I don’t eat meat (including fish). I also try to avoid eggs that are not free-range wherever possible.
I think that while it’s possible to live perfectly happily and healthily off plants, there’s just no need to inflict pain and death on animals. There are other factors (most of them on your don’t-include list) that are not reasons per se for vegetarianism but do contribute to making it an easier choice for me: the fact that I don’t like meat all that much anyway, and the fact that vegetarian food is generally cheaper than meat.
These days (see question 8) I avoid them fairly strictly. I’ve had the odd lapse by accident, for example eating a chocolate mousse that I didn’t realise contained gelatine after not checking the ingredients thoroughly enough, but nothing more than that in recent times. I’m less strict on the eggs thing: if I’m buying eggs, they are always free range, but if I’m buying an egg sandwich (for example) that doesn’t indicate whether the eggs are free range or not, I don’t let it worry me too much.
I don’t have children and don’t plan to.
My sister has been vegetarian far longer than I have (she was vegan for a while) and my mother has been a pescatarian for about equally long, so you might imagine they would be the ones convincing me rather than the other way round; it didn’t really happen like that, although I’m sure the usual absence of meat from our meals contributed to my going off it somewhat. I’ve never tried to persuade anyone else to become veggie, although I will happily extol the virtues of veggie food (rather than vegetarianism per se) when asked about it.
There are various meat replacement products that I like—quorn, tofu, soy. All are pretty readily available here in the UK. Can’t stand lentils and other pulses, which is slightly unfortunate.
Pretty laissez-faire. I admire the vegans: not sure that I could ever manage that! But nor do I see much of an ethical impulse to. I also particularly appreciate the attitudes of meat-eaters who go out of their way to source meat from animals that have been treated well, etc.
Most of my family went mostly-veggie when I was about nine or ten, so after that I ate a lot less meat (it was still available at home sometimes, and I would sometimes have it outside home). Between the ages of about fifteen and seventeen I gradually found myself eating less and less meat, and virtually never selecting it when given a choice. I finally decided to “officially” call myself vegetarian last year, when I was eighteen, and start additionally avoiding “non-obvious” meat-containing things like sweets with gelatine in. Since then I’ve had the odd accidental lapse, but nothing more than that.
As a kid I used to really like chicken, bacon and little mini-sausages, but had a pretty ambivalent attitude to most other types of meat. I would probably still enjoy chicken once I could got over the initial oh-meat-I-don’t-eat-that-yuck impulse that I now have, but I really don’t have any desire at all to actually eat some. The thought of red meat makes me feel slightly nauseous now (although weirdly, the smell of bacon is still really good!).
I’m a competitive swimmer, so I really do have to watch the protein intake and make sure I’m keeping it high enough. The only time I’ve found that to be a problem was on a training camp in Italy, where the catering for veggies was fairly poor. There was plenty of pasta and so on, but almost no protein, and doing that much swimming meant I really really needed it. That may have been one of very few occasions on which I came relatively close to eating some meat. I could feel that my body needed it, but I didn’t really get close to actually having some because my brain still didn’t want it at all.
Anissimov is in the US and is speaking of the legal definition (or lack of one) there; the definition in the UK, which is where Emily says she is in the comment you are directly responding to, is rather more restrictive.
I don’t eat meat (including fish). I also try to avoid eggs that are not free-range wherever possible.
I think that while it’s possible to live perfectly happily and healthily off plants, there’s just no need to inflict pain and death on animals. There are other factors (most of them on your don’t-include list) that are not reasons per se for vegetarianism but do contribute to making it an easier choice for me: the fact that I don’t like meat all that much anyway, and the fact that vegetarian food is generally cheaper than meat.
These days (see question 8) I avoid them fairly strictly. I’ve had the odd lapse by accident, for example eating a chocolate mousse that I didn’t realise contained gelatine after not checking the ingredients thoroughly enough, but nothing more than that in recent times. I’m less strict on the eggs thing: if I’m buying eggs, they are always free range, but if I’m buying an egg sandwich (for example) that doesn’t indicate whether the eggs are free range or not, I don’t let it worry me too much.
I don’t have children and don’t plan to.
My sister has been vegetarian far longer than I have (she was vegan for a while) and my mother has been a pescatarian for about equally long, so you might imagine they would be the ones convincing me rather than the other way round; it didn’t really happen like that, although I’m sure the usual absence of meat from our meals contributed to my going off it somewhat. I’ve never tried to persuade anyone else to become veggie, although I will happily extol the virtues of veggie food (rather than vegetarianism per se) when asked about it.
There are various meat replacement products that I like—quorn, tofu, soy. All are pretty readily available here in the UK. Can’t stand lentils and other pulses, which is slightly unfortunate.
Pretty laissez-faire. I admire the vegans: not sure that I could ever manage that! But nor do I see much of an ethical impulse to. I also particularly appreciate the attitudes of meat-eaters who go out of their way to source meat from animals that have been treated well, etc.
Most of my family went mostly-veggie when I was about nine or ten, so after that I ate a lot less meat (it was still available at home sometimes, and I would sometimes have it outside home). Between the ages of about fifteen and seventeen I gradually found myself eating less and less meat, and virtually never selecting it when given a choice. I finally decided to “officially” call myself vegetarian last year, when I was eighteen, and start additionally avoiding “non-obvious” meat-containing things like sweets with gelatine in. Since then I’ve had the odd accidental lapse, but nothing more than that.
As a kid I used to really like chicken, bacon and little mini-sausages, but had a pretty ambivalent attitude to most other types of meat. I would probably still enjoy chicken once I could got over the initial oh-meat-I-don’t-eat-that-yuck impulse that I now have, but I really don’t have any desire at all to actually eat some. The thought of red meat makes me feel slightly nauseous now (although weirdly, the smell of bacon is still really good!).
I’m a competitive swimmer, so I really do have to watch the protein intake and make sure I’m keeping it high enough. The only time I’ve found that to be a problem was on a training camp in Italy, where the catering for veggies was fairly poor. There was plenty of pasta and so on, but almost no protein, and doing that much swimming meant I really really needed it. That may have been one of very few occasions on which I came relatively close to eating some meat. I could feel that my body needed it, but I didn’t really get close to actually having some because my brain still didn’t want it at all.
See Michael Anissimov, Free Range is Bullshit.
Anissimov is in the US and is speaking of the legal definition (or lack of one) there; the definition in the UK, which is where Emily says she is in the comment you are directly responding to, is rather more restrictive.