I was reading a post by Jesse in which he mentioned going vegetarian after having an informed conversation with a patient friend. This made me curious as to what motivates people to make a kinder change in their life. Maybe there is a common thread that can help when discussing the topic with others, or at the least, it might make for some interesting stories.
I remember clearly when & why I went vegetarian. I grew up in a house full of animal lovers, and have been head-over-heels in love with them for as long as I can remember. At age 20 I stopped using any products that are tested on animals, or are owned by parent companies who test on animals (darn Unilever seem to own everything).
I'd tried going vegetarian (unsuccessfully) when I was 13, but by the time I'd turned 22 I'd started eating & enjoying meat less & less every day. Then at Big Day Out 2005 I went to the RSPCA stall & saw a sticker stating "Meat is Murder", & that was it for me... I completely agreed with the statement, loved everything about it, & haven't consumed any meat since that day. More recently I went vegan after seeing the Bobby Calf report on the 7pm show, & I don't think I'll ever look back.
Anybody else interested in sharing the how, when & why of why they changed? Even the smallest of changes like not using products tested on animals or eating free-range meat make a huge impact, & I'd love to hear some other's stories.
My change was kinda random. I was looking up bands/music, and came across Kisschasy (who i am now obsessed with), and it linked me to Unleashed. So i started watching the videos, and reading up about it. And yeah, stopped eating meat. Since then I've stopped using animal tested products, wearing animal fur (mainly leather - not that i was a fan of it in the first place), and about a month or two ago i went vegan
It has been the best decision I've ever made. if i could change anything, it would to have been vegan since birth ... but yeah. Ah well, too late for that now. Hahaha
So, thank you Darren Cordeux, and the other members of Kisschasy for helping me understand the more important things in life
I had thought about going vegetarian for about 2 years on and off, but thought it would make no difference.
Then I made friends with some vegan folks in my hometown, and started to properly think about it. I thought they were crazy for going to that extreme! I started reading what I could on the net about the environmental consequences of eating meat as I thought myself to be quite the environmentalist.
Once I realised that eating meat just didn't make sense and was extremely wasteful, I stopped; for the environment and also because of (somehow) starving people in third world countries. The way I see it, we have enough food already to redistribute it and stop children starving to death, and we're feeding it to cattle to serve our tastebuds.
Then I started learning more and more and reading more and more and it seemed to me that animals were capable of suffering, of understanding their deaths and what right did we have to take their lives and cause them to suffer just so that we could say "that tastes yummy"? I was vegan six months after being vegetarian. It's been 15 months so far.
In November last year I was playing a game online and chatting with other players. After they left for the night and I got bored I started clicking on their profiles and reading websites they had in their profile, you know, mostly things like facebook or a blog or something, but then one of them was different.
I spent hours devouring what was written there and clicking links and googling until it was getting late and I finally had to stop and go to bed. But I knew that when I'd get up in the morning I would start cutting the cruelty out of my diet and out of my life, something which I probably would have stuggled with a lot more if I hadn't found this website not long after that.
I was never really a big fan of meat or animal products.
My dad first made me go off Lamb when I was very young and we passed some sheep on a paddock and he said something like "that's what lamb is, baah" and everytime I thought lamb I saw a sheep in my head.
One day I started feeling sick after eating meat. It was like this for about a week.
I was fed up with it, so I started researching alternatives, the main one being Vegetarainism. That then branched off to me researching Veganism, because I didn't like or eat a lot of animal products anyway, and I figured if I was going to stop eating meat that I would go all the way, not half-ass it and just go Vegetarian.
So after looking at a lot of Australian websites on Veganism, and Melbourne websites on where and what to eat, I decided I'd give it a go for a month and see how I go.
Once that month passed successfully, and seeing how easy it was, I decided to announce and call myself an official Vegan. It's been 3 or 4 years now, I have lost count.
My parents never let me eat red meat. And they always said that I was vegetarian even though I still ate poultry and fish. I've always loved animals, and when I was in grade 9 I went on a trip to Canberra, I had to write that I was vegetarian on my dietry requirement sheet. Then my dad said "you're not vegetarian, vegetarians don't eat meat", I made him write it anyway and then spent 4 days interstate on a completely vegetarian diet. It really opened my eyes, but when I got back to Hobart I started eating meat again.
In March grade 10 I realisd I'm not an animal lover if I eat what I love. So I remembered how I was vegetarian in Canberra, and used that experience to become vegetarian.
Then I stumbled across Unleashed, I had plans to become vegan when I left home, but I discovered that there were vegans here who were my age and even younger than me. So I thought why not? And did research towards veganism. Now I'm a happy vegan.
Oh wow, look at that… already people’s reasons and motivations for making changes are so varied, and not at all what I expected! I find this fascinating, because I hope it will help me inspire others. We all know what it’s like when the subject comes up; a lot of people tend to get on guard and defensive right away (understandably, nobody likes to be preached to), so it’s nice to hear about some subtler ways to inspire. Very cool stories!
I was at my uni's orientation festival day and there were tons of stalls. One of those stalls was on animal rights and vegetarianism, I always considered myself an animal lover and I had thought about becoming a vegetarian when I was younger so i picked up one of each of their pamphlets and took them home. I read through them that afternoon and spent most of the afternoon reading them and googling vegetarianism. I haven't eaten meat since and i'm slowly making my way to veganism, the only thing that gets me is cheese. My mum wont give it up (she went vegetarian with me that day) so until i move out i will still be eating some cheese. I can't wait until I can finally choose what foods to put into my body without inconveniencing anyone.
