I went vegetarian for a year. The girl I later married was (and is) vegetarian, and I knew I'd be doing a lot of the cooking, and wanted to see things from that side for a bit.
As for how, I went cold... tofurkey?
Ask HN: Have you gone vegan or vegetarian?
11–20 of 67 posts
Re: Ask HN: Have you gone vegan or vegetarian?
#12I did it within minutes.
Watch the film on YouTube: "Earthlings"
Try to watch it in a full sitting. You probably wont be able to, but try. Then walk to a mirror and look yourself in the face, and ask if you and this world are really real, that is, do your own version of a reality check.
Then you will see your proverbial red pill and blue pill.
Dont do it because you think you might lose a few pounds and impress some stranger at a beach. Do it because you want to deeply re-examine life and this world. Make it a life path for yourself.
Its either a difficult and impossible path OR its a trivially easy path, it all depends on your intentions.
Watch the film.
I have been vegan for several years.
It took me almost 2 years to watch the film in its entirety.
Re: Ask HN: Have you gone vegan or vegetarian?
#13I did go vegetarian (been vegetarian for ~15 yrs now).
Back during the birdflu scare (2008-09), my parents decided to stop eating meat (chicken - which was the only meat I used to eat). I was ~12-13 yrs old.
Overtime, I wanted to switch back but for some reason or another (saw some videos on Youtube about how chickens are treated and killed didn't sit right with me), never did.
We cut meat immediately. While I didn't miss a lot it, I did eat a lot of soy in the interim period (ofc a few friends of mine who tried didn't succeed).
Just as an FYI: Don't watch those videos if you like stuff like leather for example...I love the feeling of leather seats, but I'm looking for synthetic leather in my next car.
Re: Ask HN: Have you gone vegan or vegetarian?
#14Vegan for about 6 years. I cut out red meat for health reasons for a few years. I then decided to become vegetarian, which proved fairly simple. I "slowly" cut dairy from my diet over the course of a few months and immediately became vegan once I realized that dairy made me feel sick.
Do you usually cook for yourself? Do you live in a rural town with few vegan options? If the answer to either of those is "yes", I'd give yourself a couple months to learn how to eat meat- and dairy-free. Otherwise I'd say just go for it. Especially in a big city it is easy enough to find vegan substitutes (e.g. mock meats) in a pinch that you should have no trouble supporting a rapid transition.
Don't forget to take B12 supplements.
Re: Ask HN: Have you gone vegan or vegetarian?
#15The first and fundamental question you want to ask yourself is not how, but why: when your reasons are clear, the path naturally follows. I can see three strands: 1. For health reasons. This is IMO the weakest reason. I'm not interested (nor qualified) in starting an endless debate about the health risk/benefits of meat; but if you only want to eat healthier is best to start with the obvious: cut sugar, snacks, sodas…
I think people may be more familiar with the word "compassion" than "Ahimsa" but I am not sure, and definitions of compassion range broadly.
I do believe there is a strong link between reducing suffering, compassion, and veganism.
It is VERY hard for me to listen to people try to promote messages of peace, love, freedom, compassion... if they are not vegan.
Re: Ask HN: Have you gone vegan or vegetarian?
#16I was a vegetarian (abruptly) for a couple of years. Eventually I started to feel sort of icky, not properly nourished, though this is probably the fault of my specific dietary habits and not vegetarianism in general.
Since then I've stuck to a low-meat diet; I mostly eat vegetarian, and when I eat meat I try to eat low on the food chain. I'd say I eat fish and chicken about once a week each, and pork or beef maybe once a month. I also cook with chicken broth pretty often.
Re: Ask HN: Have you gone vegan or vegetarian?
#17I have been a vegetarian since 28th october 2012. I was 16 then. I cut out the meat intake immediately. I happened to one day take a stroll in a part of the town where butcher shops were in plenty and I stood and observed the butchering process out of curiosity. Whatever I saw left me pale and horrified. I came back home and cried a lot. The shrieks and cries of the hen didn't leave my mind. And I decided from that d…
It was lucky you lived somewhere where you even had an opportunity to see the butchering process and thus make your own informed choices about it.
In the USA, it is not difficult to go your whole life eating meat and never seeing where it comes from, other than "from the supermarket refrigerated aisle." Many if not most supermarkets don't butcher on site (eg, in college I once briefly worked at a Walmart meat department and was disappointed I would not be learning any butchering, but would just be moving around boxes that happened to contain meat)
I'd like to propose a perhaps odd view: It may not be wrong to eat meat, but it's surely wrong to eat it if you wouldn't be willing to do the butchering and preparing yourself if that were the only way to get it.
Re: Ask HN: Have you gone vegan or vegetarian?
#18I went to an Earth day event in the late 90s, which had lectures on the environmental impact of beef and really good vegan pizza, vegetarian ever since -- Vegan for 7 years of that; but got tired of being that guy. I was already vegetarian at home at the time, so I just stopped ordering meat when I was out to eat.
Re: Ask HN: Have you gone vegan or vegetarian?
#19The first and fundamental question you want to ask yourself is not how, but why: when your reasons are clear, the path naturally follows. I can see three strands: 1. For health reasons. This is IMO the weakest reason. I'm not interested (nor qualified) in starting an endless debate about the health risk/benefits of meat; but if you only want to eat healthier is best to start with the obvious: cut sugar, snacks, sodas…
You start by saying Reason 1 is the weakest then go on to admit you aren't qualified to be making that statement? Good breakdown regardless. I'd recommend checking out The China Study [1] [1] https://www.amazon.com/China-Study-Comprehensive-Nutrition-I...
He is saying he is not qualified to talk risk/benefit of eating meat BUT REGARDLESS food/diet is the worst reason(in his opinion) to go vegan.
And I agree.
I found no contradiction in his statement.
There are better reasons to go vegan, and as repeatedly stated in thread, reason is important to sustaining the (any) path.
Re: Ask HN: Have you gone vegan or vegetarian?
#20I have been a vegetarian since 28th october 2012. I was 16 then. I cut out the meat intake immediately. I happened to one day take a stroll in a part of the town where butcher shops were in plenty and I stood and observed the butchering process out of curiosity. Whatever I saw left me pale and horrified. I came back home and cried a lot. The shrieks and cries of the hen didn't leave my mind. And I decided from that d…
It was lucky you lived somewhere where you even had an opportunity to see the butchering process and thus make your own informed choices about it. In the USA, it is not difficult to go your whole life eating meat and never seeing where it comes from, other than "from the supermarket refrigerated aisle." Many if not most supermarkets don't butcher on site (eg, in college I once briefly worked at a Walmart meat departm…
There are many hunters who believe that it is wrong to eat meat unless you kill and butcher it yourself.