later in life? What do you eat to get your protein? What problems does keeping to such a diet present?..

And so forth.

Thanks in advance.

2

I was a vegetarian for about a decade, and both before and after I ate/eat less meat than is usual. At this moment I am an omnivore, but I cannot remember the last time I had, say, a steak or a chop or what have you. Slabs of meat don’t really do it for me. But I do like fish a lot and I did miss fish and shellfish (shrimp are stupid, but they are not vegetables).

The truth is that ultimately I became vegetarian because first my roommate and then later my boyfriend was, and it’s easier to make one meal than two (in both arrangements I did the cooking). I did always use dairy products (I dislike milk but like yogurt and cheese) and eggs.

You need a lot less protein than most people think, and you can get it a lot more places than is generally understood. I personally am not fond of tofu but am fond of tempeh, and I like nuts rather a lot, for instance.

A real vegan diet can be a real challenge to spring right into (no animal or animal derived food). I personally prefer a gradual approach, replacing meat with meat free options say, twice a week and then increasing. I found it more attractive to go to entirely non-meat based eating as opposed to using fake meat – I could think of no real reason to pretend I was still eating meat.

I did miss the taste of bacon very much, until I found that smoked cheese banished the craving.

Have a look at any of the Moosewood Cookbooks (or Fields of greens or the other Moosewood spinoffs) while you experiment, they are quite good and also helpful.

3

I’ve been a vegetarian for six and a half years now, I guess. Yeah, that sounds right. I stopped eating meat because I started being concerned about kashrut (keeping kosher) and it was easier in my house - I was living with my parents at the time, and they’re atheists - to simply stop eating meat than to stop eating pork and shellfish. Shortly afterwards, I lived in a vegetarian co-op for awhile during the summer before my senior year of college, and I just got used to not eating meat. My younger sister has been a vegetarian for several years longer than me, and vegetarians are commonplace in hippie Northern California, where I grew up, so my parents didn’t care or think it was weird, although they are omnivores.

I have nothing against people eating meat. I don’t go around telling other people that they’re disgusting or murderers, or whatever. But the idea of me eating meat just grosses me out.

In AMERICA (I often find myself starting sentences like this), I get my protein from dairy products and tofu. Here in Bulgaria…I don’t know, I eat a lot of yogurt? I do have to figure something out still.

4

Ethical and health reasons. I’d been thinking about it for years when I finally gave it ago - my thinking was that if it was possible for me to live without animals having to die to feed me, then I was ethically obliged to try it at the very least. I was also very concerned about mad cow disease at the time.

I do eat some dairy. I drink soy milk, but… well, the short version of this story is that cheese is my weakness.

Took it up just after I turned 19.

Cheese, nuts, tofu. Things like that.

When I started, I had no idea how to satisfy my hunger with just vegetarian dishes. So I snacked a lot and gained weight over the next few years despite going vegetarian - although maybe that would have happened anyway as I left my teen years behind. (It’s not like my bacon cheeseburger-based diet was way better.) And it’s a bitch to lose weight when you’ve already cut a lot of unhealthy things out of your diet. :wink:

5

Mrs. minlokwat chiming in…

On the contrary to Marley, I lost weight after changing my diet. Rather than becoming a vegetarian, though, I became a pescetarian (one who eats seafood but refrains from certain types of meat such as beef, chicken, or pork). For whatever reason, giving up beef, chicken, and pork melted pounds right off.

Since my family has a history of heart disease, I decided to give this healthier lifestyle a try. I kept to that diet for nine years and became super fit during that time. It seemed to go along with the lifestyle and did not at all feel forced. The only reason I went back is because we were trying to have a baby and I became concerned about the high levels of mercury in the seafood I was eating (which is a whole other thread). I still eat seafood but much less than before and I am very selective about the types. Darn it, if those pounds aren’t coming right back…

In terms of becoming a pescetarian (which will also apply to vegetarianism) I do have a suggestion that eased my transition: Think to yourself that you will not eat meat for only three weeks. Once you accomplish this goal, make a commitment to yourself that you will not eat meat for another three weeks. Continue this three-week commitment cycle until your new diet becomes a life style. By the end of the second go-around you may be feeling such positive results that you will not even need to make the third commitment. Committing to a lifetime without meat may seem overwhelming at first unless it’s done in small parts. To keep the commitment strong I always told people (if questioned) that I can eat meat any time I choose, I just choose not to.

Also, I never had a problem with others eating meat in front of me just as with Kyla. I never judged; I did only what worked for me. Once we have our child (due in February), I am going to go right back to my former dietary lifestyle. I miss the high levels of energy I had during those nine years. It may not work for everyone, but it worked for me.

Good luck in your decision. :slight_smile:

6

I’ve told this story before, but because it’s you asking, Skald:

When I was 17 or so, I was searching pretty heavily for meaning in my life. I turned to religion. I read the Q’uran and the Bible and found nothing in there for me. So I returned to my own religion.

I became fairly orthodox. I took vows of bhramachari* - remaining celibate and studying until 25 - and along with those came vows came vows of vegetarianism.

There is a branch of Hinduism that does not eat eggs but I didn’t go as far as vegan. I remained a pretty strict vegetarian, though. This is easy to do on Indian cuisine, as there’s lots of **dahl **(roughly: lentil soup) and other kinds of protein.

I ended up giving up my vegetarianism for a combination of three reasons:

  1. At my college, it was hard to find good vegetarian food and still be well-fed.
  2. I was moving more and more away from my religion, and didn’t see the point of remaining vegetarian if I didn’t believe in the rest of it.
  3. But the #1 real reason (as I have said before)? Steeaaak. drools

Ordinarily, women are not supposed to take this vow. I was lucky to be in a fairly progressive congregation.

7

It’s good to be loved. :wink:

This is off topic, but hey, it’s my thread. The vows you speak of…is it “celibacy until the age of 25 & studying until that age also” or “celibacy indefinitely and studying until 25”? Because your phrasing is unclear.

8

*Brahmachari *literally means a young man who has taken vows of celibacy. As long as he remains unmarried he remains brahmachari. But even our god wishes us to have children, so this is what you’re supposed to do:

From age 0 to 25 - Study and remain celibate.
From age 25 to 50, marry and procreate and further the species.
From age 50 to 75, become celibate again. Teach your children, sustain them, and help them grow.
From age 75 to 100, go away from your life and live as a hermit and contemplate life and the Universe, so you may achieve *moksha * (oneness with god) after your death.

And of course you’re loved! Didn’t you see how many people got upset when you threatened to leave?

9

I went pescatarian on January 1 of this year. My reason was, I was bored. Tired of eating/cooking the same things over and over. I’m a pretty decent cook, but after 18 years of marriage found that I had fallen into a rut of about two weeks’ worth of recipes in pretty steady rotation. I was never a really huge carnivore, but I also never really learned to cook much without meat. So instead of a New Year’s resolution, I decided to see if I could cook for 31 days without meat. My husband and daughter were cool with the idea, so we all decided to give it a shot.
I’m not a big fan of seafood in general, but I figured since I do eat shrimp, crab, and tuna, I’d keep them in the diet for variety’s sake.

Easiest major change I’ve ever made, and it’s been fun, too, because you almost have to get a bit more creative cooking-wise. I was surprised to find out that not eating meat doesn’t automatically mean you’re eating healthier - we had a bit of a cheese overload here for awhile. Besides cheese, my biggest issue is that I tend to sub mushrooms for meat, and there’s not a helluva lot of nutritional value in 'shrooms. They’re yummy, though.

I don’t have any real ethical issues about meat-eating – although I much prefer to keep my head in the sand where meat processing is concerned. The only thing that truly wigged me out came to me courtesy of Cecil, which is where I found out how gelatin is made. I knew it was an animal product, but the details grossed me RIGHT out.

I kind of miss ham, but after eight months, I’m a little leery of reintroducing meat into my diet. The husband and the kid went back to meat-eating pretty quickly after our one-month trial period, but I think the veggie thing may stick with me. I may even go so faras to eliminate the fish, but we’ll see.

10

Ethical because I feel that large industrial farms are needlessly cruel (though Temple Grandin has made terrific strides in reducing the stress on these animals). But my people eat meat and I love to cook; so and I buy a calf from a small local farm once a year and eggs from the local farmer’s market. If they want chicken or pork they eat out or do the grocery shopping themselves.

I also have no issue with hunting or fishing so long as the kill is quick and clean. We are at the top of the food chain and we wouldn’t have such a big brain if we hadn’t started eating meat. But I can choose to avoid eating animal products without harming my health even while I thank my cave dwelling ancestors for taking down a few mammoths. (Irony alert)

Health reasons because I don’t feel well when I ingest animal products- (like chicken and beef stock at Chinese buffets). My health is great- I have good numbers though my blood sugar does drop from time to time due to lack of protein. No need to buy exotic or expensive veggie fare; though- peanut butter and beans are inexpensive and easy to prepare.

There is a social caveat- having to defend my meat free plate is tiresome. I never bring it up because some omnivores take a defensive posture when they realize there is no meat on my plate and insist that I explain my choices. If it appears that an emotional discussion is pending, I just say “I don’t like meat. Some people don’t care for spinach; and I don’t care for meat.”

11

I’m a vegetarian. I became so three or four years ago, when I was in high school. I did it for pretty much wholly ethical reasons, though reading about the health issues involved with eating meat has certainly not made me eager to eat a hamburger.

Since I became a vegetarian, I’ve lost about net twenty pounds, though it seems imprudent to attribute such a long term loss to one single thing. Vegetarianism doesn’t have to be healthy-- in fact, in lieu of meat and without access to or knowledge of good sources of protein it’s very easy to go heavy on the carbs. There’s a million vegetarian things to eat that involve nary a vegetable. It may seem counter-intuitive, but making sure to eat your veggies is just as important IMO for vegetarians as for carnivores.

Personally, I love vegetarian cuisine and I’ve been blessed with never having loved meat much in the first place. The great thing about being a vegetarian is that no matter how low-quality or unappealing something vegetarian is, it almost never is disgusting on the visceral and intellectual level that a gross animal product is (that is, some leafy thing may smell and taste horrid, but at the end of the day it’s just a plant that grew out of the ground somewhere. That raw pig eyeball is still a fucking raw pig eyeball. For this reason, in very low-quality eating situations, the vegetarian options are almost always more appealing. There’s only so far down a vegetarian meal can go. A meat meal can go pretty. damn. low.

The thing I find hardest about being a vegetarian is not having trouble finding something to eat, but having people think I’m going to have trouble finding something to eat. 99% of the time, there is something I can eat at a given place, and when once in a while there isn’t, personally, I can deal. I hate being fussed over and worried about, but that’s exactly what many well-meaning people do to vegetarians, and I hate being “that finicky vegetarian guy”. On the opposite kind of well-meaning: being a vegetarian means you have to be very skeptical. Unless an item is very obviously eyeballable, simply asking “is this vegetarian?” is rarely enough. The definition of “vegetarian” for many people is “does not have big chunks of meat in it”. You’ll fast come to learn what dishes and cuisines could have meat lurking in them. Soups, for example, as much as I love them, are an instant red flag to me. Guilty until proven innocent. Authentic Chinese food has very little I can eat-- pork and seafood hiding the damnedest places. Conversely, Indian food is great for vegetarians-- there never seems to be meat unless there ‘needs’ to be. Sussing these things out will eventually become second nature for you.

Hope this helped a little. Just my personal experiences. IMHO, YMMV, RSVP, MLK JR, etc.

12

Hunh. I’ve never (so far) had to explain my eating habits to anyone. I ask servers in restaurants if I can have things without meat, or I simply say “no thanks” to people who offer me meat products. On the two occasions I have been pressed on my refusal, I have said, “I don’t eat meat” and the responses were, “Oh, sorry, would you like a blueberry muffin instead?” and “Really? OK.” (And no one has EVER offered me raw pig eyeballs :dubious: )

I did have one occasion where I asked a friend if he knew if a particular restaurant had any veggie choices on the menu and his response was, “Yes, they have turkey burgers.”

It IS likely that the fact that I went non-meat for reasons other than health or ethics makes me a little less particular about my inquiries than someone who is staunchly anti-meat, so it’s possible I have been “slipped” chicken broth or something inadvertantly. If I were very very concerned about it, I can see that it might be considerably more work to ascertain ingredients.

13

I’ve been a mostly* vegetarian for something like 20 years now. I first gave up meat around age 19 when I was getting naseous a lot a night for no particular reason. Giving up meat fixed that (of course, since the main meat I had been eating was Taco Bell every other night, maybe it wasn’t the meat).

Anyway, I first went towards vegetarianism for health reasons but I’ve gradually shifted towards ethical reasons. Like Beaucarnea, I don’t really have a problem with killing animals for food but I do have a problem with the way we raise and treat food animals in this country. It seems immoral to me to raise animals in utter misery just for cheaper Chicken McNuggets.

When I first started vegetarianism, I just cut out meat. So I was still eating a lot of crap food and got most of my protein from cheese. I’ve refined my diet a lot and I now eat mostly beans and lentils for protein (along with occasional tuna) and lots of fruits and veggies. I do eat cheese and eggs, just not lots of them. Don’t worry too much about protein, most American get far, far more than they need and unless you’re on a really strict raw food diet or something, it’s easy to get adequate protein. I will say that I do think cutting out processed foods from your diet can make an even bigger change in your health than giving up meat (although, for many people, those changes occur together).

Problems with vegetarianism: Can be kinda a pain in the ass at company catered lunches. My current company is great about providing an vegetarian option but my old company would routinely order BBQ without thinking. I don’t have many problems at restaurants, particularly here in liberal Austin. Sometimes when I travel, I’m stuck with appetizers tho’. My biggest current problem is my recently diagnosed anemia caused by my lack of iron intake. But it’s uncommon for males, even vegetarian ones, to have problems with it.

*I’ve admitted before that despite being a vegetarian, I have a secret fondness for Arbys. :o Ooooh, the shame of it all…

14

Been a vegetarian since I was 20, so 14 years now.

I won’t discuss my vegetarianism most of the time for this very reason. My family isn’t very open to it and tend to give me shit about it on family holidays. So fun. I don’t want to debate the topic anymore-- it’s old now, and I’m not looking to convert people. Even when people say they really want to hear my reasons, and promise they won’t start an argument, often they quickly try to debunk my reasons. I just stopped talking about it, and demure as Beaucarnea does.

But anyway, short story long: I don’t eat meat because I couldn’t kill the animal myself, and even if I could, I wouldn’t want to eat an animal that has been factory farmed. Maybe if I were starving, I would, but I’m fortunate to be in a situation where I can make choices like this. There are zero health reasons for me doing this-- I eat what I want as long as I’m not eating animals’ bodies, though I tend to prefer “health food” because it tastes better to me-- no soda, not a lot of pre-packaged insta-foods. I only buy free-range eggs and I have a milk allergy, so no milk either.

15

I’ve been a vegetarian for a couple of years at this point. I’m not terribly strict about it. I tend to avoid milk and eggs, but will eat them if pressed. I’ll also eat wild meat if given the opportunity and I feel like it (so far, this has only happened once; my man caught me a fish).

I wandered into it for ethical reasons. Factory farming eeks me out. A lot. I happened to lose ten pounds almost immediately since cutting out meat means cutting out fast food almost entirely. I also use cruelty-free products, since testing lipstick on rabbits seems absurd to me, but that’s neither here nor there.

If you’re thinking about going vegetarian, the best advice I can give is to remember that there are no rules. You can do it however you feel most comfortable. Dropping into a completely vegan diet seems like it would be very shocking. Start by cutting out red meat, and then chicken and fish, and then eggs and milk, or however you like. Don’t feel bad because you ‘cheated’. This is not a fad diet and you don’t get a prize if you win.

The people I have seen try to go vegan cold turkey end up eating pretty awfully for a while. French fries by themselves really aren’t a meal you can have five times a week. Neither is bread. The more you ease into it, the easier it is to come up with healthy, proteiny alternatives to whatever you eat now.

16

non-drinker cheers from the peanuts gallery

17

I first stopped eating meat for health reasons, but about two weeks later they changed it so meat was healthy all of a sudden. Figures. Then, I didn’t eat meat of animals kept in conditions I couldn’t agree with (wild game and “good” farms were always OK by me) for ethical reasons. Then, I got ill and had a colectomy and now it would be rather difficult for me to exclude meat from my diet, especially when eating out. It’s not that I couldn’t, and I probably will go back to it, but it would be difficult.

I got my protein from the meat I did eat, lentils, soybeans, quorn and various vego-meats or whatever you call them.

Problems? Not many. The main problem was that I could never just get a burger when I needed something quick out, as I’ll rather starve than eat one of those peas-and-chopped-carrot-stuffed-into-a-fried-shell deals. Man, those are seriously disgusting.

18

I was vegetarian for a good ten years. Right now I eat meat because I am living in a meat-heavy culture and I don’t want to distance myself from the community. But vegetarianism treated me well and I will probably continue it when I return to the states. Frankyl I find it easier than an ominverious diet- easier to cook, easier to shop for, easier to deal with.

I was veg for no good reason- vague health and ethical concerns, but mostly I didn’t like meat much.

One thing is- you don’t have to be vegetarian all the time. For some time I was “Flexitarian” or “meat-curious”. Meaning I ate mostly a vegetarian diet but wouldn’t turn down a good chunck of meat if the mood struck me. There is nothing wrong with that. There is no reason you need to have some sort of consistant and justifyable diet.

19

Well, yeah, but some of those people might have had venom-spewing etc. winged monkeys hovering them. Hard to say what’s sincere and what’s “we’ve got to keep him where we can keep an eye on him till we can figure out how to poison his oatmeal.” :smiley:

20

I’m actually contrary enough to do something largely because other people disapprove, but that’s probably a character flaw.