How to become vegetarian?

[Kyrie Fluffins]

Does anyone have tips for easing into vegetarianism? I have tried to become vegetarian before, but I always end up going back to meat. How do you deal with cravings? What meat replacements/substitutes do you use?

[Jeremy]

I know you’re referring to vegetarianism but on a related note, when I became vegan my favorite food was (and still is) ice cream, and I would also drink a lot of milk and eat a lot of cheese back then. Each night I began to hear these crying sounds as I was trying to sleep from a distant farm. It felt like they were crying for my help. Eventually I decided to research it and soon discovered that they were mother cows crying for their stolen babies. Then I read that those mother cows had been artificially inseminated to have those calves by having a large rod stuck inside of them against their will and injected with semen – then when their baby is only a few days old (if that) it’s stolen from them (which causes both of them a lot of separation suffering) and then the milk designed for the baby cow is taken from them to give to us. Once I realized this was going on, which I didn’t even know until I was like 24 I became horrified to the point where I gave up milk, ice cream and cheese right that very moment and never chose to ate them again. Of course I would still have cravings for these foods and I have found vegan equivalents which are just as good, but mostly it was an ethical thing that helped me the most to stick with my decision. A strong love for animals seems to be all that was needed in that case because I couldn’t stand the thought of contributing to something like that. A year or so after, your entire taste and body changes. I have since tried milk after 2 years of having no dairy products – I tried it in a dairy ice block that I wasn’t aware of as being dairy. I almost vomited at the taste of cows milk – even though I used to easily be able to drink large quantities of it – the smallest amount now made me feel so physically sick and the aftertaste stayed in my mouth for hours no matter what I ate or drank to get it out of my mouth. That sounds extreme, but that’s how much our bodies do change when we allow them to go back to the state that they were in before. The same goes for meat – it might have once been appealing, but the thought of eating animal flesh becomes so repulsive after a short while of not eating it that even the thought of it can make you feel sick. There are of course meat substitutes for people that do crave strongly certain types of food – and I would still eat a substitute meat without feeling sick – but the idea of eating animal flesh becomes very repulsive the more you return to the natural state. There’s so much information out there about how our bodies are not at all designed to be consuming that type of food – when compared to carnivorous animals, etc. I’m not sure how long you have gone before returning to meat but perhaps it just takes a little more time to adjust if it has been a huge part of your life. Of course it is really important to research proper substitutes and everything. I’m not sure if this helps or not but for me it was basically a moral thing and was made easy through my love of animals. If you think of something that hasn’t been conditioned by society in your mind to be normal (like for example, if you found out you were eating human children, or a cat, dog, or horse when you eat meat) do you think it would be as hard to change what you were eating before once you knew that you were eating human children or dogs/cats/horses? I think it has just become so normalized in our society that we forget the sentience of each of these beings that we are eating, and just remembering that can help immensely with the decision to become vegetarian.

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